Review: Fear the Walking Dead S1E02 “So Close, Yet So Far”

Posted on August 30, 2015 by Arleigh

“I’m about to step into a world of shit. You know that, right?” — Nick Clark

[some spoilers]

Is watching a zombie apocalypse unfold during it’s early days something that fans of the original series, The Walking Dead, want to actually watch happen? That was probably the least important question asked by AMC producers when they were brainstorming about how to take advantage of the pop-culture phenomena they had in their hands with The Walking Dead. This was a show that consistently beat every show it went up against and even manages to surpass some Sunday Night Football games in viewership.

The show enjoys viewership ratings of every type of metric one can think of that only the biggest network shows today can pull. Yet, the question remained of whether a second series exploring the world that Robert Kirkman created in his Image Comics title of the same name would have a similar reaction from fans. If the numbers brought in by the pilot episode of Fear the Walking Dead would be of any indication then the answer was a resounding yes.

The pilot episode of this new series introduced viewers to a cast of characters that wouldn’t look out of place from any family drama on network tv, cable or even the big-screen. It’s a world focused on the densely-packed Los Angeles area with all it’s different neighborhoods from glitzy and glamorous Hollywood and Beverly Hills to it’s surrounding middle-class areas like East L.A. and Venice Beach. One could substitute any major American city as location and we’ll still be able to relate to the opening narrative beats of an apocalypse descending on an unprepared populace.

Witnessing a zombie apocalypse in it’s early stages has it’s drawbacks and for some fans it’s the lack of the very zombie mayhem which made the original series so “must-see” that has become this companion series’ own weak point. Yet, there’s a logic and reason to the lack of zombies. It is the early days and the lack of zombies doesn’t mean the show lacks in tension and dread-building moments.

As Madison Clark’s drug-addict son succinctly says during the second episode, and could mean for the rest of the cast in the show, they’re all about to step into a world of shit.

“So Close, Yet So Far” jumps into literally right after both Madison Clark and Travis Manawa sees the truth in Nick’s words about what he witnessed in the drug den during the pilot episode. Their disbelief still governs some of their rash decisions (like splitting up to find other family members), but it also gives them a leg up on some of their neighbors and most everyone of the Greater Los Angeles area. Outside of Travis and Madison we’re given glimpses of others like Tobias (Madison’s paranoid but well-informed student), a next door neighbor looking to stock up and flee the city right up to a cop on-duty stocking up on water supplies. The city and the surrounding seem oblivious to the hell about to land on everyone, but that primordial part of everyone’s brain the says something is wrong seem to be working more efficiently for some.

The episode finds both Madison and Travis and their respective families split up when it looks like the zombie apocalypse is finally hitting it’s stride. Police actions turn into riots as civilian bystanders witness cops shooting (many, many times) and killing who look like innocent homeless people. As an audience we know better and it’s that knowing the rules of the game while those in the series are still so uneducated to the changes in this world of theirs which gives Fear the Walking Dead a fresher look at Robert Kirkman’s world.

This advance knowledge of this new world’s rules make for both a exhilarating and frustrating show. We wait for when the rest of the cast catch up in how to deal with the zombie apocalypse, but we also worry that some characters may not get the time spent during this shortened first season to survive. Rick Grimes was the lone babe in the woods in The Walking Dead. His family, best friend and the other survivors he has met with since he awoke from his coma already knew the basics on how to survive in this post-apocalyptic world. Madison, Travis, Nick, Alicia and the rest do not have the luxury of knowing what’s happening. They’ve seen examples of what’s coming, but they’re still dealing with it as if it’s your typical natural disaster. That everything will sort itself out in the end.

Tobias, our on-screen oracle, knows better and in just two episodes have become the audience’s proxy for a series cast full of babes in the woods. His very insular nature of spending way too much time on-line has given him an insight to this current calamity that everyone else around him seem oblivious and/or not extremely worried about. Whether Tobias survives the season has been left up in the air and with 4 episodes left in this inaugural season there’s not much time to dwell on who will live or who will die.

