It may be time to officially call it. Fear The Walking Dead has finally turned a corner. We’re five episodes deep on season 3 with 1.5 stinkers and the rest of it is rapidly approaching the same level of writing the core show has enjoyed for the last two seasons.

A huge part of that is down to the inspired pairings this episode. Nick and Jeremiah, Madison and Troy, Alicia and Jake, Strand and Daniel all bring out something new in each other and in doing so tell us things about those characters we desperately needed to hear.

Nick and Jeremiah is the most surprising and successful duo. After the original house on the property burns down in a chilling and oddly sweet cold open, Nick begins renovating it. The clear hope is he and Luciana will move in; not quite part of the family, not quite out in the wilds. Very Nick.

While it ultimately goes the exact way you’d expect, the friendship that’s struck up between Nick and Jeremiah is one of my favourite things this show has ever done. Nick and Alicia are neck and neck for most improved character and Frank Dillane has blossomed now he’s allowed to play Nick as a tenacious, wry and still naive survivor. Here he’s on great form and the way he and Dayton Callie play off each other is brilliant. Nick and Jeremiah are recovering addicts. They’ve both done questionable things and hold questionable beliefs. And on the edge of the property, in not quite liminal space, they find that doesn’t matter. Survival’s enough. Or at least, enough of a start.

Alicia does not feel the same way. Sinking into low level PTSD she’s numb to the relentless horrors around them or at least telling herself that. Jake, insulated by the very family he rebels against, can still feel in a way she can’t and their relationship this episode is centred on that. It’s not a romance, not yet, but again they’re finding common ground in the interstitial spaces of Jeremiah Otto’s fractious, fragile, belligerent community.

Literally out in the wilds, characters fare less well. Troy gets to go full Machete Peter Pan on a group of Walkers and then gets his legs taken out from under him by the real force in the region. The way he reacts to that, and to Madison’s effortless takedown of his machismo is so violent it clearly terrifies him. And it’s exactly what Madison knows how to work with.

Kim Dickens has carried this show on her back at times and Madison as a character has suffered for it. Here she’s starting to grow in unusual, surprisingly dark ways and her relationship with Troy is as fascinating as it is dangerous. She’s in control, he hates that and only time will tell if they can find the common ground the others have.

Daniel and Strand certainly don’t. In the weakest plot of the episode, they go back to the hotel, find it overrun and Strand confesses Ofelia left. Daniel leaves him to die in a horde of Walkers and steals his car. No real development, an unneeded return to the hotel and Strand taken off the page again. That’s a real shame.

What’s a real worry is the reveal that the local native American tribe brought down the Ottos’ helicopter. The idea of the next conflict being a land war between the ranch and the tribe is a smart one, especially given both the moral ambiguity and unabashed racism of the Ottos.

But in one episode, the tribe murder and set fire to a group of ranchers and leave one alive, scalped, a crow eating his brain as he recites nursery rhymes.

Verdict: There’s on the nose and then there’s cutting the nose off. If the show is going stereotype then this is going to bring the season crashing down. If it’s going to explore Walker and his family with the same care and attention its exploring the Ottos then we’re on a winner. Right now, we can’t tell. But the show definitely has our attention more than it’s ever had before. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart