After skipping a few seasons during the "Happy Friends Do-Gooder Club" story arc, Bob and I have started Fear the Walking Dead again: survivors of the Zombie Apocalypse puttering around the ruins of the American Southwest. In this season, they run afoul of Virginia, whose totalitatarian police state covers a large swath of southern Oklahoma and northern Texas (but still, everyone goes by first names, and there's never a duplicate).
She forces Morgan's Happy Friends to join her community, and gives them...ulp...jobs..that match their abilities. The former nurse runs a mobile medical clinic. The former police officer becomes head of security. The former barber becomes a barber. How oppressive! They immediately start making plans to take her out and restore freedom.
Problem #1: No beefcake. Only 5 of the 15 main characters are male, none paticularly attractive.
Problem #2: Heterosexism. Strand is gay, but when was the last time he dated, or expressed interest in a man? Season 2? Al, a lesbian, got a brief romance in Season 4: it began and ended in the same episode.
Meanwhile heterosexual romance goes on and on. Dwight has been searching for his wife Sherry ever since they lived in Alexandria, on the other side of the continent -- and he finds her. Season 4 ends with a boy-girl wedding. In Season 5, half the women in the cast are pregnant.
Problem #3: They keep introducing cute guys, only to have them killed. One gets tired of "Look, a cute guy! I wonder if...no, he's dead" over and over and over.
I kept a tally of all of the hunkoid deaths in Season 6 to date.
Episode 1: "The End is the Beginning": Wi.th Emile the Bounty Hunter (Demetrius Grosse, top photo) hot on his trail, Morgan encounters Isaac, and accompanies him to an isolated valley, where his pregnant wife is waiting for supplies. In the subsequent battle, Emile and Isaac both die. Dead Hunk Count: 2
Episode 2: "Welcome to the Club": The rest of the Happy Friends Do-Gooder Club from last season are living in Virginia's settlement, Lawton. Strand is punished with the job of clearing some molasses-covered zombies from a warehouse. To accomplish this, he wounds Sanjay (Satya Nikhil Polisetti) and uses him as zombie bait. Two guards are also killed. Dead Hunk Count 5
Episode 3: "Alaska": Virginia has assigned Al and Dwight the job of clearing the zombies from new territories. They come across a building full of living people who have been sequestered there since the Zombie Apocalypse began, but now they're all sick from the bubonic plague.
Episode 4: "The Key". A murder mystery episode! Cameron (Noah Khyle), one of Virginia's Rangers, is murdered -- by his girlfriend, by Virginia, or by someone else? Meanwhile, Morgan, who is starting an alternate settlement, is accosted by two men who want the key he carries around his neck. He kills them both. Dead Hunk Count: 8
Episode 5: "Honey": Dwight discovers that his estranged wife Sherry belongs to an anti-Virginia terrorist group. They kill two of Virginia's Rangers. Dead Hunk Count: 10.
Episode 6: "Bury Her Next to Jasper's Leg." Virginia has assigned June to run a mobile hospital, but she is not always successful at saving people, like the hunk with the burst appendix. Meanwhile there's an explosion at Tank Town, where Virginia's people acquire the gasoline for their endless crosscountry trips, and some hunks die. Dead Hunk Count: 14.
Episode 7: "Damage from the Inside." A horror movie episode! Virginia's daughter/sister Dakota is attacked, and her Ranger bodyguards killed. She ends up trapped in the home of a crazy taxidermist who wants to embalm her. Dead Hunk Count: 16.
Episode 8: "The Door." Former Ranger John Dorie is hiding out at his old cabin. The Ranger Marcus (Justin Smith) tracks him down, and is killed. Virginia's daughter/sister Dakota shows up; John discovers that she is the one who murdered Cameron in Episode 4, so she kills him, too. Dead Hunk Count: 18.
Episode 9: "Things Left to Do." June gets revenge for her husband's death by killing Virginia. Strand takes over Virginia's old settlements, Morgan has his alternative colony, and everything is concluded, right? Wrong! There's another Big Bad.
Episode 10: "Handle with Care": Daniel is having problems with dementia.
Episode 11: "The Holding." Morgan sends some of his operatives to investigate the new threat, a cult that plans to cleanse the world of zombies and humans with a nuclear bomb. Wes's brother Derek (Chinaza Uche) is there, and dies, along with several other cultists. Dead Hunk Count: 21.
Episode 12: "In Dreams": Grace's unborn baby helps out, somehow, before being stillborn.
Episode 13: "J.D.": June runs into her dead husband's father, who gives her the intel on the doomsday cult. Meanwhile former Ranger Hill is killed. Dead Hunk Count: 22.
Episode 14: "Mother." Alicia, one of Morgan's operatives who has infiltrated the cult, runs into Cole (Sebastian Sozzi) and some other people she knew back in Season 3, when they were all living in a baseball stadium community run by her mother. They are killed. Dead Hunk Count: 24.
Maybe I should be looking for a tv show where nobody dies.
I never was able to get into this series
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