Fear the Walking Dead (AMC)

I think they have a different point of reference for when the Zombie apocalypse started. Because weren’t they in the army controlled suburb for at least a week and a half? I was assuming we were around three or four weeks into the apocalypse at this point.

(I actually kind of liked the latest episode, compared to the season so far)

In this most recent episode Strand is talking to Dougray Scott’s character in their villa in Mexico and Strand is preparing to come back to L.A. to close a deal but Scott’s character does not want him to go. They reference “an outbreak” and “they’re rioting in the streets”, which makes me think Strand’s return to L.A. was literally at the very height of the chaos happening as L.A. was “turning”, and probably coincided with the Mexico border closing (as in he hopped the last flight out kind of thing). When he reached L.A. he was detained immediately. So a timeframe of around 10-12 days could make sense if you assume Nick, Travis and the gang were experiencing the beginning of their story days before Strand arrived in L.A., and that the military “safe zone” was created prior to or at the same time as Strand’s arrival. Then you’d have around 10 days of life in the “safe zone”, followed by the events of this season, which only seem to have covered about 48-72 hours thus far (they left L.A. at night, arrived at the Ranger station the next night, found the plane on Day Two, and were boarded on Day Three.

Even that timeline stretches plausibility though given what they’ve shown us. We’re supposed to believe that impaled guy in the plane survived for nearly two weeks without food or water and while slowly bleeding from his wounds? We’re supposed to believe that people have gone full rogue in less than 2 weeks from the point where, despite there being riots, some semblance of civilization and government still seemed to exist? We’re supposed to believe that Mexico was able to shut down it’s borders, and that a seemingly huge camp of refugees just disappeared in the space of about 10 days?

Same here, although most of my enjoyment stemmed from the boat-heist drama and the infusion of new baddies. I think this is the only show I watch where I really wish they would cancel it so I don’t have to watch anymore.

I think they’re playing fast and loose with the phrase “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” I bring this up because one of the things I’ve been doing while desperately trying to get something out of the show is to understand its philosophical underpinnings, and the speed with which collapse happened seems to be central to the plot. From my view, the further they get away from it or hand wave it away, the worse off any given episode seems to be.

OK, I went home sick from work today, and I binge-watched all four episodes in about three hours or so. In my defense I am running a fever.

But based on the negative comments here, I watched with a notebook and pencil determined to mine a few nuggets of positive impressions out of the episodes. Again: fever.

S02E01 almost disabused me of the entire project. Sweet Zombie Jesus but that was a terrible episode with almost nothing to recommend it whatsoever. I think it was Tom that noted the change from serene oceanfront idyll to Normandy Beach in (apparently) the time it took for the sun to set. And who the hell was it that decided to take two trips to get to the boat, anyway? Ugh.

But was there NOTHING positive about the episode? Well, Travis got punched in the face… that’s pretty good. I also liked the first time that Wistful Girl listened to the radio and heard nothing but horrible cries for help. Too bad it got ruined by the obvious honeypot and that completely terrible apology from the Coast Guard.

S02E02 was a lot better. I kind of liked the whole thing with the nutcase ranger realizing that eventually the zombies from the town were going to find and overrun them.

Beyond that, the prologue/tease with the two kids playing on the beach had one really good shot: one zombie is ambling towards the children and -abruptly- a second zombie stands up in the surf. I thought that was really effective in showing that the undead were constantly coming in from the waves and pretty creepy to boot.

The exposition by the ranger nicely outlined how bad things were on the mainland… though the constant air-strikes would tend to indicate that the military has a pretty good command of the West Coast airbases. I also appreciated him citing Travis’ ethnicity, because I had been wondering. Finally, I loved Strand’s line about the little boy: “Put him back where you found him!” Like he was a snail one of his kids had brought into the house.

S02E03 was pretty much back to the bad though. I know very little about boats, but I DO know that if you have a water-intake for an impeller engine, there is a grate too small to get your arm sucked into placed over it.

But I thought the shot with the sand blowing over the dunes as Papa Salazar stalked forward to look for Moody Boy was great. I’m glad they saw the beauty in that event and grabbed it.

