Fear The Walking Dead

Even after the Sep 27 episode, I can't say I'm overly enthusiastic about continuing to follow FTWD. Earlier today I said the last two episodes of the shortened first season would really have to wow me to make me follow any subsequent seasons, and as of almost three hours ago the series has one episode left to convince me to stick around.

I still facepalm at the implied failures of the soldiers to soldier, though. New recruit or not, the real thing isn't anywhere near as stupid or given to flight as (F)TWD portrays them.

Indeed. All I've heard about this show makes me want to file it under the same "never knowingly gonna watch this" list that includes Avatar (both movies of that title, because...), Titanic, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Jurassic World.

It's maybe unfair, I'm sure I've seen the actors, or some of them at least, in stuff I enjoy, but this just doesn't fill me with the notion that it's going to surprise and delight me.

It's more of a character piece at the moment. Season 2 will probably have more in the way of plot.

...I don't know.

I notice that Walking Dead doesn't seem to be a very popular show on this website. I mean, is it the most high-brow entertainment, no. I don't think it advertises itself as such. But if you didn't care for the comics or the original show, I don't know why you'd give this one a chance, you're probably not going to like it, it's largely the same subject matter. I like it, its decent enough, I didn't have very high hopes for it. I'm not going to say it's Breaking Bad or that its going to cater you.

But it's also 3-4 episodes in and we have no idea what direction it's headed in. Its an original story in the WD universe, it's not following a pre-established storyline.

edited 29th Sep '15 8:30:14 AM by Soble

The main problem I have with FTWD, as I mentioned elsewhere, was that for a character piece, I really don't care all that much about the characters. By this many episodes into the first season of the main show, I was actually interested in varying degrees to the core (at the time) cast, so I know that the TWD writers can write characters. In Fear, though, the only one I had any real concern about was the barber, and then the Sep 27 episode went and made me rather less interested in his survival than before, with turning him into a war criminal working for a dictatorial regime.

I wasn't totally disinterested in the season finale for Fear The Walking Dead. A couple thoughts.

A) It was nice seeing different characters enter the plot on different episodes, rather than all at once in the beginning.

B) Strand (smooth talking rich guy) is growing on me; the few moments of absolute panic followed by recovery into having a plan sell me on the actor. But the character's place in the narrative seems a little deus-ex-y in this first season.

C) I'm glad the first season of Fear didn't parallel the first season of Walking Dead too too much, but it's also hard not to draw parallels. I think TWD was much, much better scripted, and Fear has a long way to go to catch up.

D) It's great that they've got Abigail, but I don't see that the boat works for very long as a plot device. Separate yourself too much from the danger at hand and you lose the focus of the narrative. It does give them a slight opportunity to investigate other areas of the world (Mexico? Looks like Trump's Wall might have a purpose after all), but ...

E) ... I still don't see that Fear The Walking Dead is telling any story that hasn't already been told in other media. I watch the series more out of allegiance to its parent show, than discovering something new. Though it's set further along into post-Biter-apocalypse, TWD still manages some really great character moments. I don't know if Fear will ever hit that mark.

Abigail does make me wonder about if there are zombie herds wandering along the ocean floor, since they're not constrained by any need for breathing. While walking across the deeps is probably not in the cards (undead or not, pressure is pressure), there's hardly an absence of shallow waters that could be crossed on foot were biological functions not necessary. (I know the first Pirates of the Caribbean touched on that.)

Local predators would thin them out, yeah, but there's a fuckton of potentially infected people, and many aquatic predators aren't normally all that interested in humans (though if they had sapience, I imagine a few "WTF?!" reactions ).

[edit] That said, I may watch the first few episodes of the second season, but I don't see being as dedicated to FTWD as I am the main show.

edited 6th Oct '15 9:05:45 AM by Nohbody

edited 6th Oct '15 4:23:07 PM by VeryMelon

Watching the S6 TWD premier, I'm reminded of something that was tickling the back of my mind about FTWD: Where are the fast walkers?

It's the start of the outbreak, the literal Villain Decay that's slowed down the main show's walkers hasn't occurred yet. So where are the zombies like the ones that chased Rick and Glenn when they were disguised with zombie guts and had their camouflage washed off by unexpected rain?

edited 11th Oct '15 7:32:46 PM by Nohbody

That always felt like Early-Installment Weirdness to me, rather than an intentional thing.

edited 11th Oct '15 7:09:53 PM by VeryMelon

So there were a couple mini-shorts for Fear interspersed in the season six Walking Dead opener. No characters that I recognized from the series. The plane didn't get off the ground.

It ties into the second season, just noticed that actually in the 3rd episode.

Also, man, somehow, I knew Strand was gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Though I like Tara better.

