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twdmusicboxmystery · 6 years

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Fear 4x13: BlackJack - Analysis

Who watched Fear last night? Once again, I saw a lot of important symbols. Lots of parallels to Beth and Daryl’s story that were then confirmed on TTD.

***As always, spoilers abound for FTWD 4x13, Blackjack. Don't read until you've watched!***

I noticed fridge in the opening credits was floating in water. I still haven't posted the coolant theory, and probably won’t for a few weeks yet. Fear puts little hints about what the episode will be about in the opening credits. The most obvious thing here is the big lake John and Strand are trying to get across. Out of any character in Fear, John is the most like Beth. In the coolant theory, the refrigerator probably represents Beth, and we saw it floating in the lake. And in the episode, at one point, John is stranded in a small boat in the middle of the lake. More on that in a second.

Morgan’s Group:

We start out with Morgan's group, looking for Quinn, who we know Filthy Lady killed last episode. June said, "We should keep looking." This is a direct call back to 5x16. Daryl wanted to keep looking for Red Poncho Guy, but Aaron convinced him to go into the cannery instead, where they accidentally triggered the Wolf trap. It's not a coincidence they're coming back to this, especially since it was Morgan who saved them from the trap. Now they want to keep looking for people in Fear.

As it turns out, Filthy Lady is also somewhat Lizzie-like. She said she let Quinn “become what he was meant to be,” which in her mind is a walker.

Morgan buries walker they found. (Once again, even random walkers get burials, but not Beth.)

Remember that the owner of the truck Sarah and Wendell stole calls himself Polar Bear. We also find out this episode that he kept journals. Between the bear symbolism and Polaris (North Star and part of the dog/Sirius symbolism) obviously both those things equal Beth. Now we find he also kept journals. Like Beth

While in front of mile marker 74, Sarah says, “this is a frog/scorpion situation.” She’s basically justifying stealing Polar Bear’s truck. We’ve see frog symbolism before, specifically in Them.

Remember that frogs are major transformation/resurrection symbolism. So basically the symbols of frogs, Polaris and bears are all being used to represent the same guy here. They guy who keeps journals and believes in helping people. He’s leaving them water (a callback to Aaron leaving TF water in 5x10) and other items in the boxes. Is this screaming Beth to you yet?

Then, Sarah says the frog left his KEYS in his truck. (Key theory).

The story made me realize something. We’ve harped on the key theory before, but more specifically there’s a theme of keys being left behind in a car. The first thing that came to mind is when Rick and Daryl met Jesus in 6x10. He got out of the truck he stole from them to change a tire. They tied him up and when they got back in the truck, the keys were in there. In 5x02, when Carol found the car on the side of the road, the keys were in there too. If you go back to Them, 5x10, Maggie found keys inside the car, which she used to open the trunk. More recently, we saw an iteration of this in Red Machete with one of the Saviors, which with they even paralleled shots of him looking through the car to how Maggie did it in 5x10.

At the end, Morgan is in the truck, which is attacked by Filthy Lady. I was kind of surprised how many groups came together in this episode. Granted, we only got three episodes left, but I kind of figured they wouldn't all come together until the very last one. I suppose they’re not really altogether. John and Strand still haven't reconnected with the group at all.

Alicia and Charlie did reconnect, but only via the walkie. They haven't actually met up with the group yet. Still, it's getting the group together very quickly. That's probably because they have to deal with Filthy Lady. She's obviously doing her best to cause them trouble.

John and Strand:

John and Strand are definitely a retelling of Beth and Daryl here. Even on TTD, Colman Domingo (Strang) said this was a battle of faith. John Dorie, as ever, is the positive, faithful one. Just like Beth was. Meanwhile, Strand is the negative hopeless one. Like Daryl.

Lots of little symbols in their story. We see a black grackle, which is heavily emphasized and often mentioned. I looked it up and there’s a lot of interesting symbolism around black grackles. I won’t go into all of it here except to say that it works well for John and Strand’s story. There are things that obviously apply to what each characters is going through here.

In terms of Beth, I think it could apply in two specific ways. (I’m sure there are more, but this post is already long, so I’ll keep this particular angle short.) The first thing that came to mind is the Black and White theme around Beth and Daryl. The bird is black, which would represent Daryl. We didn’t see live white animals, but right after it first shows the bird, Strand picks up a copy of Moby Dick.

