Episode 14 Synopsis: Grotesque

"I want to be where the dead aren't monsters." - Nick Clark

And...we are back. 

Episode 14, "Grotesque," marks our second half comeback for season two of Fear the Walking Dead.  This was an interesting episode, and mostly because out of all the show types in this franchise, the focus on a solitary character is what I love to see.  This one in particular focused on Nick Clark, one of the major characters of this show who has inner and outer complexities that everyone sees, but Nick has tried to get through them himself. 

There wasn't too much dialogue in this episode, since it focused on his intent to walk among the dead.  As we've figured out, in this post-apocalyptic world, the living must fear the living more than the dead.  The dead, well, we know what they are looking for.  The living?  They are in survival mode and will take out anything, living or dead, that threatens their quest for survival.

We also got to see more about Nick's drug addictive past, and his relationship to Gloria, the Patient Zero of the zombie apocalypse, who was in recovery with Nick a few times.

These episodes usually provide a lot of insight to how the characters operated in the previous world, and how that impacts them in this world.  One of the most controversial episodes in the main show was on Morgan, who learned to just take out the already dead, but he never killed anyone living.  His personal philosophies may help him reconcile how he felt about the previous world, yet at the same time, puts himself and his people at risk in this world. 

What's fascinating about Nick is that he's always just put himself at risk.  When he swam across the border to Mexico, he left with only Strand knowing.  Madison was furious that he would put himself in danger like that.  From an addict's point of view, I can't say that I am surprised that Nick would be a risk taker like that.  He's not afraid of death.  And of course, the big fucking metaphor here is that DEATH IS ALL AROUND US.  And you're confronted with it every 17 seconds in this world.

The setting starts off I guess a few days after the stand off at Abigail, when everyone bolts in their own direction and our main tribe from Los Angeles fractures.  Nick walks off on his own.  We are led to believe he is not going to be reunited with his family and the main tribe.  But come on.  He has to be with them again at some point.  Right?

Right?!??!?!!?

In the meantime, it looks like he's found refuge with a woman and her family.  At the beginning of the show, there are two dead next to him.  We don't know if they were infected or if they just didn't want to live in the survival series. 

What is always somewhat amusing to me is how many women and children find Nick incredibly charming and are always willing to help him.  That must be part of his narcissistic personality as an addict.  But also his separation from his family has forced him to create alliances that serve him for the time being, but never seem to be very permanent.  This is evident as the mother hands him a jug of water, tells him to be safe and drives off with her son, to find her son's father.  Nick, with a knapsack and jug of water, heads towards Tijuana, which is 100 km from where he stands.  

We are interspersed with flashbacks.  The first one was of Gloria and he doing some role playing as to what he'd say to his dad in family therapy.  This is the first time we get a sense of what Nick dealt with, concerning his overbearing mother who wanted everyone to be happy and his dad, who was "there" but not "really there."  He alludes to him laying in bed.  Possibly chronic illness?  Clinical depression?  Whatever the case, it sounds as if Madison had her hands full by having a codependent existence with her husband and then her addict son. 

Nick, coming back to the present time, his demons are now the living and not himself.  First, he takes refuge in what seemed to be an abandoned home.  However, he is awakened by an angry mother who is beating him with a bat.  Not speaking English, she doesn't understand that he needs to grab his things.  He is chased out with no supplies and most of all no agua. 

In the sunlight, he finds some abandoned vehicles, with some infected and dead in there.  He find a radio and a little bit of water.  As he plays around with the radio, a group of banditos come in and start to take out the infected.  Nick hides and watches...however, the radio frequency has a shrill sound and he is caught.  He manages to run away but...into the hot desert.  With no water.  Welp.

He is now in survival mode, looking for any kind of water source.  He comes upon cacti, tries to drink some of the liquid (we all learned in science class, cactus plants hold onto to every ounce of water to thrive in the desert).  He makes himself sick, and then goes so far as to drink his own urine.  Nick finds shelter in an abandoned vehicle. 

He then dreams about when he found out his father passed.  His mother visits him, and he jokes that he guess Dad couldn't get out of bed.  Madison tells him that his father was in a car accident, and didn't make it. 

I suppose that not being there for a loved one when they pass is something that we all deal with in humanity.  To know that your loved one is loved, and that they know it too.  Yet, Nick was in rehab and it was all his doing.  The guilt, I am sure, is overwhelming.

He is however woken up by vicious and angry dogs, who are looking for their next meal in his scarcity.  Nick is bitten, badly, but he manages to escape, only to see a group of infected walkers coming towards the noise.  The dogs begin to attack them, yet they are outnumbered, and become food to the infected.  Once all is done there, the car body starts to creak, and the infected are drawn to the noise.  In the distance, a horn is sounded, and presumed to be banditos from earlier that tried to kill Nick.  Nick makes a makeshift tourniquet where he was bitten.  Now, he really walks like an infectado, dragging his leg behind him, and not noticed by the dead.

He walks with the pack, hot, dehydrated, lack of food, he starts to hallucinate.  We see he has made 60 km of headway towards Tijuana.  The banditos arrive again, and this time start shooting the dead.  One of the henchmen loses his ammo, and gets overrun by the infected.  Nick cheats death once again. 

However, in the distance, we notice a few people watching the group, and see Nick is choosing to walk among the dead.  The woman is named Luciana ("Luci"), who is a look out.  At this point, Nick collapses.  Death is imminent. 

We are brought back to his third flashback, which is where he is reading a book in the church which had served as the heroin den we saw in Episode One.  This is Day Zero of the apocalypse, as we are led to presume that this is the night Gloria overdoses and dies.  They are cooking up a shot of heroin, and Nick explains the book.  "If you hold onto something for too long or too hard, you corrupt it." Gloria says she'd like to read the book...in the morning. 

Nick, in the now, is woken by rain, serving as a sort of rebirth for him.  In the previous flashback, as he was able to wake up from that heroin hit and has probably dealt with guilt issues of leaving Gloria behind as she was Patient Zero in that church, he is now kept alive by Mother Nature and the "holy water" of rain.  How apropos.

Nick limps into an abandoned village and tries to find drugs and bandages.  He attempts to create a bandage but is instead captured by Luciana and some of her henchmen.  They ask if he is "infectado."  He says nooooooo....perro (dog bite).  He asks for "agua."  These folks seem relatively benign, and they take him to get help.  Certainly, after viewing him with the dead from afar, they also see he has some gifts of not being afraid and willing to get his hands dirty. 

He gets the wound cleaned out, by a presumed "doctor."  The doc tells Nick that Luciana says he was very "brave."  Nick said that he is not.  The doc instead tells him that he is "foolish.  Death is not meant to be feared.  But it is not to be pursued.  There is a difference."  Nick tells him that coulda-shoulda-woulda is the story of his life, and right now, he just wants to find a place where the dead aren't monsters.

Once he is cleaned up, the doctor opens the doors to a new world.  Children playing games, an open air market and village.  Nick is finally at peace.  Life has continued.