Season 2 of Fear the Walking Dead started Sunday April 10th and it didn’t take long into the first episode to see that the creators of the show just don’t give a shit about creating a good show.

Continuity errors, bad editing, bad camera work, lame dialogue, this show is everything that The Walking Dead isn’t, which is not a good thing.

Within minutes of the start of the episode I found myself being pulled away from my enjoyment and into “wtf?” town. Here are some of the biggest issues I couldn’t help but notice.

First, related to story: With all the bombing and explosions going on, why would all the dead be pulled to the beach where they were located? They weren’t exactly making a ton of noise. If the 6 seasons of The Walking Dead taught us anything, it is that the dead are attracted to fire and loud sound, not three people silently standing on the beach in the dark at the bottom of a large cliff.

Second, related to camera work: The camera shots of the dead attacking them on the beach were just unnecessarily chaotic. Cutting from one camera angle to another to promote the feeling of urgency or confusion is a standard film tactic, but this was excessive. All to hide the fact that if any of these people had even a little peripheral vision they might be able to see the dead coming towards them on the completely OPEN BEACH.

Why would you cut to this shot!?

It doesn’t help their case that the show cut away from the close-up of the “chaos” to a wide shot of the beach. These weird combination of shots is just another example of bad cinematography and directing.

Third, related to continuty: This show must have no one running quality assurance on continuity or watching the final cut after editing. These sort of errors annoyed me a lot in Season 1 (I won’t get started here), but they clearly are trying to out do themselves early in Season 2. It was hard to miss Nick’s magic shirt in this episode.

First, Nick is shown taking his shirt off and putting it on his head.

Off

The next outdoor shot we clearly see him wearing his shirt again as he sits on the boat watching the other survivors in their boat.

On

Then he suddenly has his shirt off again and is in the act of putting it back on while he walks up to talk to Strand.

Off, On, Off, On

I might believe that enough time passed between each shot for Nick to constantly take off and put back on his shirt if it all wasn’t clearly connected to a time frame by the passing of the ship of destressed survivors, the disagreement around helping them, and the interior shot of the angst of teens Alicia and Chris. Was no one in post production paying attention here?

Fourth: All the stupid shit.

No, doesn’t work like that.

Talking over the radio without interupting the song broadcasting on the same channel? Pretty sure that isn’t how HAM radios works. This whole scene would piss off a ton of HAM enthusiest, novice, or anyone with a basic understanding of how a radio works. It doesn’t help that they clearly make reference to the music in the dialogue too.

Yes, does work like this.

There you go! This conversation is much more realistic to how radios work. I don’t know if I should be happy that they corrected this through, or annoyed that they can’t even be consistent for an entire episode in their fuck ups.

ummm…. North?

Sure, let’s look out a tiny porthole on a random side of the boat and instantly be certain of direction. Not impossible, but highly unlikely for a teenager like Alicia who was previously known for breaking into neighbors houses to play dress up and acting irrational about her highschool boyfriend.

Five, more teenage angst.

Angst…

Lots more…

Lots of it…

…teenage angst.

yeah…

Six, magic fog? Smoke?

Fog? Smoke? Smokey-fog?

If it was smoke in the middle of the ocean, wouldn’t they have been worried by it even a little instead of partying over an eel meal?

Seven, whatever the hell this interaction was supposed to be.

Hey wonder what this is?

Seriously? You see a random body floating face down in the water and you decide to swim right up to its face? Really Nick, how are you not dead yet.

Eight, the whole damn episode. Even with all that is going on, this episode was still boring overall. This likely has a lot to do with the shitty dialogue that does nothing to help you engage or relate with the characters, but there is so much bad going on that it is hard to blame it on just one thing.

How about we just cancel this show and get a few more episodes of The Walking Dead each season instead. Anyone else agree?