Fear the Walking Dead (AMC)

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161

I guess my read - which is almost certainly wrong - was basically:

[ul]
[li]The government basically decided that the country (and the world) had reached the point of no return. The tipping point. The country was lost to the epidemic, and it was time to shift into containment/preservation mode.[/li][li]Since the country was basically lost, the military stepped in and took over what basic civil services it could (utilities, etc) and regulated when the power was turned on, etc (as shown in the episode).[/li][li]Telecommunications was also shutdown (if it hadn’t failed already) to prevent the societal meltdown going from 10 to 11. Obviously everyone knows the whole shithouse has gone up in flames, but as long as they don’t know exactly how bad it is (is it everywhere or just “here”?), they might just go all sheeple and just hunker down and wait it out. I think most people would do this. Most people would think that eventually the government would reestablish control, etc.[/li][li]That in mind, orders went out to the National Guard all over the country to start establishing camps of uninfected, and to protect them at all costs, etc. Along with that came some pretty harsh orders to establish perimeters around the camps where absolutely everything was killed, regardless of whether they were infected or not, which is what Kim Dickens was seeing, and what we see in the house that was flashing signals at the end of the episode. So why kill everything? Cold hard math, maybe. The military has the supplies and logistics to support ‘X’ number of survivors. Everyone else is an eventual and inevitable threat, and has to be put down.[/li][li]This weeks episode also brought with it the latest orders from the government: Now that a “safe zone” had been established out in the burbs, they were going to make a push into the city and see if they could take it back, etc.[/li][/ul]
I’m probably wrong on most if not all of that, and letting my imagination run wild a bit, but that’s the sorta thing I was going with as I watched last nights episode.

162

Hmm. My take is close to that, but a little different. I figured that the government fell completely apart, and there was now essentially a regional authority run by the local military that was making decisions on their own. That makes sense to me when the end seemed to show them getting into a firefight with what was apparently a survivor group outside of their walls - basically eliminating the competition for resources/control. The part about the push to retake the city (which we as an audience know would be utterly doomed) struck me as a line to pacify the people when supplies were running low; “We don’t have antibiotics because we need to stockpile it for the push to retake the city” - that just didn’t sound believable to me. Ammo? Sure. Antibiotics? Not so much when someone who gets bit dies and turns, although perhaps they somehow haven’t figured that part out yet.

163

Nothing sells “shit, maybe they Military are actually assholes” like golf.

164

That may be why the neighbor’s suicide was highlighted. Sooner or later it’s going to dawn on someone that she turned without being bitten.

165

If they were seriously trying to think through it they could’ve figured that out from their first encounter with Nick’s drug dealer friend, right? In both cases there’s evidence that someone was killed “normally” (gunshot, overdose), and then they later encounter first hand the zombie version. Both cases also leave a little ambiguity because no one witnessed the actual turning, so it’s not air tight, but it doesn’t look like anyone in the family is seriously invested in understanding exactly what the “rules” of this are yet, and given their situation, I’m actually okay with that. The show keeps working for me in ways like that which sort of feel accidental, given how much I dislike a lot of the writing and other choices of the script.

Right now, the family is “safe”. Their new concerns—the role of the military, and the fact that an infection has apparently wiped out much of the city—are starting to get very serious, but as far as we can tell, it’s basically been over a week since anyone in this neighborhood has seen a zombie, and many people might never have seen one in the first place. Even in Madison’s terrible field trip to the real world, she saw nothing but victims of the military, and with that head shot importance probably not still clear, that’s just more dead bodies remaining dead. The further they get from the shock of that first 24 hours and the up close zombies, and the more pressing their totally non-terrifyingly-supernatural threats get, the easier it is to rationalize away or ignore what they saw.

166

Heh, that’s definitely become a trope, hasn’t it? Did that get started with Apocalypse Now* or what? I recently rewatched the SF film Outland (Sean Connery, Peter Boyle) and it was in that, and that came out in 1981 or something, although Boyle’s character was a corrupt corporate guy in that, and he was playing in his office on some kind of virtual range contraption.

*or am I thinking of Full Metal Jacket?

167

[/li]
That’s just it though. We went from what appeared to be an escalating but still manageable situation (even the hospital, which was the worst overrun location, was still being handled when we saw the drive-by) to “fuck it, the world we knew is gone” in-between episodes without so much as a voiceover. That’s a cop out, especially when this show teased so heavily that we were finally going to see how things played out when it all went down. Now I feel like I wasted the last three episodes, like they could have dispensed with the slow burn and just crammed everything into a single episode to get us to military occupation, then another couple of episodes to go from there to Walking Dead West.

The show still fails miserably to answer the burning question, how does a government, military and armed citizenry somehow fail to stop the zombie apocalypse from happening when there was no disease catalyst to create overwhelming numbers of reanimated corpses? The mere fact that this little detachment of 100 soldiers (or however many there are) could effectively contain a 6-mile perimeter, and that we saw helicopters and other equipment that would be essential to establishing zones of control, and there is apparently a headquarters somewhere as well, all point to the ability to handle the situation, so what the hell happened?! I’m also not getting the whole “we shoot to kill anyone outside the fence, infected, non-infected, women, kids, whatever…they’re all to be gunned down without mercy” thing. Why? If the world truly had gone to shit, wouldn’t survivors be a resource too? I just don’t buy U.S. soldiers gunning down their own un-turned people and being OK with it like these seem to be.

168

“Now watch this drive…”

-Tom

169

I both liked and hated this episode. It was very close to being excellent, but the dumb way they telegraphed the military guys being up to no good spoiled the tension. Assuming the guy is not lying, there are 12 pockets of survivors in the LA area, an area that previously had millions of people. Yet look at the smirks and smiles on the faces of the military guys! Don’t they think their families back home(where ever that might be) are in equal danger? Don’t they care? I can understand them still following orders but at least look concerned about the craziness going on.

I’m also not too clear on what’s going on. They kill people outside the fence, but protect the ones inside the fence. What makes the ones inside the fence special? Besides the fact they are already inside the fence, a purely random thing? Why can’t they ‘arrest’ ones outside the fence, check them for infection, then bring them in? Why the hardcore “We’ll take him down” type threats to the civilians who know less about what’s going on than you do? If these people are so expendable then why protect them at all? If they aren’t expendable then why not build trust with them instead of always threatening them? I hope it turns out there was a reason these guys were acting like this.

On the plus side, some of it was creepy. The drug addict acting almost like a vampire, the use of mirrors in many scenes unsettled me for some reason, I think I understand Travis better. He’s a bit what we used to call ‘simple minded’. He’s the guy in the group who is always mentally one step behind everyone else. That’s why he’s sort of the military guy’s mascot, he needs to be told what to do. Now I’m not so frustrated with him because I was the one expecting too much from him. That scene of him finally seeing the light, in this case the military guys killing the guy trying to signal for help, was pretty good. it would have been down right chilling had we seen the military only in a positive light to that point.

The Daniel/Madison scene was great, my favorite of this show so far. It set up a nice twist at the end where who goes and who stays doesn’t turn out like they thought.

170

Ugh, that was mostly disappointing. My opinion of the show is starting to sour a bit.

Count me in with the crowd of folks who was disappointed with the “Nine Days Later” jump forwards. Now we’re apparently more-or-less where Rick Grimes was waking up in the hospital – civilization has fallen off-camera somewhere. I was hoping to see air strikes, or overwhelming hordes of zombies, or a slow escalation of zombie presence, or the collapse of military order resulting in chaos, or… hell, anything.

Gameoverman’s objections about the military are spot-on: this isn’t a nihilistic band of surviving soldiery who have seen the world collapse, it’s a bunch of 19-year-old kids who have (as far as they know) parents, siblings and girlfriends a couple states away. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that they would all be so very tight-lipped and blase about what’s happening.

And yeah, Travis is a bit slow. The idea that he managed to score not one but TWO prime-grade MILFs on a teacher’s salary is one of the hardest things to accept about the show.

I’m still hoping that they can pull something out of the hat in the last two episodes. Theoretically there is a reason why they’d be carting off mentally-unstable people like the car nut and Depp Jr., and maybe it will be a real interesting twist? Hey, a guy can hope.

I did like the junkie son stealing morphine drip from they dying guy. That’s taking him out of the range of “unwilling rehab” and straight into “scum bucket”. Bold choice.

And I liked the fact that the daughter was apparently putting on the act of “spoiled sister” in order to help her brother. Nice touch, especially after she was shown giving herself a jailhouse tattoo in lieu of cutting herself.

I’m a little ambivalent about the Latino daughter whoring herself out to get medicine for her dying mother. I’m not sure that I bought into the idea that a gray market like that had developed so quickly. Still, interesting idea.

Finally - and this probably speaks very ill of me - but I have a hard time telling all the brunette heroines apart. The ex-wife (Liza), the Latino daughter (Ofilia), and the whiny teen daughter (Alicia) all have the exact same hair-style, body-type, and in many of the scenes they seem to have the same complexion. To wit:

Hell, they’ve all got the same TEETH.

It wasn’t until the very last part of the Humvee make-out scene that I figured out it was the barber’s daughter and not the ex-wife trying to score more antibiotics or something.

171

I had the same problem in this episode. I attribute it to the actresses all looking a similar age. The ‘teen’ daughter does not look like a teen, that throws off the chance for her to immediately be recognizable. They have made a half hearted effort to give them a ‘look’, for instance the teen likes showing off her legs(shorts/short skirts). What happens when the camera angle is only from the waist up? You lose any individuality in costuming.

172

I think the ex-wife looks distinct enough (and looks a bit older, but I could see someone not immediately seeing much difference between the Alicia and Ofelia characters. The actress playing Alicia is a vision BTW.

173

Agree with most of the active posters above - very saddened that we didn’t get to see more of society collapsing, and instead just got the cop out “9 days later” - I realize it’s a hard story to tell plausibly, but thought they were on the right track with the first 2.5 episodes and that story of the collapse is just so much more interesting than the human vs human dynamics in an already collapsed world.