Oh, another negative: the crab-zombie. TWD hasn’t been spectacular about rules, but for the most part we haven’t seen any living creatures feeding on the zombies other than a shot or two of maggots that I’m pretty sure were just thrown in for gross-out purposes. If crabs and other sea-life feed on the undead, then the entire event would pretty much be over within two months. Cool CGI though.

S02E04 was a pretty good ride. I’m glad they didn’t wrap it up too cleanly in the end, and for the most part the main characters didn’t actually bathe in stupid. Sure, Travis’ clever plot would only fool a cartoonishly evil villain. And yeah, Luis is a better sharp-shooter than any 20 Navy SEALs. And yeah, Papa Salazar’s using his own blood as a lubricant to get the bonds off is pretty ridiculous. But it still wasn’t too bad.

Again, finding the pearl in the oyster: The prologue with Depp Jr. being a ninja was fun, but all the tents billowing in the wind was a great shot.

But overall, these four episodes were more disappointing than not. As others have pointed out, we seem to be deep in TWD organized gang territory here, which is disappointing. There are SO MANY good stories about desperate last stands, well-meaning government plans doomed to failure, communities clinging to desperate hopes of rescue, etc., etc. And yet they go immediately to post-ZA pirates. Yay.

Come to think of it, they really need a Hershel. Season 2 of TWD was a couple months after the fall of civilization and Hershel’s blind belief that there was some “cure” for the people in the barn was kind of silly. But here, with everyone seeing their loved ones coming back from the dead and most people believing in an “infection” of some sort, there ought to be LOTS of Hershels around.

It occurred to me tonight that if they would only kill off everyone with the exception of Strand, Luis, and Madison, this show might actually be watchable.

So the episodes are collecting but I haven’t started watching yet. I looked at them over the weekend and though “I could delete them and I wouldn’t care”. So I’m sort of teetering on watching.

For a while, I thought we were going to get an entire episode without a single zombie. But then we got one. Just one.

Hey, is there some rule among the casting directors that they can only cast people who look like other people in the show? Young Vera Farmiga’s boyfriend is as much of a Depp-a-like as the series regular Depp-a-like. If you were to put a silly mustache on him, wounded-in-the-stomach guy could pass for Mexican Jack Black sniper guy.

Also, ha ha, we watched another episode of Fear the Walking Dead.

-Tom

So let’s get this straight : You have weapons, but you go unarmed to the hostage exchange which is taking place on the enemy groups territory and in which you must leave the safety of your boat. Then, despite the fact that you have a sniper rifle and a man proficient in it’s use, you fail to utilize either asset to provide overwatch during your hostage exchange. Finally, the “bad guys”, who have undoubtedly encountered walkers previously at this point, seem entirely stunned to see their own guy as a walker and the brother is supposedly so shocked he essentially allows himself to get chomped.

This is all way beyond people in a crisis making dumb decisions, this is just the writers treating the characters (and thus the viewers) as idiots.

Also, the Asian woman : Her story is that they floated around in the raft until they ran out of water, then the boy took a long time to die, in the end begging her to kill him and dump him, then she herself was near death by the time this new group of merry pirates discovered her, nursed her back to full health and got all the information about the Abigail from her once she was accepted into their group, after which they sent out their boarding party. Except the boarding party arrived LESS THAN 24 HOURS after Strand cut the rope on the raft…

This show has a serious issue with timelines.

I have zero experience in producing a show, but that really strikes me as one of three things: writers who don’t give a darn/are lazy, writers who are completely inept, or writers who are trying to intentionally mess with people out of some deep well of disdain for their fellow man.

I would like to meet the genius who thought white subtitles superimposed over a white dress was a good idea. Fucking show can’t even get that right.

That said, I liked the opening scene at the church. In fact, if it was up to me, I’d shitcan the current show and make a WWZ-styled anthology series. How does the North Korean government react to a ZA? How about the Vatican? Or Putin, for that matter. A cross section of different peoples with different beliefs all interpreting the same event in their own way could make for a fascinating series.

Instead we get Herschel’s Hacienda. Pfui.

