The episode begins with a wedding reception in progress. The reception is taking place in the ballroom at the hotel where our group is currently fighting for their lives. We saw the sad aftermath of this reception a couple of episodes ago as Ofelia, Madison, Strand, and Alicia wandered through the blood-spattered ballroom. As our group wandered through the empty ballroom, they saw unopened presents, decorations, a lopsided wedding cake, and of course, blood.
In the flashback, we see the wedding cake in its fresh, non-lopsided form, and a room filled with happy people. Everyone is having a good time, toasts are made to the bride and groom, and the first dance between the two of them is joyful. The hotel staff members tasked with supervising the event are grim-faced, although we don’t know why (but we can guess). Even though they are worried about something, they continue to assist the wedding group as the father-of-the-bride gets up to dance with his daughter.
The event manager asks the mother-of-the-bride if everything is okay, and the mom says no. The mom is worried about the illness that is going around – and she wants to leave the hotel – sooner rather than later. She states that the current dance will be the last dance before they depart. The event manager asks her assistants to go get the guest’s cars. It’s not clear whether any of these people know what ‘the illness’ is.
As the father-of-the-bride is dancing with his daughter, he falls over. He seems to be having a heart attack. The event coordinator sees what’s happening and can’t get help when she dials ’emergency’ on her phone. The bride begins to give her dad mouth-to-mouth (oh no! – stop! stop!), but he dies anyway. He revives (almost instantaneously), and immediately takes a big chunk out of his daughter’s face. The hotel staff, instead of rushing to their aid, lock the entire wedding party and their guests in the ballroom. They may not know exactly what the illness is, or how it’s spread, but they knew that everyone will turn eventually, and so locking everyone in the room was their solution.
Wow, nice opening!
Travis and Chris are walking down a dusty path, and Travis is limping, and having trouble walking due to his foot injury from a few episodes ago. His gait looks a little walker-like, to tell you the truth. They come across an isolated little road store/restaurant, with a few tables inside. There’s an old green and white station wagon parked nearby, and it looks abandoned. Travis breaks the window of a car in the hopes that they may be able to drive it away. And Travis knows how to hotwire things – remember when he hotwired the Abigail?
While Travis is investigating the car, Chris strolls into the shop, sees a photo of the owners on the wall, and then sees their dead bodies on the floor. They look kind of fresh, and neatly arranged – who killed them? The place looks empty, so Chris decides to take some food. And then the walkers arrive – not too many of them, but enough that they are a threat. And it turns out there are a couple of very much alive guys there as well. I wonder if they killed the owners of the store. Chris kills most of the walkers, and then makes a break for it – some food in hand. He leaves the guys to fend off the last of the walkers.
Chris approaches Travis and says they need to leave ASAP. He neglects to tell Travis that there were people who he left there. He also neglects to tell Travis that he stole the supplies from said people.
Later on, after dark, Chris and Travis drive along the empty road and discuss their current situation. Chris scans the radio dial, but of course there’s nothing but silence. Travis wants to get away from their current location. Travis’ foot is bothering him from driving, so he decides that now would be a good time for Chris to learn how to drive (and Chris has been bugging him to let him drive). They switch seats and Travis instructs Chris on how to apply the proper amount of pressure on the gas pedal. I’m sure this is a metaphor.
Alicia is trapped in her hotel room. She has a knife in her hand, and she peers through the peephole. She counts the walkers as they meander by, and places notch marks in the door to try to get an idea of the number of walkers on her floor. She pulls her hair back – preparing herself mentally as she decides whether or not to go out into the hall. Alicia – It might be better to wait till daylight when you’ll have more light! It’s super dark, and probably not so easy to see any lurking walkers.
Chris notes that Travis keeps looking at his injured foot. Hmm, Griselda died from a foot injury… Chris tells Travis he’s sorry – at least he knows it’s his fault. Travis says it’s okay. Then a lone walker wanders along the road, and Chris easily avoids it. Chris says that driving is kind of easy, and Travis says wait till you have to parallel park and make 3 point turns. So very true.
