Here's my take on every episode:
"The Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1) -- Original Air Date: 08/23/15 -- My Rating: 6/10 -- We're introduced to all the characters in this 90-minute premiere. Led by Travis Manawa, an English Literature teacher, and his new wife Madison Clark, a Guidance Counselor, the family at the center of this disparate tale has many regular people problems. Travis was previously married to Liza, and has a son, Chris, with her, who doesn't seem to like the fact that Travis left him and his mom behind for another family. Travis, whose now moved in with this other family, is having a hard time winning over his new wife's children, both of whom lost their real father to death and have acted out in different ways, Madison's son Nick by becoming a heroin user and her daughter Alicia by becoming overly co-dependent on her boyfriend. Clearly, they're both seeking some type of "out" from their realities in Los Angeles. In this first episode of the show, Nick wakes up from a drug-induced stupor to find that Gloria, the girl he shoots up with at a church-turned-drug den in "the bad part of town," has become a zombie and is eating people. This frightens him so much that he runs out into traffic to get away from her, but ends up getting hit by a car and rushed to a hospital. Once there, the doctors order him a psychiatric evaluation thinking that he tried committing suicide, but Nick, who seems fairly rational, says otherwise. Travis, his stepfather, follows up on his claims, and goes to check out the drug den, where he comes across lots of blood and instantly knows something bad went down there. He tries to tell his new wife, Madison, but she shuts him down saying, "It's a drug den. Bad stuff always happens there!" Meanwhile, a viral video goes public, showing an event that shut down the freeway the night before, where a guy got shot four times and still came back at the cops, violently. People are wondering how that's possible. While they do so, Nick escapes from the hospital and seeks answers from his drug dealer, Calvin, as to whether or not his drugs were laced with something. Unfortunately for Nick, after escaping the hospital, his parents went crazy looking for him and paid Calvin a visit first, before Nick could call him. So now, this drug dealer thinks Nick is ratting on him, so in the guise of a friend, Calvin leads Nick to some abandoned dry bridge area in the industrial side of town to kill him. Nick catches on to what's happening, and turns the tide on Calvin, shooting him dead. He then calls his mom, Madison, and tells her his whereabouts. By the time Madison and Travis come to pick him up, Calvin's body is nowhere to be found. Nick swears he murdered him, but now wonders if he isn't going seriously crazy... until Walker Calvin shows up behind Travis Manawa's pick-up truck. Not knowing about the incoming apocalypse, Travis and Madison get out of the car to talk to Calvin, only for Calvin to attempt to bite Madison, at which point Travis pushes him away and Nick puts the truck in reverse, slamming into Walker Calvin. After getting ran over by a pick-up truck, Calvin gets up, making Nick have to run him over again, this time in the opposite direction, and then have to slam on his brakes to toss him off the hood of the car onto the concrete pavement below. If people are coming back from the dead, clearly the world we know is changing right in front of us, that's what this episode aimed to show us. What I really liked about this series premiere is that we know more than the characters about what to do and about what's going on, a total rarity in television these days. However, the episode did crawl its way into the zombie apocalypse, meaning that it moved way too slowly and left us viewers wanting a bit more action from our protagonists, so it could have started off better. But oh well, it is what it is, and we can now proceed into the rest of this series.
