‘Fear the Walking Dead’ season 2, episode 13 review: Madison, Travis face harsh truths

On Sunday night’s “Fear the Walking Dead,” they kept things small, and with that, we may have had some of most powerful moments we’ve seen on this show over the course of the entire season to date.

We don’t want to waste time before getting to what we thought was the best scene of the episode: Travis telling Madison that she was right to protect her daughter Alicia, just as he in turn was right to protect Chris. They are parents first, and they do what they can in order to ensure that their kids are safe. Doing anything otherwise would only be thought of as irresponsible.

Unfortunately for Travis, what he learned tonight is that his own son thinks that he no longer needs him. Like with Nick, we like to assume that Chris will find his way back eventually, having learned a few things about what it really means to find love. There is so little gratitude out there in this world, and finding that is an integral part of surviving something as devastating as this situation is.

Since we’re in the mood for characters being honest, let’s go ahead and turn to what Madison revealed to Alicia: Her father / Madison’s husband died as a result of suicide. She hid this from her for the longest time to protect her, which once again is another example of her doing what she could to protect her child. Yet, this is reality, and much like Travis, she had to realize that this was a pointed, painful world where there was no room for sugar-coating. Her finally giving up this information, complete with his final message (“I love you all, but enough’s enough”) is her finally succumbing to this world being what it is: One full of hard truths.

The relative lack of Nick in this episode likely says a lot about how we feel about this storyline; it just doesn’t connect. If we’re focusing on Madison and Travis, we often feel like it does connect with us. This episode may have been slow, but we cared about the people involved. For much of the series, that has been an Achilles’ heel. Grade: A-.

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