Military is bombing everything, there's walking corpses trying to eat you everywhere and you've got a raft with no supplies and two people that are most likely going to turn into walking corpses. There's nobody around to help - no safe building, hospital or rescue services, you're just all alone on a raft with two other humans and two other soon to be dead relentless walking cannibals - I do not believe societal morals apply in that situation.

Bitten = dead. The kid is well on his way. Alex is extremely irrational and her speech at the end about it not getting any worse than this signifies severe irrationality. Human callousness gets far worse than being towed around and given food/water.

He would not. But if it were me and I saw somebody in that scenario(keep in mind we're no longer in civilized mode, we're alone with threats everywhere)carrying around a person assured to die to the detriment of herself and others, I would absolutely not take them on board with my limited supplies. Because:

A - She's obviously super motivated to protect him at all costs which could be very dangerous.
B - He dies and turns into a walker and we've got a big problem.
C - The entire situation would create tension with our already fragile alliance of differing opinions and differing levels of intelligence.

They were a threat to the mentality of the group. Tow them around and there's no doubt your naive companions would have pressed and outvoted you to take them on, then the next bunch of mishaps and so on and so on until the boat is filled with mutinous idiotic strangers which not only prohibit us from reaching our destination, but also kill us all.

As well being that we don't know anything about her, she could have taken the line and pulled herself on board to cause trouble or kill somebody - she could be totally insane.

Strand did the right thing.

 

I really fail to see how killing people to protect a corpse is "the female Strand" and fail to see how this is smart and adept surviving. That's irrational and not pragmatic, where as Strand is stricken with ultra pragmatism.

 

Maybe we're not seeing the same things, or maybe I am seeing it wrong. Alex wants to protect Jake, who is severely burned but still alive. We don't know why. When the guy in the suit went for him, she stabbed him with something and next thing we see, he is no longer on the raft. Then the perfectly healthy guy in the "tide-clean" striped sports shirt threatens to put Jake out of his misery if Alex won't. Poof-- that guy ends up as a walker with his arm stuck in the intake of Strand's boat. Jake didn't throw him overboard. That leaves Alex. I may be wrong, but that sure as heck looks like Strand's strategy to me -- i.e., that lifeboat is Alex's life boat and she decides who stays on it. Just as Strand decides who gets on his boat or stays on it. I guess I don't understand what you are saying/seeing.

 

I hear you.

You made me LOL over the intoxicated driver comment.

At the very beginning I did think maybe they were going to develop a more ruthless group, and I was hoping not, because I would never bond and enjoy watching them survive. That magic happened with Breaking Bad, though, so you never know. I have not bonded to many of the current survivors yet, and Strand is a great character.

I still don't trust him.

 

I would have kept the stewardess by a mile but they know what their doing...I hope.

 

So is she Alex or is she Charley? IMDb lists her as both.

 

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Well, Salazar also distrusts Strand. If he is not a utter moron, what does that say about Strand?

Face it.

1) Strand - even though he is clever, cool and a big reason why they are all still alive - is not a man of his word. That, combined with his secretiveness, his manipulative tendencies and his dubious past, makes him bad news waiting to happen.

2) Madison and Daniel both know this. And so they will continue to have serious problems with him in the future.

Strand's problem is that it's as if he is trying to make enemies. It hasn't even been a week since they've met and Strand is deeply distrusted and despised by two, soon to be three, of his seven crew members. Not a good start.

As for Alex: yeah, Strand cutting the rope is juxtaposed with her story of kicking people off the boat who endangered her friend. But Alex does Strand better by being loyal and true.

 

I wouldn't trust anybody, I was just arguing the opposing side because the group themselves are not trust worthy.

I can already empathize with Strand given with what he has to work with. Those people suck as companions in different ways.

I'm putting pieces together though as to what Strand is and why he was locked up to begin with.

 

Salazar is far from a moron. But he himself is not trustworthy and he himself is out for himself and his daughter, he even tells her this in the episode.

Salazar is the least trust worthy person in the group. Useful? Yes, but only when he's kept at arms length and kept watched. He's a sneaky bastard. Salazar would dump them quicker than Strand would if the situation permitted it and benefited him.

#1 - He owes them no word, they are equally untrustworthy and most them a hazard to themselves in this environment.
#2 - It remains to be seen if he's going to end up a villain, gray character or good character. We don't know, but it is typical that the obvious is not the obvious in set ups like this. Salazar is far more ruthless so far than he's shown by a mile.

Them having problems with him doesn't mean they are right and he is wrong and vice versa. He again owes them nothing.

No, he is trying to survive. He's deeply distrusted by Salazar because Salazar's nature is to expect the worst in people(not a bad quality in this setting)and deeply distrusted by the others because the others have their heads up their asses about reality.

We don't know why he's secretive, we will find out. Everything he's done so far though has been so he and they can survive and his decisions have been on point all the way to cutting the rope on that raft. The others decisions have been extremely reckless and incompetent by comparison, so I don't know what he would feel he has to gain by being totally open with people that are a mess.

They are alive and have remained alive at sea so far because of him, that's the most important fact. If it were up to them making group decisions they'd already be dead.

It's not hard to make enemies of the irrational and emotional without the intention to do so, happens everyday.

Strand has no reason to be loyal to any of these people. They are not loyal to him.

You can't paint him to be the "bad guy" in this set of scenario's without calling everyone else out on their own bullshit - both intentional and unintentional.

In this raw survival mode - the ends absolutely justify the means.

 

Can he really be mad about that though? Strand chose them. And they did save his life.

People who were locked up were a threat to the military's operation: either they were sick, mentally disturbed, weak/medically deficient, loose cannons, instigators or criminals.

And I agree. Daniel Salazar is someone you have to watch very closely. He's also hard to trust but at least, you know he won't go back on his word and/or re-neg on his main responsibility/goal: keeping Ofelia safe.

 

They're also alive because of Salazar and his intentions to get his wife back(his motivation was not for the others but for his own). Those intentions helped them find the base, got them into the base and lead them to Nick and Strand, which Strand's own self interest lead them to the boat and got them out of the LA bombing just in time.

I'd advise anyone citing these self interest driven characters as "bad" to look at what the alternative, the bleeding heart characters would have accomplished so far - assuming they make it out of LA, which they would not.

- They'd have let the 20 people on the boat - that would have ended up killing them.
- They'd have lured Captain Jack over talking to him on the radio thinking he's someone in need to them and would then be riddled with .50 cal bullet holes.
- They'd have let crazy Alex and her soon to be dead teenage companion on board for a fun time.

....and the shit show wouldn't stop there. Let's say this was a video game and there was a reset button after every death, they'd walk right back into a new trap.

So give the guy a chance before aligning with the people that seek to get themselves killed, unless intentions are the defining factors for how you rate a characters moral compass in regards to the world they now find themselves in.

These self driven characters are at the start of the apocalypse and surrounded by primarily incompetence and unlike Shane and the group while Rick was asleep, they are at water with even more dangers and haven't run into other normal people on a highway to shack up with and create a base of operations, which created a unity situation of sorts.

What would season 1-2 Shane before he lost his mind have done in these situations with this group?

What would the Rick of recent times do?

What would Daryl do? Pretty obvious that characters that most everyone likes from TWD wouldn't behave much differently, the difference being that they are loyal to their companions - but that's something that took time to bond.

I truly don't think their decisions would be too far off from what you're seeing from Strand. They wouldn't be trusting of these people, they'd be holding secrets and they'd be avoiding contact with anybody else due to risk factor.

 

Agreed, it's pretty obvious Strand was involved with criminal business. He might have been involved in both legitimate and criminal enterprise, it's a very interesting character. But it may be really bad like a ruthless drug runner or something not quite as bad as we're projecting.

And no - Strand wanted Nick, he didn't want the rest of them he just took them along because he was stuck with them at that point. I still will cite that he could have ditched them at numerous points if he really wanted to get rid of them or viewed them as too much of a risk, which to me foreshadows that he's a gray character and really not that bad.

I could be wrong, it's up the writers after all. I did call TWD S6 pretty accurately tho in predictions.

You don't know that Salazar won't go bad on his word(only know that he'll protect his daughter at all costs including disposing of the rest to do so, that's something we 100% know), that would be very very naive to think so just because he has not so far. There's also different levels of keeping your word. You could promise people you'll get them somewhere safe and keep that main important promise but then go bad on a bunch of minor promises that would have gotten you all in trouble, the end result being you still kept the important one.

Then you could have a character that keeps his word on minor stuff and you think he's trustworthy but then he goes bad on the big one that gets you killed.

Common variations of behavior in humans.

 

I'm not sure about Strand - he certainly is hiding a lot, but he is not wrong to be careful, who to take on board. Cutting the boat with Alex and the boy loose, was harsh though. He could have taken them to another coast at least.

But still, Strand is an interesting character and the actor playing him is great

 

The only thing I think Strand did wrong, was this...

Imagine a boat with a .50 cal pulls up on the bright yellow raft drifting along, asks "Did you see a large boat come this way?" Now odds are they are going to pick her up anyway to do whatever they are gonna do for good or ill, but she is going to sell out the direction they went without batting and eyelash.

Bad show ol chap. Use your long term head man! They were not hurting anyone strapped back there like that, but now they are a liability after being cut loose.

 

It wasn't nice but it was necessary to put Madison in her place. That b!tch acts like its her boat or something and just invites everyone along for the ride. She needed this to happen to know her place!

 

Strand is not adapting to this ZA quick enough as he still says thinks like ''this is my boat''. That is pre-ZA mentality and that does not work well in a post-ZA world where anyone can grab anything and it is the one with a bigger gun owes stuff. On that boat, he is outnumbered and outgunned. If he wishes to maintain a certain degree of control, he needs to present himself in a much different way. It did not go well when he tried to 'order' Travis to fix the boat. The tension between him and the rest will get higher in coming episodes.

 

I think Alex killed 2 guys -- first the guy in the suit,who she stabbed with something and then the guy in the striped shirt who wanted to put Jake out of his misery. In exchange for stating his opinion, he ended up with his arm in the intake of Strand's boat. Alex is not the goody-two-shoes everybody thinks she is.

Is anyone besides me wondering why she would go to such extremes (murder) to protect a kid who looks like he's at a high risk of death?

 

It wouldn't have been perfectly fine. Besides the drag they're imposing on the boat, they're going to have to be pulled in to be fed with food,of which there is only a limit ed supply. And they would be a constant source of dissension between the rescue-everybody-club and Strand.

 

If being true and loyal includes murdering other two other healthy survivors to maybe save one survivor who seems likely to die anyway. I wouldn't call it that. Is her motive irrational? We don't know what it is. Maybe she's just overcompensating for the death of someone that she loved and couldn't save before. Who knows? She's entitled to do that. But, why should everyone else she encounters be placed at risk and expected to rescue her along with a severely wounded boy who could kill them all?

 

Perhaps she is motivated by guilt?
She recognizes that now is ZA and she told the kid that he should be with his mother whose seat was taken by her (maybe she is higher then Jake's mother on the waiting list).