5.14: Fear The Walking Dead - Today and Tomorrow

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An encounter with a survivor sends Al and Morgan on a mission into a dangerous settlement; Al chases a lead while Morgan has an epiphany; Grace and Daniel make a connection.

 

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There is no paradise in the dead wasteland. Nothing other than the one you create and keep secure. The people of Kirkman's world had it better than us, even if they were on the same path of as the one we have taken. After the dead arrived, the whole scene turned to a Hell-On-Earth.

I get why Morgan is hellbent on trying to help people, because it is redeeming all bad from the past. Ricktator wasn't really a good man. He did do a lot of bad things to good people, and those deaths could have been avoided.

You look at the new female leader, Virginia and her Pioneers, and you see a lot of same things. The survivor of her oppression indicated that not everything is well in the Paradise Ridge gated community. In the past we how one of them had fallen to the mysterious Wolves, and it is likely that those places were more like a death camps than saving the people living inside.

Tom, in fact said, "I got lucky and then... unlucky. Water supply started to go bad. We couldn't grow food. The fence failed. The roof started leaking and we were ready to split before they showed up."

"They said it wasn't about today. It was about the future."

Well, the road to the hell is paved with the good intentions. I, for one, would be afraid of Virginia and her pioneers. There is no need to create a conflict. Yet, everyday the Fear crew put themselves out there in one ... or many.

Al put herself and Morgan in wrong place, when she lead them into the compound. Some people can be saved, others has to be left on their own devices until there is a way to do the other thing.

It surprised me that Al associated Pioneers to the Helicopter people. The map she found from the wall, didn't look anything like the ones we saw earlier. The evidence linking them together is circumstantial at the best.

When Al asked about "the helicopters," Virginia out-rightly denied it. "Helicopters?" She smirked. "We just got gassed." But, the way she is dressing and acting makes me think about another helicopter crew, the Trashlady.

Is it possible she's lying?

Morgan claimed that Virginia is living in the past, by trying to hold on to the community. I disagree. The way of being nomad is a way of life, but so is by living in the fortified communities. Without the gas you are forced to find a settlement, because at the end, the life on the road demands supplies.

It is nice that Grace doesn't live in the past, but she's actively preparing for the future. Just like Daniel. You got only one life and you have to live it. Giving it up is not the way to go. That is what Daniel was feeling after he heard the news about losing the oil field.

"Man," I'd said in Grace's shoes. "It's not like the only place in the States with the oil. Everything that you see around us was built by us. Everything you can see can be salvaged and reused. This isn't the end, just a bump on the road. Get over it."

When they got in the accident and broke the transmission in the moving truck, Daniel showed there is always light at the end of the tunnel. No situation is too demanding. There is always something that can be done, even if the greed got them in an unfortunate incident.

Nothing last forever. Not even learning from previous greed situation, because Daniel surely should have left the vinyl's in the truck rather than trying to haul them with him.

At the morning he wanted to listen them because he wanted to hang in the past and remember the good old times. Every moment you live on Earth should be one. You'll have to love yourself and your neighbours enough to keep living in the place. Together we can all make it better and then there is no room for the hatred.

"It is all right to live the life," as they sang. "It is all right to hang in the past."

Is Grace dying from cancer?

 

[REBerg]

Pairing Grace with and Daniel with Al with Morgan didn't do much for either character development or plot advancement here.
For a bit, I was wondering if Daniel was going to become Morgan's rival for Grace's affections. As it turned out, it seemed as if their entire adventure served only to have Daniel confirm to Grace that she is Morgan's sunshine. Daniel's new lease on life, courtesy of meeting Charlie, was a non-revelation.
Meanwhile, Morgan decides to stop running away from Grace just in time to learn that she circling the drain. That really seemed contrived, as Grace had shown no recent health deterioration before that point. Isn't radiation sickness more of a gradual than a sudden thing?
I don't think Morgan's desperate need to continue do-gooding was motivated by a need to make up for past misdeeds. He has fulfilled his obligations there. I think that he was struggling with the conflict being generated by his feelings for Grace and loyalty to his late wife.
Al's hope that matching phrases were going to lead her the location of her heartthrob helicopter pilot was a long shot. In the end, the only development for Al and Morgan was meeting Ginny and her Gauchos.
Isn't it strange that Ginny knows the names of everyone she is meeting? She claims that they have been watching, but such details makes me wonder if she has a spy embedded in the Fear Gang.

 

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Isn't radiation sickness more of a gradual than a sudden thing?

Well, you can get cancer from the accumulated radiation. We don't know how long and how exposed she was to the radiation. The Pioneers map didn't showed any contaminated sites. No areas to avoid, even though, if they've spreading around the southern states, they should have pretty good idea where and how things are in there. If the Paradise community is her HQ, I'd have expected to see that info on the wall maps. None was present.

If she is suffering from the radiation poisoning, she should start losing teeth, having blood in the urine, and her beautiful hear would start to fall out. To my eyes she's suffering from extreme pain. Daniel, ex-intel officer, for some reason doesn't see it or then he cannot understand what's happening cos he's not a doctor.

If it's the doctor case, they are all effed because they have none capable of making the diagnosis.