"So Close, Yet So Far" (Season 1, Episode 2) -- Original Air Date: 08/30/15 -- My Rating: 4.5/10 -- The worst episode of the first season, this episode only exists to show us how slowly people come to realize the gravity of their situations. After showing us the viral video of the first episode and the confrontation with Walker Calvin at the climax of it, only now are Travis and Madison starting to think that maybe something is happening, to the point where they won't even allow Madison's daughter Alicia to hang out with her boyfriend because he's displaying a severe fever and where Travis is trying to contact his ex-wife and their son to warn them both. When Travis can't get through to either one, though, he heads out in his truck to find them and warn them in person. Meanwhile, Nick prepares to hunker down and kick drugs once and for all, but knows the battle won't be an easy one, so he begs his mom to get him a methadone presciption. When she can't reach his doctor, she decides to check out a supply closet at her school that contains various items confiscated from her high schoolers, and lo and behold, she finds some OxyContin in there. Meanwhile, Alicia stays with Nick, but considers abandoning him to go check on her boyfriend, until Nick suffers a seizure and starts choking on his own vomit, forcing her back to his side. Cutting back to Travis, he's since found his ex-wife and, via cell phone, been able to reach their son, who tells him that he's at a protest downtown because cops have shot a homeless man without reason (most likely because the dude was a walker, but our characters don't know this yet). Travis and Liza head downtown to pick up Chris, while Madison, back at the school, has a showdown with her zombie principal, Artie, which ends in Madison bashing his skull in with a fire extinguisher. As Madison heads home, Travis and Liza find Chris, just as an infected woman wanders onto the scene and police open fire on her, sending the mob into mass chaos. Luckily for Travis, Liza and Chris, they are able to escape the full-blown riot by seeking shelter in the barber shop of reluctant Daniel Salazar and his more trusting wife Griselda. As mayhem descends on the street, Daniel lowers the shop's metal shutters. Travis thanks him, meets his daughter Ofelia and explains that victims of the virus don't die. "They come back," he says. Outside, fires ignite amidst the sound of smashing glass, the yelling of the rioters and police sirens, while inside, Griselda lights prayer candles as her family and Travis's gather together. Again, this one was a very slow-moving episode, so after two airings totalling 2½ hours, we've now seen a grand total of three walkers (Gloria, Calvin and Artie, unless you want to count the guy in the viral video as four and the woman the cops shot during the riot as five). Either way, averaging about two walkers per episode in a show that's supposed to be about a zombie apocalypse is not going to cut it, so I could totally understand why people were starting to tune out after this second outing. But luckily for me, I didn't, because the show got way better quite quickly.
"The Dog" (Season 1, Episode 3) -- Original Air Date: 09/13/15 -- My Rating: 9/10 -- The show starts with Travis, Liza, Chris, Daniel, Griselda and Ofelia escaping their barber shop lock-in just in time, as the building next door is on fire and the looters and rioters are getting more and more violent about being locked out. The group of six make a run for Travis' truck, but during the process, a collapsing scaffold falls onto Griselda's leg, injuring her. Nonetheless, the group carries on, and gets her onto the truck. As they leave the mob scene behind, they talk about taking Griselda to the hospital, only to find the facility has been cordoned off by armed police, who've surrounded the building and are shooting the infected patients wandering out. They hear on the radio that a state of emergency has been declared in 11 states, that the National Guard has been called upon to manage the riots and that all flights are being grounded in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. Liza suggests that they go to another hospital, but Daniel says that the others would most likely have the same issue and asks to come with Travis to his residence, where he will call his cousin to pick his family up, evening their "score." As they drive to Madison's house, they witness a city-wide power cut, with fires burning amidst the darkened streets. Meanwhile, Madison and her two kids pass the time waiting for Travis to return by playing games, until something starts scratching at their back door. They open the door to find a wounded dog escaping the reanimated corpse of a neighbor named Peter Dawson, who had bitten into the canine. The trio sets off toward the house of their other neighbors, Patrick and Susan Tran, to borrow their shotgun, leaving the dog behind and their door wide open. While they grab the shotgun, they see the group of six finally return from their downtown rioting adventure, but they also see that Peter Dawson has wandered into their house, so they rush off to warn Travis and company. Alicia is told to grab more shells for the shotgun, and just as she does, a reanimated Susan appears and chases her back into the Clark's yard, while Daniel saves the day for Travis -- by using the shotgun they brought back to kill Peter Dawson, once and for all, with a necessary two shots (because the first one by itself didn't do the trick). At this point, Chris runs outside to throw up, Travis in disbelief asks what just happened, and Alicia panics as she realizes that the same thing that happened to Susan happened to her boyfriend Matt. Things are talked about after these incidents, including how to dispose of Peter's body, how Griselda's infection will soon spread throughout her body eventually causing her death, and how if something were to ever happen to Madison, she'd rather have Liza take care of it than have to put the burden of that on Travis because "it would break him." The next morning, Travis buries Peter, Daniel teaches Chris how the shotgun works and Madison tries to kill Susan but is talked out of doing so, in case there's a chance that a cure might someday exist. Daniel observes this and thinks that Travis and company are weak, and that they'd be the first to die in such an outbreak because of that, so he decides when his cousin shows up, he and his family'll be going their separate way. Team Travis packs up their cars and prepare to leave the city, but are forced back when Madison sees Patrick Tran returning from his trip and has to warn him about his reanimated wife posing a threat to him back at their house. She almost gets there too late, as Susan is about to bite into Patrick, when suddenly a shot goes through Susan's head... and we cut away just far enough to see that it was a National Guard who fired it, saving Patrick's life. The National Guard has now arrived, and things look to be changing for the better as this episode comes to an end.
