Fear The Walking Dead

Yesss

I'm looking forward to it. Plus, the best part is since it is not based on comics, there will be no spoilers! It will help fill the gap between seasons of TWD. I have Game of Thrones to hold me over on Sunday nights for a while too. Plus Penguins playoff hockey soon (if they hold off the Senators tonight). :)

I'm stoked about this show, although I'm not crazy about the name. It seems more silly than epic. But if it lives up to the original, they can call it whatever they want. Well, they can call it whatever they want regardless, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, this show is going to be based in LA, so it will be a totally different cast and it will show the early days of the walker outbreak, since TWD kind of skips over it with Rick getting shot and then waking up in the hospital to the aftermath. It will definitely be interesting.

I was reading comments about the show somewhere, and someone posted that he/she was excited about seeing how the outbreak occurs. If I'm not mistaken, they're still not going back to the beginning so that we see how it started. We're just going to get an earlier glimpse so that we see the initial response and get to see society fall. We still won't learn how it started though. At least that's my understanding. Either way, I'm excited for it.

Im in!

Wallace108 wrote:

I was reading comments about the show somewhere, and someone posted that he/she was excited about seeing how the outbreak occurs. If I'm not mistaken, they're still not going back to the beginning so that we see how it started. We're just going to get an earlier glimpse so that we see the initial response and get to see society fall. We still won't learn how it started though. At least that's my understanding. Either way, I'm excited for it.

Awww, that bums me out. I was really hoping we would find out how the outbreak occurs. Oh well, I'm sure we'll enjoy the show anyway.

I'm not thrilled with the title of the show either, but there's nothing we can do about that. I'm just gonna call it "Fear."

Lady Steel wrote:

I was really hoping we would find out how the outbreak occurs.

My information might have been incorrect. I just found this:

Quote :

This series presumably shows us what happened before the plague as well as what caused the plague that raised the Walkers.

http://www.thebitbag.com/walking-dead-robert-kirkman-fear-walking-dead/111108

So perhaps we will find out.

Some random thoughts after the first two episodes:

1. One of the first things that jumped out at me is that, obviously, FTWD doesn't believe that black lives matter. Of all the characters who have had more than just a few lines of dialogue, three have died. And all three were black. I'm OK with the deaths of the principal and the drug dealer, but I thought Alicia's boyfriend would play a big role and end up being this show's Glenn or Daryl. Nope! Bitten and left to die in episode 2.

2. Does anyone on the show watch the news? Does anyone, other than Tobias, have Internet access? How is it that Tobias knows exactly what is happening (he's learning about it on the Internet), yet no one else has a clue until they actually have a run-in with a zombie?

3. I can accept a zombie apocalypse. What I have a hard time accepting is unbelievable dialogue. Five scenes in the second episode bothered me:

*When the family tried to get Alicia to leave her infected and dying boyfriend.
OK, so the family is packing up and fleeing to the desert. They find their daughter with her infected and dying boyfriend. She has no idea what is wrong, but her family DOES! Where was the sense of urgency? Why didn't they tell her what is going on? And/or grab her and get the F out of there?

*When Travis was talking to his ex-wife on the phone and trying to locate his son.
It sounded like a normal conversation between ex-spouses about locating their son. Again, where was the sense of urgency? Obviously, Travis's ex-wife had no clue what was happening. Here's a thought ... TELL HER!!! Then maybe she'll stop being bitchy and resistant. That might have helped speed up the process of locating his son.

*When Travis and his ex-wife tried getting their son away from the protest.
Again, why all the secrecy ... which only slowed down their escape? Tell him what is happening. It doesn't have to be a long, drawn-out explanation. One word would suffice ... ZOMBIES!!! Or if nothing else, grab him and drag him out. Perhaps then he'd realize that something serious was happening and, like his mother, wouldn't be so resistant.

*When Madison returned home after killing the principal.
She walks into the house and strolls into the bathroom like she just came hope from work or something. And even after Nick told her that Alicia tried leaving to go see her boyfriend (who is infected and dying), Madison doesn't show any sense of urgency in telling her what is going on. Her brother having the seizure was the only thing that kept her there. There was a very real chance that she'd just take off when Madison returned. If it was me, as soon as I walked into the house, I would have grabbed Alicia and Nick and told them what happened and that we have to stay together. I get that Madison was in shock, but you'd think that the maternal instinct to protect her children would kick in. Heck, she found it within herself to go across the street and, presumably, tell the neighbor what was happening. Why not tell her daughter and prevent her from slipping out to go to her boyfriend?

*When Madison and Travis were talking on the phone after the riots started.
Again, for the most part it sounded like a normal conversation that a husband and wife would have on a normal day. Where was the sense of urgency? Madison didn't say anything about what happened at the school. It took Travis a few minutes to even mention the fact that he's pinned down in the middle of a riot. Like the other scenes, the dialogue just didn't seem believable considering the situation. If I had written the script, all of the dialogue WOULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE PEOPLE WOULD BE F'ING FREAKING OUT!!!!!!!!

With all of that said, I'm actually enjoying the show.

i had forgotten all about this show coming on. i may try and get into once i get through Game of Thrones. I have been binge watching that for a couple of weeks now.

Enjoyed the first episode, thanks for the spoiler alert Wally Looking forward to watching the second one tonight, but the acting thus far has been very believable in an unbelievable situation. "Suspending disbelief" is a must for this style show. Sad to see Alicia's BF is gonna die, I thought that kid was great in The Wire...

Drizztbob wrote:

Enjoyed the first episode, thanks for the spoiler alert Wally  Looking forward to watching the second one tonight, but the acting thus far has been very believable in an unbelievable situation.  "Suspending disbelief" is a must for this style show.  Sad to see Alicia's BF is gonna die, I thought that kid was great in The Wire...

It's not a spoiler if the episode has already aired.

I'm a big fan of horror and sci-fi shows, so I don't have a problem suspending disbelief in order to accept impossible scenarios. But for a show to work, the characters have to react in a believable way to those impossible scenarios. This didn't happen on the show but just as an example, if you were sitting on a park bench and saw a zombie attack and start eating someone, I think it's a safe bet that you would freak out. Now, if a show was portraying that same scenario, and a character sitting on the bench points and calmly says, "Hey, look, it's a zombie eating someone," as if he's pointing out something normal like a rabbit chewing on grass or something, then that would be a totally unbelievable reaction to seeing a zombie. And that's my point with episode 2 ... there were too many instances of characters saying things in ways (and doing things) that just weren't believable.

EDIT: Apparently, I'm not the only one who is picking up on the characters' unbelievable reactions to what is happening. Here are some snippets from reviews I found on just page 1 of a search for reviews for episode 2:

Quote :

I like actress Kim Dickens and I think I could like Madison Clark, but not if the writers keep making her say and do stupid things. Between the pilot, in which she and Travis both ignored “blood and viscera” in the junkie den where Nick was staying, and never once called the cops about it, and her lines to Tobias last week about the authorities informing us if anything is wrong, Madison risks becoming a really irritating main character. Later she refuses to explain to her high school senior daughter what the heck is going on, putting everyone at even greater risk. This is all bad writing decisions and not a problem with the acting.

Why, Fear the Walking Dead writers, why? Why do you care so little about the basic building blocks of plausibility? That it’s a zombie show is no excuse. If anything, to be taken seriously a zombie drama needs realistic, believable characters and motivations.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/08/30/fear-the-walking-dead-episode-2-review-so-close-yet-so-far/

Quote :

It's a poor comparison, but the show is starting to be vaguely reminiscent of "Lost."  And, like "Lost," "Fear the Walking Dead" is best when you see people dealing with the crisis at hand. Unfortunately, "Fear" is spending a lot of time showing us characters who are barely alarmed at rolling power failures, reanimated corpses and a sudden abundance of human biting incidents.  

http://www.redeyechicago.com/tv/redeye-fear-the-walking-dead-episode-2-review-20150830-story.html

Quote :

I have to admit that I really don’t sense any sort of panic or urgency among the characters considering they’re witnessing the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. I think by zombie number two, I would grab whichever family members were close by, cut my losses, and get out of dodge while I still could. These people rarely project a scream in the presence of zombies and it’s just not realistic. How can you be an actor in a zombie series and not possess the ability to act terrified?

http://1428elm.com/2015/08/31/fear-walking-dead-episode-2-review/

Quote :

But, as far as feeling a connection to any of the main characters and how they are reacting, there is a lot left to be desired.