Isn't it strange that Ginny knows the names of everyone she is meeting? She claims that they have been watching, but such details makes me wonder if she has a spy embedded in the Fear Gang.

We don't know how much she has seen. Is it the box film, or something she salvaged from the oil yard.

 

[Dave]

1. Did we see the complete promotional video that they broadcast? There could have been interviews with more people that we weren't shown. There could have been further video sequels made and broadcast that we didn't see. They obviously didn't give away secrets, like the location of the oil field; Logan needed to raid the safe to get that, but the names of people they seemed to give out fairly freely. However, yes, Virginia could also have seen another film from the safe that Logan had brought. She's done her homework.

2. Is Tom's sister, the same girl (forget name) who was rescued in an earlier episode running from Virginia and the Pioneers? The part I don't really understand is the killing. It instils fear in the survivors, and that motivates people in the short term, but not in the very long run as Neegan found out in TWD. Killing Logan and gang, and trying to kill Tom and sister, but letting Morgan and Althea go, I don't understand the logic here. People are a scarce commodity. Attitudes can be changed, people convinced and made to come around. Logan did make an about turn. So, making a go of separated camps in the long term, that takes cooperation and agreement, as Maggie found in TWD. What does Virginia want from Morgan and Althea that she thinks telling them about killing Logan and threatening Tom will get her?

 

[REBerg]

We don't know how much she has seen. Is it the box film, or something she salvaged from the oil yard.

Oh, yeah. I forgot about the recruitment tapes they've been putting out. She could get many of their first names there.

 

[nixie]

Again I liked this episode, thinking about the similarities between Virginia and the trash lady, Virginia may be on the the look out for a/b for the helicopter people.
Maybe marked one of the fear gang but been unable to decide which one.
Also we have helicopter people, we know they took Rick and we have seen their presence in fear.
They are more advanced than any the other groups but maybe there is another group out there who can rival them, remember the lady who showed up at Hilltop? Maggie is apparently with them, wonder if we may see evidence of them in a later season ?

Hope Morgan does have some happiness before Grace succumbs to cancer.

The guard in the community dragged the dead inside, I get they don't want a pile of dead at the gates but what are doing with them and why not bury/ burn them outside the compound? Also they just left the two Morgan and Al killed.

 

[Dave]

The guard in the community dragged the dead inside, I get they don't want a pile of dead at the gates but what are doing with them and why not bury/ burn them outside the compound? Also they just left the two Morgan and Al killed.

That's because the guy got sacked after he let Morgan and Al inside. There is a still a vacancy available for a replacement Diener.

 

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They are more advanced than any the other groups but maybe there is another group out there who can rival them, remember the lady who showed up at Hilltop? Maggie is apparently with them, wonder if we may see evidence of them in a later season ?

Maybe or then we'll start to see them in the movies. I would hate them to cock it up, if this whole thing is AMC invention and has nothing to do with Kirkman's vision.

 

[Dave]

SO....

Spoiler: Helicopter People

Are there no helicopter people mentioned in the Graphic Novels? Or, have the TV shows now caught up with/ overtaken the story in the graphic novels?

 

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Spoiler

Are there no helicopter people mentioned in the Graphic Novels? Or, have the TV shows now caught up with/ overtaken the story in the graphic novels?

I don't know, because I stopped reading soon after the Whisperer conflict started. There was no mention about the helicopter people in the comics before that point. There was one radio contact that Eugene made, but that's all I know about it.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

SO....

Spoiler: Helicopter People

Are there no helicopter people mentioned in the Graphic Novels? Or, have the TV shows now caught up with/ overtaken the story in the graphic novels?

Spoiler

The helicopter people, as we know from the comics, are from the Commonwealth, and in the comics that's a major arc/conflict.

 

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Sydney Freeland, director on Fear the Walking Dead 514, “Today and Tomorrow,” expected there to be a revelation tying Virginia (Colby Minifie) and the Pioneers to soldier Isabelle (Sydney Lemmon) and the CRM organization, the mysterious helicopter group responsible for Rick Grimes’ (Andrew Lincoln) disappearance from The Walking Dead.

“I was convinced the helicopter pilot was going to tie in to my episode at some point, or that Colby... I thought that they were somehow tied together with the helicopter pilot,” Freeland admitted to Insider. “So I was like, ‘I know it’s all going to come together. It’s all going to come together.’ And it didn’t. So that kind of left me going... I think it sort of opened up a bigger, broader world in a good way.”

Althea (Maggie Grace) shared those suspicions, asking ringleader Virginia if her well-off pack of cowboys were in possession of a helicopter. When Virginia claimed not to have ties to CRM, it was disappointing for Al, who infiltrated a Pioneer compound with Morgan (Lennie James) in the hopes of reuniting with Isabelle.

“Yeah, that’s her, that’s that little grain that she latches onto initially to motivate her to go break into this complex, which is a crazy thing to do, but that’s the grain, and then obviously we find out later on that they’re not like them at all, and then I thought, Maggie Grace gave this great performance,” Freeland said. “She sort of realized like, ‘Oh sh--, this is... I brought Morgan in here and put him in very, very serious danger. What I thought this was, isn’t that at all.’”

Fear the Walking Dead Director Suspected a Connection Between Virginia’s Pioneers and Rick Grimes’ Abductors