After being off on Labor Day, AMC's "Fear The Walking Dead" returned Sunday night with its third episode, "The Dog."
The episode opens with Travis, his ex-wife Liza, and their son Chris where we left them: holed up with the Salazars in their home behind their barbershop, as the riot sparked by a cops killing an "unarmed" walker rages right outside.
At home, Nick is still trying to wean himself from drugs with the stash of pills Maddie took from her school. Eventually, she, Nick, and Alicia try to pass the time playing Monopoly while they wait for Travis and company to return.
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Losing grip on the situation, cops deploy riot hoses, and the water knocks over a scaffolding, pinning the leg of Daniel's wife Griselda. They get her on her feet and reach Travis' truck, and speed to the hospital – only to find it on fire, and cops cordoning off the area to take out a walker patient.
With getting Griselda treated off the table, Travis reluctantly decides to take them to his home. And then in the City of Angels, the lights start to go out.
Back at Maddie's home, literally, the games are over. When the neighbors' dog, bloodied, begs to come in, they let it, and Nick recognizes the blood on the German Shepherd's coat doesn't belong to the dog -- and that's when they spot a walker working his way across the street.
Nick remembers the neighbors own a shotgun, and the trio slink across the street and locate it -- just as they look across to see the walker in their home, and hear the dog they rescued meet its end.
Then, as they huddle in the dark, they see Travis and company drive up to the house and enter, not knowing the walker's inside.
Travis, Daniel et al find the walker feeding on the carcass of the dog, and Travis recognizes the undead man as Peter, one of their neighbors. He attacks Travis, who, new to this whole zombie apocalypse thing, tries reasoning with the "sick" neighbor. Daniel steps up, grabs the shotgun, and dispatches the walker -- first with a shot to the face, and when it moves again on them, a killshot to the head.
Alicia, meanwhile, forgets the rest of the shells, and returns to the neighbors' home, only to find its other resident, Susan, also undead and hungry. Alicia runs but gets stuck on a fence, until Chris pulls her over -- only to get his nose cracked by the panicking girl for his efforts.
Back inside, Maddie convinces Eliza, her hubby's ex, to kill her if she ever "turns," explaining, "Don't make Travis do it. It'll break him."
The next morning, Maddie faces the former Susan through a gap in their fence and attempts to put her out of her misery with a hammer. Travis, believing the walkers to be curable, talks her out of it.
All packed up, the family attempts to get out of town, when Maddie spots walker Susan's husband coming home to her. Thinking she's ill, he welcomes the walker with open arms and she goes in for a bite -- when she's blasted apart by soldiers, who suddenly swarm the area, separating the living from the undead.
A while later, as soldiers in biohazard suits discard wrapped bodies, other military personnel question Travis and the other survivors, looking to quarantine those who have been exposed to the "infected."
"Cavalry's arrived," Travis says. "It's going to get better now."
Taking the more realistic perspective, Daniel looks over the scene and in Spanish tells his hobbled wife, "It's already too late."
"Fear The Walking Dead" returns Sunday on AMC.