6.11: Fear the Walking Dead - The Holding

ctg

weaver of the unseen
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An infiltration turns rescue mission as members of the group dig deeper into an underground community.
 
Them, the people who paint messages, living in an underground nuclear shelter that is big enough for hundreds, if not thousands. All fuelled by the Dead. And on top of all of it, a mad man. Well, I should laugh because this is the Kirkman's world and we have never seen them actually utilising any of those shelters governments most likely also built in their world.

I also like that we got Alicia, Althea and Wes centric episode, with no Morgan influence. I really think that they needed Lenny's contribution to get Fear back in the track. To show stories that are not indirectly influenced by Kirkman's writing.

We know he is a consultant, but the bunker and all the antagonists in Fear are inventions of the genre writiers, like you and me. That's how it should be.

I did find it amazing that the "painters" were able to determine the personality by showing Alicia's group the Dead living on a post. And I laughed out loud with Alicia's answers. She is truly a warrior princess and she should be always leading the expedition teams.

Maybe the most amazing moment in the TWD history is Wes finding his brother alive. It just doesn't happen and haven't happened in a long while. If ever. I cannot recall an incident that would have been the same, but we know that it happens in the real world. Those who has gone missing one day walk back into your life, even for a brief moment.

It's just it doesn't happened in Kirkman's world, because we assume that all who was lost are gone. Turned or dead. Then again, life happens. Wes believed that Derek is as he was back in the day, when they were young. But as the life happens, we change and we are not the same, even though we are same.

Thing is, the one thing we have learned very well in the course of the Fear, and that is: "Those who you think are the same, always, aren't. The Kirkman's world changes them, twist them and often brings out the ugly side."

I know it's hard, but we also have learned that nobody should be trusted, until they have shown a reason to do. But that also happens in the real life and those who are blood, sometimes exploit the trust in most horrible way possible. Just like it is Wes learning that Derek sent people to raid the Oil Town.

Derek was lost to Teddy's brainwashing techniques, and in Wes' shoes I would have kept my mouth shut about the locations and people on Morgan's side. But he didn't. He opened his mouth and declared out loud that Derek was wrong.

The brainwashed people cannot be broken that easily. They believe their own truth.

Maybe we could blame the absence of mass media in Kirkman's world. There is nobody informing people about what is happening in various parts of the world. So I believe that loss of context has made the people to lose their grip from reality and form their own imaginary castles. And at the moment they are ruled by this man...

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Where will he land on the villain scale?
 
A new villain about to surface on Fear the Walking Dead brings "a lot of twists and turns and surprise" in Season 6, teases series newcomer John Glover. The Smallville alum joins the Walking Dead spin-off as Teddy, the founder of The Holding: a self-sufficient underground community where followers believe "the end is the beginning." The spray-painted message, a cryptic creed that haunted Ginny (Colby Minifie) to her grave, is the calling sign of the existential threat now facing Morgan Jones (Lennie James) and his group of zombie apocalypse survivors. In "The Holding," premiering Sunday on AMC, Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) digs deep into the subterranean society where "life will begin again."

"I have a four-episode arc. I'm sworn to secrecy, I can't talk about it," Glover told his Smallville son Michael Rosenbaum on the actor's Inside of You podcast. "I got the job before [the pandemic] happened. So David Letterman, my agent, called and said, 'They're still probably gonna do it, but we've got to find out when it's gonna be safe enough.' They started up again in October, so I was [in Austin, Texas] from March 15 to October something or other. I finished [filming] a couple of weeks ago."

AMC Networks paused production on the Texas-based Fear in March 2020 and resumed later that year, wrapping filming on the nine-episode Season 6B this past March.

"It was fun," Glover said. "They were very generous and so welcoming and really wonderful people. They made me feel happy to be there."

When Althea and Wes (Colby Hollman) dig into the underground community in "The Holding," they find maps watermarked with the CRM's three-ring logo. In "Alaska," Althea and Dwight (Austin Amelio) tried to rendezvous with Isabelle — nicknamed "Beer Lady" — on the roof of an office building/CRM drop site they found crawling with plague-carrying rats and graffitied with a spray-painted message: "The end is the beginning."

"The Holding" ends with Althea setting off to find and warn Isabelle about Teddy's people targeting the CRM drop sites — as she tells Dwight, "If they hit a chopper, they could take out a lot of people."

"It definitely is something that caught Al's attention and kind of recontextualized the episode where she was in the tower and she thought the rats that had the plague were just there by happenstance, or that Teddy was targeting the people who lived in the tower. But now she's realizing that he actually had larger plans and he was targeting these people in the helicopter," co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss told EW. "Now he might not know who the CRM is, but when you see people in helicopters, you know that you can probably exact some destruction on them."


"And I think on a more personal level, what it does for Al is it makes her realize that she's got to act, she can't kind of wait and see what happens. She can't sit by and accept that something could happen to Isabelle," Chambliss added. "So that's why at the end of the episode she kind of makes that decision to go off and warn her, even though she knows trying to make contact with someone from the CRM could result in her own death. So it really speaks to kind of the way her feelings for Isabelle are sticking with her, even after all this time."
 
Teddy, the Talker, made me miss the relatively autocratic normality of Virginia.
Looks like Teddy rates a longer run than a single episode, although I briefly wondered if the whole underground colony had been destroyed when Alicia fired things up. I also thought that she might have finally found survivor guilt relief by making the same fiery, self-sacrificing exit that Madison is believed to made back at the stadium.
I don't know why Teddy wants her. Is his colony short of breeding stock?
Why, when this industriously recycling cult is about to seal itself underground from the rest of the world, is it so intent on killing off the other survivors on the surface? Do they actually think that they have the muscle to eradicate the Civic Republic?
 
