Fear the Walking Dead: 1.06 "The Good Man" (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
101

I suspect the yacht has enough fuel for more than a three hour cruise. They won’t be able to sail the seas, but they will be able to go to a few destinations. At this point, just hanging out on the water is half the battle. And I agree that it is at least possible they will be able to scavenge fuel somewhere- if anyone knows where to get it, Strand does.

Who knows, maybe they’ll commandeer an entire oil tanker along with one of those at-sea platforms, where they set up a small refinery and general bunker headquarters. Through various means they acquire weapons, followers, and a small armada of ships. They might construct new piers or lure hordes of zombies out onto existing piers, where they blast the crap out of them with machine guns from their utterly zombie-impregnable ships. Maybe there is a scene where one of the dumber characters (take your pick!) is firing from some kind of rowboat, and a zombie sinks to the bottom, positions itself under the rowboat, and surprises the character from underneath, dragging him to Davey Jones’ locker as he gets munched.

Some of the characters remain quite flat. Lovestruck girl never saw her boyfriend again, and has spent the rest of the series basically moping around. There isn’t time for sad in the zombie apocalypse. You gotta realize that it is now life or death, you need to be prepared. This is the kind of character that gets munched, IMHO. Someone needs to sit her down and tell her, "Look, I understand your deep sense of loss. I really do. I mean, reallllly, I lost people I cared about too. So has your mom. So has Travis… heck, probably even Strand has lost someone, and his shit smells like roses.

But there is something you have got. to. understand. There isn’t time to dwell on your sorrow. Not anymore. Look around, connect the dots. The world has changed forever, and if you don’t adapt, you are going to die. Die, dammit, for real!

You’re doing it right now, looking down at your hands, moping, not taking this seriously. Look at me. Look at ME! <slap> YOU WILL CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE, YOUNG LADY! YOU ARE GOING TO BUCK UP AND BE A PART OF THIS TEAM, OR I AM GOING TO PERSONALLY THROW YOU OVERBOARD!!!"

Hopefully Salazar doesn’t have to talk to her. “Yes, it changed us all, on both sides of the knife. But that was then, this is now. Now, right now, you are going to make me a few promises about your role on this team. Yes, I know. You will promise me anything. I. ask.” That would suck.

Which reminds me- I think the very worst actor in this season was the Lieutenant. He’s strapped to a chair, getting cut to ribbons down to the bone, and he is calmly chatting information as if he just got a shampoo at Sport Clips. C’mon, show some feeling, dude!

102

Sadly, I’ve spent a fair bit of time around junkies, and I can assure you that they have a remarkable work ethic, if you define “work” as “obtaining money to buy drugs”. Those guys never quit, they are out there all day every day, doing whatever they need to do to put smack in their veins. They are the ultimate motivated workers.

103

Motivated, I’m sure. Nobody wants to go into withdrawal.

On the other hand, I’m still wondering precisely what skills Nick has that Strand means to make use of other than “expendability.”

I am also wondering if Nick went through withdrawal in the medical center and is now clean, or what; he seems awfully functional, and I was under the impression that opiate withdrawal took weeks… and we KNOW he’s gotten good and lit up in the not too distant past, unless Soldier was in the basement a hell of a lot longer than I think he was.

104

I think Nick did get meds while there, and his mom made another picnic basket raiding the compound.

105

(post shortened)

We’re getting into speculating about what the writers will do but what skills does NtJ have other than an addiction to drugs, the inherent need to avoid hassles and responsibility, and a willingness to do anything in order to score drugs? And he’s slow. After years of drug use, any healthy person could outrun him. Buh bye Nick. Nom, nom, nom.

OTOH, Strand is constantly looking for value and added value. He’s got a $50 million(?) boat and a $50 million(?) home. What he doesn’t seem to have is guards, grounds keepers, cooks, employees, and, possibly, a boat crew.

Nick has no specific plans of his own for the future, and he comes with a family. People are abandoning their jobs and positions to be with their families during the ZA. If Strand can crew his boat with families, there’s less of a chance that they would jump ship at some later date. But I’m just guessing. :slight_smile:

106

Man, that’s cold.
Appropriate, but cold.
:dubious:

107

Remember what happens to Otis, in the future, in another state, in another show.

Not everyone follows the teachings of Rick Grimes.

*“We don’t kill the living.”

  • Rick Grimes

“Unless they deserve it.”

  • left unsaid*
108

From what we’ve seen of Strand, I don’t have any trouble imagining that he’d cheerfully feed Nick to the zombies. All you really have to do is watch the first part of the episode where he’s verbally abusing Nervous Breakdown Guy. Strand is not a nice person.

