In this week’s Season 4 episode (13) of Fear The Walking Dead, we finally meet Sarah and Wendell’s “Polar Bear,” but before we get to him, Morgan, June and Al are searching for Quinn, who we know has turned into a zombie.
Morgan talks to Sarah on the walkie, telling her to wait for them while they look. “What the hell is this, an airport shuttle?” Sarah says, just before she heads into the woods when they hear a walker. As Jim and Wendell wait for her, a walker approaches and we find out Wendell has a kick-ass button on the arm of his wheelchair, he pushes it and it releases spikes out the back, which efficiently skewers the walker.
Still calling for Quinn, they get a moaning, walker’s voice in return. Then the filthy woman on the walkie says she helped him “become what he was meant to be.” Morgan recognizes her voice. She tells him if he keeps leaving the boxes at the mileposts, she is going to come after him to make him “strong again”.
Then we cut to the best characters currently on this show, Victor Strand and John Dorie, who, after the hurricane, are now stranded on a ranger station. They have supplies, but as a disappointed Victor points out, no booze. John is building a raft out of logs because he wants to get off the station to find June. Victor doesn’t particularly feel like leaving, especially when they see an alligator waiting to ambush them in the water near the shore they are trying to get to.
Luciana is walking around an abandoned town, kills a walker, opens a car door to find a living being actually inside. She asks him how long he’s been there. “Since the storm,” he replies. He introduces himself as Clayton. Lucinda tells Clayton, played by Stephen Henderson, that she is going to help get him out of the vehicle. As it sadly turns out, the only reason he’s still alive is because he’s pinned to the steering wheel. If Lucinda moves him, he’ll die. Then he laughs, and says he would have just loved to have had one more beer.
She tells Clayton she once watched someone die (a shout-out to Nick!) and couldn’t do anything about it. The least she can do for Clayton is find that beer.
My Fortune For A Beer
After a fruitless search, Luciana eventually finds one of the boxes Morgan left on the road with, of course, a beer inside. She keeps it cold for him with a med kit. He enjoys his first sip and she asks him what he used to do. “I drove a truck,” Clayton answers. And we finally know the identity of Polar Bear.
Speaking of alcohol, Strand ends up risking his life for a bottle of single malt.
When John’s wooden raft inevitably fails, he asks Victor to retrieve the roof of an overturned truck at the top of a hill, so they can use it to float over to the other shore. As Victor begins to flip the first latch on the hood, he notices the bottle of single malt beside the zombie inside, tries to grab it and the truck ends up flipping down the side of the hill. Victor miraculously survives, as does the bottle, and he wanders over to the ranger station to sit on the steps to drink.
“Did you always drink?” John asks him.
“I drink to forget,” Victor says.
“To forget what?” John asks.
“To forget that I don’t have anyone to drink with anymore.” A shout-out to Madison! Poor Victor, maybe it would help if he knew the rest of us miss Madison almost as much as he does.
John plans to use the car hood to get them both across the water and have the vehicle’s horn going to attract zombies for the alligator to eat.
Unfortunately, the horn dies too quickly and they have to go back to the ranger station.
Once Clayton is gone, Luciana tunes to channel 4 on the walkie (Morgan had added a note the boxes advising anyone needing help to call channnel 4) and she reaches Morgan and reunites with him, June and Al.
Then Alicia and Charlie find a box and call channel 4 and talk to Morgan, but Filthy Woman chimes in with “I gave you a chance.”
They can hear the SWAT van firing on Morgan’s truck on the walkie. “I told you, I’m making you strong,” she says before opening fire on the truck.
