Fear the Walking Dead (AMC)

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181

What I was expecting to see? It can be easily illustrated by this:

Maddie goes outside the fence to find dead bodies in the streets in a lifeless area surrounding their compound. That’s what we saw.

Maddie is passing through the area while whatever happened there is happening. This is the kind of thing I was expecting to see.

Essentially, copy that ‘stuck in the barber while the riot is going on’ scene. I was expecting to see, from each character’s vantage point, the breakdown as it happens. Show, don’t tell. The last episode we had the military guy telling us what happened, I wanted to see that stuff happen.

182

Don’t brush aside the Monopoly Effect. It’s possible enough people died of boredom and then turned to tip the scales relatively quickly.

183

A perfect opportunity for a game like Dead of Winter or Zombicide to get some mainstream exposure! Could have had a family game of Catan at the very least.

184

It was also consistent with the source material to not show that stuff, and pick up with Rick waking up after it had all gone down. It’s a story predominately shown from Rick’s perspective, at least to start.

185

This episode is off to a terrible start.

186

So I find it fascinating that they made sure we understood that it was 9 days between eps 3 and 4, but here there’s some indeterminate amount of time between eps 4 and 5. One night? Three? I honestly can’t tell; I think every character is stupid enough that it could be the next day when they decide to abduct the dude from Outside Providence. What a terrible plan. Wouldn’t the military come looking for him after a couple of hours? Even one in the current state, just because the of the implications.

Why would E-Patrol or whatever have been up for 50 hours straight? It appears the military was able to bunker down and at least secure several locations. Patrols may be difficult but they should be able to stay rested. At least it contributed to one of the few decent moments in the episode; namely that they shot the crazy commander guy. Who was crazy for no discernible reason, but clearly needed to be shot.

I assume Ruben Blades’s brilliant strategic planning will be opening up the Colosseum and letting that huge horde out. Awesome.

187

Two main questions from last night. Why didn’t they give us any of the tension among the soldiers last week? They still didn’t take it far, but they at least showed a little bit of how they’re struggling with this unprecedented situation as well.

And as peacedog mentions, I can’t tell how much time is going by, although I think this really was just the next day after the abductions, so we’re on day 10 I guess? But the problem is whatever day it actually is, we’ve got characters moving all over the spectrum between “this natural disaster sucks when will life get back to normal?” and “oh well society is all gone forever!”. Specifically this week the two kids trashing that house and wondering about the fate of the family gave the impression that it had sunk in at some point that there was no going back to the way things were, but we never see that transition in them, or really any characters. That would be one of the most interesting things to focus on if you’re just going to give us this very limited, “character driven” perspective on the end of society.

Oh well.

188

I think it’s next day as well because the “9 days later” is the only time transition we’ve had, I think? Everything else has been “and then the next day this happened”. But who knows?

You’re right, they needed to show military problems much earlier than this. And frankly, 9 days is not enough time for me to believe in this level of collapse (Going ruthless dictator, utter indifference to civilians, Golfing, killing a CO and going awol, possibly limited communication with other areas even for military personnel). A couple of weeks after they show up, but this is technically day 13 or 14 since it started? Just seems too abrupt, especially given that they haven’t given us a strong reason to believe in the military going bananas.

The thing is, I can totally buy that a week without outside communication would freak people out. We’re so connected these days that it would really mess with our sense of self/place. For the Military men it would be different though; they’re used to long deployments overseas where they go periods without getting to hear from/talk to people back home. For them to start getting jittery, there needs to be stuff on the level of “Fort Baldwin has gone dark”, “Jimmy says we haven’t heard from he east coast in over a week”, “I don’t think the CO is going off standing orders, because he hasn’t received any in 10 days”, etc. Disruption of the chain of command would be freaky for them.

189

These weren’t military though, per se. They went out of their way this week to point out that these are National Guard reservists, for the most part. They aren’t a well trained crack military force. They aren’t vets from Operation Iraqi Freedom. They are family men thrust in to the fray (the Sargent left his family in San Diego) or new kids seeing their first action (“Most of them are 19 year old scared kids. You have to keep them busy or they’ll break down”).

