Spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't yet watched the latest episode of Fear the Walking Dead!
With the sixth episode of its sixth season, Fear the Walking Dead pulled its character-specific focus in on Jenna Elfman's June and her dauntless efforts to make the world a better place with her medical skillset. Even, as it turned out, at the expense of her most important relationship with Garret Dillahunt's John Dorie. The episode basically worked like an "Event Episode" of a medical drama like Grey's Anatomy or ER, with a major disaster testing everyone's physical and mental mettle.
Given the stress involved, "Bury Her Next to Jasper's Leg" featured quite a few wild character choices and reactions to situations that we have to talk about. The most understandable reaction in the episode? Sarah's genuinely touching response to Daryl Mitchell's return as her brother Wendell, which Mo Collins nailed three times over. Now let's get into the weirder moments!
Paige Taking Herself Out
Fear the Walking Dead's cold open is where the episode title's Jasper came up, and it also featured a compressed roller coaster of choices for the short-lived rebel Paige. Injured and in slight danger, Ellen Locy's Paige is outed by Virginia as being part of the "End is the Beginning" group, plays innocent, gets snappy, takes one of the Pioneers' guns, makes an ominous threat, and finally blows her own head off to avoid going back with Virginia. It was pretty solid foreshadowing to how the group played into the episode's big inciting incident, which is still something of a question mark, as well as dodging Virginia's torturous interrogation tactics.
June Trying To Save Malcolm
It's a zombie apocalypse, June, just like it has been for quite a while now. Clearly it sucks to lose a patient, but let's act like we've been here before. That said, jeebus cripes, Malcolm turned into a walker with WTF speed, so it isn't all on June.
Virginia Torturing Wes
As a villain with a vengeance, Virginia's decision-making skills are on a narrower path than most. But even she had to realize how goddamned stupid it was to carry on an interrogation session in the middle of such an explosive situation. As if she couldn't have painfully extracted information from Wes while transporting him to a different location. In the long run, I don't think she would have saved very much time by taking him and leaving, but it's the principle!
Virginia's Reaction To Being Bitten
For a franchise that hangs so much of its drama on people dying and getting bitten, there have been relatively few scenes in which characters are allowed to react to their potential doom with full-on panicked dread. If I would be writing this show, literally every episode would feature at least one character saying "No..no..no, no! No! No!" So Virginia's reaction itself wasn't as wild as it being utilized in the first place.
June Saving Virginia's Life
Yes, I understand June has a kind and moral soul that was wooed by the idea of getting a hospital, but she could have just started a hospital with Virginia dead. It would not have been too hard to kill Virginia so that she turned into a walker, which would allow June a self-defense excuse to give to Virginia's loyal followers. It would have been complicated, sure, but certainly not as complicated as having to justify allowing Virginia's dictatorship to continue, or losing John.
John Driving Off Without June
While there's wiggle room for John to be taking a detour to pick something up before catching back up with the truck, the worried look on his face made it pretty clear that he opted to make his escape without June by his side. I mean, he also made it very, very clear earlier that he wanted to get away from Virginia's communities no matter what, but June has obviously been his anchor, and he straight up lied to her so hard. Maybe he can go start up that spinoff idea that I'd be super-interested in.
So are the "End Is the Beginning" members only interested in taking out Virginia's communities, or do they have secondary motives? Are any of these people in cahoots with Lauren Cohan's Maggie and Jayne Atkinson's Georgie from The Walking Dead? Does John actually think he can possibly stay away from June for longer than, like, two episodes? So many questions, so much oil wasted.
New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead air Sunday nights on AMC at 9:00 p.m. ET, followed by new episodes of The Walking Dead: World Beyond. While waiting to see what will happen next, keep current with our Fall TV 2020 premiere schedule to see the biggest shows still on the way.
