Fear the Walking Dead Season 1 Review (TV)

Fear The Walking Dead - Pilot Review (TV)

  More like The Sleepwalking Dead, am I right? The pilot episode of Fear the Walking Dead is fucking boring. You could make the argument that The Walking Dead proper is really a drama series set in a post-apocalypse, but at least it's about interesting people in unimaginably high stress situations that takes place in unique, captivating locations. Fear the Walking Dead features a mundane family in Los Angeles, and the majority of it takes place in a high school...

  The focal point of the premiere episode features a shitty Johnny Depp-like junkie kid and his family who suddenly gives a shit about him when the spec script calls for it. The first scene has him looking for his girlfriend in a heroin church, then running away horrified when he finds her chewing on a corpse. He gets hit by a car in what I assume was supposed to be a shocking turn of events, but anyone familiar with the main series will probably give a shrugging, “And...?” to the cold open.

  The twist here is that this show is a prequel? What that means is we're not supposed to compare the low energy and no stakes of Fear the Walking Dead to the five (mostly excellent) seasons of the established franchise, but by taking up the namesake I don't find that fair to the viewer. There is a way, I'm sure, to make the lead up to the zombie infestation captivating and tense. Fear the Walking Dead has just failed miserably. Without the title this could maybe pass for a generic zombie show at best, but judging this episode alone it could more easily be a run-of-the-mill network family drama that mistakenly had five minutes of a generic zombie show spliced onto the first and last act.

  I completely understand the need to establish a sense of normalcy in a horror universe to ground the world before everything goes to shit, but here it is just handled so poorly. Comically, there's generous use of an intense score during scenes where absolutely nothing is happening. No real threat has been offered up beside the aforementioned ineffective opening scene, and you never give half a shit about any of the characters anyway. The teenagers are angsty stereotypes and the adults are whining about divorces and child custody... the zombies can't eat them soon enough. After the chaos of the outbreak, once you suspend your disbelief that zombies exist anything goes because it takes place in a fantasy world. Here, in “reality”, these are just off-putting people doing a bunch of dumb shit.

  Depp-alike's step-dad decides to investigate the heroin den in the middle of the night (in downtown L.A.) by himself instead of calling the police. In a pre-zombie world, Depp is a zombie magnet, seeing one of the assumed first zombies in existence (who disappears without a trace, apparently), then is magically hospitalized at the exact moment the staff starts to become worried in the corpse-ridden hospital about the dead... because his roomate dies.  His mom and step-dad conveniently witness one of the first public incidents as well, and after he shoots his dope dealer they all see him turn... meanwhile the rest of the city is going about it's business more or less unaffected. That's more than a few coincidences that make this world seem unreal and incredibly small.

  The concept of Fear the Walking Dead has potential; watching a major city go down in flames while knowing the hopelessness that awaits them later on is a goldmine. Judging by this episode, I have very little confidence in the ability of the cast and crew to execute the show in a satisfying manner. There were a total of two special effect action/gore shots here, and they were unimpressive. The character building didn't work. The pacing had me rolling my eyes and stifling some yawns. I'm still holding on to hope that this was just a slow burn and the remainder of the series will catch fire, but you can honestly just skip this entire episode because it's boring. At this point it seems little more than a cash grab on the Walking Dead name.

Fear The Walking Dead - "So Close, Yet So Far" Review (TV)

  Has anyone coined the term “zombra” yet? As in: a drama that happens to have zombies thrown in the mix to spice things up and patch up the holes in the script? If not, I claim it. “So Close, Yet So Far”, the second episode of the “companion” series to The Walking Dead, falls neatly into this newly minted genre. The pilot episode may have been a complete mess that failed in every conceivable way, but this one at least gets the gears turning. Not very well, but it's a smooshy step up from complete shit, anyway.

  Even staunch champions of the real Walking Dead series roll their eyes at the overuse of the “split everyone into small groups to highlight their relationships” trope. Want to guess what happens here? We've barely seen the main family together for more than a few minutes and haven't seen the father figure interact with his ex-wife or biological son at all, and already we're split into two camps. There are some mysterious outsiders thrown into the mix as well, who I'm sure will spin some eye-opening, scene chewing yarn next episode while the camera cuts to the reactions of the main cast to build their relationships with each other in lieu of anything interesting happening.

