[RECAP] Season 4, Episode 7 of Fear The Walking Dead, "Wrong Side of Where You Are Now"

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By Carolina Gallardo (@carolgallardo)

Based off of last week's episode, "Just in Case", we were left hanging on the fate of John Dorie, after being shot by Alicia.  Unfortunately, this episode, "Wrong Side of Where You are Now" didn't do much in terms of resolving that story line but rather, we again revisited the past to get closer to the ultimate question: What the hell happened to Madison?

When we start off the episode, we are greeted by flashbacks, specifically of moments between John Dorie and Naomi: John and Naomi in the row boat, John and Naomi eating dinner, John and Naomi fishing, John and Naomi playing scrabble.  We then harshly cut to the present, with Naomi trying to keep John alive by applying pressure to his wound, in the midst of this firefight between The Vultures and Strand, Alicia and Luciana.  Naomi says that she's going to get medical supplies and she makes a mad dash attempt to get onto Mel's truck, which apparently is holding some medical supplies.  Before Naomi can manage to get on, Mel starts to driving away to get away from the gun battle but his truck is promptly blown up, care of Alicia's space age gun. Alicia then takes aim at Naomi who is able to physically fend her off and run off.  We then see Luciana come across a crouching Charlie who simply and sadly says, "Sorry".  A conflicted Luciana then struggles with the decision on whether or not to kill Charlie then and there...but ultimately has to shoot and kill another vulture, giving Charlie the opportunity to escape.

In the midst of all this, Morgan manages to make his way to Althea, who is the process of filming the battle between these two groups.  Morgan pleads with her to take them all in her SWAT vehicle to the stadium, where Naomi assures them the necessary medical supplies are located.  At first Althea resists, not wanting to play a role in all of this, but inevitabily her conscious wins out, especially since John Dorie desperately needs immediate medical attention.  They all get in the truck, even Charlie who listens to Morgan and joins them, despite the fact that she wanted to stay and ensure Mel's okay (there definitely seems to be affection between these two, in a brother/sister way).  As they start to depart, Alicia realizes that a firefight with Althea's armored vehicle is not a battle she's going to win.  In light of this realization, she stands down and the SWAT vehicle rides off, with Alicia, Luciana and Strand shooting at the car (to no avail).  Mel eventually crawls out the blown up van, only to be savagely killed by Alicia with her makeshift weapon.   DAMN.  Well, wasn't expecting all THAT to happen so soon, with Mel and Ennis BOTH no longer in the picture.  But anyway, RIP Mel...we hardly knew ye.

We then move into the past again, and we see how the entire community came together to work on planting all the seeds and/or crops that was salvaged from the FEMA Center.  Madison and the group hear that someone is at the gates and it turns out to be Charlie, asking for her help.  Apparently Mel and Ennis got into a fight and then Mel and Charlie drove off, only to crash with another abandoned vehicle.  Charlie wouldn't come unless she urgently needed the help and expresses that.  Nick is wary of trusting Charlie but Madison sites her evolved relationship with Naomi and as example that foes can become friends.  And with that, they follow Charlie to the crash site.  Naomi examines him in the vehicle and determines that he has a bruised lung and cracked ribs and would likely not survive being out here on this own.  They finally decide to take them back with them, rather than leaving him to certain death.

Once back at the stadium, specifically the infirmary, Naomi tends to Mel's wounds, while keeping him handcuffed to the bed to be safe.  Madison is present as well and Mel insists that this place is not safe and he wants to be released, before Ennis arrives.  He warns them that Ennis is determined to MAKE the stadium fall and no longer just wait for it to happen.  Madison is confident that they can handle any threat that would be directed their way but Mel insists that she has no idea of what's heading their way.  Even after Madison leaves, he continues to try to convince Naomi that he is being perfectly reasonable and that she knows as well as anyone that his place will likely fall.  Naomi ignores him but we find out later that secretly, she agrees with Mel.  Once she has a moment to herself to speak to Madison privately, she tries to convince her to abandon her current plan of reinforcing the stadium and instead, fold up shop and keep moving to a new location.  Madison insists that she built this environment to give her children some semblance of stability in this post-apocalyptic world and she's not going to abandon it all now.  Naomi understands where she's coming from, but is hopeful that she will change her mind.

This conversation seems to stay with Madison, though, and she decides that Mel is essentially a cancer that could spread internally and kill the hopes of all in her community.  Because of this, she drags him out of the infirmary, still not fully healed, insisting that if he wants to leave so badly, he can leave right now.  In reversal from their earlier sentiments, Nick and Strand are not agreement with Madison's decision, however, they do not push her to change her mind.  Mel insists that the walls will not hold against the threat headed their way so he will go, but all he wants is Charlie and he'll be on his way.  Madison refuses to let him take Charlie with him and after some back and forth, he eventually drives off, much to everyone's disapproval.

Later Madison and the group start to realize the scale of the threat heading their way.  Strand and Cole share that the Vultures would capture and lock up walkers in trailers, silos, etc and then mark the container with a flag stating the number of walkers contained within.  They tell Madison that these containers are currently empty and if one adds up the individual totals from the flags they collected, they are looking at potentially being attacked by thousands of walkers.  Madison instructs them to continued to reinforcing all the walls in the stadium, in anticipation of this threat.

During all of this, Charlie is incredibly concerned over Mel's whereabouts, since he was injured when he left.  Luckily (or not luckily, depending on how you look at it), there was a walkie-talkie in the Range Rover and Charlies attempts to connect with him.  Unfortunately, she can't make a connection which leaves Charlie incredibly worried for him.  Alicia and Nick decide for themselves that the right thing to do is to go and retrieve Mel and bring him back so they convince Strand to open the gate and off they go.  They eventually find the Range Rover on the side of the road and they immediately get in the car, ready to drive back...when they see headlights.  They turn off the car and hide and see Ennis' caravan of tracker trailers heading to the stadium, presumably carrying the thousands of walkers speculated.  They use the walkie-talkie to radio back to the stadium and warn them about what's heading their way.

Eventually they all return to the stadium and they all remain frozen, unsure of what is about to happen with these trailers.  Very methodically, the vultures set up a stream of gasoline in front of the stadium as a sort of Phase I of their attack.  Phase II is when ramps are attached to each of the trailers right before they lift up each of the latches and release the full force and magnitude of all the captured walkers.  Many of them begin to swarm Nick and Alicia's car and they essentially radio back to the stadium to say their goodbyes, not anticipating surviving this. That is all that Madison needs to hear and she states that she needs to get out there and get her kids.  Strand and Luciana insist that they'll join her and the gates open to a fiery scene that I suppose we'll see more of next week.  Flaming walkers, I'm guessing?

We then head to the present day and see the SWAT vehicle pass by the original ice cream truck that released the gasoline at the stadium.  It is almost completely torched.  They see the stadium up ahead and upon Naomi's insistence that there are indeed medical supplies still inside, they hold on tight as Althea drives the truck through one of the wooden barriers that had been erected.  Once inside, the smoke eventually clears and the dust settles...and they realize that they are completely surrounded by thousands of charred walkers.  Not a good situation.

The episode ends here and with the midseason finale coming up next week, we have to anticipate that we will finally get an answer to Madison's whereabouts and the fate of John Dorie.  At least we hope so.

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