What would sell the military breakdown better for me is if they were to better communicate how stretched thin the military is right now. You have 350+ million civilians in the U.S., scattered across one of the largest countries in the world. In Southern California alone they have “12 safe zones”, each of which requires its own military contingent. A ton of people are turned as well, which they aren’t showing very well. The doctor said something like “You’re worry about saving 600 people. I’m trying to save 600,000”. If there are only 600,000 non-zombies left in the L.A. basin, holy crap, that’s literally millions of zombies shambling forward. With that much territory to try to control and that many zombies constantly attacking, I can see the military getting overwhelmed in a relatively short time…but they are doing a horrible job communicating that to the viewer.

I realize that the show is about this one local family’s view. The show-runner, however, said that Fear the Walking Dead was going to be about explaining how this all happened, how the Zombie Apocalypse went down before the events in The Walking Dead. You can’t communicate that with a single family finding things out through random over-hearings and torturing a corporal. As much as I hate to say it, you need exposition, and lots of it.

190

I keep forgetting they’re not professional soldiers. Maybe that explains the crazy CO; they don’t have nearly as rigorous screening for the National Guard?

Anyway, I think exposition is fine as long as it’s well done. Here the problem is that there’s both too little and it’s not always well done. Driving by the hospital and showing what a trainwreck things are turning out to be? Excellent. Seeing all the headshotted bodies when That Woman (Kim Dickens played the analogue in The Zero Effect) sneaks out of the fence? Nice. Torturing the one dude and having him regurgitate information? Eeeeeeeeh.

191

The more I think about this the more it just overall isn’t working at all. No new revelations, just the more time I spend reading other impressions or considering it, the more all the same stuff we’ve been critical of from the start is piling up and I hate this show. We’ve seen, what, literally one zombie in the last two episodes? You run into more zombies in a mile-long hike in the middle of the woods in the rural southeast than you even see in all of L.A.? There should be millions of bodies somewhere: zombies, military casualties, or evacuees, and the show is just completely failing to communicate where the hell everyone is. On every level this show is making bad decisions about how (or if) to communicate what the stakes are, whether for the family, the military, or the city. This show has been awful since episode four.

192

I’ll echo what everyone is saying and also add - why the hell does the guard in lockup care about diamond cuff links? I assume that’s what they were, was putting miniatures together at the time. Seriously though, aren’t there mansions and jewelry stores aplenty to rip off easier than leaving a potentially infected junkie upstairs at the prison/detention center? Or couldn’t he just pick them off his corpse when they terminate everyone with Operation Cobalt?

193

Given that we saw the military essentially looting towards the end of the ep (when the daughter and son were on the way back from playing dress up), it sort of hammers the point home.

If you’re hording stuff, it means you have hope of a return to. . . well normalcy may not be the thing. But order of some sort. However, we’ve been given no reason to think the military guys really expect that, other than looting/being greedy. And we’ve been given evidence to the contrary, that they actually think there’s no more room in hell and everything is fucked. They’re basically at a point where a bottle of pills - penicillin or whatever - is probably worth way more than the watch or cuff-links.

Wholly, you just reminded me of something. Either in ep 4 or possibly 3 there was a shot where either Daughter or Kim Dickens was outside in a backyard or side yard or something. And off in the distance there was a person just standing in the street. I thought “oooh, are they gonna do a walker showing up to shake things up? Makes sense, the perimeter probably isn’t that secure/there are dying people they may have missed/etc”. Only nothing came of it.

It’s unfortunate the show has sort of gone south the past two eps. I don’t think it was great before - I didn’t like it as much as Desslock did - but it had some stuff going for it. It feels like it’s just meandering now, though.

194

This show is rapidly becoming “Fuck the Walking Dead”. I have been so frustrated with the lack of exposition and now the ridiculous plot is pushing it over the edge for me.

On the bright side, I enjoyed the introduction of the character “Strand” this episode, he reminds me of a slicker version of Lennie James from the original series. He’s obviously fairly well informed, and knows the military will be bugging out soon (without civilians), so he’s got a plan. I’m not sure what value a puking junkie adds to the plan, but I suppose we’ll figure that out next episode. I do hope Strand sticks around though…

I also thought the scene with the son and step-daughter was well done. This is the kind of thing Walking Dead excels at. Here is an empty house full of cool stuff…“what happened to the people?” (probably still in the arena) becomes anger at the missing people for having such a nice life in the days before everything went to shit and then not having to still be around to experience life afterwards. It’s the whole “who is luckier, the people who survived or the people who died and will never know the horror of what life is like now?” scenario. Trashing the place spoke directly to those feelings.

And for the not-so-bright spots…where to begin? Papa Salazar was apparently a torturer who made all those people “disappear” way back in the day in his home country. Nice little table turn, only abducting a soldier and torturing him in a basement is a really shitty plan to get your severely injured wife back from the military. Of course it was a great way to impart information to the viewers quickly and cheaply, but it made zero sense in the context of the plot. Worse still, the information imparted was exactly the kind of thing this show should be SHOWING, not TELLING. Even if it was in flashback, how much more awesome would that scene have been had we witnessed the evacuation center at the arena with thousands of (CGI) people milling about, waiting for the military to evacuate them, busses out front packed with civilians pulling away with military escorts while people queue up to be next to board. Then suddenly from the hallways at the back of the arena where the soldiers had been taking the dead and dying to remove them from the general populace there is the sound of gunfire and screaming, and a dozen walkers burst though a door and begin attacking the people closest to them. The resulting panic leads to the trampling and crushing deaths of dozens more people, who turn quickly and add more walkers to the mix. The military tries to shoot the walkers, hitting panicked civilians in the process, and more people turn until the decision is made to withdraw, soldiers and those civilians lucky enough to be near the exits flowing out the front and more soldiers coming up from behind and chaining the doors shut as the screams of thousands of people echo from within… Total missed opportunity for epic storytelling right there…

More dumb and dumber…the Humvee ride to camp whatever. Let’s stop to plug a walker from 100 yards out, and we’ll make the civilian do it. How the hell did that girl die at the donut shop still in her uniform? Was she manning the counter on a typical Tuesday when a walker casually strolled in? “Hello sir, fine day for the apocalypse isn’t it? How may I help you?” “Grrrrr…arrrghhh!!” “Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t have any donut holes this morning, our baker didn’t show up to make fresh ones, can I interest you in some iced coffee? Wait, sir, what are you…ahhhhh!!!” I mean, seriously? Thousands of people were supposedly evacuated, thousands more were waiting at the arena for evacuation, and this girl was still working the counter at Krispy Kreme? Dumb.

Also, the office building filled with walkers that took out an entire military patrol and most of a second one. Really? This in a zone that was supposed to be mostly cleared? How did so many people die in an office building? Workaholics? I know they tried to handwave it by having one of the soldiers say something about holdout survivors that must have died and turned all at once, but it still smacked of incompetence and writer setup. Why would you send squads into a dark building to clear room by room when you could just sit out front honking the Humvee’s horn and shoot the walkers as they emerged from the front door? Even National Guardsmen should have enough tactical training not to get flanked by slow moving undead in an office building full of windows they could shoot out and escape through…

The entire episode was filled with little things that just didn’t make sense and missed opportunities for better storytelling. This is becoming the norm for the show, and it is rapidly devolving into Walking Dead West, which was my fear from the beginning. If Papa Salazar lets the horde out of the arena next week in his brilliant plan to save his wife, then it will officially be the dumbest plotline ever to grace television.

195

Well, won’t be happening next week. We’ve officially hit the end of “season one” of Fear the Walking Dead, and regular old Walking Dead takes the baton in a couple weeks.

edit: no wait, I’m wrong. One more episode.