As we saw with Madison stopping Alicia from running out of the house to help a neighbor being attacked by another neighbor (the same one Travis saw earlier that day planning to get out of the city but already sick and infected) zombified, some have begun to worry about just protecting those closest to them and leaving the rest to fend for themselves.

Fear the Walking Dead has navigated a narrative that could get frustratingly old and stale with some great character work from it’s cast. Yes, even the annoying way the teenage children of the two leads have been written. The series has chosen to focus on the lives of your typical American family of the 21st century and that includes the annoyances and warts of parents and children.

Will fans continue to tune in without the zombies showing up more often? That will depend on whether show’s writers slows things down just as the apocalypse is hitting or just press the pedal to the floor and ride the zombie apocalypse wave and hope it lands with a bang instead of a whimper.

Notes

Tonight’s episode was written by Marco Ramirez and directed by Adam Davidson.
The episode’s cold opening of the high school principal walking the grounds of an empty high school made for an eerie sequence.
While it seems like instances of zombie attacks have been concentrated in the more densely populated city area of LA, we still saw some signs of it hitting the outer areas like East LA. Alicia’s boyfriend Matt being one on the way to turning.
Interesting way for the writers to incorporate the current climate of distrust the public have with law enforcement into the series with civilians protesting then rioting over cops shooting what they think were innocent people. Audiences know better and we see how this civil disturbance look like it’s adding to the chaos that helps the zombie apocalypse take a foothold in the city.
Always nice to see Ruben Blades on-screen.

Season 1

Episode 1: “Pilot”

Review: Fear the Walking Dead S1E01 “Pilot”

Posted on August 23, 2015 by Arleigh

“We’re safer in numbers.” — Tobias

There’s a scene early on in the pilot episode of Fear the Walking Dead that really helps set the tone for what could be the running theme for this first season. We have the awkward high school student Tobias getting caught by his school guidance counselor (Madison Clark played by Kim Dickens) with bringing a knife to school. His reasoning after some prodding from Ms. Clark is that he didn’t bring the knife for protection from the school bully. He never outright says what, but his rambling about viruses, microbes, people dying and that it’s a situation that is spreading even sets Ms. Clark aback. Tobias truly believes that there’s a storm coming and that everything he has been preparing for will fall by the wayside. It’s not just his plans, but everyone’s.

Fear the Walking Dead has the difficult task of satisfying not just the legion of fans that make up the prequel series’ parent show, but also set it separate with it’s own identity from The Walking Dead. This show takes us, the viewers, back to the beginning when zombie apocalypse hadn’t landed on the world’s lap. It’s a look into the days gone bye that were only hinted and talked about in the The Walking Dead. Rick Grimes still in a coma, Glenn’s still delivering pizzas in Atlanta and Herschel still has an empty barn.

We find the world still turning and turning with it’s people oblivious of the storm looming over in the horizon. The worry about a prequel series is that as an audience who has seen five seasons of The Walking Dead we’ve learned how this encroaching world operates. We know that anyone who dies becomes a zombie (or walker, biter, etc) who will attack anyone living and propagate the outbreak. The writers of this new series must now try and convince this audience that the actions of the cast are not born out of stupid horror tropes, but on uneducated decisions during situations that they’re not prepared for.

The series focuses on the lives of what would be considered a typical American family. Two families trying to combine into one with children either resentful or apathetic to their parents’ attempts to create a new family from two broken ones. We witness the opening stages of The Walking Dead zombie apocalypse through their eyes as they go about the normal routine of their lives. Whether it’s going to school as a student or as a guidance counselor or a English teacher. This world we recognize as something we see everyday of our own lives.

The question the pilot begins to raise through some tense moments of dialogue is whether the world is prepared for the apocalypse that’s coming. In this world, as in the world of The Walking Dead, the term zombies and the rules governing them don’t exist. There’s no George A. Romero zombie films or Italian zombie knock-offs to help educated the masses through the years. This world has no analogue for the horror descending on them which should explain why some of their behaviors might seem frustrating to those who have watched horror and zombie films.

