Desperate times call for… you know the rest, right?
This saying was most definitely driven home on Fear The Walking Dead Season 1 Episode 5. Hard.
Early on during the hour, Ofelia lured was under the impression that her dad wanted to trade Reynolds for Nick and Grisela. So she lured the solider into a trap.
But, in reality, the barber intended to use his handy torture skills to draw information out of his daughter’s boyfriend.
Upon discovering just how bloody things had become, Maddie shed all emotion and asked a simple question: “Did he tell us what we need to know?”
Ofelia, though, didn’t react nearly so well.
As for what Daniel learned? “Cobalt” was code to initiate the evacuation of enlisted men from the Los Angeles basin the following morning. What about the civilians? They were marked for “humane termination.” GULP.
Elsewhere: Moyers scoffed at he referred to as Travis’ “issues with protocol.”
That is, until the Mayor threatened to start a revolt in the neighborhood if he wasn’t taken to Exner to check on Nick and Griselda.
But they never made it to the doctor’s makeshift hospital.
After Moyers challenged Travis to kill a walker – which he couldn’t bring himself to do, of course – the commanding officer was lost to a building chock full of the infected… and his platoon dropped Travis near his hood before making tracks to find their own families.
Let’s go inside Exner’s ER/lock-up combo, shall we?
We witness Nick being taken “downstairs” there when his well-dressed cellmate suddenly trades a soldier a pair of diamond cufflinks to keep him around. For what purpose?
Because the soldiers are departing – and when he makes a break for it, he’ll need a “man with [Nick’s] talents.”
Later, after Liza sneaks in to see Grisela, Exner explains that she has to be shot in the head, or else, like everyone who passed away, she’d come back. So Liza pulls the trigger herself.
Finally, Travis gets back home, he’s horrified to discover what Daniel had done – and even more horrified that Maddie was totes down with it.
But Reynolds did provide some useful information.
Not only had he rundown the deadly meaning of Cobalt… he told Daniel about a nearby arena that is teeming with the infected.
As the penultimate hour of Fear the Walking Dead Season 1 came to a conclusion, it certainly appeared as if the barber was considering turning the zombies loose on the soldiers.
Is this how the finale will play out?
Sound off below with your thoughts and go watch Fear The Walking Dead online prior to next Sunday’s season-ender.