In short order, everything we thought we knew about the status quo is revised.  The western part of the country has been firebombed into practical extinction as napalm has hit most of the coastal cities.  The military has given up and let the virus take hold.  Considering what is already known about the eastern seaboard in the parent series, this explains a lot regarding the swift downfall of society.  Of course, it also means we’re in decidedly familiar narrative ground.

              

 

Landing on Catalina Island to escape whatever human threat is preying on survivors on the water, the gang meets George and his family. George has been a bit of a survivalist, which has turned out to be a good idea in the face of the zombie apocalypse.  He maintains the fences, but he’s also a little too ready to give his family the Jonestown treatment if the day comes.

 

But it comes in handy, as Chris finally starts learning a few skills that will comes in handy in the future.  For example, how to use a pickaxe properly when killing Walkers.  Whether or not Chris will pick up some of those survivalist attitudes along with the rest of the instruction from Seth remains to be seen, but anything that can make him less useless would be a step in the right direction. 

 

 

As one would expect, things go badly in very little time.  Dying Melissa wants Maddie and the rest of the yacht crew to take the children and get away.  Travis and the rest have a few differing opinions on the subject.  Maddie wants to be the kind of person that saves as many people as possible during the end of days, while Travis doesn’t exactly think that taking on the job of protecting and raising the children of strangers is the best overall strategy. 

 

It’s not long before Willa, one of the children, takes one of the suicidal “power pills”, and that meant the beginning of the end.  It ends rather predictably with Willa taking a bite out of Melissa, George dead soon after, and Seth demanding the right to determine the fate of younger brother Harry.  Travis’ philosophy ultimately wins out, leaving everyone more than a little depressed.  They are learning, slowly but surely, what survival in the apocalypse is going to require.

 

Meanwhile, Daniel hasn’t been sitting around idle; he’s been drilling Stand about what exactly the next steps might be (and ensuring he didn’t cut and run without the others).  Strand has an ulterior motive involving someone in Mexico, but his plans were complicated by the napalm death of San Diego.  Something tells me Strand is still plotting, though.

 

The pace of the series is still far too slow, and even when the moral arguments are fairly on-point (as they are in this episode), the conversations seem to go on forever between the sporadic moments of action.  The show is trying to run on atmosphere and franchise credit, and I would like to see the cast do more of actual interest.  There are a lot of people on the cast that simply haven’t gotten much in the way of characterization, and that needs to change.