Fear The Walking Dead Season 7, Episode 15 Review: Bye, Alicia

I’m not sure how they’ve done it, but somehow the writers and producers of Fear The Walking Dead manage to make each episode of Season 7 worse than the previous episode (which was worse than the previous episode and so on and so forth).

You’d hope that the final episode for the longest-running character still on the show would be epic, moving, emotionally poignant or at least riveting and shocking, but ‘Amina’ is none of those things. It’s a jumbled, over-written series of dream sequences where Alicia follows around her inner child, “rescues” Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) and then abandons her friends for fear she’s going to turn into a walker.

Then, after a nap in the hot sun, she’s miraculously cured (except for the whole ‘talking to your inner child’ mumbo jumbo) but still heads back to the ruins of the tower to “help people find somewhere safe to go” because that’s totally a normal human motivation that actual people would have. Not sticking with your friends and loved ones. Not helping the people who you actually care about. Just go, by yourself, as a young woman in the apocalypse through the nuclear fallout of Texas to help strangers. To help strangers find somewhere safe to go.

To make up for all the bad things you’ve done.

There is no point in really recapping this episode. It’s just a bunch of nonsense strung together with urine-colored filters during all the dream sequences and bad dialogue from start to finish. Alicia passes out, has a vision, wakes up and convinces people it’s real so they come with her, then she talks them into going back to the rafts. Turns out this whole time they could have just ignored the stupid tower, hopped on some rafts and made their way to safety.

But no, we had to waste an entire season fighting over an office building so that we could get some fake, BS ‘makeup’ scene between Strand and Alicia. Awful, awful writing. Awful planning, too. It just beggars belief that professional writers and showrunners could sit down and come up with a plot this hamfisted and convoluted and half-baked. It’s amateur hour on Fear The Walking Dead, once again. Once again, AMC seems totally undeterred by the massive fan backlash and sneering columns like this one, roasting this dumpster fire week after week.

Oh, and Daniel’s dementia was cured by the power of his love for Charlie. Maybe she’ll still find a way to get pregnant so her baby can take the radiation from her body like Grace’s baby did and she’ll survive, too!

In a world where we can watch Stranger Things 4—which is terrific—or Obi-Wan Kenobi—which is at least okay—I see no room in my busy schedule for any more of this nonsense. I’ve been reviewing this sad dead show out of a sense of obligation to my readers, and I will review the final episode. And I will watch the Season 8 premiere and decide if it’s worth writing about, but Season 7 may be all I can take. It’s not just a chore, it’s torture now. It’s excruciating. The fact that Alycia Debnam-Carey’s last episode is literally one episode before Kim Dickens returns is so insulting I can’t even believe it’s true. Madison returns the next episode after Alicia walks off into the sunset?

And come on, you couldn’t even muster the cajones to just kill her off in some wild, gruesome death? Remember when Travis died? He went out like a badass at least. He sacrificed himself. Not so that some strangers somewhere could find a safe place to live—Alicia is like some glorified real estate agent at this point—but so that his family could survive (Cliff Curtis apparently saw the writing on the wall early and bailed before the show spiraled, though he missed out on a quality Season 3).

Alycia Debnam-Carey is a good actor. She’s beautiful and talented and I hope she goes places. She has the acting chops, that’s for sure. Just because she hasn’t seen a good Fear script since Season 3 doesn’t mean she can’t hold her own. It’s remarkable what she can do with these awful lines and goofy predicaments. That goes for many of the actors on this show. May they all go on to do bigger, better things.

The good news? That’s not a very high bar to cross.

One more to go, folks. One more to go. Then on to Season 8, where our heroes will fight over a Circle-K, the last safe place in Georgia, which has been invaded by aliens who can only be defeated by throwing beer bottles at them because they’re week to beer, and Strand ultimately joins them, becoming a general in the alien army before leaving to outer space where he will go find other aliens who need safe passage to that great big office building in the sky.

To make up for all the bad things he’s done.

What did you think of this incredible episode of television? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook. You should also sign up for my newsletter and follow me here on this blog and on my YouTube channel.

(P.S. I’m late to this review because I’ve been devouring Stranger Things and I’d say I was sorry but I’m not. I’m just not sorry. I feel nothing.)