The cover is mostly just water, but also shows the tail fin of the whale. Guess what color it is? White. (Cuz the whale in Moby Dick is white anyway.) So we have the black and white theme, and the white one (which has always represented Beth) is an ocean creature. Just saying.

In terms of grackle symbolism, one thing that leapt out at me is that the crackle usually perches and caws either just BEFORE DAWN or just after sunset. It’s the before dawn that caught my attention because we believe Beth will appear with a sunrise. Sirius the dog star also reappears before sunrise. And in this episode, it was obviously first thing in the morning that the bird was seen, because Strand was still asleep and it woke him.

Also, at one point, John says it’s odd that the grackle is alone. They always fly in groups or herds and he’s never seen just one on its own before. I think it’s a theme about the bird being separated from its family/loved ones. Which works well for this episode, since the group (especially John and June, who mirror Beth and Daryl) are separated from one another.

They draw attention to the bird by saying "the early bird kills the dead." We also know that will be birds in TWD S9. One of the promo pics include Rick, Michonne, and Judith watching a flock of birds. This is obviously an ongoing symbol and theme.

Other symbols we saw include water bottles and canned food, including a lot of green on the cans,

a fire extinguisher,

and binoculars.

Back Moby Dick. I'm not entirely sure what the Moby Dick connection is yet. The most obvious thing in this episode is the body of water. In Strand and John's case, it’s an alligator rather than a whale, but the alligator did attack the boat they’re in. I’ll admit the reference doesn't bode particularly well for the characters, as Ahab doesn't survive in Moby Dick. But it could also be symbolic. Strand’s faith was kind of “killed” in the alligator attack and he gave up.

Strand said he lost his stomach for boating. That's obviously meant to be a humorous callback to Fear S2, where the characters spent a good chunk of the season on a boat, but it's also an ocean/sailor/boating reference.

At one point, John says the water is moving "slower than a one-legged dog." Wow. Not only is that a dog reference, but a reference to an injured dog. Granted, Sirius is a one-eyed dog, not a one-legged dog, but it brings up a similar image. We could also compare this to the Lost Shoe/Foot symbolism around Beth.

We see several road signs underwater, including a 30-mph sign. We’ve seen that a lot in the show.

John sees a walker going into the river just before the crocodile gets it. The walker going into the river as it did, looked exactly like what we saw in 4x08. Lily saw a walker move into the river and be swept away by the current. Just saying.

John says, "There ain't no happy endings, but we gotta fight every day... Or we are no different than the passed." Just sounds like something Beth would say. Very much her philosophy. It also occurred to me that it applies to Beth and Daryl. They didn't get to have their happy ending. I think they still will, it will be a matter of them fighting to get back together, not simply “getting” a happy ending. It’s very similar to Carol saying in Consumed that they “don’t get to save people anymore.” They always try, of course, but it doesn’t really work that way in this world. Those people have to save themselves. Have to fight to live. So once again, this was heavy on themes we saw heavily emphasized around Beth in S5.

We also had a major theme of people being trapped in the front seats of cars. I’ll talk more about this when I talk about Luciana, but John also found a walker trapped in the front of the truck. He wants the truck’s shell to cross the lake, but it was the walker that caught my attention. It was trapped in the front seat…with a bottle of booze. Just saying.

When Strand tries to get the bottle, he gets pulled into the front seat and nearly killed himself. It just seems a bit suspicious that he tried to get some booze and ended up in the water. It's something we might relate to Beth.

Strand also says, "I drink to forget that I don't have anyone to drink with anymore." They mentioned how sad this line was on TTD. It's Strand’s way of saying he misses Madison and all the other people he's lost. But (naturally ;D) I can't help but think of Beth and Daryl. They drank together, and remember that both were offered booze after separating and refused it. Dawn offered it to Beth and she refused. Denise offered it to Daryl in 6x14 and he refused as well. Now, of course we did see him drinking it when burying her, but that was both to honor her, because he was suddenly super-depresed, and, symbolically, to parallel her death with Beth’s. And even though Carol was there, he was still drinking alone. The point is that both Beth and Daryl refused other drinking buddies after the two of them drank together at the moonshine shack.

