Spenser Granese as Arno, Rub and Blades as Daniel and Danay as Luciana.
Fear The Walking Dead has set up a conflict that is ridiculous. Last season's confrontation with Teddy was silly, but this season is worse.
Theheroes of our show are obsessed with taking or destroying the tower from Strand rather than leaving the nuclear wasteland of Texas behind.
The character of Colman Domingo has been recast as an egomaniacal villain, who will happily toss innocent people to their deaths and hire contract killers to kill children. The people who write this show don't understand the characters at all.
The episode focused on two long-time characters who have been treated worse in the past few seasons than almost anyone else in the show, and they are Daniel and Luciana.
The two are off on a little adventure in this week's episode, and it's a mixed bag. That is in line with the rest of Season 7, which is shaping up to be Fear.
Morgan and his people are trying to get a cache of weapons that will help them take down Strand and his army. Daniel thinks the picture of a boat in a memory card game he and Luciana were playing is a clue to his missing daughter.
Ofelia died in one of the more tragic moments of the show. Daniel's grip on reality starts to slip as his memory fails him. He thinks his daughter is still alive and needs his help.
We first glimpsed Daniel's gradual slide into dementia in Season 2. This has potential to be an interesting story element, but it's mostly wasted here, and I think this was one of the better episodes of the season.
Colby Hollman was Wes and Danay was Luciana.
I liked it.
The Spanish.
I liked all of the Spanish. Fear headed to Mexico and we had a lot of Spanish and Mexican culture, which was a nice contrast to the flagship show. Season 3 was mostly about the racial tension between a group of white survivalists and a Native American tribe before heading back to Mexico and the dam.
Things were thrown out completely in the fourth season. We still have a multiracial cast, but any effort at actually dealing with race, racism, cultural differences, etc. has been abandoned. Even though we don't get back to that inelia, we get some Spanish!
They are Daniel and Luciana and Wes.
Luciana and Daniel are part of a story with lines and an actual arcs. I will get into what doesn't work, but I like where Luciana went. After Daniel killed Arno, she told him that Ofelia was in the tower with him. She is manipulating his mental condition and it is horrible, but she is doing it for a good cause.
Wes calls her out. Wes tells Luciana that he includes her in the verdict because people suck. He went to the tower to make a deal.
Luciana is not able to convince Daniel of her lie. It reminded me of batteries not included. The old woman in the apartment building believes that the bad guy is her son. She's convinced of this all the time until he visits her in the hospital and pretends to be her son. She realized he wasn't. Luciana finally told Daniel that Ofelia is alive, but he almost didn't go along with it.
Luciana is doing this to convince Daniel to help take down Strand because he has dementia.
Arno.
They killed Arno because I started to like him. He is a leader of people who care about them and are trying to get them to safety. He's angry that they were forced to follow around a zombie to find a mythical creature.
I don't know why they wouldn't just make common cause. Why has Arno been set up as a villain when he and other people want the same thing?
As Daniel Salazar, Rubén Blades.
I didn't like it.
Arno's Group.
The part of the episode that made no sense to me was here. Luciana appealed to the remaining people in Arno's group after Daniel slit the throat of one of Arno's lieutenants.
She wants us to fight to get the tower. My boy Daniel suffers from dementia and just killed his leader by feeding him zombies and a young man who seemed like a nice guy by slitting his throat because he went along with Arno's lies. You can trust us.
This would be like if the other bad guy showed up and killed Glenn and Abraham.
Luciana convinces Arno's group to follow them despite being outnumbered. If just two people showed up, killed Glenn and Abraham, and convinced Rick's group to join forces, it would be like that.
Teddy, a serial killer and prophet, was once the leader of this group. Surely they aren't this meek?
Fear The Walking Dead's writers and producers are all about the plot. Whether or not it makes sense is at the bottom of their priorities. This is a cult of soft sheep.
Several bags of assault rifles have been found at the submarine by Morgan and Sherry and they are happy to have Arno's people with them. They didn't make common cause earlier because of their goals. Luciana tells them in her speech that they hurt some of her people. This would have been a good time for a double cross. Oh well.
Spenser Granese was Arno.
Not as bad as the last few episodes, but a far cry from good. Luciana is still a mystery. She remains a mere husk of her former self, but it's remarkable she's still alive. The Luciana of the desert is no longer with her community of survivors in Mexico. She has become a symbol of Nick's absence.
Daniel is sad to watch. They should have kept him cold like he was in Season 3. It feels like a convenient way to sideline his character 99% of the time, because we already dealt with his mental health in Season 2.
I enjoyed Arno and Wes. We would like to call out everyone's BS and then go to the tower to make a deal with Strand, who could have been a cool new addition to the cast. I should have known they were going to off him when I realized how nice he was.
What do you think about this episode? I have to warn you that it gets much worse after watching next Sunday.
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