196

I took this as the unit luring their CO in to plug him and desert. I don’t remember the exact events leading up to the office scene but it could’ve been a fake call. Not to excuse the show though; it’s been a trainwreck. Has anyone seen rating numbers? I haven’t heard much positive from anyone I know and I’m kind of shocked they greenlit season 2 right away.

197

Oh, I hadn’t thought of that…that could very well be the case. I thought I saw another empty Humvee outside the building though, and not all the other soldiers who went in with the CO came back out either (or so it looked like), just the sergeant and the African American soldier who both seemed sympathetic to Travis in the zombie sniper scene.

198

The premiere was the most watched something or other. Most of any cable show ever? Any new show premiere? I don’t remember, but the point is it started with big numbers. I haven’t heard any follow up on that since, but could just be because I wasn’t looking. None of my friends have given up on it—love it or hate it—because it’s only six episodes and it’s a group-watch for this season. No idea if anyone will still care enough to get people together for it next season though.

199

I’m going to buck the consensus and say I… liked the episode? Well, I liked it compared to last week anyway and some of the issues I listed were at least partially rectified by this episode.

First, the soldiers were mostly humanized. I appreciated the scene at the gate where the sergeant was going to… I dunno… probably slap around Ofelia, and the other troops show some discomfort with the idea. The unidentified trooper walking off was a nice touch. Also, the sympathetic troopers in the Humvee and the revelation (of sorts) that the ailing mother WAS actually taken off to get treatment rather than just dumped in a gully somewhere were good “grounding” scenes that showed that as nefarious as the military was portrayed, they didn’t actually go full-on “Hunger Games” in just a week.

Regarding the scene where the dopey CO died: it seems unlikely that it was a planned fragging. First, the sergeant specifically requested that his guys not have to go. Secondly, if they were just going to off and plug him I reckon they didn’t need to concoct a complex plan with an office building and another squad… they could have just shot him while they were setting up the 50-cal. I think it was just what it purported to be: they got wind of some “holdouts” and went in to root them out. As one of the troopers said (paraphrase), “There must have been a whole lot of them that had turned.” One squad, faced with both live and undead enemies, was getting overwhelmed and called for backup. The CO led his guys inside, it went south somehow, the CO got eaten, and the two sympathetic troopers were among the few that got out.

And that scene also was showing some breakdown of order. It’s still not the full-on chaotic descent that I wanted to see, but at least it was SOMETHING. I sort of like the idea that the soldiers are being whittled down partially by the zombies but mostly by “people who don’t trust the government.”

Next… so it turns out that Papa Salazar was not a victim of terrible war crimes, but the perpetrator of same. I probably should have seen that coming, but I didn’t. Either I was too dense to see the signs or the writers put one over one me. Either way, that’s good thing for my enjoyment of the show. Yeah, torturing the soldier made little or no sense… worse, it sounds like the military is entrusting their most closely guarded secrets to the oldest privates in the army.

And what type of a dumb-ass plan is “COBALT” anyway? You lose control of a region and are in danger of being overrun, so your big plan to to spend time wasting ammunition on civilians that are absolutely going to try and kill you as soon as they figure out what’s going on. I would have executed plan SILICON: find as many models and porn starlets as possible, load them onto a truck and skip town in the middle of the night.

I too liked the scene with the two kids.

I wish I could figure out where I know Colman Domingo’s voice from. Nothing in his IMDB listing rings a bell, but it’s just spectacular. I might enjoy the show more if they just cut all the dialog and had him narrate a bunch of zombie kills.

Finally, I have some hope that next week will have the huge CGI horde of zombies we’ve been hoping for as Papa Salazar executes him brilliant plan to rescue his (now dead) wife using tens of thousands of ghouls.

200

Doing it in the sniper scene would have allowed a civilian to see it. I think these guys wanted to avoid that for a variety of reasons, assuming that they did in fact do the CO. And maybe they didn’t, but I got that vibe pretty heavily.