AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead
7×02: “Six Hours”
Directed by Michael E. Satrazemis
Written by Andrew Chambliss & Ian Goldberg

* For a recap & review of 7×01, click here.
* For a recap & review of 7×03, click here.
Morgan and Grace, along with the baby, are now inside the submarine for an extended period of time. Hard enough lasting through the apocalypse, it’s even tougher when you have to listen to a baby cry. The big problem? The child’s hungry. They need food, which necessitates Morgan and Grace having to deal with the nuclear fallout beyond the submarine’s walls. So, off Grace goes, suited up, to try finding anything edible in this newly dusted wasteland. Goddamn, what a life. The zombies are still out there, even among the nuclear wastelands. Grace eventually finds a store to search, cautiously going inside. She looks for anything left intact and she finds baby powder, though not before some people show up. She tries to hide quickly but makes a bunch of noise. The people are there scavenging, too. They take a couple things and move on, thankfully. Yet that leaves even less to scavenge than there was before. It all leaves Grace more than frustrated as she screams at the wind outside: “I don‘t even want to be here anymore.”

Back at the sub, the baby’s still crying because there’s nothing she’ll eat. Morgan wants to go out this time, but Grace says she’ll go. He doesn’t like that plan because she’s been exposed enough, insisting he’ll take his turn out there. Mostly it’s the fact Grace doesn’t want to be alone with the baby, but she has to right now, even if it’s stressful. She counts the minutes waiting for Morgan to return and listening to the child wail. The only thing that calms the baby? A bit of music: “Baby Please Forgive Me” by Margaret Lewis.
Later, Morgan’s back, and he has no food, but he’s got a plan. He’s been working on a vehicle for them to get out of there. He’s fitted it out so there’s clean air inside and there’s a real safe place for the baby, too. Grace isn’t so sure about the plan to leave while Morgan thinks it’s their best option, to get away from there and find a place somewhere else to build a life again. In spite of her doubts she agrees to leave, and the trio, along with their dog, are off on a road trip together.
The wasteland is even more dangerous than ever as Grace and Morgan survey the blast zone on the road. They start getting closer to “ground zero” where the bombs actually hit, noticing the radiation spike on their meter. So they try to get further away by heading a different way on the road. Grace flips out when a certain song starts playing, trying to stop the tape and getting frantic. This nearly puts the car off the road and finally Morgan gets the tape out. Plus, they have a bent wheel now, and they’re running out of time exposed on the road. Grace pulls off her mask, deciding that she wants the baby and Morgan to go on without her. She’s done with this world, it seems. In the midst of her and Morgan arguing they’re confronted by a group of people who’ve come to take the baby, claiming it’s their child. Oh, my. Not a good situation.

The people hold Morgan and Grace at gunpoint inside a garage, where they make the former fix the car’s tire. Grace says the people, Fred (Derek Richardson) and Bea (Maren lord), are heavily radiated, appearing to have radiation burns under their bandages. And she also doesn’t want to give up quite yet, not if it means leaving Morgan and the baby in a bad spot. That also doesn’t mean she’s happy, feeling as if Morgan dragged her into a life with a child that she didn’t ask for, even if it was only him trying to do right by a child in the post zombie apocalypse. Things get sketchy after zombies crowd the garage and the child won’t stop crying. We see the zombies outside came from “the crater,” likely where the bombs hit. They’re oozing and falling apart. Grace soothes the baby with a few quiet tunes. But the garage isn’t going to withstand any further pressure. Bea mentions somewhere called Padre, but Fred tells her to be quiet. Another paradise-like location rumoured to be somewhere out there?
Either way, Morgan and Grace are about to be stranded when he grabs a gun off Fred. This just sends the couple fleeing in the car. Morgan tries to stop them and takes a couple shots. The car does stop, but Morgan has to fight off Bea while Fred runs with the baby. Morgan sees how deteriorated Bea is in the struggle and she tells them: “I‘m not one of them. Not yet.” The two of them wind up hiding together. Bea explains she and Fred got their burns not during the blast but some time later. She knows she’s dying and she wants to take the child to safety. Morgan explains he’s only doing the same thing. Bea and Fred tell Morgan and Grace about the place called Padre marked on the map, a place they heard of over the radio. It’s a dangerous road to get there. Grace thinks they should go back to the sub, if they can find supplies to take with them. That’s if they don’t get swarmed by radiated zombies first.
The group work together on the car. But they’ve got to figure out where they’re going now. Grace keeps pushing for the sub, whereas Morgan’s thinking about Padre. They’re also trying to reconcile with the truth. Grace thinks Morgan might be hoping for something that’s not possible to find. Right about then they all hear a vehicle coming up the road. They’re concerned it might not be somebody friendly. Grace takes the baby with Fred to hide while Morgan and Bea are outside. Morgan holds a rifle out and threatens whoever steps out of the vehicle. He starts shooting, taking the person to the ground. Then Morgan starts to hear something strange coming from a bag in the car, so he shoots it. Because Bea’s zombie child was in there! Good lord. Fred killed their baby when it wouldn’t stop crying, and now Morgan’s afraid the guy might do the same to little Mo.
Luckily Morgan gets word to Grace before Fred can kill the baby, and Grace saves the child’s life. Then it’s Grace and the crying baby left inside while the zombies try to break through the walls. So she sings lightly to the infant, rocking lightly, and Mo goes quiet in her arms. Also helps that Morgan comes flying through with the car to crush the horde into guts. Yet there are still some others out there in the darkness, somewhere.

Grace, Morgan, and Mo get back on the road while they leave Bea behind. They arrive home at the sub once more, only to find people with guns waiting. One of them is Howard, a very familiar face to us. And Howard recognises Morgan’s name, revealing he knows Victor, which, naturally, surprises Morgan. He tells them about the Tower. He also explains Grace can secure a place there, but Morgan didn’t “make the cut.” She refuses to go, knowing all about Victor already. Morgan wants the child to go to the Tower, only wanting the baby to have a safe place to live. But Grace refuses. A lot has changed for her in the past 24 hours.
There’s still nothing to eat in the submarine. Or at least very little. One ray of light? Mo’s crawling around. And that discovery leads to the discovery of food rations in a container beneath the floor. Something to smile about, for a while, anyway. There remains the question of who’s out there aside from Howard and his people? Who was it that came for Grace and Morgan earlier? We get a glimpse of the person Morgan shot at now by the fire with a box marked MORGAN JONES, inside of which is a zombified head. This person is Josiah LaRoux, and it’s his brother Emile’s head in the box. Oh, shit! A blast from the brutal past.