‘Fear the Walking Dead’: The Pitfalls of Post-Apocalyptic Parenting (RECAP)

Fear the Walking Dead

Six Hours

Season 7 • Episode 2

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Cindy Hawkins

[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead Season 7, Episode 2, “Six Hours.”]

If you’re not a fan of crying babies now, just imagine how much of a headache they are after the world has ended.

That’s actually a key component of the story in “Six Hours,” as Morgan (Lennie James) and Grace (Karen David) are struggling to keep baby Mo fed and happy — and it seems that no matter what they do, the tears won’t cease. That becomes a major issue when you’re dealing with a threat that hunts by sound, as walkers do. And on top of that, Grace is still reeling from her recent pregnancy loss; she’s not even sure she still wants to keep fighting, much less endeavoring to raise a child. Here’s how it all happens.

Lauren “Lo” Smith/AMC

At the start of the episode, Morgan and Grace are holed up in the submarine, and they’re alternating shifts taking care of baby Mo and searching for food. Or at least, that’s what Grace thought Morgan was doing — turns out, he was building them a sweet ride to get out of the sub and get to somewhere safer. Thanks, Morgan!

Except Grace isn’t feeling very grateful. They head out that night in the direction Morgan is convinced is away from the fallout, and as they do, Grace makes it clear that she doesn’t want to do this anymore. She’s tired of the running, the barely surviving, and, most of all, she’s still in deep pain over the loss of her baby and wants to be with Athena again. She and Morgan argue, and as always happens when two people are driving in a car at night and having an argument, they crash, which wrecks the car.

Fortunately, there’s a body shop just down the road! Unfortunately, they’re cornered by a bandaged-up duo of bloody survivors. The husband and wife hear baby Mo and insist she’s their child — so you know they’re not playing with a full deck — and they insist Morgan fix up the car for them. At gunpoint, what choice does he really have?

Lauren “Lo” Smith/AMC

They all head to the garage, where Morgan works on the car. Apparently, these people were in the blast zone when everything detonated, and they’ve been suffering some pretty nasty side effects (like, skin-melting side effects). But the conversation is cut short when walkers, drawn by Mo’s crying, start pounding on the door. Morgan fixes the car, but everything goes south from there; the woman gets in the car and the man holds them at gunpoint, and even though Morgan manages to wrestle the weapon back, he can’t stop the guy from getting into the car and speeding away with baby Mo.

He can, however, shoot out the car’s tires, and that’s exactly what he does. They all fight for a bit—but walkers corner them, so everyone calls a truce and takes shelter in a building. When night falls and walkers again descend, they head for the car; Morgan then has a very interesting run-in with a person in a uniform who has a huge truck. He tells Grace and the man to take cover, while the woman stays with him.

Grace winds up in a garage. (So does Mo, who is, of course, crying. Poor kid spends 99% of her time crying this episode.) Of course, this draws more walkers, and the man almost kills the baby, saying “it’s better this way.” Outside, Morgan realizes that the baby to which the couple was referring earlier is zombified and stashed in their suitcase. Inside, thankfully, Grace comes in and knocks the man unconscious just in time. She then gets Mo to stop crying by singing to her, which she’d vehemently sworn she’d never do earlier in the episode. So, it seems Grace has gone from screaming “I don’t want to be here anymore!” at the hazy sky to, well, being okay with being here. At least for now.

Lauren “Lo” Smith/AMC

In the end, Morgan leaves the woman to spend whatever time she has left with her husband — who it really seemed like Grace killed, to save Mo? — and they go back to the submarine. That’s where we get Surprise Reveal No. 1 of this episode: Victor Strand’s (Colman Domingo) people know where Morgan is, and they were willing to take Grace to the community. Howard (Omid Abtahi) says as much, offering Grace safety in Strand’s super-special, super-luxurious new living space; it’s implied he wants her because of her knowledge of radiation. She turns him down.

Morgan, however, tries to bargain for a place for Mo, saying that if Strand’s community is everything Howard says it is, it’ll be best for her there. Grace won’t hear of it, and in the end, none of them leave and Howard warns them that this was their only chance (this is where we get the best line of the episode, which is, “Victor’s memory is long and sharp.”) But that ends up being okay, anyway, because there was food stashed under the floor panels this whole time. How convenient!

As the episode ends, we get Surprise Reveal No. 2, which is that Rufus the hound has abandoned Morgan. Well, that’s not really the whole surprise, but it’s part of it: Rufus left Morgan to go hang out with — wait for it — Emile’s (Demetrius Grosse) brother. Yes, Emile apparently had a brother, since someone has held onto his decapitated head in the “Morgan Jones” box and is swearing revenge on Morgan. So that’s… unexpected.

Other Observations

• Karen David really shone this episode; she excelled in conveying Grace’s pain, her anguish, and her depression after surviving yet another nuclear meltdown. The scene where she was screaming about “not wanting to be here anymore” gave me chills.
• I’m less enthusiastic about the “Emile had a brother!” thing. We now have three antagonists this season: Strand, the group that’s scavenging from the dead, and now Emile’s brother. Why do we need three antagonists? What was wrong with having it just be Strand?
• Another episode, another vague “Padre” reference. We still don’t really know what it is, but we know these people had heard of it and were planning to head there because they assumed it was safe.
• Those radiation-infused walkers were some of the grossest I’ve seen on any TWD show, mostly because they were just so… slimy.
• Rating: 4/5. A mostly solid episode with an interesting atmosphere — gotta love all that fog! — and solid performances from James and David.

Fear the Walking Dead, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC