Continuing the pirate story left off by last week, this week’s Fear the Walking Dead proved to be a bit of a step down from recent weeks as it failed to wring much tension or adrenaline from its premise.
There’s some intriguing drama here and there within ‘Captive’, but it generally lacks the focus and clear-eyed vision of the last few episodes – consisting of a few scattered plotlines that never quite coalesce into a satisfying whole.
There’s some solid character development here and there and a relatively fun climax, but ‘Captive’, on the whole, simply feels workmanlike, delivering an adequate amount of tension but failing really to delve into the ideas it introduces.
‘Captive’ is broadly focused around the ways in which people are adapting to the new, post-apocalyptic world – and while this is a pretty well-trodden theme on either flavour of Walking Dead, it’s explored competently on the whole with flashes of something richer and more compelling in places.
It’s Travis’ storyline that perhaps provides the most stimulating and intriguing spin on this idea as he came face to face with the product of his negligence in the returning Alex from ‘Ouroboros’, now joined up with the villainous pirates and bearing a distinct grudge against the Abigail crew.
It’s a plotline that hits upon an idea that Fear has only flirted with exploring before, which is the sheer breadth of morally questionable acts committed by our heroes in a time in the apocalypse when civilised society was still a clear memory.
Travis’ plotline primarily works because it not only provides several very justified criticisms of the way our group have swiftly abandoned civilised morals in favour of ruthless pragmatism in the form of Alex’s barbed attacks, but it also opts for a more nuanced critique of the group rather than just re-iterating how ruthless they can be.
One of the most interesting and rewarding choices ‘Captive’ makes it to put Travis, a man who’s kept his hands broadly clean save his mercy-killing of Liza, on the end of these accusations, because it shifts the debate from merely covering the same criticisms of ruthlessness to condemning the negligence and inaction that’s arguably just as damaging.
The act that Travis is being attacked for in ‘Captive’ is… well, the lack of an act rather than a brutal act of violence or self-preservation (in failing to stop Strand from lopping off the rope tethering Alex’s raft to the Abigail), but what’s most rewarding here is that, as a result of Travis’ inaction, he forces Alex into the same, mercy-killing position that he was in with Liza.
Travis has often been a hazily-defined and frustrating character in how he’s constantly failed to gel with the new status quo, but ‘Captive’ utilises that shortfall for a really effective character story in which Travis’ status as the helpless bystander to his peers’ ruthlessness is completely undercut and shown to be mere excuses.
‘Captive’ doesn’t really reach that same level elsewhere, though it certainly tries. Chris’ story is fascinating to observe purely because it’s aiming to tell a dark, disturbing character arc of his descent into murderousness as a coping mechanism for his grief, but seems unable to commit to the inherent bleakness of this idea.
His actions, therefore, are framed as the dumb mistakes of an angsty teenager taking matters into his own hands in a way that completely messes up well-crafted plans – and that’s a weird creative choice, because it means that Chris just comes across as incompetent and annoying in a very familiar way, despite his very unfamiliar actions.
Herein lies another problem with ‘Captive’: it plays it safe, delivering the most conservative and cautious version possible of big plot developments which saps these moments of the impact they would have had with a bigger commitment, and that’s certainly a problem that affects Chris’ story.
I can commend the bleakness of this self-destructive spiral Fear’s telling, but it’s telling the story in execution through the prism of oh-so-familiar teen angst that’s distinctly unrewarding to watch, staying cautiously tethered to Chris’ defining characteristics rather than boldly and assertively taking the character into a genuinely new place – which is what his murder of Reed, a major moment of moral transgression, would seem to indicate.
The pirate story itself fails to really spark to life either, and they never really become the compelling long-term adversaries they seemed to be at the start of last week. Jack, the pirate who’s attracted to Alicia and is defined by his reluctance in the whole enterprise, never comes into focus as a character because his willingness to escape from a place that, by his own admission, works well is never substantiated by fleshed-out motivations.
We’re told Jack wants to leave, but ‘Captive’ pins all of the reasoning for that on his attraction to Alicia which is similarly thinly-sketched, a development that seems mandated to add a bit of tension and complexity to the otherwise deeply simplistic conflict with the pirates.
As such, Alicia leaving Jack at the end of the episode is a development that lacks any kind of emotional or shock value – it’s the culmination of a haphazardly sketched and inconsistent arc that ‘Captive’ can’t sit still and carefully explore for five minutes, so the ending falls disappointingly flat.
Connor, meanwhile, gets a great and densely-packed introduction scene in which his vaguely unnerving commitment to hospitality, ambiguously friendly demeanour and evasiveness is established, then disappears for a while until the climactic hostage exchange at the end, at which he’s promptly killed off with no further exploration of a character who was better explored last week where Jack provided a few choice details on him than in his actual portrayal.
That final exchange provides an enjoyably silly usage of the walkers with the bagged hostage trick, which neatly illustrates our group’s growing adeptness with adapting hostile situations to their advantage alongside providing a superficial but enjoyable shock.
Nonetheless, it’s a pretty cursory way to dispatch most of the pirates with neither real closure on their villainy nor intriguing set-up for the surviving pirates’ inevitable revenge, leaving ‘Captive’ in a non-committal compromise with the villains that once again reflects that tepid cautiousness and lack of willingness to really commit to its plot points.
‘Captive’ is certainly a step down from the last few episodes, returning to a quality familiar from season one and the season two premiere, but there’s moments here and there that still indicate the lessons Fear has learned and the improvements the show has subsequently put in place.
It’s ultimately a narrative cul-de-sac that ends a villainous arc with a bit of a whimper, but it’s hardly a misfire and there’s certainly elements here that the show could do well with expanding upon, such as Alex’s newfound bitterness towards the group.
Let’s just hope it’s full steam ahead for the final two episodes of this half-season…
Aired at 9pm on Monday 9 May 2016 on AMC UK.
> Buy the Season 1 box set on Amazon.
What did you think of this week’s episode? Let us know below…