...

Upon finding Alicia in bed with her sick boyfriend, they gently tell her they gotta leave, freaking her out. The sick boyfriend gets the subtle hints they are laying down, and tells her to go with them, yet they can’t be bothered to tell their own daughter what’s actually going on. The mother has a terrifying encounter with the principal, now turned walker, a the school while she is trying to get meds for Nick, and then decides to keep all that information to herself when she gets home. Also, when the father is looking for his son, and shows up on the doorstep of his angry ex-wife, he not only doesn’t clue her in, but she actually tells him she worked late and hasn’t heard of anything happening. This is the perfect time to tell her what he’s seen, and there is nothing. These instances where the information that can be shared is vital to the story, yet is being withheld for no point whatsoever, are infuriating to me as a member of the audience.

http://fanboysinc.com/tv-review-fear-the-walking-dead-episode-2-this-doesnt-end/#sthash.n3DZXZiD.dpbs

Quote :

Some of the other decisions, like Travis and Madison’s refusal to explain anything they’ve seen to other members of their families despite riots and zombies wandering on their own front lawns, rekindle the worst memories of horror shows.

http://bamsmackpow.com/2015/08/31/fear-the-walking-dead-episode-2-review-so-close-yet-so-far/

Wallace108 wrote:

Some random thoughts after the first two episodes:

*When the family tried to get Alicia to leave her infected and dying boyfriend.
OK, so the family is packing up and fleeing to the desert. They find their daughter with her infected and dying boyfriend. She has no idea what is wrong, but her family DOES! Where was the sense of urgency? Why didn't they tell her what is going on? And/or grab her and get the F out of there?

I don't think the daughter would understand fully well even if they had told her. She'd probably just of accused them of being crazy. That's one of the first responses people have when you tell them something horrible, or something that'd normally be unbelievable. They get angry, or they go into denial. I think they handled the situation quite well given the circumstances. Right now we're seeing all of the confusion and how it mucks everything up and makes the outbreak even more dangerous.

i agree with wally. nothing bothers me more than when they have characters saying and reacting to circumstances the way no normal human being would.

There is definitely a lack of urgency in the show. It seems like its more than just Nick who is on the pain meds. Everyone is kind of sleep walking. No screaming, no running, just some gasps and a little scrambling.

Have some emotion people. If I saw my neighbor attacking and eating my other neighbor, I'm pretty sure I would do more than just casually observe.

The Walking Dead is one of my all-time favorite shows, so I came into Fear really, really, really, wanting it to be awesome. I knew it would be difficult (if not impossible) for it to equal The Walking Dead, but I hoped that it could at least get somewhere close to the same level of awesomeness. And it may over time, but right now Fear is failing on a lot of levels for me.

With that said, some random thoughts from this week's episode of Fear The Walking Soldiers ...

Unless I blinked and missed it, there wasn't a shot of a single zombie in this week's episode. Could they not have shown some wandering around outside the fence? It just felt odd that we've seen at least one zombie in every episode so far, and now we get none. I kept waiting and waiting, especially when Madison went outside the fence. But nothing. Not a single zombie. On a show about zombies. Must have been their bye week.

Yes, I call them zombies even though the Walking Dead crew refuses to.

I'm really not liking a single character on the show. I know at some point some favorites will emerge, but at this point, I'm rooting for the zombies to eat all the current main characters.

In a few years, we'll get a third show that will tell us everything that happened between Day 1 and Day 9 on Fear. Seriously, I thought the purpose of Fear was to show us how everything happened ... how society collapsed. In the last episode we saw a few scenes of a riot, and the electricity went out. And this week Los Angeles is a wasteland, and all the main characters are in a fenced-in safe zone under martial law. It feels like we missed everything that happened between the initial riot and the safe zones. If I was binge watching this show instead of watching it live, I'd think that I somehow missed about 3 or 4 episodes.

