Review: 'Fear The Walking Dead' Season 1 Struggled To Carve Its Own Path



The question on most people’s minds when “Fear The Walking Dead” was

announced was not “Why?” (the ratings for “The Walking Dead” made greenlighting

two seasons of a spin-off a no-brainer) but, “How will it be

different?” It’s not like the world of “The Walking Dead” has a lot of room for nuance. So when it

was announced that the show would be a prequel chronicling how the world

descends into the zombie plague, as perceived by one suburban extended family. Well-trodden

territory, to be sure, but it was at least a change of pace from “The Walking Dead” proper.

READ MORE: Watch Episode 1 of AMC’s New “Airborne Zombies” Series, ‘Fear the Walking Dead: Flight 462’

The pilot wasn’t very encouraging — unfortunately several

of the leads turned out to be some of the most patience-trying characters in

narrative fiction: sullen teens and drug addicts. Alicia (Sullen Teen #1) was

given some development (or at least wasn’t as one-note), but Chris (Sullen Teen

#2) was a pain from minute one and never managed to redeem himself. Nick (the

drug addict) was similarly frustrating; if you’ve seen one addiction story

you’ve seen them all, and “Fear

The Walking Dead” brought nothing new to the table. Probably best

to give Nick the Charlie from “Lost” treatment in Season 2: claim he

finally kicked heroin and go about developing him as an actual character.

Despite the weak pilot, I still preferred the first half of

“Fear The Walking Dead’s”

first season to its militarized second half. The suburbs provided a quiet setting

for some mounting dread, and also effective was the sense that a single zombie

could be dangerous. Since the Ricketeers of “Walking Dead” Prime are an ultra-competent fighting force,

watching the families of “Fear” struggle to take down a single walker added a nice edge of suspense in the

early going. Of course, there were still pitfalls: Characters seemed willfully

stupid about zombies even after it was obvious that you shouldn’t try to reason

with them. Also, having such a big cast for such a short season meant that the

characters were thin across the board, despite a fine cast including Kim

Dickens, Cliff Curtis and Ruben Blades.

But things took a downturn in the show’s back half. Once the

military lockdown began, it was nothing we hadn’t seen in other zombie media. Also,

a time jump between episodes 3 and 4 meant that we didn’t see the characters

acclimating to their new situation; they were all used to it by the time we

caught up with them. The last few episodes were extremely rushed and

underdeveloped; we only got the barest effort at establishing the community or

any characters outside the main cast (there was a Mean Soldier, a Nice Soldier,

and a Neighbor Who Is Losing It). Which makes sense, since the final episodes

were all leading to yet another upheaval in the status quo.

And then we come to morality. I’ve never been much concerned

with the morality of “The Walking

Dead,” a show that repeatedly argues that killing is the only

answer and that an unwillingness to participate in violence is a lethal

weakness, because its bleak post-apocalypse wasteland is so divorced from our

own way of living. But on “Fear

The Walking Dead,” society has yet to fully collapse, so it seemed

like something of an overreaction when Daniel decided the only response to his

wife and Nick being forcibly taken to the local military base was to kidnap a

friendly soldier and torture him with knives. Daniel at least had the excuse of

his tragic background in El Salvador, but the moment Madison figures out what’s

going on, she’s on board. Apparently the second her dirtbag son is possibly in

danger, all bets are off.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to what happens in the

season finale, “The Good Man.” Seeking to enter the military base

undetected, our heroes decide the best possible cover is to release the

thousands of zombies locked in the nearby stadium, let them overrun the base

and escape in the chaos. The soldiers, the prisoners, the patients: all of them

are acceptable collateral damage as long as the ostensible good guys can

retrieve Daniel’s wife (who’s already dead) and Nick, who sucks. It’s

apparently Daniel’s idea, but everyone else seems to be cool with it, since

none of the characters find time to discuss whether this plan of attack is right

or wrong. And oh hey, they abandon all of their neighbors without warning them,

to boot. The end result is that the whole cast goes from zero to psychopath in

the course of two episodes.

Since their collective morals are already compromised, there’s

really nowhere else for the characters to go. The world has already descended

into chaos, and the streets are empty, save for random zombies. So we’ve got a

group of survivors wandering the desolate zombie apocalypse, willing to do

whatever it takes to survive. Hey, that sounds like it could be a successful TV

show!

Grade: C

READ MORE: Watch: ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Teaser Shows What Fear Looks Like

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