Fear the Walking Dead Review: Captive (Season 2 Episode 5)

If you’re having trouble sorting through how you feel about this week’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead, look no further!

This week, we’re going to sit down and hash out our confusion over how “Captive” manages to completely resolve what could have been a central, seasonal conflict within the span of a single episode and why, exactly, it bothers us so much.

Let’s start small and work our way up toward the bigger picture and what may just be the overarching issue with Fear.

The smaller, episode-specific issues are as follows:

• Alicia/Jack – We only had one scene where we saw any real interaction between these two before Jack showed up in the flesh last week and yet, somehow, it sort of seems like we are supposed to believe that he and Alicia have a genuine connection…?This entire relationship, whether she is manipulating his feelings toward her or not, just moves far too quickly. The fact that he has feelings for her at all this soon, with so little contact, is baffling — especially since he is so completely willing to abandon his group to run away with her.

• Walker Decoy Reed. Because they’re not going to notice that Reed is snarling and gurgling? Really?Also, take notice of how he conveniently becomes awfully still and silent in the moments when Madison goes to make the trade.

  We’re not buying it, folks. Sorry.

• One Big, Happy Abigail Family. They all agree to this half-baked rescue plan way too easily. Here we were, hoping we would be getting a source of real conflict within the group from this kidnapping, and literally no one, beside Luis for two point five seconds, has anything to say about this? Seriously?
• They kill off a potential villain in the span of a single episode. This entire plotline gets resolved so quickly! Why don’t we have more of Alicia struggling over which group to choose? It would’ve been interesting for this to have been a society like Woodbury where it’s at least tempting for her to stay.There are so many interesting things they could have done with this plot!

  For example, they could have spent a couple episodes showing the contrast between Alicia’s experience with Connor’s group versus Travis’. They could have had Alicia living the high life with these people whilst, meanwhile, in the cages belong, Alex is getting her revenge on Travis — anything to make this plot a bit deeper, more intricate, and longer lasting!

  It feels like we’re only scratching the surface of what this group could have been, and that really is a shame.

Now, with the episodic specifics out of the way, let’s get in to the overarching issues that could possibly be the downfall of the show as a whole:

• Fear has missed a massive opportunity by skipping over the actual downfall of civilization — the bombings of large cities, the looting, the violence and panic in the streets, the riots, et cetera — because, now, no matter how much it improves in regards to plots and conflicts and character development, it’s seeming more and more like Fear is always just going to appear to be an alternate version of The Walking Dead, instead of a true prequel.

• There is a serious lack of real conflict on the show that is making it boring. Thus far, everything just seems to work out in favor of our heroes — and any issue that does present itself gets resolved so quickly that it hardly matters at all in the grand scheme of things.It’s hard to be invested in the show and it’s characters when it honestly seems like there’s no real danger.

Oh, and have we mentioned that, for a show revolving around the zombie apocalypse, there is a serious lack of zombies?!

Yeah…

There you have it, folks. Just a few thoughts and doubts inspired by “Captive.”

Take from this what you will. Was “Captive” a bad episode?

Honestly, it’s hard to say. This reviewer doesn’t think so, but with the pile up of other, larger issues overshadowing the episode itself, it’s hard to appreciate a strong episode when and if we do get one.

What did you think of this week’s episode? Let me know in the comments below!

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Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays 9/8c on AMC.