John and Strand use the battery from the truck and a car horn as a distraction for the alligator. Obviously, Battery Bheory, especially because it runs out of juice halfway through. The horn, of course, also reminded me of 6x02 when the Wolves arrived and blew the horn. Just things we’ve see tied up in Beth symbolism a lot. At one point, Strand says to John, "Well, I didn't think it survive a bullet to the gut, but here we are." To which John replies, "You just gotta believe. Fight for one more day."

Remember that when John got shot, that was a huge retelling of Beth and Coda. So, it's important that someone says they didn't think John would survive, but here we are. And his line, “You just gotta believe,” is almost identical to Beth saying, "Would it kill you to have a little faith?"

When the battery dies and they lose their distraction, John says "That's a pickle." So, St. Nicholas and pickle story. But really think about that. Obviously the “death” of the battery here represents literal death. The Battery Theory was first thought up because of how many batteries we saw being brought back to life. (TWD episodes 4x04, Daryl at gas station. 5x02, Carol and car on side of the road. Even 5x11 with the RV batteries.)

The St. Nicholas/Pickle story is about 3 resurrections. So we see the death of a battery here, and there’s an immediate resurrection symbol that follows it. Said by John, who has a billion—yes, a billion!—parallels to Beth. Just saying.

At this point, the two men are stranded in the water with the gator. Not entirely sure how to interpret the symbolism yet, but I'm sure it's important. It feels like something that might be an analogy of what happened to Beth. In her case, I think she was stranded in a sea of walkers rather than water. Trapped that way. But we’ve seen water be used to symbolize her a lot as well. I'm sure it will make sense once we get her whole story.

I also couldn’t help but think of 7x08 when Rick and Daryl got the supplies from the houseboat. They had some really obvious Beth symbolism in that scene. In that case, there is no alligator, but there were walkers in the water and the boat started taking on water, just as John and Strand’s did here.

So it's a theme of being on the water and besieged by some sort of predator (walkers/alligator) while their boat is sinking. They have to fight to live. I'm wondering if Beth will find herself in a similar situation at some point. In this case, it was sad because John Dorie didn't make it across the lake. He kept saying, "We could make it.” Nearly identical to Beth saying in Still, "We made it." John went back with Strand and was obviously depressed that he hadn't pushed forward. But he’s still alive, and obviously will just have to fight a little harder to get back to June.

On TTD, they described the, the relationship between John and Strand. They said they really were like an angel and a devil. Colman talked about how their arguments work very intimate emotionally. That's exactly how they described Beth and Daryl on TTD after Still. They said Bethyl being in the trunk together was a metaphor for the overall situation. They’re forced into this very intimate situation, just the two of them, but they’re surrounded by danger.

In a way, you could see John and Strand’s situation similarly. As I said at the beginning, John = Beth and Strand = Daryl. Rather than being caught in the trunk of the car and surrounded by walkers, there stuck in a tiny boat that's filling with water and there's an alligator out there waiting to eat them. Everyone seeing the parallels?

Luciana:

Lucian’s arc, in many ways, is the one that hit me the hardest with the symbolism.

While looking for Charlie, Luciana goes to a library. I won’t go into library details here, but this isn’t, by far the first time we’ve seen a library (think where Morgan took Carol in 6x16 after she was shot) or even the first time we’ve seen it in Fear.

Outside the library, she finds a man in a car. This is the second instance of a man trapped in the front seat of the car. Unlike John Dorie’s case, this man is still alive. He crashed his car into a pole during the storm and his injuries are critical.

His name is Clayton, and later in the episode, we learn he drove the truck Sarah and Wendell stole. So Clayton is Polar Bear. The man Morgan is looking for.

Here's where it gets crazy, guys. Polar bear =’s Beth right? The man who calls himself Polar Bear is found injured and trapped in the front seat of a car. Not to mention, what does he ask Luciana for? To go find him some beer. Just like Beth and Daryl in Still, Luciana goes looking for a drink.

She's in paralleled more with Daryl than Beth here, though. Even though Beth was the one who first went looking for a drink, all she found was peach schnapps. After that, Daryl went looking for alcohol for her. Luciana is more like Daryl because she's not looking for her drink for herself. She's looking for drink for someone else who's requested it. And then there's the fact that Polar Bears/Clayton equals Beth. Therefore Luciana must equal Daryl.

