Yet, why is he the one fixing the boat and giving Strand all of the technical repair input? Instead of Strand who is obviously pretty experienced with boats and been around them a lot? But instead, he did absolutely nothing and seem completely ignorant in the technical aspects of the boat as Travis was giving him input where Strand even called Travis a technician.
Posted Apr 25, 2016, 10:00 AM UTC
Strand is a rich kid with fancy toys. In the real world (without the apocalypse) somebody with his status would never waste his own time trying to repair something. He'd call a guy, sign a check he'd never think about again, and call it a day.
Travis may not be the guy, but if he grew up with a hands-on lifestyle (as seems evident by his vast general knowledge), he would reasonably be the best guy available for the job.
We can't assume because someone held a particular occupation, that their skill sets are simply based on the job. Travis, for example, demonstrated scuba diving skill last night. Underwater math classes? :)
Driving a boat and maintaining one are two different things and I am still not convinced that the boat is Strands.
To Travis every person has a hobby.
You'd be amazed at what you could fix yourself with some google-fu or just reading the instruction manual.
I don't know shit about appliances, but my washing machine stopped working and I stripped the entire thing down and figured out where the problem was so I could fix it, then reassembled it and it works.
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Travis was an English teacher not a math teacher.
Why did I think all this time Travis was an English teacher?
He was.
Because he could fix a carburetor so he transferred all his knowledge into boat maintenance somehow. Also he had that big manual to steer him in the right direction.
He's used to working on engines and doing other handyman stuff, and he had a manual. That's probably enough to figure out how to unclog some blocked intake pipes.
Yes that makes sense. But then, I still thought its a bit of a stretch for him to instantly pin point it being the intake pipes when the boat engine died.
He didn't instantly pin point anything. He was reading the boat's manual. It's amazing what you can learn about an object when you're holding the specs in your hand.
So because you are a highschool teacher you can't fix shit? Come on son...
Also, just because you know a lot about boats doesn't mean you know how to fix it.
He's not a math teacher, he's an English teacher. The first time we see him he is fixing a sink. Later he mentions to the soldier in command of his safe zone that he has kept his father's old truck running for years.
2+2=Travis is good at fixing mechanical things.
Magical Morian powers.
The line about Travis being a technician was a joke by Strand I'm sure. The Winston Wolf quote afterwards supports this.
He had an old truck, that he must have rebuilt the carburetor on. Combustion engines aren't so different from one beast to another. Get fuel, spark and air to it, and it will run. I'm a telephone man, by trade, but I also build race cars.
Yea i totoally forgot about the old truck in the first ep.
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Yes i remember only remember the sink. So that alone to me wasnt a big enough and significant enough hint to vastly labeled him as handy. Rebiulding the truck is definitely a big enough hint, but that was one detail i forgot about. But that was also like a one line or two line mention. Hard to recall them and every little detail almost 9 months later. Let alone taking offense to every little detail that was asked or forgotten about for a tv show lol.
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Don't forget about his impeccable SCUBA diving skills.
It is pretty amazing what people learn to do when they live on the ocean.
In S1E1 we see him fixing a leaky sink Later on in the season when the military takes over his neighbourhood Travis has a convo with the commanding officer and mentions he has expertise with car repair/rebuilding. This episode when Strand gets pissed when Travis tells him it'll take a whole day to get the ship back in running order he says something like "Look I can fix a carburetor but this [referring to the ships filtration system] is not my forte."
So we get the sense that Travis has some technical experience with this type of stuff, at least more than anyone else.
Yeah I totally forgot about the part where he told the military officer about repair/rebuilding cars from last season. Though his old truck should've been another hint. Him fixing the sink and garbage disposal was the only thing I recalled at first.
"Look I can fix a carburetor but this [referring to the ships filtration system] is not my forte."
Ok, I definitely didn't really catch that line from the episode. So that definitely clears it up of them addressing that. Funny it took almost 30 comments for someone to finally bring that up to me. Thanks for clarifying.
In S01E01 when Travis movies in with Madison, the episode opens with a discussion that he fixed the kitchen sink. This was to set up that he's handy.
And to keep his classic pick-up truck from S1 running would take either a good mechanic and lots of money or some technical know-how.
Yeah the kitchen sink was the only one i recalled. Was gonna go back the older episodes to look for more clues. The truck one i totally forgot. Thanks.
Knowing what we know now, there's good stuff to see about characters on re-watch. Except for the really glaring character choices (i.e. Strand from his first line), we miss the weight of these the first time through an episode. There's actually a lot of very good set up for the characters in the first few episodes that has more weight on review.
I'd like to say particularly with Chris's character, but it's actually all the characters. Viewers complain that Chris is a shitty teenager but he is already testing his limits with Travis before the world ended. Every conversation they have is charged, so imagine that relationship with your father and then your dad shoots your mom?
Salazar, also. Here's an immigrant who owns a barber shop and he's prepared and able to lock it all down with his family and wait out the riots just as they are starting. He's seen so much worse in his lifetime than looting, and we don't get much of an inkling what until he's dealing with Ofelia's BF soldier.
And that's just two characters. There's great setup for everyone, even Salazar's wife. Rewatch!