Yet, it’s through the characters’ very naivete about the crisis happening around them that looks to be a strength for the show. There’s no Rick Grimes, Shane, Daryl or Michonne to come in guns blazing and blade slicing to save the day. These characters must adapt quickly to this encroaching nightmare world or die. It’s as simple as that: adapt or die.

If tonight’s pilot episode stumbles a bit it’s through some of the backstory sequences that episode was trying to dump wholesale to the audience. The one major criticism that the original series continue to get from fans and detractors alike was how so many characters in the original series have been left underdeveloped. Pilot episode writers Robert Kirkman and David Erickson seem too intent on not making that same mistake with this series premiere, but it did lead to some major expositions that, at times, put the breaks on the episode’s forward momentum. It’s understandable to try and flesh out these characters before the zombie mayhem arrive in full-force, but the adage of showing rather than telling still goes a long way even when the intentions are good.

The zombie mayhem that fans of The Walking Dead have become used to appear quite sparse in this pilot episode. We see what we could call as “Patient Zero” for this series in the episode’s tense-filled first three minutes. We see glimpses of them in parks and from amateur video footage on the net. They’re not as spread out and coming at our cast in horde-like numbers. These people have nothing to fear from the walking dead. Yet, we sense throughout the episode that this outbreak has already started randomly all over the country (most likely around the world) and the very institutions meant to protect the population doesn’t have that very population’s trust. Misinformation and mistrust of institutions make for a dangerous recipe that the student Tobias knows full well.

Fear the Walking Dead has the luxury of having a built-up audience courtesy of the massive success of The Walking Dead. The question looming over the series is whether it will be able to use that head start and distinguish itself from it’s older brother series. We have five episodes left in this shortened first season (just like The Walking Dead) and we shall see if these characters will get tossed into the deep end as the crisis grows and grows. One thing Fear the Walking Dead shouldn’t do is to be deliberate. It’s the one mistake that The Walking Dead made during it’s first two seasons that it’s still trying to fix as we near the start of season 6.

Random Notes

Tonight’s premiere pilot episode was written by series creator Robert Kirkman and showrunner David Erickson with directing duties handled by Adam Davidson.
It’s great to see two veteran actors such as Cliff Curtis and Kim Dickens as the leads of a major project as Fear the Walking Dead. They’re definitely the anchor and foundation that this show will revolve around.
We get two shout outs to recent zombie films during the episode.
First one was the traffic jam when Travis and Maddy were trying to drive home only to have them stuck in traffic with helicopters overhead and police motorcycles driving past dangerously close to Travis’ truck. A scene similar to 2014’s World War Z.
Second one scene was of the faculty staff and some of the students watching videotaped footage of fire department personnel and police responding to the cause of the traffic jam only to have the supposed dead victim come back to life and bite one of the firemen. The scene looks eerily similar to footage from George A. Romero’s fifth zombie film, Diary of the Dead.
I do believe that was Lynn Chen from the Buzzfeed videos that was playing the nurse when Nick’s elderly roommate patient went into Code Blue.

Fear The Walking Dead Season 1 Trailer

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Arleigh

“When civilization ends…it ends fast.”

It was just a matter of time before AMC decided to mine their massive hit of a show, The Walking Dead, with spin-off to maximize it’s dominance over the tv landscape. We’ve been getting teasers leading up to San Diego Comic-Con where AMC released the first official trailer for this spin-off series titled Fear The Walking Dead.

This spin-off series will pull back time from the original series and have it set in the very beginning of the zombie outbreak which leads to the fall of civilization by the time Rick awakes from his weeks-long coma. It will also have it’s location as far and different from the backwoods and backroads of Georgia to Virginia where The Walking Dead is set. Instead this new series will have sunny Los Angeles as the setting. What better location than one of the most densely populated areas in the United States to show the first days and weeks of The Walking Dead timeline.

Unlike some who seem to be getting tired of the zombie craze of the past decade or so, I and a few others here at Through the Shattered Lens still enjoy this zombie apocalypse renaissance. Maybe it’s the inner doomsday preppers in some of us here in TSL that makes these types of shows and stories appealing.

Will Fear The Walking Dead succeed just as much as it’s older sibling? We shall find out when it premieres this August 23rd.