There were little symbols around Luciana, too. There were some black-and-white racecar flags in the background.

She looked into a fridge. She saw a car with a hole in the hood, which looked like the engine been removed. (That scene was juxtaposed with John Dorie taken the engine out of the car he found using it to build his boat. So. it was kind of a theme about cars with missing engines.)

Lucy finds root beer with the green lid. It also struck me that Lucy was having a hard time finding the alcohol she was looking for. Strand found alcohol he wasn't looking for at all. I don't know if there's anything to that. (The things that make you go, “Hmm.”) The girl who drank the alcohol in S4 is missing, and if the alcohol represents her in the front seat of car, Strand found her when he wasn't looking for her. Chances are the same will be true of Daryl finding Beth.

Clayton told Luciana that in the old world, he ran away from the people he loved by being a truck driver. He was hiding from them and when world ended, he realized it was a huge mistake. That's why he began helping people. I don't know exactly how to relate that to Beth and Daryl, but it feels like something that should be.

When Lucy brings Clayton the beer, he surprised it's cold. She says she found an ice pack in the first aid kit. Just feels like more of the coolant theme. He also gives Luciana all his notebooks and journals.

And what do you know? When Clayton dies, Luciana buries him. We don't get a very good shot of the grave, but we see the headstone and she leaves the beer bottle on top.

Once again, this is something TWD does. Anyone at all important to the story get burial. And often mementos are left behind. They nailed Patrick's classes to his headstone in S4. They left Tyreese’s beanie on his headstone in S5. Now Luciana left the beer bottle on Clayton's headstone here. We did not see what happened to Beth's body. She did not get burial. She did not get headstone. She did not get a momento left behind. Nope, nada, zilch, nothing.

I guess I can’t end without touching on the title. Blackjack refers to the candy John is carrying around.

There really is a black licorice taffy candy called Blackjack, and he knows June likes it. So he’s kind of carried it as a symbol of his hope for reuniting with her. It was sad here because at the end, he’s very sad and eats the candy, as if to show that he’s losing his hope.

I’m sure we could get into the particulars of Blackjack (also called 21) and see the ways in which it relates to John and June’s story, and even to Beth’s. It’s very much about gambling and beating the odds. It’s all about chance and luck. Of course there are strategies for beating the dealer as well. But this post is hella long and I won’t go into all of that.

The thing it reminds me most of is the 4 poker queens, of which Beth is one. Let’s put it this way. They could have used any candy they wanted to symbolize June and John’s hope of finding her. Anything at all would have worked as long as they related it to the story. They chose to use something that invokes poker suites and symbols we’ve seen in regular TWD. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think that's all I have. I'm still loving this season of Fear and can't wait for next week's episode. Anyone else see anything I missed?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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thegloober · 6 years

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Don't 'Fear the Walking Dead': The Secret History of a Serial Killer, Plus Someone Gets Bit

We weren’t sure if “Fear the Walking Dead” was going to go the way of “The Walking Dead” and only dispatch characters during its openers and closers — which is totally lame, by the way — but they’re going old-school “TWD” with death lurking around every corner.

Kudos to the creators of “FTWD” for picking up the torch dropped by “TWD” many years ago and keeping the show exciting and unpredictable. Last week, we declared that we would be sad if anyone from this newly-assembled group of survivors bit the dust right away, which is probably why things went down the way they did.

It’s a testament to the writers that they’ve made all of these characters endearing and intriguing in their own ways so that the loss of any of them is difficult. It definitely reminds us of the days when “TWD” was the water-cooler talk of the week because you genuinely never knew what was going to happen, or who might die at any moment.

But before we get to the heartache in the here and now, we’ve got to explore the heartache in the past that culminated in the “strong” woman (Tonya Pinkins), who now gets a name. In a brightly-colored flashback sequence, we meet Martha, stuck on the side of the road with her dying husband, impaled in the car with a guard rail.

We don’t see how it happened, but that must have been one hell of an accident.

“Someone Will Help Us”

Martha’s murderous mission these days is to not help anyone ever, but it turns out this may be a relatively new development for her. There is no clear timeline on when her husband died on her but she apparently snapped shortly after he died, lamenting to God, “I don’t want to be here and I don’t know why you didn’t take me!”

