Z Nation Episode Seven ‘Welcome to FU-Bar’ Recap
Tonight’s episode starts with the gang still in shock over last episode’s death of Garnett, the team’s leader, as they enter Kansas.
Citizen Z is on the radio broadcasting from the Northern Light Arctic NSA listening post, despair in his voice. He says it’s the third day of the sixth month of the year aught three AZ and offers “congratulations, or condolences. You know, whatever” to those who are still alive.
Citizen Z gives a bit of a Eulogy for Garnett, going over some of history and say he was an “honest to God, real life, actual good guy” who gave people hope. There’s some flashbacks of Warren and Garnett’s relationship intercut with shots of her trying to sleep in the group’s truck. Citizen Z ends his speech by giving Garnett’s picture on his monitor a salute.
And then the truck breaks down. Addy and Mack, riding ahead on a motorcycle, turn around to go back. The radiator has blown. Murphy sarcastically suggests Warren should fix it and Doc says she has post-traumatic stress.
“The whole world’s got post-traumatic stress. Actually, there isn’t anything post about it, we all got plain old present tense, all traumatic, all stress all the time,” Murphy says.
He goes around to Warren’s window and tells her she can’t check out, that he’s running out of time, and that California is still 2,000 miles of bad road away and they won’t make it without her as leader. She just shrugs him off.
Mack must be Fred from Scooby Doo, because he’s the only guy in a zombie apocalypse who would suggest splitting up. He says he and Addy will go ahead on the bike to look for help. Doc, not being Fred from Scooby Doo, says they should stick together but Mack and Addy go ahead after having a little private convo about what might happen if Warren doesn’t snap out of it.
10K says the problem is just a leak in the radiator hose. He’s taped it, and the gang tries to fill the radiator with their water supplies. Murphy is reluctant to give his up. With 10K driving they leave.
10K is not such a good driver and Doc asks him who taught him how.
“No one,” he says. It’s his first time.
Mack and Addy come to a fork in the road and go left. After a while stop in the road. Addy says there’s nothing out there and they have to go back, but Mack suggests abandoning the mission.
“We made a promise,” Addy says.
“No we didn’t. Addy, the only promise we ever made was too each other. To stay alive,” Mack says.
Addy tries to convince him, reminding him that Garnett came back for her when she was kidnapped by cannibals and that Warren and the others need them. Mack says maybe they have a better chance on their own.
“How long before you think you have a better chance on your own?” Addy asks.
Mack is hurt by this, he says he always comes back for her. At this point Addy is fingering the mysterious necklace that’s tied to her weird, crippling flashback of, something. To prove his devotion Mack agrees to go back.
The truck comes to the fork in the road and goes right. Uh oh.
They pass handmade signs that says Gun Show and Liquor. Doc tells 10K congratulations, he’s now the designated driver.
Addy and Mack stop again, this time not to have a heart to hear but because they see an incredible mega-horde of Zs heading their way.
“So much for going back,” Mack says.
At the gun show the truck is subjected to an unusual weapons check. Burly men ask if they are all armed and Cassandra sarcastically says “Obviously.”
“Good. We don’t have time to babysit anyone,” the men say and wave them through.
When Murphy reads a sign saying “Guns and Liquor” and adds “What could go wrong?” Murphy speaks for the first time.
“Did someone say liquor?” she says.
The entry fee for the gun show is seven bullets or pills. Doc offers to trade some of his crystal meth, but a man in a top hat says he doesn’t want toilet bowl cleaner meth. He wants “genuine, vein splitting, take you right out of this beautiful apocalypse and into a hellhole” meth.
Doc hugs the guy, who turns out to be Sketchy McClain. He’s from the same group of drug and weapons dealers that sold Addy her Z-Whacker in the first episode, remember them. Sketchy says his group found a truck full of weapons and enough gas to get to Kansas, so they started the gun show. Sketchy’s druggie friend from Skeezy the first episode is there, too.
Sketchy shows off his new and improved Z-Whacker, which is a fork, as a joke, and asks if Addy is dead. Doc says he thought she’d be there, but Sketchy says he hasn’t seen her.
