Fear the Walking Dead 102- So Close, Yet So Far
By Bobby Doherty

After its slow and dragged out premiere episode ‘So Close, Yet So Far’ starts off with Alicia heading to her boyfriend’s house to figure out why she was stood up. She finds that Matt is sick on the floor.

We cut back to Nick, Maddie and Travis fleeing the scene of the double murder of Calvin(Nick’s drug dealer) from episode 1. Nick is searching through the radio stations to find if anyone is reporting on the outbreak in LA while Nick and Maddie are trying to get ahold of there other kids.

Travis believes it’s safer to escape the city for the desert. The only logic he has for this is because he thinks the fewer people that are around the less chance there is for them to become infected.

Maddie finally gets a hold of Alicia and they meet her at Matt’s house. Where we find Matt laying in the bed with a bite on his shoulder. After some convincing by Matt Alicia finally leaves agrees to leave the house.

Travis is still trying to reach out to Chris(Travis’ son)but Chris won’t take his calls. Travis takes Maddie, Nick and Alicia back to the house to start gathering supplies to escape the city. Travis decides he needs to go find his ex LIza and son. Travis finally gets ahold of his ex wife and tries to explain that it is important that she gets ahold of their son and she doesn’t listen (but what ex listens). While Travis is making his way across town he finds cops loading up on supplies. This seems to confirm Travis’s thought that the issue is bigger than they are letting out.

Back at the house we start to see Nick suffer withdrawals from heroin. Maddie is unable to get a hold of the doctor to get the prescription needed to help with the symptoms. She then leaves her kids at home to go back to the school to search for drugs to ease Nick’s pain.

While at the school we run into Tobias a pimply faced kid who Maddie took a knife from in the first episode. Unlike in the first interaction between Maddie and Tobias Maddie is willing to listen to Tobias about his theories on survival. After raiding the school’s drug locker and cafeteria both Maggie and Tobias leave the school after a run in with the newly zombied principal. Maggie saves Tobias by bashing Principal Artie in the head with a fire extinguisher. Maggie extends an invite to Tabias to stay with them until his parents get back but he refuses.

Travis finally gets to Liza’s house and together they figure out that Chris is in the middle of a riot going on in LA over police shooting an unarmed homeless man. Travis and Liza get to him and convince Chris its time to leave just as riot geared police start to storm the area. While running Travis finds a local barber who allows them to stay with them until the riot is over. During the time in the barber shop Travis delivers the news to Liza about what he’s seen. He tells her ‘that they don’t die and they come back’.

Maggie finally gets home with the oxy’s from the school. She arrives home just as the neighbors across the street are getting attacked by a zombie. Maggie locks the door and tells Alicia that there’s nothing they can do.

Show ends with all the main characters locked in for the night and an eery prayer in spanish which google translated to ‘Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.’

I enjoyed this episode 100 times more than the first. The pacing was so much better and the hour went by fast and left you where you want to be at the end of a show. Wanting more. We are seeing the evolution of the chaos theory that was getting taught to the students in the premiere. You see this in the escalation of the riots and failure in the infrastructure of the city. There was a lack of walkers in this episode instead you see the writers focus chaos of humanity, survival, and potential of a government cover-up. I give this episode a B+

Things that I question about this episode:

How Maggie and Travis just gave up on Matt? Cold blooded less than 48hrs into the outbreak

Did my school have a have a cabinet full of drugs?

Who set off the metal detector that caused Tobias and Maggie to run?

Does anyone else thing Tobias parents are dead?

Doesn’t Principal Arte look like Obama?

Can you lock shutters on a store front from the inside?

Anyone else find it funny that they are playing the stereotype that black people die first in horror films? 3 for 3 in two shows…