The next moment, we see her attacking a woman leaving a box at a -4 mile marker. From then, it’s a murderous rampage on both people stopping by the boxes and other people dropping them off, all on the search for the elusive “Polar Bear.” We follow her all the way up until she kills a box deliverer and then picks up the CB and catches Morgan (Lennie James) in that truck stop.

It certainly seemed like she snapped in a hurry, which is similar to how Morgan has lost it in the past. So he really does understand what she’s going through, even if her methods are a little extreme and a lot gross. Plus, we don’t really see a path for redemption for good ol’ Martha, though a final reckoning is due.

“This Was the Right Call”

This was an explosive episode that left the majority of our survivors on foot … or worse in Wendell’s (Daryl Mitchell) case. Martha’s attack on the truck culminated in her getting shot and the semi exploding in glorious fury, allowing her escape. Unfortunately, it also invited a horde of walkers, which she left to finish the work for her.

How very classic superhero villain of her, though she was honestly in no shape to take them all down. If you needed further proof she’s off her rocker, she came out of the tank with just one walker on a stick to face off against half a dozen survivors. She’s either extremely confident or reckless or just plain cuckoo.

And so the chase was on, with Wendell dragging everyone down after his wheelchair was destroyed. Dragging a full-grown man is tiresome work, and with a growing horde in your wake, it’s also terrifying work. So when Morgan saw a hospital sign, they saw salvation.

On the one hand, it worked a bit, as June (Jenna Elfman) tried to assure Morgan. She was able to patch everyone up and Wendell got some new wheels. But the excitement kept coming, as it became a race through the hospital after the dead broke in and began to fill the floors one by one until the survivors had no recourse but to make for the roof.

It was an adrenaline-filled sequence, and the kind of thrills we need to see on these shows. The dead are still very much a threat, and especially in large numbers. It’s nice to see them still a menace that needs to be dealt with, can’t always just be killed off easily, and can still get their chomps in.

“I Have Beer to Make”

We were all so proud of Jim (Aaron Stanford) when he got his first-ever zombie kill in the hospital. Finally, he stepped up and took care of the danger himself. Only he didn’t.

Well, he killed the walker, but he will pay the ultimate price for doing so. And he thought it wasn’t so hard, after all, even getting a little smug once they finally emerged on the roof. They are a threat that should never be fully minimized, as the parent series does too often, and it was beautifully handled here.

Jim is the least capable of the group, so the most likely to succumb to a bite while grappling with a walker. He’s just not going to be as careful of their reach and bite as he should. And now no one is going to get any fresh beer.

And while Jim is also the easiest character to dispatch, as he’s the least developed, and the most unlikable, it still counts as a genuinely unexpected death. It’s the kind of thing “Dead” shows should be doing more often. This world is dangerous and unpredictable, so the shows depicting it should be, too. It’s nice to see one of them doing it, at least.

“I Just Need Something to Be Good”

Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and Charlie (Alexa Nisenson), on the other hand, had an arc that stretched plausibility so hard I can’t believe it didn’t snap. Sure, we don’t yet know for sure who they found at the flooded lake, but we totally know who they found at the flooded lake.

After lamenting that they both needed something to go right for them — which apparently entailed abandoning everything and everyone to make for the beach, Charlie hears the sound of water and they stumble upon the lake. Instant beach? Also, instant hope for Victor (Colman Domingo) and John (Garret Dillahunt), we can only assume.

It was easily one of the most ridiculous sequences of the season so far, but stranding the guys on a newly flooded island was a little silly, too. we then spent the better part of an episode watching them fail to leave, and now they’re going to have to be rescued. Honestly, we could have done without this bizarre diversion for any of these characters.

Alicia being a quitter again is annoying and getting old, while Charlie is suddenly the one with a conscience. Victor was his usual drunken useless self. The only thing worth watching in all of it was Garret Dillahunt’s inspired performance as the eternally optimistic John finally reaching his breaking point, and we didn’t even get to see him in this episode.

With only two episodes left, it looks like everyone will be reuniting and we’ll have a final showdown with Martha.

“Fear the Walking Dead” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.

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