Chris is pretty sure he’ll never have to deal with those things now that civilization is gone. Travis says that he believes that civilization will come back, ‘they’re working on it.’ Chris wants to know who ‘they’ are. Travis says they have to be working on it. He doesn’t want to believe that this is the end. Chris thinks for a moment and then opines that he doesn’t think that they’ll get everything back.
Travis reminisces about camping with Liza and with Chris when Chris was much younger. They laugh together about how Liza was a city girl, and wasn’t into camping. But what do they do in the here and now. Hunt? Fish? Maybe they’ll be safe. Chris wants to know what it is that they’re doing. Travis replies with ‘we’re surviving’. Chris wants to know where they’ll go. Travis says someplace with elevation, so that they have a vantage point. Travis is planning on being survivalist mountain man. Chris is dubious.
Just then a truck drives up and parks behind the old station wagon. And yes, it’s the guys who Chris left back at the store – they’re probably not happy. Travis steps out and IDs himself and Chris. Chris comes clean to Travis about the theft – but only because he was about to get caught. They all discuss the status of food and water. The lead guy has a gun. Chris says Chris saved his life, Brandon (lead guy) says Chris stole his stuff. But then he introduces himself as Brandon, and introduces his two companions, Baby James, and Derek. Bros, all three of them. Yay.
Alicia is looking down at the broken tables outside and decides to make her move inside. We can hear the walkers, and they’re coming her way. She calls out for Ofelia (which is always great thing to do in a dark, confined space with nowhere to run, and walkers patrolling the halls), and runs down the hall. She’s now surrounded by walkers, the staircase is filled with walkers, so she pries open the doors to the elevator shaft.The elevator box itself is way down at the bottom, so if she chooses that route to evade the walkers, she’ll have to jump to grab, and hold onto, the elevator cables. Jump or get eaten, Alicia. She jumps – and makes it! The walkers reach out to her, and are barely able to touch her. Many of them lose their balance (they have no balance to lose, really), fall to the bottom, and splat on the top of the elvator box. Alicia climbs the rope. Good thing she has strong upper body strength. A woman on a floor above reaches out to her and pulls her to safety.
It’s the event manager from the beginning and she wants to know where ‘he’ is!
Back in the brush, Brandon sets up a perimeter of string with cans as ‘an early warning system’. Now they can eat in peace without fear of a walker ambush. Turns out the bros are Americans, and Travis and Chris are the first Americans they’ve met. They explain that they’re from San Diego. Chris and Travis exchange meaningful looks. Chris and Travis break the news to them that L.A. and San Diego are gone – as is pretty much everything up and down the coast, and east to the continental divide (this is the info we got from George Geary before his little girl ate the ‘power pills’, died, came back, and killed her mom). The bros are shocked and despondent. They were camping when everything happened and so they didn’t know what happened. Brandon, with bravado, says we’ll come back, we always do. But he doesn’t look at all sure of himself. Brandon wants to know where Chris got his skills with killing. He asks both Chris and Travis how many they’ve killed. Travis says he doesn’t keep count. Chris says 17. Of course Chris knows how many he’s killed. Of course he would. They all discuss their meager plans.
The event manager is the one who has putting the ‘do not disturb’ signs on the doors of the rooms containing walkers. That’s how she ‘contains’ the dead. She wants to know where Hector is. Hector is her nephew, and he went to get food, but hasn’t come back. Alicia wants to leave to help her mom, but the woman won’t let her. Alicia quizzes her about the hotel, and why is the woman even still there? The hotel is her home, and as far as she knows, there are about a dozen guests left. Alicia wants to pool resources so they can better defend themselves.
Travis doesn’t trust the group, but Chris does. Chris may be a budding psychopath, but I think he’s just happy that someone is praising him for his skills – no one else has. And remember when Chris’s face lit up when Liza told him she loved him? Chris and Travis argue about whether or not to trust the bros, and Chris questions whether this is about staying in Madison’s vicinity, and Travis says it’s about keeping Chris safe. Chris doesn’t even know what that means. To stay and live as mountain men, or trust others and form a group? It’s easy to see why Travis wouldn’t trust these guys – they’re the definitive ‘bad crowd’ that parents always warn about – and they’re bros.