And it makes sense he’d want Nick as opposed to Nervous Breakdown Guy or someone less predictable, I guess. Although Strand couldn’t have had any idea that Nick’s family was coming charging to the rescue.

Still wondering what a rich guy like Strand was doing locked up, though… as well as what waits for them out on that yacht. It seems unlikely that if the yacht is Strand’s, that the crew would still be on board… unless they bailed out, got their families, and CAME BACK… perhaps having armed themselves along the way…

…which could be another unexpected obstacle in Strand’s plans…

109

On a related note:

In a flashback on TWD, we find out how Rick was saved: Shane tried to evacuate him and realized he couldn’t, not with zombies snapping at his heels, and CDC soldiers shooting everyone in sight, so he closed and blocked Rick’s door, presumably to keep anyone from going in there and shooting him or lunching out on his comatose carcass.

Repeatedly, Shane says and demonstrates that the authorities are killing people indiscriminately. I’ve always wondered about that. It seems to me that just going into a hospital and shooting everyone in sight is kind of a non-starter strategy when corpses get up and try to eat you. And in the first episode, when Rick leaves the hospital, he goes past a large pile of bodies on a loading dock. The authorities knew it took headshots to kill zombies… and yet fired indiscriminately on civilians, and possibly even law enforcement, judging from Shane’s dive to hide when the soldiers enter Rick’s room.

Yet the soldiers didn’t kill Rick, for some reason, despite the fact that they HAD to know the place would soon be overrun.

This is kind of mirrored in the military solution Cobalt, in which the military bugs out after humanely headshotting all the civilians in their chain link cages. WTF? At first, I pondered whether it was to keep the zombie population from growing, but it seems to me that you’d have a lot more to lose and a lot more to go wrong by ordering your men to “Yeah, cap every civilian here, healthy or not, including that rich guy with no watch or cufflinks.”

110

Well, after a day or two of being weaned by Mom, he was taken into custody with no drugs at all for nine days. I think we’re meant to assume he went through most of his withdrawal during those nine days, then we rejoin him as he’s puking out the last of his withdrawal as Strand saves him.

111

(post shortened)

Strand had asked NtJ how far his home/family was from the detention center. Maybe he intended to meet them there? If Nick managed to survive the escape.

Nick obviously doesn’t trust Strand. I assume that’s why Nick picked Strand’s pocket for the key. I may be a junkie but you’re not leaving here without me.

As far as Strand being in lock-up. I’ll suggest that lock-up would have been one of the safest places to be, initially, in a ZA. Still looking for value, a high-rise has no food cache. A hospital is where you bring the dead and dying. Schools have too many windows. Malls have too many egresses. Single family homes can easily be breached.

That leaves heavily armed and defended military bases. At least on paper. They have food, water, medicine, and a shit-load of 5.56 and .50 cal. You can’t knock on the front gate and ask for shelter, but you might be able to arrange to be detained and then arrange to be transferred to a secure military facility. Especially if you have gold or cash for bribes/trades.

112

I don’t think this is the right timeline. He was at home during the entire “nine days later” jump, getting his methadone doses from mom. The time we see him puking is his first night off any drugs. It doesn’t say how long a gap there was between when he was taken and when he was rescued, but it didn’t appear to be more than two or three days.

113

He was detained for nine days? Where did we get this? I must have missed something. I was under the impression we had a time skip for nine days, during which Nick was cheerfully suckin’ up someone else’s heroin. THEN he was taken into custody.

I don’t blame Nick; they’ve gone out of their way to let us know Strand ain’t no good guy. But if Strand got himself locked up, I question his judgment in picking the chain link detention center; seems to me he could have bribed or talked his way into a better position. I do hope we find out precisely why Strand was in there in the second season…

114

Good point, I was confused.

I still think the writers intended us to think that most of his withdrawal happened during the nine day time jump.

115

You may be right, but he was high as balls in the same episode where the soldiers took him…

116

I think you’re right on this. And maybe they aren’t far off, assuming he was already slowly weaning off it with his methadone:

[

](http://www.futuresofpalmbeach.com/heroin/signs-symptoms-withdrawal/)

117

But it looks like methadone withdrawal actually takes longer. Am I remembering right that it was methadone he was getting from mom and from his neighbor’s IV?

[

](Methadone Withdrawal Symptoms and Treatments)

118

No, NtJ was getting ***morphine ***from the neighbor’s IV. Which is why mom smacked the hell out of him – he stole morphine from a dying man to feed his habit.

He was getting various stuff from Mom – but not methadone. I think she had just gotten whatever opiate meds had been confiscated in the school.

119

Musta been one hell of a high school.

120

Surviving While Black.