Sketchy, in a moment of hubris, says there’s no Zs there, they’ve all moved on to the big cities. He points out the FU-Bar and Warren heads there immediately to get drunk. Doc wants a new vehicle and ask for help. Sketchy says he’s an entrepreneur and won’t help for old time’s sake, but he suggest they enter his shooting contest to win a huge .50 cal sniper rifle they can trade for a vehicle.
10K decides to sign up for the contest. Sketchy says his stiffest competition will be Darren Cooper, an intense looking Army Ranger sniper with 50 confirmed kills in Afghanistan.
The FU-Bar is um, let’s be charitable and say rustic. Warren is getting wasted. Murphy wants Doc to do something. Doc wants to look for Wannamaker first, a guy Sketchy said would trade a vehicle for the gun.
The bartender points him out, he’s a drunk passed out under a table. But there’s a hipster douchebag, Forman, sitting at the table bragging about his “machine,” which he calls “The Formanmobile,” which has biodiesel, solar, machine guns and flamethrowers. But he won’t trade it for the .50 cal.
Forman goes to pee and Murphy follows him. He passes out from drunkenness. Murphy tries to steals his keys, but Forman grabs his leg while he’s walking away and there’s a big fight. In the fight Murphy starts growling like a Z and bites Forman’s neck. He’s horrified, but he knocks him out with a rock to the head and runs off with the keys.
As the other are lining up for the shooting contest, 10K catches of the eye of a girl also signing up. Warren is still getting drunk.
As Murphy looks for the Formanmobile he catches his face in a car’s side mirror. There’s blood on his mouth and he tries to wipe it away in a panic.
As the shooting contest begins 10K shyly tries to introduce himself to the girl.
“I don’t need to know your name to kick your ass,” she says.
The shooting contest involves actually shooting at Zs. Everyone lines up and gets ready to shoot.
The bartender lends a sympathetic ear to Warren. He can tell she’s lost someone. She keeps drinking.
The way the shooting contest works, Zs follow an ice cream truck playing its song across a field far away from a line of shooters. Sketchy calls out which Zs to shoot and Skeezy eliminates shooters if they miss or hit the wrong Z. Sketchy says it’s sudden death, because that’s the only kind these days.
Forman returns to the bar and shows he was bit. He leads the bar patrons in a hunt for Murphy. Warren sees all this, but slides her glass over for another drink.
“It’s not a zombie,” she tells the bartender.
At Northern Light, Citizen Z is monitoring the tsunami of Zs in Kansas, a “freaking zunami.” He gets on the radio trying to warn people to “get the hell out.”
Murphy is still looking for the Formanmobile. He’s found it, a tricked out truck, when he’s accosted by Forman’s mob.
“That’s the Z that bit me,” Forman yells. Doc overhears and he and Cassandra goe to help.
The mob decides Murphy isn’t a Z and tries to search him for his keys. When they see his bites they change their minds and draw guns on him, deciding he is a Z. So mercurial, mobs.
Forman puts a gun to Murphy’s head and there’s a bunch of slow motion shots of people’s faces. Just before he shoots Cassandra knocks the gun away and we get a bullet POV shot where the bullet goes through an outhouse and kills an old man on the toilet reading a magazine.
Forman keeps firing as he and Cassandra struggle. The next shot hits Darren Cooper at the shooting contest lineup and kills him. Another ricochets off several objects, through a narrow gap in the bar door, grazes Warren’s impassive cheek and kills the bartender. One of Forman’s mob tries to shoot Murphy and kills Forman when he’s pushed in the way, but it’s too late, the crapstorm has started.
The old man in the outhouse is the first to reanimate. He busts out of the outhouse pants down and starts biting. Darren Cooper changes next and the other shooters take him out and go right back to the contest. The bartender goes for Warren but she goes into full badass mode and cuts off its arm.
Doc and Murphy hide between their truck and another car and Doc chastises Murphy for biting Forman. Murphy denies biting, but he admits to stealing. Doc notes Murphy is missing a tooth.