"Not Fade Away" (Season 1, Episode 4) -- Original Air Date: 09/20/15 -- My Rating: 8/10 -- First off, the opening to this episode is by far the best one yet: recovering heroin addict Nick is on a floating device in the middle of a pool with sunglasses on, as Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" plays overhead. How awesome is that? LOL! Anyway, it is after we see this scene of a world returning to normalcy, that we're shown Chris, sitting on the roof of the Clark residence, videotaping and narrating events that have transpired in the nine days since the National Guard took over: a perimeter fence has been erected around the neighborhood, creating a "Safe Zone" with a strict curfew in effect. Since everyone outside the fence is reportedly dead or gone, Chris is alarmed to discover a light flashing from a house in the "Dead Zone." He shows Travis his footage of the light and insists someone out there is still alive, but Travis dismisses this idea and orders Chris to help Madison around the house, since Travis has a lot of work to do being the "man of the people" with the soldiers. Chris' step-brother Nick is now refusing to take his drug-weaning pills because he's feeling so much better and doesn't need them anymore, or so he claims. Officer Moyers, Commanding Officer of the National Guard, announces to the entire neighborhood that the Safe Zone is officially infection-free for a six-mile radius around the perimeter and that they are the "lucky ones," people getting to live in one of 12 safe zones south of the San Gabriel Mountains. Alicia and Ofelia collect weekly rations for their families, and Ofelia is even flirting with one of the soldiers to try and get access to the medication needed by Griselda, while Liza, who is pretending to be a nurse practitioner but really only took a few courses in school, is tending to the neighbors' sicknesses. It appears everyone has a job to do and that things are looking up, when suddenly that veil is pulled back, and we're shown Nick trying to steal one of Liza's patients' morphine drips to get high again. Apparently, things aren't as good as we thought there for a second! It is here that we learn Madison has doubts about the military's intentions, since they've been less than forthcoming with medication, information and communication. Her and pro-military Travis have an argument about that, which quickly becomes about other stuff and leads to Madison telling Travis that he needs to pay more attention to Chris and not just dismiss his son's ideas. At this moment, we also learn that another neighbor, Doug, whom we already knew had previously had a run-in with the National Guard, has gone missing. Travis goes seeking answers and finds Officer Moyers playing golf. Moyers tells Travis that Doug was taken into custody after soldiers found him crying in his car because they can't have "head cases" like that around camp. Agreeing with him, Travis mentions the light signals Chris had seen and gives Moyers the location of the house. Moyers shrugs it off, insisting they've already searched that area. After this meeting, Liza gets introduced to Dr. Bethany Exner, who is working for the government. Dr. Exner informs Liza that her patient Hector was transferred to a medical facility and that she knows Liza is not a real nurse, but praises Liza's skills caring for the community and asks for her continued assistance. Dr. Exner examines Griselda and recommends surgery at a nearby hospital. She also takes a look at Nick because of something Liza told her about his addiction. Meanwhile, Madison sneaks outside of the Safe Zone by cutting a hole in the fence, and finds that the streets out there are littered with corpses, some of which were clearly not even infected. She runs back home and tells Daniel about this, who immediately conveys his deep mistrust of the government. Madison then discovers something else: Nick rifling through a neighbor's house in search of drugs. She proceeds to beating the living snot out of him for this, but then feels bad about it when soldiers arrive to take Griselda to the hospital, and end up taking Nick as well, while forcing Daniel and the others to stay back and convincing Liza to join them. Of course, Madison blames Liza for them taking Nick, and tells Travis that exact thing. Distraught over all of this, Travis retreats to the roof, where he spots that same someone signaling from the Dead Zone house, only to be followed a moment later by gunfire and then darkness.
