Fear the Walking Dead season 5, episode 9 review: Channel 4

Fear the Walking Dead returns after a midseason break. The latest chapter takes a documentary approach to allow our survivors to reflect on their status quo.

Althea interviews every member of the group throughout the episode. She also records the attempted rescue of a woman and her son who are trapped in their house. Before we dive into the A-plot of “Channel 4”, here are some important takeaways that each character reveals during their sessions:

Morgan – relates to the woman who locked her family away inside their home since he once felt compelled to do the same (as seen in the pilot episode of The Walking Dead). Morgan gets emotional thinking about his wife and son.

Alicia – after the flight home, she has decided not to kill anymore, and that includes zombies. She is learning from Morgan about Eastman’s worldviews, as well as the art of stick defense.

Salazar – appreciates company again after locking himself inside a fortress with Skidmark the cat for a long time.

Grace – is caught on camera checking her lymph nodes. She expects to grow sick sooner than later from being around so much radioactivity for so long.

Strand – is doing what Alicia can’t. He watches her back and takes down the growlers.

John – talks briefly about being a cop and not needing to speak to your partner to know what makes them tick, referring to how Morgan doesn’t discuss his wife and son often.

June – coordinates the caravan’s operations and, of course, provides medical assistance when needed.

Dwight – feels lucky to be on a good team instead of having to side with some bad people, like the Saviors, in order to survive. He also hopes he may run into his ex on the road since the group is crisscrossing the south to help others.

Sarah – has a laugh about leaving Logan behind as payback for tricking them out of the factory in the past. She did throw him a bone… one of their care packages that they leave at mile markers. She is also the DJ of the long rides, exclusively playing trucker music, to everyone else’s displeasure.

Althea – raided a camera store to fund her documentary. She grabbed all the cameras, batteries, and tapes they could carry.

Morgan explains that people took notice of their improbable aerial adventures and started contacting them for help. The group’s current focus is a mother named Tess. Her husband went out looking for an inhaler for their son and left the house surrounded by land mines so that walkers couldn’t get to his family.

More from TV

• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episodes 1 and 2 review: Aftermath
• The 9 best (and 8 worst) Arrowverse characters
• 10 things nobody wants to admit about The Walking Dead
• Harley Quinn renewed for a fifth season on Max (and it’s well-deserved)
• The Walking Dead: Every TWD spinoff show coming in 2024 and beyond

One unsuspecting biter stumbles onto the front yard and sets off an explosive. That calls on others that John sharp shoots from the other side of the fence. A nearby walker wearing a back pack turns out to be the boy’s father; he retrieved an inhaler but died before making it back home.

Morgan makes a run for it and kills a zombie that was closing in on the house when he steps on a mine. He remains calm and keeps his foot on the device, making for a tense Hurt Locker kind of situation. Althea tries to help him off the mine until Tess emerges to offer assistance. A pin temporarily defuses the explosive but unexpectedly goes off seconds later – luckily Morgan already walked a safe distance. They all celebrate that night with a big cookout.

The video that Althea edits together is later watched by an unknown individual at a gas station. Logan and company drive up to him as he fills his bike with gas and accuses him of stealing their fuel. They leave his ride with bullet holes and give him a walkie to call for Morgan.

Weekly Walkaways

• With this style of filming, one almost expects Jim and Pam Halpert to pop in and give us an update on how their post-The Office life is going. Coincidentally, Fear has their own Dwight now, as well.
• The show doesn’t, and probably can’t, explain how “people noticed” the groups risky plane trip in the dead of night. Also, is there an unlimited amount of walkie talkies for anyone and everyone to reach out to each other?
• Fear the Walking Dead is presently struggling to find a raison d’etre. All of the characters are now united, but the show won’t survive as an episodic charity program where they help a new person each week. The documentary tactic doesn’t necessarily help, with their final pleads for people to reach out to them coming off like a humanitarian aid infomercial.
• The MVP of “Channel 4” is Morgan for risking his life to save a woman and her son. His documented testimony where he opens up about the family he lost is heartfelt and proves that Lennie James is the best actor in the series.

Fear the Walking Dead returns next week with “210 Words Per Minute” on Sunday, August 18th at 9:00 p.m. ET on AMC.