When I first began watching TWD, and later FTWD, I expected to see religious cults like this in the style of the Planet of the Apes franchise. It has taken a long time to get to this point. Virginia, Negan, the Governor - they were in much the same vein, harsh, violent, possibly evil, but still sane. Teddy, the "king of the crazies" is going to be harder to deal with, as he isn't open to reasoning.
How are they going to do it? Nukes?
Reminiscent of the human mutants in the Forbidden City in Beneath the Planet of the Apes worshipping the Alpha and Omega "doomsday bomb"! I've also just read The Stand with Trashcan Man and his doomsday weapon. In fact, it is a staple of much 1950's-1980's SF isn't it?
we have never seen them actually utilising any of those shelters governments most likely also built in their world.
According to the After FTWD show it was an underground car park and not a nuclear shelter, but it doesn't really make much difference. Except it would be harder for them to plumb in water and wire up electricity, so they must have done a lot of work to the place to get it where it was.

However, I can't see how an underground car park would be able to accommodate thousands of recruits, and they obviously did have plans to expand the Holding. By the way, Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear bunker in Essex was designed to accommodate up to 600 military and civilian personnel, not a whole city, and that is the largest that I know of. Maybe there are still some bigger secret bunkers, but either way, their plan to increase their size seems wanting.
I briefly wondered if the whole underground colony had been destroyed when Alicia fired things up.
I thought it had gone up completely and Alicia with it. However, when Teddy said their work was destroyed, it must have taken out all those raised beds of vegetables, and all that plumbing and wiring that I just mentioned, and a lot more. That will not be replaced very easily or quickly, and it is a severe setback to their plans. Also, if you have ever been in a fire and (fact you won't know about me #1) I have, the smell and blackening from the smoke doesn't easily or quickly go away. I think they would be better off leaving and finding some other underground hideout.
I don't know why Teddy wants her. Is his colony short of breeding stock?
Teddy was being a little disingenuous. He tried to kill her when she was on the surface. Then again before she set off the fire. He just, this very second, had someone try to embalm her, but he says that he means her no harm! Her characterisation of Teddy as "king of the crazies" is correct. He cannot be reasoned with logic because he isn't thinking logically. He will say one thing, one moment, then another thing in another moment. He may seem lucid and he uses long words, but he is still off his trolley!
 
Reminiscent of the human mutants in the Forbidden City in Beneath the Planet of the Apes worshipping the Alpha and Omega "doomsday bomb"! I've also just read The Stand with Trashcan Man and his doomsday weapon. In fact, it is a staple of much 1950's-1980's SF isn't it?

It's just it's not easy without the launch codes. You might be able to bypass the key, but the codes ... it's another matter. In theory it might be a possible to generate specific key, but for all of them it's going to be a huge task, and there is no way of knowing what sort of state the nukes are after ten years of zombie apocalypse. But you're right, nukes were and still are an element in the SF.
 
Oh I liked this one, me thinks Teddy is even crazier than Alpha and the filthy woman.
Big mistake thinking he can turn Alicia into one of his disciples. I thought we'd lost her, gone in a blaze of glory like Madison (maybe).
I did see shades of Madison when Alicia faced off Teddy, like mother, like daughter.
Poor Wes finding his brother, then finding out he is a full blown member of the cult, death was his only salvation.
How do the bunker people know about Morgan?
I also think its a mistake for Al to go and find the helicopter people, if it is the civic Republic everyone is doomed.
 
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Oh I liked this one, me thinks Teddy is even crazier than Alpha and the filthy woman.

What your mind brings up about him? Dave brought out the nukes, but if we look into the last season encounter, that plague encounter is more plausible than using the nukes. To me he doesn't strike as nutcase, but as a professor that has found freedom to do anything he knows and can imagine. Maybe even putting his subjects in the brainwashing program, he couldn't do when the Old World was still standing and functioning.
 
To me he doesn't strike as nutcase, but as a professor that has found freedom to do anything he knows and can imagine. Maybe even putting his subjects in the brainwashing program, he couldn't do when the Old World was still standing and functioning.
In my opinion, the top rung of the nutcase ladder is occupied by characters like this guy -- visionary leaders willing and able to murderously bend reality to match their twisted visions.
 
In my opinion, the top rung of the nutcase ladder is occupied by characters like this guy -- visionary leaders willing and able to murderously bend reality to match their twisted visions.

It happened with Negan and the Filthy Woman, they both found freedom to do whatever they liked and there was nobody stopping them, until there was.

I'm thinking Charles Manson, Jim Jones type of crazy. Intelligent, charismatic but somehow not wired quite right.

Yeah, I get similar kind of vibes. Very intelligent, knowledgable and at the same time, liberated from the laws that bind people.
 
What your mind brings up about him?
It's a religious-like fervour in his own political ideology that he has developed and is spreading. He may well have been some kind of academic with odd ideas before that he can now explore for real. Seeing the "event" as a call from God or science to clean the Earth has no basis in anything we've seen in TWD or FTWD yet, so I'm assuming that it is an idea he cooked up all by himself.
In my opinion, the top rung of the nutcase ladder is occupied by characters like this guy -- visionary leaders willing and able to murderously bend reality to match their twisted visions.
Historically, this kind of figure all thought they were doing something that made sense to them, and their ideologies had mass appeal. However, mass violence and the elimination of other groups of people does require dehumanisation as a psychological prerequisite. That's why working on Wes' brother to show him that the people he killed were just like Wes should have worked.
 
This reminds me of A BOY AND HIS DOG; though I admit it had not occurred to me until I began reading this thread.

I just loved that scene when the central figure finally got something/someone to eat!:ROFLMAO:
 
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