It's Getting Real: Fear the Walking Dead "Cobalt"

First of all, s$%# is getting real now, folks. We’re torturing soldiers, trying to force English lit teachers to shoot zombies with military weapons, putting bolts through the heads of dead patients so they don’t “turn”, bartering with soldiers in quarantine with cuff links and gold watches. Hmmmmm. You were right, Tobias. You were right.

I would like to quickly state that I didn’t love the weird Alicia / Chris moment where they were ransacking their rich neighbors’ house and he looked at her while she was pulling her dress strap down. I formally request that we not have weird semi-incestuous sort of step-brother/sister issues, please. nobody needs that. It’s the zombie apocalypse. Even teenagers can keep it in their pants.

OK, so I like it that Maddie is fairly clearly going to be the brutal leader in this crew, whereas Travis is going to be the one giving everyone second, third, and fourth chances. I actually got pretty annoyed at a point made in this recap, where they referred to Travis as the leader. Why is Travis the leader? Why isn’t Maddie the leader? She seems to be taking charge of a fair amount of things. People seem to listen to her. She has handled her business pretty well. Stop assuming The Guy is in charge for Pete’s sake. Yeesh. I mean if I roll my eyes any harder at the idea that a man always has to be in charge they’ll get stuck backwards in my brain and I won’t be able to write for this site anymore.

In fact I want to give some credit to the ladies on this show right now.

Maddie is keeping stuff running at home while Travis is out jogging and buddying up with the useless untrustworthy soldier in charge.

Alicia is encouraging destruction of property.

Ophelia is dragging her soldier boyfriend into her father’s lair to be tortured.

Liza is putting bolts in the heads of former patients because that’s what you’ve gotta do.  As the Mashable recap I read said of Liza:

Now if only Liza would share some of her courage with Travis, who remains THE WORST.

So what does Cobalt mean?

Well, after Daniel Salizar removes some skin from Ophelia’s hapless boyfriend’s arm, we learn it’s the code for evacuation (of the army, not the citizens) and the “humane extermination of…” I assumed, and I think this assumption is correct, the extinction of the people at the holding facility/hospital where Nick and Liza are, not of the people in the neighborhood.

At least one recap I read assumed it meant everyone – the citizens in this neighborhood encampment, specifically, possibly in addition to the people at the undeterminedly-located off-site facility. The people there are all perceived as “problems” for various reasons, I could see it being part of the disturbing evacuation procedure to “humanely exterminate” people perceived as a problem or risk, but I don’t think the young soldiers in charge of this neighborhood guard detail are down for assassinating a bunch of peaceful citizens in their homes. Regardless, it’s obviously disturbing. Now we know that Maddie, Travis, Daniel, Alicia, and Chris are going to have to head out to save their loved ones. You don’t get to keep pretending it’s OK anymore, Travis.

I’m very interested to see what’s going on with Nick’s new buddy, whose name is apparently Strand.

He clearly knows exactly what’s up with Nick, and he has a plan. I’m interested to find out more about his background. Hey, maybe he’s a black man they’ll actually keep on the show for more than 2 episodes. We can hope.

Daniel walking up to the stadium at the end was a good time to remind us of the horror of zombies overrunning the city. I assume and hope there will be lots of scary undead things happening for the season finale. Just in time to get good and psyched up for the first episode of Walking Dead the following week!

You can always come back to the Fear the Walking Dead tag on this site to read everything we’ve written about it, and remember to come back each week for a recap by yours truly!

What do you think so far? Please leave your comments below!