Season 7 of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead has been terrible. If you were expecting a better episode this week, sorry.
The only difference this week from previous episodes is that no new characters were introduced and promptly killed.
Instead, the TV series decided to take out a couple of established characters.
So, who lived and died? Who even cares? Let me break it down for you
Victor Strand continues to be paranoid
Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) has continued to be the worst villain so far in the show’s history. And this is saying something because they brought in a doomsday cult leader in Season 6 of Fear the Walking Dead.
Tonight’s episode opens with Howard (Omid Abtahi) doing room searches in order to find any hidden contraband.
However, the joke’s on him because a walkie-talkie is found in his apartment.
Even though Howard has been totally one-sided when it comes to his devotion to Victor, the leader threatens to throw him over the edge of the Tower.
It is here that it is mentioned that Howard had a family before the world went to s**t, so we immediately know what is going to happen to this character.
However, Howard manages to buy himself some time before the inevitable once Baby Mo (Avaya White) goes missing, and he promises to show his worth by finding the baby.
John Dorie Sr. is conflicted
John Dorie Sr. (Keith Carradine) is playing the long game in Episode 12 (titled “Sonny Boy”). It seems he might want to shake things up a bit in regard to how Victor runs things.
And, because Victor is paranoid AF, he also gets John to hunt down Baby Mo.
It is here that he discovers the Resistance and, no surprise, it is headed by all of those people that were taken forcibly from Team Morgan and placed in Team Victor.
However, while John doesn’t like Victor and the way he does things, he does believe in the safety of the Tower, and so begins the back and forth between him and June (Jenna Elfman) regarding who is right and who is wrong.
Who took Baby Mo?
It comes as no surprise that June and Grace (Karen David) are behind the kidnapping of Baby Mo. They plan to smuggle the baby out of the Tower and back to Morgan (Lennie James). This way, Morgan will then be able to attack the Tower without worrying about killing his baby namesake.
John discovers where June is because she doesn’t know how to wipe her shoes and promptly they start arguing about whether Baby Mo is safer inside the Tower or outside.
In the meantime, the walkers become a real threat and June has to call Grace for help.
Which gets them all totally busted by Victor and Howard.
Howard has the worst day at work
Howard is excited because he managed to find the baby, thus, saving his life. Right?
Oh hell no.
Instead, Victor calls him out on a technicality because John found Mo first.
Now, John has to push Howard off the Tower. His reward is he gets to be Victor’s second in charge.
What a prize, huh?
John doesn’t really want it but takes it anyway, figuring he can help change things.
Once again, that’s not the correct answer. Victor continues to be a paranoid douche and John knocks him out and decides Baby Mo really is better with Morgan.
John Dorie Sr. saves the day
After all the back and forth between John and June, the character finally decides to smuggle Mo out of the Tower. Also, he has radiation poisoning, just like Charlie (Alexa Nisenson), so he has an expiration date now.
After knocking out Victor, he sets about making a suit to protect himself from the walkers from every historical thing Howard has ever collected.
He then speaks to June, Grace, and Wendell (Daryl “Chill” Mitchell), and they all hang around for way too long considering John has merely pistolwhipped Victor. Wendell suggests they cover John in walker guts and then continue to talk it out some more and, seriously, that probably would have been the better idea than making that damned suit and talking about s**t.
But, we have tension to create, and that seems to be how AMC thinks it works in Fear the Walking Dead. Spoiler alert: I was not tense.
John manages to walk through the undead and not get knocked over by the horde even though that is how it goes down in every other scenario like this across all of The Walking Dead franchises, but, hey, this show is the worst now, so who really cares?
When he gets to the other side, Morgan takes the baby and John lets him know he will cause a distraction as he has gotten a single walker bite during his trip.
Morgan is like, “‘kay,” and heads back to the submarine while the walkers finally remember they can knock people down and they manage to eat him through John’s armor even though it protected him only moments ago.
Victor is not defeated
Even though Victor planned to have Baby Mo as his insurance so that he won’t get attacked by Morgan’s group, he is still ready with a backup plan.
Namely, June, Grace, and Wendell get to live — so long as Morgan doesn’t attack.
He informs Morgan of this after Wes (Colby Hollman) helps him set up an antenna and defects totally to the dark side by becoming Victor’s new second in charge.
Now, we have to wait until next week’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead to find out what Morgan’s plan is moving forward now that Grace is in Victor’s crosshairs.
Season 7 of Fear the Walking Dead airs every Sunday night on AMC.