“The Good Man”
Quick catch up: The Clarks, Manawas, and Salazars (Can we just call them the Clanazars??) just discovered the military’s plans to exterminate the community via Daniel’s “24” torture methods he learned from being a war criminal in The Salvadoran War. In the zombie apocalypse, the survivors are surrounded by two separate yet equally dangerous forces: the military, who abuse their power and exterminate communities; and the infected undead, who eat the military. These are their stories. DUN DUN.
The Clanazars prepare to leave while Daniel milks more information out of Corporal Adams, who claims he can take them to Nick and Griselda *she’s dead cough*. Back at the military compound, Dr. Exner is optimistic a helicopter convoy is coming to evacuate them. Before she can feel safe leaving, Liza demands Exner has Travis and Chris brought to the base (anything is possible?).
Terrified of Daniel, Adams asks Travis to kill him. “There’s no story here that doesn’t end with me dead,” he explains. But of course, Human buzz kill keeps him alive. They soon leave the community thanks to Daniel using the code he tortured out of Adams (torture works, guys!). To get them into the base unseen, Daniel creates a distraction by casually leading a hoard of zombies to one of the gates (which overwhelms the guards). He meets back up with the gang just in time for Travis to tell him about letting Adams go. They leave Alicia and Chris behind in the parking garage while they enter the compound to get Nick and Griselda *cough she’s still dead cough. *
Three soldiers find Chris and Alicia (doing an awful job of) hiding in the car and forcibly remove them. The soldiers need a ride out but Chris refuses to give up the keys. A fight breaks out when the soldiers suggest they take Alicia with them and Chris gets knocked out. Alicia gives them the keys and they leave.
The infected have penetrated the gates and are now killing everyone. This is the most inept army of all time. They have an entire arsenal and yet towers are falling, bullets are missing, and alive people are literally decapitating themselves by walking into helicopter propellers. Liza is at a crossroads on where to go. The infected inevitably break in and for once Liza decides NOT to leave with the soldiers.
After the power begins to fail, Strand and Nick finally make their escape. They navigate the compound to find Melvin (the soldier that got his cufflinks) for a ride out. Unfortunately, Melvin is busy getting his leg chewed on by the undead. Strand retrieves his cufflinks and leaves Melvin to die as the infected pour into the lobby. Travis, Madison, Daniel, and Ofelia break into the compound and find the cages everyone’s kept in. They begin releasing people in exchange for information on Nick. Nick and Strand backtrack and find themselves trapped at a dead end hallway with zombies coming straight at them. Strand fires but misses horribly. Looks like they’re doomed.
Miraculously, Travis and the gang make their way to Nick on the other side of the door but it’s locked. When all seems lost, Liza appears out of nowhere and lets them and the zombies in. The gang wrestles with the infected in the kitchen where they’re finally forced to take the zombies head on. Nick even saves Madison from a zombie. Finally safe, Liza breaks the news to Daniel and Ophelia that Griselda died. They find a defeated Dr. Exner, who says, “There’s nowhere left to go.” They leave her as Dr. Exner picks up a cattle pistol. She won’t make it.
Strand suggests they head west where he has a home on the water with supplies. They make it out of the compound and see a burnt pile of bodies (it’s also morning all of a sudden). They make it back to the parking garage to discover the car missing but Alicia and Chris in tact. Adams appears out of nowhere and points a gun at Daniel. While Ofelia tries talking him out of shooting her father, Adams shoots her instead (probably because she was more valuable to him). Travis immediately jumps on top of Adams and beats the living hell out of him (FINALLY Travis has a Rick moment). After landing a couple of dozen punches on Adams, Travis gets up shaking and covered in blood. He has finally changed.
The Clanazars (maybe now Strandazars?) drive through a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles (which STILL has traffic) and finally makes it to Strand’s house/mansion. (Ofelia’s going to be fine, by the way). Strand begins packing up and tells Nick that no one can stay. “The only way to survive a mad world is embrace the madness,” he says. Nick peers through the binoculars and sees a boat labeled “Abigail.” They’re going to sail out of this!
On the beach, Liza (weirdly calm) reveals to Madison that she’s been bitten and asks Madison to kill her (lots of assisted suicide requests in this episode). Madison actually agrees and takes the gun just in time for Travis to show up. Madison explains Liza’s situation to Travis and he decides everything’s going to be fine (don’t go back to old Travis)! Liza talks him down and insists she’s incurable and it’s better to die now then let Chris see her as one of the infected. Travis promises to protect Chris, takes the gun from Madison, and shoots Liza in the head. The Strandazars hear the commotion and rush over to find Liza. Chris sobs over his mother’s body, Alicia looks lost, and Madison comforts Travis as he has an emotional break-down in the ocean. END.OF.SEASON.
Questions:
WHAT NEXT?
Do you think Travis’ actions will finally toughen him up the next season?
Is Strand someone worthy of the Clanazar’s trust?
