AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead
Season 4, Episode 16: “… I Lose Myself”
Directed by Michael E. Satrazemis
Written by Andrew Chambliss & Ian Goldberg

* For a recap & review of the previous episode, “I Lose People…” – click here
* For a recap & review of the Season 5 premiere, “Here to Help” – click here
We find Al (Maggie Grace) alone on the zombie-ridden streets after escaping the hospital. A horde pushes her into a tight spot in a side street where she manages to find her way into a parking garage. She gets hold of a radio, but nobody answers, and soon it’s dead. She discovers a news van with all its gear inside, including a camera. She also finds herself a cop car with gear and heads for the hospital, coming across Martha (Tonya Pinkins) and zombie Jim (Aaron Stanford). The dirty lady doesn’t want to kill her, asking Al to pass “a message” on to Morgan (Lennie James). When Al refuses she gets knocked out.
When Al wakes, her friends have found her in the street. They heard her call on the radio luckily. John (Garret Dillahunt) and June (Jenna Elfman) are there to greet her, as everyone else is readying to head to Virginia. They found a video taped for Morgan from Martha, saying she’s going to see him again when she’ll be “stronger than ever.” That’s one creepy woman.
Nevertheless, Morgan tells the others more about Alexandria and the king with his “pet tiger.” All sounds more like a fairy tale, if we didn’t know it’s true. Morgan wants to keep dropping off Polar Bear’s boxes along the way, to keep helping others. He can’t get Martha off his mind. He wouldn’t want to lead someone like her to all his other friends back in Virginia. He also hates seeing others suffer, after knowing what it’s like to lose his mind, and he’s adamant about trying to help her. John wants to give him a hand, but Morgan refuses wanting to do this by himself, giving his pal directions to Alexandria, in case the worst happens.

“Y’know, there’s some fish in this world just won’t be caught.”

On the lonely road, Morgan calls Martha on the walkie, pleading to give him a chance to show her a better way. She tells him to meet her at “mile marker 54“— where she watched her husband die then reanimate. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew are back at Polar Bear’s outpost, drinking coffee and loading back up on supplies for the long journey ahead of them. Strand (Colman Domingo), Luciana (Danay Garcia), and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) are mapping out “another reason to live” after all they’ve been through. John and June get a moment to enjoy alone, too. While working on her SWAT truck, Al gets dizzy and falls over. She’s nearly chomped by some walkers, before Alicia puts a bullet in one to let June and Strand get Al to safety. Not good.
Morgan comes across Jim, locked in the cop car Al was driving before. He puts the man down for good. Afterwards, he finds Martha lying face down in a field on a pile of dirt, where she buried her husband. He approaches and tries reaching out. She’s resistant. But he throws her in back of the cop car and heads back on the road. On the drive, Martha confides in Morgan about her husband Hank and what happened to him. She sees herself as weak for not being capable of saving Hank. Over the radio, June calls Morgan to alert him to an epidemic breaking out— Al’s not the only sick one, it’s everybody. Could this be from the tainted water Martha made?
When Morgan rushes to help his friends he’s distracted long enough for Martha to grab his arm, resulting in a car crash. She pulls him from the wreck, writing on his forehead with marker. He’s not dead. He’s got a nasty piece of metal sticking out of his leg. She reveals a zombie bite she got willingly. It’s either he kills her, or she’ll kill him. Morgan repeats his “I don‘t kill” mantra. All the while his friends are dying— June confirms the bottles are tainted, just as Father Gore suspected. Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Over the walkie, June tells Morgan what they’ve discovered, which Martha fully confirms for him. The dirty lady rattles on about weakness more, believing this is all a part of a greater plan to help people find their strength. She tells Morgan it’s antifreeze in the bottled water. If they drank enough of it, they’ll certainly die. This pushes Morgan to his limit and he grips Martha at the throat, thinking of his friends about to perish. He stops when he gets a glimpse of what she wrote on his forehead. He’s determined to save the others. So he pulls the metal from his leg and gets going, handcuffing Martha to the cop car first.

“I made sure you couldn’t help me”

While Al and the others get sicker there are zombies outside, dying to get in— get it? Morgan’s trying his best with a busted leg to make it back. He falls in the road, calling over the walkie to his friends. He’s able to let them know they’ve been poisoned with antifreeze. June says “ethanol” is an antidote, and there’s a tanker truck crashed nearby, Sarah (Mo Collins) tells them. Finally, a ray of hope. First the group’s got to fight their way out, ill, and get to the stuff. They do pretty damn well for a bunch of people with poison in them, until the truck gets shot up after Al has to use the SWAT guns to save everyone from a horde of “meat puppets.” They’re back to square one. Morgan feels helpless on the road: “I can‘t go back to what I was.” He won’t give up on them, no matter what.
Just as the group are ready to die Morgan makes it back in a fury. He stopped to get something on the way, seeing as how ethanol’s “just a fancy word for alcohol.” Fittingly, it’s Jim’s beer. Even young Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) gets a bottle.
Back out on the road, Morgan sees Martha’s zombified, having torn her arm off to get free of the handcuffs. He puts her out of her misery— a symbolic gesture, given the fact she was keeping so many of the zombies alive. He actually buries her, as well. Then Morgan explains he’s not going to Alexandria again. He wants to go help people like Martha who’ve lost their way. He brings his friends to an old “denim factory” where Polar Bear worked delivering product, which is near the outpost the old guy setup. They all see a possible new beginning, a place to rebuild “something more.”

 

Will the group be successful in their quest to help others? Will it bring about more enemies to face? You can bet there’ll be a bit of both. This season was ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT, so Father Gore’s anticipating a solid Season 5 as the series picks up steam moving forward.