"Cobalt" (Season 1, Episode 5) -- Original Air Date: 09/27/15 -- My Rating: 7.5/10 -- We start off by meeting a stranger named Strand, who has a con man's charm, wears a suit and taunts his fellow cellmates, who include Doug and Nick, at a local military command post. It seems he's taunting them just to see which one will not break, and the only one who doesn't is Nick. Strand's found the man who will help him execute his escape plan! Back in the Safe Zone, Ofelia's ticked off at the taking of Griselda and so she's hurling objects at the soldiers until her "boyfriend," a soldier named Adams, intervenes to comfort her, basically just so that the other soldiers won't kill her. Next thing we know, Daniel Salazar has Adams tied up in the basement of the Tran home and is getting ready to do whatever he needs to do for information. "This is how we bring them home," he tells Madison, referring to his wife Griselda and Madison's son Nick, once Madison discovers the tied-up soldier. Ofelia thought they'd just use him as trade bait, but Daniel had much worse plans in store for Adams, who keeps insisting that Griselda and Nick will return as soon as they've been treated and claims not to know anything else. Daniel doesn't believe him, though, so he begins unpacking his razorblades and describing his past in El Salvador carrying out torture-based interrogations for the military-led government. Desperate, Adams reveals that Griselda and Nick are at a command center two miles away, but Daniel still thinks there is more information to extract from the soldier. Meanwhile, back at the command center, Dr. Exner is teaching Liza about how they euthanize people with bite marks because they can't risk letting potentially-infected patients live, lest they all start "finding out how the neighbors taste," and Rick goes to warn Moyers about the town's rising uneasiness with the National Guard, only to get dragged into a field mission with them, in which Officer Moyers tells him that he and his men are not a bunch of murderers because the people they're shooting are infected and no longer human. The scene cuts back to Daniel wiping blood from his blade after flaying Adams' arm, while the soldier begs him to stop. Daniel demands to know what "Cobalt" means after hearing the code word said several times on Adams' radio transmissions. While that is going on, a guard back at the holding cell takes Nick's temperature and detects a low fever. When they start to haul him away, presumably to kill him, Strand saves his life by offering the guard a set of flashy cuff links, then tells Nick that as a heroin addict, Nick is an adept survivor and that he could use his help during an escape attempt, showing him that he has the key to their cell in his possession. Then, for no apparent reason other than to symbolically reject the apocalypse, we're shown a scene of Alicia and Chris going to the rich neighbor's house, trying on all their fancy things, then breaking everything in sight. As they do that, Liza learns more and more about the nearby hospital, including the fact that Griselda has gone into septic shock there. Liza tries communicating with her, but Griselda is rambling something about the war and Daniel, but not making much sense, so Liza starts accepting the fact that Griselda may be a lost cause. Griselda then dies in the hospital ward, and having been instructed as to how traumatic brain injury is the only way to ensure dead people won't reanimate, no matter how they died, Liza takes the captive bolt pistol from Dr. Exner and shoots Griselda in the head. Back at the Tran basement, Adams tells Daniel that the military locked 2,000 civilians in the local arena after people began turning and trampling each other. He also reveals that "Cobalt" is a command code to initiate military evacuation from the Los Angeles basin and humanely terminate the surviving civilians, beginning at 9 a.m. the next morning. Chris and Alicia start seeing military vehicles loaded with soldiers driving through their neighborhood at night. The two notice that the soldiers are not paying attention to the goings-on around them, so Alicia notes "something's not right." In the final scene, Daniel heads to the arena to confirm Adams' story. As he approaches the doors, he hears the herd of infected people inside growling and pounding the doors.