And how will Flight 462 play into this?
Let us know YOUR thoughts on the thrilling Season Finale!
Alright! We finally get to see all the boat theories play out, for however long they last… I don’t see them staying on “Abigail” long, resources are hard enough to come across on land. Surviving the initial outbreak seems to be the hardest part, at least for a little while they’ll have a advantage. I’ll be hoping for a little pirate action before they have to port.
I don’t think any of them will really be ready for this world until they see a loved one get torn apart and/or come back. (Fingers crossed for a Travis pick ‘n pull) Mercy killing someone isn’t the same as fighting them from become lunch meat yourself so they still got some devolving to experience and there is no where to hide on a boat!
Great final, good job at making me want more.
Really, really enjoyed the season finale! One question though for anyone that can answer it….at the end of the episode, the camera zooms out from the beach scene and pans to the left. We see the Abigail, but the camera continues on, and starts heading out over the ocean to at one point, I believe it’s a huge oil slick or something…important enough to include in that shot, as once the ‘slick’ disappears from view, the screen cuts to black. Is that representing the possible downing of Flight 462, will this ‘slick’ be a major plot point going forward, or am I just reading waaaaaay too much into nothing? With anything “Walking Dead”, if it’s in there, it’s there for a reason.
looked like a patch of seaweed, but I feel you on that. Definitely seemed like they wanted to emphasize more there. i dismissed it as an artistic cut. kinda like a visual to say “there’s nowhere to go” even on the ocean. i saw it as emphasis on the endlessness and emptiness of open water. But I totally agree that if stuff happens, its usually on purpose
The more I think about it, I wonder if it’ll turn out that “Flight 462” ends up going down, crash-lands in the Pacific, and what we’re seeing is actually oil or gas from the crashed plane…which someone survived…and is the person that gets rescued by the crew on the Abigail in Season 2?
The last 30 minutes of this episode was the best 30 minutes the entire season. I found the entire season to be uneven, with too much focus on portraying the Army in a very bad light.
Funny how the only people in the zombie apocalypse that can’t hit a headshot to save their lives are the ones who train with weapons on a regular basis.
Honestly, they could have bypassed much of the middle episodes and gotten to the house much sooner and progressed from their.
Dboutic, in answer to your question about the Oil Slick…. I didn’t see an oil slick. All I saw was a lot of brown algae that slowly disappeared the further out to sea we got. Maybe I need to watch it again. The ending kind of reminded me of the ending to the original Jurassic Park.
I needed to spell check this. Too early in the morning and still tired. *there, etc….
Season Finale was OK. There were some WTF moments here & there, but that’s been consistent with almost every ep. To be honest, I really wasn’t left with that burning “I WANT MORE!” feeling but I do find the idea of using a boat interesting & based on how Dave Erickson was talking on Talking Dead, I have hopes for something worthwhile for Season 2.
Travis… who knew he had it in him?! I believe that was the next to the best moment of the entire season!
I thought it was algae/glowing algae as well. Thought it might hint at the cause of the outbreak. Wishful thinking.
I thought this was a pretty dope finale. Salazar is a boss, acting as the first whisperer and hopefully using that strategy again. That herd was pretty brutal, and I’m interested to see how the walls of Alexandria will fare against that this season. The group showed some decent skill against the infected. Strand needs to work on his shot, but he seems like an excellent addition to the crew. Didn’t really care about Liza, so happy Offelea is ok.
I am super intregued about this boat though. I feel like it could go either way. It could be an awesome tool that helps them thrive for a little while, or it could be pirated almost immediately and get a lot of people killed. Either way it’ll be cool. Thoroughly excited for season 2.
I’m really not liking this show. The writing is not up to the same standards as TWD. I mean the writing isn’t perfect on TWD but it is better than this.
The other thing I dislike is the show has a definite point of view as far as politics goes. That is disappointing. I don’t know when those in Hollywood are going to realize that most of the country and yes the world doesn’t have their same skewed focus.
The acting is adequate. That isn’t saying much though. I mean I really like some of the actors. I just think the writing is mostly to blame. A mediocre actor can even seem great with a fabulous script. The best actor in the universe can’t do much with a poor script. It becomes an exercise in frustration.
Perhaps the writers are trying to portray the vapid lifestyle which is the mainstay of LA. If that is the case they lost the perfect chance to have a tongue in cheek jab at Hollywood. Can you just imagine a zombie Oscars? How great would that be. Real zombies trying desperately to be believable fictional zombies.
Liza’s death at the end felt forced. I feel like the writers got to the end of the season, and someone told them that no one had died, so they went in a killed off a random character so they could fit with the formula of someone dying every season finale.