“I am very disappointed,” Doc says and puts Murphy in the truck. But he gets out when Doc leaves and heads off.
10K and the girl are dominating the contest. Two more shooters fall out leaving just three and Skeezy offers some consolation to one loser.
“Better luck next year. If there is a next year,” he says. They move the Z targets back to 400 yards.
There’s a full-on Z attack around the bar now. Murphy checks Forman. He didn’t turn. Murphy finds his own tooth in Forman’s neck and puts it back in his mouth, where it stays.
The shooting contest moves to 500 yards. The girl asks 10K why he’s called 10K and he explains its how man Zs he plans to kill. He says he’s got 2,119, not counting today. The girl says she’ll still get more than him today, but 10K says maybe not. The third guy misses and it’s just 10K and the girl.
There’s a bit of what 10K probably hopes is sexy banter between them, but the girl just tells him he can’t psyche her out and she’s going to win the gun. The girl’s dad is there and tries to keep her on task.
Skeezy finally notices the horde. Sketchy sends people to stop the Zs while 10k and the girl keep shooting.
Warren has cut one of the bartenders arms off and stuck his other hand to the bar with a knife. He’s snarling at her across the bar as she drinks but can’t get away.
And now she actually opens to him, reminiscing bitterly and angrily about Garnett, about how she believed in him, about how he was a badass who wasn’t blind to the hopelessness of life in the zombie apocalypse.
“So when you told me there was a way to live again, I believed you. You made me believe you. How could you do that to me? You gave me hope,” Warren says.
She says she loved him for that, then it got him killed. That hope made them weak.
She keeps asking how he could give her that and take it away, “How could you die?” and starts taking out her anger on the bartender, punching it and then going to work with a knife while she has flashbacks of Garnett.
When she’s finished she says Garnett gave her a beautiful lie as a reason to live.
“It won’t ever be beautiful like that, but I’ll find a reason to live. I will,” she says. She stabs the Z in the head saying “I give you mercy.”
The shooting contest has come down to final shots.
“Ladies first,” 10K says.
“Screw you. I’m no lady,” the girl says.
10K shoots a zombie in a judge’s robe in the head and makes it fall to its knees. He tells the girl to “beat that.” She says “‘kay” and literally shoots a bullet through the hole he left.
As the contest goes into overtime, though, Sketchy notices and advance wave of the zunami heading their way through his binoculars.
Now the contest gets serious, as some of the Zs approaching are fresh and runners. The ice cream truck driver is eaten, but 10K gives him mercy with a nearly impossible shot through the truck window and into his head. Sketchy declares 10K the winner and hands over the gun.
The gun dealers load their truck and run. 10K and the girl start fighting their way out. The girl can’t find her dad and they’re both running out of ammo.
She sees a Z chasing her dad, who calls out her name, Brittany. She tries to shoot it but her gun is dry, so 10K takes it out for her right before it gets him.
As she goes to leave 10K gives her the .50 saying she deserves it more than he does. This and saving her dad earns him a kiss on the cheek and a thank you. Ain’t young love grand?
Warren’s in angel of death mode, killing the outhouse Z and then soloing a whole horde in slow-mo with a revolver and knife. She’s unstoppable and untouchable. Doc and Cassandra watch in shock as she beheads a final Z.
“You’re looking better,” Cassandra says.
“Who’s next?” Warren asks.
10K finally arrives at the truck but he gets attacked by a Z. Brittany returns the favor and blows a huge hole in its head with the .50. Ain’t young love grand, again?
The group heads west, following the sun in their nearly broken down truck, because Warren says that’s what Garnett would do. Cassandra says she hopes they catch up to Mack and Addy.
Citizen Z is on the radio, watching the zunami on his monitors and wondering aloud what you call something worse than an apocalypse. He says there’s no outrunning it, and people need to find someplace safe to hide.
Mack and Addy stop in the road and look back. The final shot of the episode is what they see, a dust cloud with thousands of zombies boiling out it heading for them. End of episode.
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