"The Good Man" (Season 1, Episode 6) -- Original Air Date: 10/04/15 -- My Rating: 7/10 -- The three families prepare to leave their home after hearing of Operation Cobalt from Andrew Adams. Daniel wants to kill him, but Travis argues that without him, they'll have no way of locating Griselda, Nick and Liza in the command post. Travis persuades Daniel to let him take Andrew with them, but once they're alone, Adams begs Travis to let him go since he knows Daniel will kill him eventually, and Travis, who's sometimes too nice for his own good, relents, freeing the soldier. The families' three cars proceed to the abandoned checkpoint, where Daniel manually opens the gate for them. In the next scene, Daniel casually walks to the military command post with the entire arena of zombies trailing closely behind him, telling the soldiers there who're threatening him, to "save their ammunition" and then pointing at the zombies. With the soldiers now distracted by the horde, Daniel, Ofelia, Madison, Travis, Alicia and Chris easily get inside the command post. Alicia and Chris stay with the cars, while the rest go inside the compound. As the walkers start jamming up the area outside the medical station, the medical evacuation assesses the situation as being too dangerous and leaves without Dr. Bethany Exner, Liza and the other medical workers. As a result, Bethany says that she'll stay back with the patients, and that the rest of the people should head downstairs to join the military evacuation. Liza reluctantly agrees. In the parking lot, three soldiers spot Chris and Alicia and take off in the car that they found them hiding in, while in the holding cells, Strand and Nick hear gunshots and soldiers leaving, and decide the time is now to leave. On their way out, Strand tells Nick that their escape plan includes getting to "Abigail," as the two come across Melvin, the same guard Strand had traded with earlier, who is now being eaten by walkers. Strand walks up to Melvin and takes back his cuff links, before telling Nick that Melvin was their ride out and that they must now come up with a new exit strategy. Outside, Liza goes to board an evacuation helicopter, but pauses, only to watch one of the many soldiers trying to contain the breach out there get bitten by a walker and then proceed to kill himself by running into a propeller blade to avoid reanimation. Realizing that containment has failed, the surviving soldiers retreat and Liza runs back into the facility. Inside, Travis, Madison, Daniel and Ofelia look through the holding cells for their loved ones to no avail, but when Nick and Strand run from the infected back to the door they originally went through, the two groups finally see each other through a locked door. However, nobody has access to it (except for Liza, who's not with that group), and the dead corpses are getting ever-closer to devouring Nick and Strand. Just in the nick of time, Liza shows up with her access card to save the day, getting the doors unlocked mere seconds before the zombies could get to Nick and Strand. The entire group is now reunited... and running. As they do so, Liza catches everyone up on Griselda's passing, and Strand tells them that he has a house on the water with supplies. They run back to where Alicia and Chris are waiting with the cars, only to learn that the one car's now gone. As if this wasn't a bad enough scenario, suddenly Andrew Adams appears and points a gun at Daniel. When Ofelia tries to talk some sense into Adams, he shoots her in the arm instead, leading to the first sign of Travis actually having some leadership skills in this entire first season, when Travis suddenly pounces on Andrew and beats the daylights out of him. The group then takes off in their other two vehicles toward Strand's place. After arriving, Liza gives Daniel some medical supplies with which he can treat Ofelia's wound, before leaving. Madison chases after Liza, while Travis, who noticed Madison leaving, goes after Madison. Nick then learns from Strand that "Abigail" is the mega-yacht parked off the shore, and that Strand intends to board her for survival, as "the only way to survive in a mad world is to embrace the madness." When Madison catches up to Liza, she asks her where she is going, only to learn that Liza has a wound of her own and will soon become a walker unless she could manage to kill herself, but Liza can't bring herself to do this. So in a turn of events from earlier, it's actually Liza who asks Madison to kill her, because "it would break Travis" to have to do the killing. Travis catches up to the two women, is updated on the situation, and also on the fact that the antibiotics don't work against it. Completely distraught and heartbroken, Travis asks Madison for the gun and shoots Liza. Everyone hears the gunshot and looks for the source. Upon seeing his mother dead, Chris begins crying, while Travis drops to his knees and is comforted by Madison. The scene then pans out into the ocean and season one is officially over.
Despite the slow start, I actually enjoyed where this season went. I just wish the actors were better because, honestly, the only one I enjoyed watching was Rubén Blades, the real-life Grammy award-winning Panamanian salsa musician turned former El Salvadorian military torturer Daniel Salazar. The rest of the characters seemed to lack any real depth to them and were just kind of bland, although there's obviously still plenty of time to change that moving forward. And yes, I do expect to be watching next season, as I'm enthralled by the idea of tackling the zombie apocalypse at sea. However, are we even going out to sea? That's the real question, because I, for one, don't trust this Strand guy as far as I can throw him. Only time will tell, though. Here's to my enjoyable Monday viewing of season one leading to an even better second season!!
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