Z Nation - S4E4 - A New Mission: Keep Moving

Previously on Z Nation, “The Vanishing”

BITES AND MORSELS

Warren guides the group through Spontaneous Mass Mortality Site Number 247 - aka The Great Pile - a 200 square mile kill zone full of Zs of differing species. Disturbed by Roberta’s odd behavior, Murphy calls on the others to voice their concerns about their new mission. Internal strife aside, the gang has to contend with low ammo, camouflaged Enders, booby traps and making sure not to contract tetanus from the heaps of scrap.

ZOMBIE ROLL CALL

Now that everyone knows Mad Zs are as real as it gets, the group has to rely on each other more than ever. As the cold open to “Keep Moving” proved, one Mad Z could be stomped into undead jelly and still blankly stare at you with their one good eye. No amount of dismemberment and double-tapping seems to do the trick, and now that Lucy confirmed that she cannot talk to them, Warren and the others are at a serious disadvantage. They’ve only dealt with two Mad Zs on separate occasions, and it took the entire team to take them down. Imagine if they ran into a small group… I hope they’ve been keeping up with their cardio!

Oh, let’s not forget about rat Zs! *shivers*

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

For this week’s installment, Keith Allan made his Z Nation directorial debut, and appeared to have no problem guiding his friends and castmates in all kinds of perilous scenarios. Deftly scripted by Delondra Williams, “A New Mission” was everything one loves about the show: a harmonious blend of turmoil and humor with ample amounts of craziness sprinkled on top. Allan and Williams provided an effective one-two combo, focusing on the lingering uncertainty of the survival, as well as the strained dynamics between the survivors.

It was expected that Alvin and Lucy would take up a fair amount of screen time, yet it’s well earned due to their uneasy “relationship”. Although it appears Murphy is solely in the wrong, it’s hard to place all the blame on him: he believed his daughter died. He was on the verge of death itself in the season three finale and we still haven’t a clue what occurred between the showdown atop Mount Casey and Warren waking up from her coma. Zona’s influence across the nation and in the Westward Bound Survivor Group’s mission was absolute… once they had Murph in their clutches, they spun him any ol’ tale about the fate of the others to make his stay that more agreeable.

On the flipside, Lucy had spent the last two years with Addy, fine tuning her instincts and fighting abilities. In that time, the world has made her a touch colder so it’s no surprise Lucy reacted as she has in the presence of her supposedly cured father. It’s one thing to hate dear ol’ dad because he didn’t try hard enough to look for you, but to say he isn’t your father simply because he’s no longer blue or psychically attuned hints at Lucy’s still-developing maturity. Ah, teenagers!

Amidst the chaos of evading the dangers of The Heap, Williams deftly added a hint to the cause of Warren’s intense visions… which may not be mystical in nature. At the height of the frenzy, Warren managed to find one of the towers present in her dreams and scaled it to avoid a pack of Zs. However, when holding on for dear life, Roberta saw her hand briefly “glitch” with a sensor and wiring snaking around it. What the what?! Like the rest of us, Warren is absolutely confused about why she’s compelled to head east and receives such grim imagery.

The sense of urgency among the group is already heightened because they’re going all in with Roberta instead of Newmerica, but when they figure out what’s happening to Murphy… oof. Looks like the man formerly known as The Great Blue Hope wasn’t immune to his own “impurities” as Dr. Teller called them. Whether it was him, Mr. Sunshine or the entire committee of scientists Zona rounded up, the vaccine failed spectacularly. It may have given the one-percenters a few more years of easy living but ZN-1 came back with a mutated vengeance. Could Zona’s futzing with the malicious virus two years ago be the reason Mad Zs exist? Possibly! They were some daffy bastards. Not to mention “The Reset” their Founder kept hyping

Anyway, this writer is jumping off the deep end of post-apocalyptic conspiracies with suppositions and rumor. What’s a certainty is Alvin is in a real bad state. Between losing the last scrap of respect from his daughter for mercying a booby-trapped Z, coming down hard on Warren during her intervention, and appeasing his reptilian brain by eating his own flesh, Murphy is going to provide all sorts of trouble for the group as they continue to uncover the mysteries locked away in Roberta’s unconscious.

NOTES OF THE DEAD

• Doc and his outer-inner monologues, man! If only paper wasn’t such a rarity in this universe so he could keep a journal of all his exploits. Then again, would you use it to chronicle your misadventures in a hellish living nightmare or roll up some bomb-ass Z weed?
• Early into their trek, Warren asked Lily for intel on the Great Heap, and the sergeant remarked how a woman lead a cult that believed aliens would arrive and take them to safety. “Well that sounds insane… and oddly familiar.” Well I hope so, Murphy! I wonder how poor Bernadette is doing these days.
• Lily was practically a wealth of information this episode, remarking how roughly a million people (!!!) turned Z in SMMS 247, then migrated as a horde across the U.S. Their last location was near the Grand Canyon, and Doc and 10K were nowhere near it! Nuh uh!
• Will 10K ever catch a break? He already thought Red was dead once and now Tommy is questioning whether she survived the camp yet again. Red didn’t live a clue for 10K, but Doc was right about one thing: if she turned into a Mad Z, Tommy wouldn’t be around right now.
• This week Lucy also reminded us that the normal Zs still retain a trace of their former humanity as she became acquainted with three lost souls. We never caught the name of the first one she sensed but it was clear he, along Alex and Audrey aka the Boobie Trap zombies, were ready to move on from this world. The weight of it all must be enormous on Lucy; every passing day there are more zombies in the world and she senses all their fears and frustrations, and can never switch it off. So yeah… her irritability is warranted.