There's a scene where Salazar's daughter is speaking to her mother, and she asks Nick to be there with her. Does anyone familiar with religion know what that was about?

Nick is quickly becoming the best character.

edited 12th Jun '16 1:08:29 PM by Soble

Wow.

They brought back the best character apparently.

I kind of stopped watching this halfway through and got spoiled on Chris's death. Now apparently Travis gets his ticket punched, while Daniel survived.

I don't know why, but The Reveal of Madison's Dark and Troubled Past didn't hit me very hard, and I am not the only one who feels that way, judging from Twitter.

Oh, hey everyone at the ranch is dead.

edited 1st Oct '17 7:12:11 PM by Mizerous

So this show has gotten really good in its third and fourth seasons apparently, and the main show is suffering. This is not the future I predicted.

edited 20th Mar '18 5:23:11 PM by Soble

IKR? It's strangely bittersweet.

This is where it gets weird, this franchise. This is a much more interesting route for Morgan than his comics counterpart.

A sad, final conversation between these two.

And Morgan's escape to someplace new.

I did not expect Rick, Carol, and, oh yeah, Jesus to cameo on '"Fear'' as well.

I like Garrett Dillahunt's character. I hope he doesn't have some horrible dark secret or something.

I wonder why Daniel has been absent from all of the previews...

edited 17th Apr '18 9:09:50 PM by BearyScary

Oh I'm thinking he's dead.

Hole through his cheek, armed foes near the dam. I'm surprised Nick escaped. But then again, I thought he was dead last time too.

Dillahunt? I thought he was annoying at first, but "man looking for his wife in the zombie apocalypse" hearkens back to Rick's original quest in a really nostalgic way.

Yeah, the Rick/Jesus/Carol cameos were really unexpected.

I love how the promos for this season Madison in a leather/biker jacket.

edited 18th Apr '18 5:10:18 AM by Soble

They should use this for the season 4 soundtrack◊.

I dunno, Daniel has escaped uncertain death before. He's a tough old cuss.

Daniel not being in any of the promos thus far is what concerns me.

Alright, I liked the first episode. The second disappointed me.

It's like if in TWD S4, Hershel didn't exist and Rick just decided to become a farmer just cause.

In TWD we saw Rick go from Ricktator to Peppridge Grimes. In FTWD we get none of that. Our characters just have new roles all of a sudden:

• Madison is a selfless, gun-toting carpenter - when did this happen, I remember her giving an old man a gun to shoot himself with last season.
• Alicia is considerably more together than she was in Season 3
• Strand and Luciana are full-on Team Madison now, and wasn't Luciana's thing that she and her community didn't want to kill walkers? Was that ever resolved or was the near-death experience just assumed to be the point where she gave up on that ideology? And Strand's still gay folks. Don't forget about that. He's the only one allowed to have romantic drama this season, don't forget.
• And Nick is the only one with PTSD? Really? The guy who two seasons ago walked several miles covered in walker guts in the baking sun, got chased by dogs, joined a community of corpse fetishists, the former addict who seemed to be the quickest to adjust to all of the death and all of the killing - he is the only one with PTSD?

Alicia, Nick, and Madison have seen some sh't granted but I'm not really buying that they've become the hunter-gatherers of this community.

And where did Luciana even come from? Didn't she leave last season? Did the writers forget that she left last season, or am I expected to assume she just showed up again because she missed Nick that much?

After getting a nice, fat prologue with Morgan, we have to sit through dangling plot threads and unexpected character developments that are bouncing between past events and the present ones. We just pushed our main characters into a new location and left cryptic clues of how they got there, physically and mentally.

We don't know how they ended up here, how Madison found Courtney, or why Nick is suddenly a farmer or who he learned from, or where the gang got their new guns, or how they found the diamond. Maybe they'll do a gradual, Season 4-esque "how we got here" plot but, really, none of this was necessary.

That silo scene tells me Madison's Plot Armor is going to be thicker than Rick's this season. I'll be pleasantly surprised if the lack of Madison in these Call-Forward's actuall means anything. But that scene was just... why are there walkers inside of a goddamned silo full of water anyway?

I shouldn't even start on Not-Negan in the back half of the episode. But considering he knows how many guns are in Madison's hands his entire act was dumb. The thing about Negan is that he had enough people pointing guns at Rick and blocking roads to make his performance memorable and threatening. We've yet to see that with Not-Negan who pretty much shows up, flaunts about, pulls up a chair, acts weird, and drinks a beer - all while making not-so-subtle threats and expecting Madison not to just unload on him with any number of conveniently-placed survivors. I suppose Courtney did all of the recon for him.

Here's some more -professional- reviews:

• FTWD is better than TWD
• FTWD is pretty much TWD now

Not off to a great start, this season.

edited 23rd Apr '18 8:45:41 PM by Soble