Season Two Breakdown

Prior to the season two finale, AMC showed the marathon of the first and second seasons of the show.  Even though I keep a notepad of the shows, I had a few ah-ha moments while rewatching them.  I really do think they are trying to tell us something, an underlying theme.  Certainly I've seen the five stages of grief come into play a lot.  In Mexico, Day of the Dead was prevalent.  But also character growth is what has abounded.  In a world where you need to be selfish, it's the selfless people who seem to survive.  Sure, there are takers.  But they usually get theirs, one way or another.

Like Brandon and Derek.  Or the warehouse banditos.  The takers usually don't have contingency plans.  They just continue to take.

I think the easiest way to do all this is to breakdown where each character was at from the beginning.

In Season One, we started off with nine people as focal characters.  The Clarks:  Madison, Nick and Alicia.  The Manawa/Ortiz family: Travis, Liza and Chris.  The Salazars: Daniel, Griselda, and Ofelia.  In a flash, each of these families became connected for better or worse.  In the case of the Clarks/Manawas, Madison and Travis were living together, with Nick (a recovering and relapsing drug addict) and Alicia (an overachieving high school student).  Liza and Travis were divorced and splitting custody with their son Chris, who was an angry young teenager.  As for the Salazars, they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, allowing Travis's family shelter, then leaving with them.

Daniel's wife Griselda was one of the first casualties of these families.  Only to lose Liza once she was bitten in an infected attack at the refugee hospital where Nick was being caged, along with Victor Strand, who in turn took on this new tribe.

So season one ended with Madison, Nick, Alicia, Travis, Chris, Daniel, Ofelia and Strand as a group.

As the second season hit its midway point, we were introduced to Celia, who was the "house mother" so the speak of Abigail ranch, who was named for Thomas Abigail, Strand's partner.  Abigail had become infected, and Strand made sure he passed.  Celia had taken a liking to Nick, especially when Luis (Celia's son) died in a gun fight on the boat, and Nick had taken an infected Luis to Celia.

See the underlying theme is that the dead are not dead.  As Celia once said, the dead have always walked among us.  We just see them now.  And if I know anything about Mexican culture, it's that they have a respect for the dead.

By the end of Season Two, a main character was killed, and that was Chris.  We saw something very unprecedented in this show, in that the main characters stayed intact pretty much though at the midseason finale, they all went separate ways, and you wondered how they would get back together.  Strand, Madison, Alicia and Ofelia took off as a team, Nick went off on his own while Travis and Chris went in their own direction. 

And I am still convinced Daniel is going to make a big dramatic entrance somewhere at some point.  I just can't believe that a show would hire Ruben Blades and his awesomeness to just have him peter out in a scene with a shit-eating grin on his face as the cellar burned around him. 

(NOTE: I had this draft saved forever, and I'm finally writing the wrap up nearly one year after the second season ended.  We are well into the third season of FWD and we have a good idea of what Daniel is up to these days...)

 Unlike the predecessor show, this band of survivors of the apocalypse seem to compromise everything they fucking touch.  I believe we have seen several years at Alexandria, as an example.  In this show, each place they've touched has turned to shit, and quickly.  If Madison and crew show up, I'm warning everyone, just leave because shit is about to go down and badly.  Patient Zero was in LA - they knew her.  They go to the boat - it gets stolen.  They go Abigail - soon overrun by the dead and gone in a fire.  And they leave the hotel in potential ruins.

By the end of season two, Alicia, Madison and Travis leave together.  Victor plots his next move at the hotel.  Ofelia seems to have been captured by a border agent or vigilante.  Daniel hasn't been heard from.  And Chris is now with his mother.  

Right now I'm going over my notes for the second season and finally getting caught up on my third season notes.  We are well on our way through the second half of the season.  And man, it keeps getting better.  I'm so glad I got into this show.