Or – and I know this is a really really crazy idea so just stay with me here – someone could just take the World War Z book and convert it into a limited-run series filmed as a documentary.

I’d watch a WWZ-style documentary/anthology type series. Cool.

As for this most recent episode : Luis! NOOOOO!!! You were supposed to be Mexican Daryl my friend! You were going to be the bad ass nothing-gets-to-me fun and gun guy I rooted for every episode. RIP Luis, except we know you won’t because nobody spiked you in the head, so now you’ll probably show up at the hacienda next week and eat your mom’s face off.

Speaking of Celia, wow, is she messed up. If I was reading between the lines correctly in this episode, the church goers were preparing to storm the hacienda to spike all the walkers Celia had rounded up (which were themselves the family members of the hacienda’s workers). Celia poisoned the host, not only killing innocent children but turning everyone into even more walkers, and then inadvertently causing the death of her employer, a man she thinks of as another son. All this because she’s cracked and believe the walkers are somehow “the next form” in human evolution or something? And somehow nobody has stabbed her to death in her sleep yet?

I guess next week we’ll get Dia de Muertos as all hell breaks loose after Celia discovers Strand has “murdered” Abigail and our gang has to make a quick exit from the hacienda. I suspect Celia will meet her end at the hands of those she has “saved”, as will most of the other remaining inhabitants of the hacienda, and our gang will end up back on the Abigail with no idea where to go or what to do next until the final 90 seconds when something happens to propel them onward and that will be the mid-season finale ending.

Anyone stupid enough to go off on their own with a bad foot and no weapon deserves to be eaten. These people just get dumber and dumber.

Besides potentially decent ratings and maybe money-grabbing I see no reason for this show’s raison dêtre. If you’re gonna count me, count me out.

Just a thought I had last night while watching the latest episode, but for readers of the comic book, I wonder if we…

stuff from comic book

are seeing the birth of the Whisperers in Depp 2.0’s final proclamation and departure?

Yeah, I wondered that too, Hepcat. But I suspect Nick will be back on the show when it resumes.

There’s no other way to say it: this show is run by retards. There is just no reason for it to be this dreadful aside from the fact that it’s being run by very, very dumb people who prefer untalented or imbecilic writers, or who are unable to capably discern that they have assembled a team of such writers. It is just insultingly stupid, and just when you think it’s hit rock bottom, it starts digging again. That was perhaps the worst (half)season finale I’ve ever seen - so unpleasant and unwatchable.

Despite having a decent production budget (which seems squandered, ineffectively, which isn’t surprising given the previously mentioned judgment and intelligence of the showrunners), the show is just a mess - few likable characters, inconsistent characterization, completely rudderless, nonsensical world-building, sketchy performances, dreadful dialogue and obscenely stupid plotting.

The best the showrunners could come up with as a season finale was a plot where not one, not two, but THREE of the 8 cast members…go insane and/or are unable to grasp reality? And at least 2 of those transformations, if not all three, were completely unearned and only seeded with a couple of moments in prior episodes. And the person who controls the location they’re staying at is also insane. And because someone actually thought that the one thing that should be replicated from the Walking Dead was the “zombies in the barn” because everyone clearly loved that Herschel’s farm storyline.

For decades I longed for a return to the world George Romero created and could never imagine the slate of zombie offerings that have become available in the past 10 years. Nor could I imagine one (which was played straight) with solid production values being so dreadful that it would be unwatchable despite my interest in the subject matter, in survival stories, in post-apocalyptic tales, and particularly one set during the collapse-of-society phase – because, let’s face it, there were lots of deficiencies in even the best offerings from the genre (largely low budgets and the resulting c-level and d-level acting talent that garners) but the genre still grew because “what would we do?” to survive in a disaster situation is compelling on a primal level, but even that instinctual interest falls away when that story is depicted in such an asinine, annoying, manner.

Don’t hold back, Desslock. What do you really think about the show?

Wow, that sounds almost Legends of Tomorrow bad. Almost.

Legends of Tomorrow has actually managed to improve over time (faint praise, I know). Somehow, defying all logic, FtWD has managed to become worse.