I wanted more stories of heroism, more stories of different approaches to the outbreak (successful and unsuccessful), more moral dilemmas of whether to try to rescue your neighbor or secure your family, or run or barricade yourself, fight or run, work together or take advantage of opportunities to individually survive, etc.

I did not want a woman who was too afraid to rescue her neighbor to suddenly be cutting holes in the fence to circumvent the military and go exploring to possibly save someone unknown. I did not want another tired story of military arrogance and incompetence. I did not want another tale of the aftermath of an apocalyptic event rather than the event itself. I did not want more of Johnny Depp Jr. drugging up or Clueless giving herself a more permanent tattoo.

Very disappointed. And yet I still have some hope that all is not yet lost. I think the “military is evil” line might be a misdirection, and that we might actually see a more plausible outcome (which will still end with them on the run due to the military losing control). I also like the fact that zombies are still not play-doh creatures and still individually frightening, and presume we’ll eventually see them in large groups. I don’t love any of the characters, but am starting to like the two older males, at least, and the parental-child antagonism was at least somewhat muted this episode.

But overall, I think the worst thing this show could do would be to end the season in basically the same spot as when Rick woke up in Walking Dead. The show will just seem so superfluous then. It’s making a big mistake not prolonging the collapse of society for another season or so – show the military continuing to be at least somewhat effective, until eventually either isolated and forced to act on its own and integrate with communities. Show the communities struggle to keep utilities running until eventually meeting herds making that strategy unviable. Show heroism rather than antagonism and incompetence. Show what we’d all hope we could do and be in that situation, not a more cynical view of humanity.

174

I am afraid I lost interest and have not seen ep 4. Sounds like I saved an hour of my life.

175

I thought this show would have more of a sense of L.A. about it so far but I’m barely recognizing anything. Doesn’t help that they’re stuck in their miscellaneous neighborhood now. I lost track of some of the characters too, bleh. Hopefully they turn this thing around in a big way in the next two episodes though it doesn’t seem likely.

Also didn’t know that the please-just-DIE-already junkie kid is Stannis’ real life son. Maybe setting him on fire will stop the walker disaster before it starts - can’t hurt at any rate.

176

I have to agree with that. They have left a lot of good stuff on table, stuff that I wanted too see from an ‘as it happened’ telling of the zombie apocalypse. A part of the horror for a survivor of an apocalyptic event is losing everyone you know and/or love. So Travis and Co are it, that’s everyone in their lives in that little group? So far the daughter’s boyfriend is the only loss that’s made an impact(a very small one at that). No one had a best friend or sister or anyone? If this show had taken the time, we could have seen them getting more and more frantic as they slowly realize they are losing everyone and everything. That really is too bad the show’s creators flushed that down the toilet.

177

We are going to have a TV series that covers the events that you didn’t get to see in the original series!

And then we aren’t going to show you those in this series, either. It’s just aggravating.

178

Another outstanding episode. I must be watching a totally different show from all of you. My only gripe is the “bad military” stereotype being used yet again. As to seeing the collapse of civilization, what are you all actually expecting to see? Mass hoards of zombies chowing down everything in their path? To me it is perfectly clear that we are indeed seeing a slow descent into the upcoming chaos. Since the show has not really shown us how people turn into Zombies (do they need to be bitten and then die or does everyone who dies turn into a zombie?) it is unclear as to the possible amount of Zombies that are out there. Most likely people are fleeing the highly populated areas to get away from the “virus” and some are being shot and others are off in parts unknown. That would explain the lack of activity outside the fence. I suspect that in downtown LA you will see a very different environment.

179

They have expressly shown “us” that, as well as our family of protagonists other than the daughter. It’s likely other characters don’t know, or refuse to believe that, however.

180

I don’t know, exactly, what I was expecting to see… TWD had a throwaway shot of Atlanta being napalmed by military planes, so that was kind of my going-in position, but I wasn’t counting on exactly that. But I did expect to see SOMETHING.

Don’t get me wrong. TWD started out 30 days after civilization had fallen to the zombies. I had no issue with that because the show more-or-less declared that it was going to be about how normal, run-of-the-mill Americans dealt with the aftermath of that fall. They didn’t need to go back and show how all that happened because that not what the show was trying to do.

But THIS show specifically trumpeted that it was going to be about the Fall itself and how a middle-calls US family dealt with the actively-collapsing civilization. Moreover, they implicitly promised that we’d see the “how” that eluded us in Atlanta – how, exactly, did US civilization collapse due to relatively slow-moving zombies?

And we’ve gotten neither of those things, really. Two episodes of an apparently large (?) riot, and a shot of the family playing Monopoly, not getting bit by a neighbor, packing their car, and then… I guess that was about it. Minus one civilization. I’ve seen morning commutes that engendered more fear in me. This week.

And again - perhaps this week we’ll see a military facility that is barely holding the line against uncounted millions of gnashing teeth. As the facility falls, so too does any hope of organized resistance to the Walkers.

But right now the goal of the show-runners seem to be to replicate TWD in a more accessible filming location.