‘Fear the Walking Dead’: Six Feet Under (RECAP)

[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for AMC‘s Fear the Walking Dead Season 7, Episode 3, “Cindy Hawkins.”]

In a distinctly Halloween-y episode, John Dorie Sr. (Keith Carradine) comes face-to-face with a ghost from his past… literally. As he and his daughter-in-law June (Jenna Elfman) are trapped six feet underground in the late serial killer Teddy’s (John Glover) bunker, they’re faced with the atrocities he committed before the world ended — and seeing it all brings unpleasant memories flooding back for John.

As the episode opens, John and June are living a happy, Desmond-on-Lost-style life in their cute little bunker. They’ve got plenty of food, booze, and games to last them the year June insists they have to remain belowground, but should they need to venture into the hazy wasteland, they also have radiation suits, which they apparently, uh, made by hand. Is this logical? Not… really. But the plot does demand it, so they have ‘em.

Lauren “Lo” Smith/AMC

Their charmed life slowly crumbles around them. First, some collapsing debris aboveground shifts the beams and breaks open an entrance to another room, which turns out to be the spot that Teddy used to torture the women he later murdered. John’s shocked, saying he and the rest of the squad could never find where he was doing any of it, but the place was below their feet the whole time. He also finds a necklace that belonged to Cindy Hawkins (Brittany Bradford), the only young woman whose body he never recovered. He’s harboring serious regret about not being able to keep the promise he made to her mother: That he would find her child and lay her to rest.

John becomes obsessed with the room, combing through it again and again and again for any details he might’ve missed that could lead him to Cindy. All the while, he’s also slowly going through alcohol withdrawals; he was a heavy drinker before the end of the world — and during the end of the world — but the partial collapse in the bunker also shattered all the bottles of booze, so he’s without any alcohol. That messes with his psyche, and he begins to “see” Cindy, who encourages him to stop listening to June (who tells him he should forget about the room and rest) and keep working to find her.

Lauren “Lo” Smith/AMC

In addition, radios continue to be the downfall of pretty much everyone in post-apocalyptic Texas. Because June and John were reaching out every day on the radio in hopes of contacting survivors, they’ve drawn a group of baddies to their bunker, and they’re desperate to get in. With John ailing and a threat on the outside, tensions between June and her father-in-law reach a boiling point. He demands she allow him to investigate and leave him alone, and she… sticks him with a sedative. During this time, she also admits that the number on the chalkboard is made up and they could’ve left much sooner, but she’s scared to go outside and scared because she “doesn’t know what life looks like” without her late husband. On one hand, awwwwwww. On the other, yikes.

As he’s losing consciousness, the bunker starts to fully collapse around John. He wakes up to find June pinned beneath a beam, but alive: hallucination-Cindy tells him to leave her and go outside to look for Cindy’s body, which John thinks he might have located. He puts on a suit and goes outside, but he sees the group of villains descend on the bunker and realizes he can’t leave June behind. He manages to kill all but one, who makes it inside — then, he has a choice to make. He chooses June over continuing his investigation, returning just in time to save her and kill the last guy.

Lauren “Lo” Smith/AMC

But that return to the bunker also ends up allowing him to keep his promise. The bunker still isn’t stable, and another wall has cracked… revealing Cindy’s body inside. (Convenient, no?) He removes her from the walls and pays his respects, returning her necklace to her before he and June suit up to leave the bunker. And then… the whole thing collapses around them.

When John wakes up, June’s right beside him. They’re both in nice-looking beds, in a room overlooking the city — and if you’re thinking there’s only one character with digs like that, you’d be right. Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) enters the room, and he makes June and John an offer to remain with him in his tower. June, still frightened of the wasteland, tells John they should accept, but John doesn’t seem too inclined to stay; that is, until he sees the moat of walkers Strand has set up around his property. So, it looks like they’ll be the newest members of Victor’s team. What other choice do they have?

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Other Observations

• I hate to say it, but I found this episode really predictable. I called Cindy’s body being in the bunker from the moment John said he never found her.
• Also, I’m not sure what the purpose of having him hallucinate Cindy was? In the end, he didn’t really listen to her, and the plot of the episode could’ve happened without it.
• I’m not sure I buy June’s sudden fear of the wasteland. I do think it’s plenty in character for her to be torn up about (her husband) John, though.
• If we were doing the hallucination thing, I was kind of hoping we’d see either John or Teddy again. Would’ve been great to see either one of them, too.
• That brief appearance by a charred, walker Dakota (Zoe Colletti) was pretty grim, although I’m amazed John didn’t have any anger toward her considering she killed his son.
• Rating: 3/5. The opening of the episode was excellent, and Elfman and Carradine were great, but I feel it’s time for these shows to do away with hallucination-based storylines. We’ve had plenty of them.

Fear the Walking Dead, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC