WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for this week's episode of Fear the Walking Dead, "Close Your Eyes," which debuted Sunday on AMC.
In Fear the Walking Dead's “Close Your Eyes,” the storm that splintered the group further in last week’s “People Like Us” strands Alicia Clark in a house with the tween she holds responsible for the deaths of her mother and brother. Charlie ran away from June and John’s bus, first to return Madison’s copy of The Little Prince and then to parts unknown after Luciana chases her out of the mansion she and Strand have made their haven. As luck would have it, she finds her way to the same walker-ridden home Alicia finds at the beginning of “Close Your Eyes,” and so begins the hotly anticipated standalone episode starring Alycia Debnam-Carey and Alexa Nisenson.
Over the course of the hour, Alicia wrestles with the conflicting desires to punish Charlie and to keep some part of her mother alive by embracing Madison’s belief that everyone is redeemable. Even Madison’s ghost wouldn’t seek vengeance on the orphan who, while guilty of murder, clearly has no idea how to be in the midst of an apocalypse that has transformed fully grown, formerly sane people into monsters more nightmarish than the walkers themselves.
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The episode rests squarely on the shoulders of the only remaining Clark, not to mention the only remaining character from the pilot, and that burden serves as an apt metaphor for Alicia’s struggle now that she’s utterly alone. Her mother died an idealist, but Madison’s loss unfortunately serves as irrefutable proof that idealism is cold comfort when it never manifests into anything tangible. In this house alone with Charlie and multiple opportunities to exact revenge, Alicia has to decide for herself what kind of person she’s going to be, and practically pulls herself in two trying.
Alycia Debnam-Carey masterfully plays out this internal conflict with every strike of a match, hammer of a nail and clench of a fist. Her frustration is palpable, as is Charlie’s terror in response. The most frightening thing about “Close Your Eyes” isn’t the walkers banging against the windows or the rapidly flooding basement threatening to drown them, but the possibility that Alicia will give in to her rage and grief, and murder a child.
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Alexa Nisenson carries her half of the story as well as she can, although she isn’t given much more to do for the first half than look petrified and flirt with suicide by letting a walker bite her. She serves Alicia’s story by putting herself in danger and forcing Alicia’s better nature to reassert itself in order to play savior. It’s clunky, but consistent with Charlie’s perpetually wigged-out state of mind. Luckily the two girls have dinner in the back half of the episode, and Charlie finally opens up about her parents’ deaths. She saw them die, saw them turn and now can’t remember what they looked like before. It’s the first truly humanizing moment we’ve seen from the character and it makes sense Alicia’s the one to receive it. Whether or not she knows it, Charlie’s offering up her tragedy as a way of explanation for her subsequent choices – she’s asking for forgiveness, and Alicia us the only one who can deliver it, as kind as John and June have been.
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Fans of both series will notice the obvious parallels between “Close Your Eyes” and the classic Walking Dead Season 4 episode “The Grove,” and there’s a reason for that. Showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg admitted “The Grove” inspired “Close Your Eyes,” and they even tapped the original director, Michael Satrazemis, to helm this episode. In typical Fear fashion, “Close Your Eyes” ends on a less-cynical note, and that’s because Alicia isn’t quite as disillusioned as Carol was, nor is Charlie as mad as poor Lizzie.
After they discover the storm has driven away Luciana, John and June, Alicia coldly tells Charlie that everyone’s most likely dead, and they should simply accept that. But Alicia also has two opportunities to kill Charlie – once in the basement, when Charlie begs her to, and another when they drive away from the house and Charlie’s eyes are blissfully closed while Alicia describes a beach for her – and she doesn’t take them. Alicia isn’t Madison, nor is she yet an acolyte of her mother’s belief that no one’s gone ‘til they’re gone. However, she also hasn’t closed herself off to the possibility of hope, and her momentary acceptance of Charlie proves that. At the end of the day, Charlie is a girl who’s lost her entire family and most of her innocence, meaning she and Alicia have a lot more in common than Alicia probably wants to admit.
It’s worth noting, however, that “Close Your Eyes” is not “The Grove.” The dialogue leaves much to be desired and it trips into overt sentimentality at certain points. Fear never been as delicate a show as The Walking Dead was at its best, and unfortunately in bare bones episode like this one that’s a hard truth to ignore. As good as Debnam-Carey and Nisenson are, Nick and Madison’s (especially Madison’s) absences are keenly felt. FEAR’s in unfamiliar, harsh territory, almost as if the show itself is grieving for the loss of a loved one and struggling to discover its identity in the wake of said loss. As good as “Close Your Eyes” is, it also raises the question of whether Fear the Walking Dead will ever feel more connected to its own past than it does now, or grow into something totally new whether we’re able to accept it or not.