It seems apparent that Fear (at least in its early stage) is going to focus on the government and military (as the bad guys). The direction it's going in is clear, and I do like the direction ... I just wish they would have spent more time on showing us how the collapse happened. We knew that Los Angeles was going to become a wasteland, and I thought that's what we were going to see happen. The lure of this show was to see how people dealt with the start of the zombie apocalypse, but it feels like we missed all of it, and we're now deep into the apocalypse. I don't know the timeline, but it feels like in just four episodes, we're almost at the same point where The Walking Dead started. Los Angeles already looks like Atlanta. Minus the zombies (at least in this episode).

With all of that said, I do like the direction the show is going in. I just wish we could have gotten to see more of the collapse. It happened too quickly.

LA has a population of about 4 million ... so where in the hell are they ? they've fenced in a few small suburban neighborhoods and killed some , but that doesn't explain where the other 3 million plus people are.
i'm assuming the military are rounding up an executing people with a low survival rate out of fear they turn into zombies and infect more people , but yet they haven't given any hint of a theory on how they think it's transmitted other than being bitten. we all know from TWD that everybody is a carrier , but they said nothing on FEAR to lead you to believe it was the case in the early stages.

Master_Of_Puppets wrote:

LA has a population of about 4 million ... so where in the hell are they ? they've fenced in a few small suburban neighborhoods and killed some , but that doesn't explain where the other 3 million plus people are.
i'm assuming the military are rounding up an executing people with a low survival rate out of fear they turn into zombies and infect more people , but yet they haven't given any hint of a theory on how they think it's transmitted other than being bitten.  we all know from TWD that everybody is a carrier , but they said nothing on FEAR to lead you to believe it was the case in the early stages.

Good points. I'm still just shaking my head that we went from a few outbreaks and a riot, to LA being a wasteland without seeing it happen. That's what I thought we were supposed to see in this show. I was expecting to see unsuspecting people get attacked by zombies and the chaos that would ensue. But the only scenes that really showed the clash between normal society and the coming apocalypse was the mother across the street getting ready for a birthday party, and then later getting attacked in her front yard, and the cops shooting the homeless guy who was really a zombie. Those are the kinds of scenarios I was expecting to see more of. Instead, we see a few isolated attacks ... and then a wasteland. Where we're at now feels like Woodbury, minus the Governor but with a military.

I feel like we're still in the middle of the outbreak. I think the best is yet to come. We're at the part where fear and panic are starting to settle in, and the outbreak is still IMO only in it's infant stages.

IowaSteeler927 wrote:

I feel like we're still in the middle of the outbreak. I think the best is yet to come. We're at the part where fear and panic are starting to settle in, and the outbreak is still IMO only in it's infant stages.

Los Angeles is a wasteland and the main characters are in a safe zone under martial law. If I was in that situation, fear and panic would have settled in on Day 1.

Got to say that the wife and I are not impressed with "Fear..." at all. Most of the time both of us are fiddling with our iPhones playing games and texting instead of actually watching the show. We just aren't connecting with the characters in this one like in "The Walking Dead". You guys are spot on with the biggest problem being plausible reaction to crisis and the inexplicable lack of communication and truth between the characters in these situations. It's just not believable and quite frankly, boring.

Another problem for me is the zombies themselves. I know this is the beginning of the apocalypse and the walkers are freshly dead/reanimated, but the creepiness factor isn't as intense as having a rotting corpse chase the characters like in "TWD". These walkers are "zombie-lite" compared to "TWD" and don't project as much horror.

I watched one episode, it will be my last.

another episode...another fail

i thought the purpose of this show was to educate the viewers on the events leading up to the cause and spread of the contagion. something TWD didn't do.

90% of these shows are prepping the sheep for the coming events.
Survival shows out the wazoo.
And I'm damn sure tired of hearing, "its the final count down".
Calgon take me away.