I am really not understanding all of the butt hurt going around about the portrayal of the military. If we were to go under martial law, we would be told what to do and how to do it, and if we didnt, we would definitely get smacked around. period. I dont understand what people don’t get. It is their duty to control the citizens, whether or not they want to be. just because they made douche characters doesn’t mean they are saying the military is douchey. There were only like 3 dicks in the whole season that went out of their way to be dicks unnecessarily. The rest are following orders and that’s how it would go. why does everyone act like this wouldn’t happen in real life?
especially with the collapse of civilization, its a chance for those douches to shine and be who they are without being reprimanded; of course we are going to see them acting inappropriately. I’m sorry but just because you are in the us military, it does not mean that you aren’t an asshole and a shitty person. were bikers upset with how the claimers were portrayed? Rick and shane were both cops and they ended up murdering people, are cops upset with their portrayal? or the portrayal of the cops in slabtown? please. The show is about how people handle this apocalyptic scenario, and the military are people, no different than you or I.
My point was martial law doesn’t ALWAYS have the same result. Only in top heavy socialized central planning governments does the type thing shown in these episodes happen. This did happen in pre-WW2 Germany. This did happen in post Bolshevik Russia. This did happen in Mao’s China. SO the writer’s obviously imply the US will be a completely Socialist country by the time this happens. Free of any other context, we are to assume that this zombie apocalypse happens relatively soon in time.
Now to your point, as to the following of orders. That was the universal defense of multitudes of SS and Gestapo soldiers about their participation in the death camps after WW2 during the war crimes trials. In a moral democratic society the “job” of the military during a crisis is to maintain order, defend and PROTECT the citizens. It would NOT be to corral people into a confined area, restrict their movement and then abandon them to certain death. That is what a leader such as Hitler, Lenin or Stalin would do.
True, in real life during crisis people are under a lot of stress. However, NOT every one would revert to animal behavior. That is why during a natural crisis such as a hurricane, there are some that murder and loot and those that do not. It is also true that behavior does seem to express more prominently in certain ethnic groups than others.
it may not have the same result every time, but we aren’t talking about a normal, real-life scenario. we’re talking about a completely unknown virus that is wiping out the population and needs to be stopped. regardless of the type of leadership we have, troops would be deployed to isolate and eliminate any threats by any means necessary. There isn’t room for freedoms and rights when the lives of billions are at stake. Its not like Obama would instill martial law as seen on tv and Romney would have put into place the friendly martial law. I don’t get why everyone wants to make it a political thing. You’re comparing this to the holocaust, where the Nazi’s committed mass genocide to get rid of jews, not protect germany from zombies… And yeah, not everyone would resort to barbaric behavior; i already pointed out that only a few of the soldiers were acting out, it wasn’t an army of assholes.
Not to belabor this but one has to completely suspend disbelief to watch this particular genre anyway. There is no way this (zombie apocalypse) could naturally occur, medically, biologically, or physiologically. So what is left is the character development and the dramas posed by this inconceivable fantasy environment. My point is the writers had a definite point of view which was one dimensional and unimaginative when it comes to the particular issue of the military. No matter how you slice it, the military is ALWAYS a political hot button issue. I just didn’t care for the story line and will probably not go any further in the series, especially when there were so many missed opportunities to make the scenes better. I am one of those people that likes to be engaged and think about a story. It has been my experience that most series lose focus in the middle of the second season. That is what happened in Lost. I tried to continue but they lost me totally with the random schizoid writing. I never watched beyond the opening of the third season. I correct that. I did watch the final episode. It was exactly a I had predicted the night of the very first show. Talk about lackluster writing….
I don’t think the issue is that the military is portrayed as being bad. The issue is that the military is always portrayed as being bad. It’s an overused cliche. When I saw the preview for episode 5, it looked like the grunts were going to mutiny on LT Boyers because they wanted to do the right thing. That actually got me excited because that plotline would have been original. In the end, they beat up the young private, and it was back to the military being the bad guys. Imagine if some of the soldiers mutinied and protected the safe zone. Once again – just an opinion – we all have one.
i respect that. that honestly would’ve been dope if they went in that direction too. that is a much more valid argument than everyone calling the writers army-bashing liberals.
Of course I know actors need to work. Nothing personal towards their cause. This show DOES NOT need to continue. I thought the purpose was to show how it began and fill in the gap of time that Rick was in a coma. They should have addressed that issue and somehow tied it to TWD Season 1 and called it a wrap. If they want to make another WD show, just do it. This one is not working for me. I believe they should have shown it from the military standpoint. Maybe the cause would have been exposed.
I absolutely loved this season. R,I.H. to Liza she made the season. She tried with Chris av BC Travis annnnnd Madison. Then in the end saved nick. She was the truth. Now I’m not big on the pirate thing bit I did think that water and algae meant something.. Most definitely see different views on where they head from Mr Strand’s. Tyranazars are disabled. Travis is unstable. Nick is??????????? Chris is…………. I’m thirsty for season 2. Not even having too but comparing it to TWD it’s 1st season didn’t quite catch like TWD but I’m into it I will be watching more