The event manager, named Elena, fights walkers, including a maid, who was probably once a friend. Obviously Alicia and Elena used their time to come up with a plan – use Alicia as bait and lead them into a sleeping room, and then lock them in. Alicia ends up having to kill the zombified maid when the maid gets within biting range, and then she goes out onto the balcony, shutting the glass doors behind her, and locking the walkers inside. She sees Elena close the entrance door to the room, so yeah, these walkers are ‘contained’. Many of the walkers press against the glass doors, and they begin to crack. Alicia waits anxiously for Elena to help her out. Elena throws her a bed sheet from the next balcony over, and Alicia is able to cross from her balcony to Elena’s balcony ‘next door’.
They discuss their next steps, and Alicia would like for Elena to help her rescue Madison. Elena says she hasn’t left the towers since everything happened, and she doesn’t want to go down, even to look for Hector. Alicia says her mom would die for her.
I guess Alicia was persuasive because the two of them, including Elena’s large fire hatchet, make it downstairs. We’re back in the ballroom. Elena tells Alicia what happened. The dad did indeed have a heart attack, and bit his daughter, as we saw. Elena says she contained the situation. She couldn’t let the sickness spread, and admits to locking everyone in the ballroom. She’s still very upset about this. She and Hector waited for help that never came. There was no one to save them. Now people hate her. Alicia says we’ve done worse, and she won’t let anyone hurt Elena. ‘I promise’. I think this is in reference to anyone in Alicia’s group.
Travis and Chris accept a ride from the bros. Brandon and Travis are seated in the back of the truck. Brandon has bounced back from his despondent state from the night before and now thinks the whole situation is awesome – because of course he would, he’s a bro. Here are his reasons: no cops, no speed limits, they’re alive, and they are now gods because they’ve survived. Ugh. Chris, in the front seat, spots something, maybe crops, a farm, perhaps? The two bros in the front seat are impressed with Chris and stop at the farm to investigate. And again, that puffs up Chris. There’s a nice house, but no food, no nothing, everything has been picked bare. They go to check the barn. Travis likes this place, let’s make this home. Chris says they need people, they need a group – this group. Chris goes to check out the barn with his new bro friends, Travis stays.
They approach the barn. One of them says there’s something in there – we see a barn, and immediately think it’s got to be filled with walkers. But nope, no walkers, only chickens. ‘Protein!’ says a bro. Travis remains outside, and walks around the yard, exploring. He sees a child’s swing hanging on a tree, and three graves below it. He looks worried.
Elena and Alicia walk downstairs near the bar – now locked, and barricaded with chairs. Alicia wants to go in and try to save her mom. Before they can go in, several guys approach them with knives. They want the hotel keys. And, they have Hector.
One of the members of the group is the bride’s mom, and she is not happy – at all. They make the exchange, keys for Hector. Alicia lets the walkers out.
Back at the farm, Travis tells everyone about the graves – and says that the owner is still there. The bros and Chris don’t really care, it’s all theirs for the taking.
Back at the bar, Alicia looks for her mom, and sees a walker who looks like her mom, but isn’t. It was an eye-rolling moment. We knew it wasn’t going to be Madison. I wish they wouldn’t do stuff like this, it doesn’t add anything.
At the farm, a gun battle is brewing between Travis, the bro group, and the owner, who has now appeared.
Elena and Alicia run through a maze of tunnels beneath the bar. There is a locked door and they need to get through it as quickly as possible because a walker is approaching them and they have nowhere to go.
In the barn, the owner shoots Baby James (he’s the one with the man bun) in the leg, so Chris shoots the owner in the chest. Yikes!
Madison and Strand open the door and let Alicia and her group in. Everyone is very relieved, although Madison has a hard to read expression on her face.
Travis stands over the owner, stone-faced. Chris holds out his hand to Travis, and Travis turns away. He looks at the face of the man dying on the floor.