  Fear The Walking Dead continues to feel generic, not taking advantage of the mass scale chaos it's populous Los Angeles setting is capable of delivering. We return to the school for an extended scene involving the mother breaking into an evidence/contraband locker to steal Oxycontin for her overacting junkie son. Seriously... the kid is going through heroin withdrawals, and it's portrayed like Uma Thurman overdosing in Pulp Fiction: foam vomit, convulsions, and all... Even overlooking how stupid it is for her to jeopardize her job over a situation she's not entirely sure of, the scene plays out in a ridiculous manner.  She runs into one chubby, basement dwelling internet conspiracy theorist kid who is the only person in this universe with Twitter access. He acts as the wise prophet, using his singular power of forum trolling to lay down what the audience already knows is going to happen regarding the outbreak and the collapse of civilization. He's also needs his knife back, because apparently standard kitchen knives are hard to come by in L.A. He's also stealing stockpiles of food from the school's fallout shelter, and again Mom goes along with it because giving into mass hysteria is “smart” from the audience's point of view, but man, is it dumb given the current situation...

  We get some zombie action here, as Mom comes to Wise Troll's aid from the attacking Principal Obama by bashing the zombie's head in with a fire extinguisher. It's pretty bogus. Lot's of jump cuts and bad editing ruin any sort of impact the scene should have produced. Other noticeable bungles include some heavy handed attempts at social commentary when Biological Brown Son tries filming the scene of a police shooting with an unarmed homeless person as the victim. Because cops shoot unarmed suspects. Get it? Then there's what seems to be a call back to the original Night of the Living Dead in the closing scene (you know... that movie that tackled racism and paranoia with tact about fifty years ago?) which again just seems cheap and unwilling or unable to use the show's setting in any original way. There's also a riot that happens mostly off screen, too...

  Episode two of Fear the Walking Dead has elevated the trajectory of the series from “awful” to “bad”. The characters are starting to get some detail drawn on top of them, but that's coming at sitcom-quality hijinks and they are still so very, very bland. This may be a case of the creators' eyes being larger than the show's budget, or it could just be stapled together script pages swept up from a number of rejected zombies shows. That isn't to say I won't continue to watch the series; there's only four episodes left and I bought the season pass, but... ehhhhh...

Fear The Walking Dead - "The Dogs" Review (TV)

  Fear the Walking Dead continues to shamble along; the half-baked zombie makeup/CGI hybrids a morose reminder of the impending daylight shortening, soul crushing Winter slowly approaching and the dead leaves and seasonal depression that comes along with it. It's also just some bullshit nonsense to watch while waiting for better TV and horror movies to return in the Fall.

  The series is jumping headlong into ridiculous territory at this point. If the shallow, corny characters and whiplash-inducing jumps from “all out apocalypse” to “minor inconvenience” are carefully constructed gags... then kudos. It's not a bad Birdemic-style joke. I'm still not quite convinced it's self aware enough to go all out comedy just yet, and even if that's the case it's kind of a dick move to use The Walking Dead name as a punchline.

  Some highlights from “The Dogs”: Trapped inside the barber shop from last episode, the ethnic, segregated portion of the group (commentary?) watch a riot take place outside in broad daylight, only to step outside into the pitch black night moments later. Wading through the tamest riot L.A. has ever witnessed (most of the stereotypical '90s “punks” are happy just standing around, beating on walls), they easily make their way under some carefully framed scaffolding where a crowd is just standing around, waving their arms. After some shitty editing the scaffolding topples onto an old woman, who is then unceremoniously rescued by the “mob” who seems unfazed by the cops eating each other. The family then loads up into a truck and speeds away into the night (after destroying someone's motorcycle like a gaggle of assholes) in some of the funniest, most blatant use of blue screen this side of a late night sketch show. That's essentially one scene...

  Meanwhile at the WASP household they're breaking out the Monopoly board and playing with fake money (commentary?). They decide to break into a neighbors' house to steal a shotgun as a family relationship building exercise because two of the three know about the zombie threat, but decide to keep that information from the daughter because they're pranksters. The neighbor knows something is amiss, because half a day of civil disorder was enough for her to kill herself. Some people just don't like change, I guess.

  When the two groups finally and thankfully meet up, the main family tries to execute a plan to escape to the desert while allowing the Venezuelan family they met hours ago to take over their giant house in their affluent neighborhood. On the way out the dead neighbors' husband comes home from a hard day's work, apparently living in some alternate universe where the half assed “chaos” and impenetrable gridlock that has been established doesn't exist. He's about to get eaten by his wife, but fret not... video game CGI Ospreys (the real things are damn expensive) are patrolling the sky and an entire platoon of National Guard shows up at just the right moment to save him and stop the family from escaping. It was a nice little twist at the end of the episode, and it was also completely unearned and illogical. And kind of funny.

  Fear the Walking Dead continues it's upward trajectory in it's third episode, “The Dogs”. It's not good by any metric, but it's now become a cheesy train wreck that may or not be aware of what a silly piece of entertainment it has become. I lamented the network TV quality drama it started as, but this episode steers the series toward campy, made for SyFy, B-movie cheese. With just a little more care and a bigger budget it would be passable as a genuinely okay show; a smaller budget and some heart and wit and this could be a cult classic. I laughed out loud on more than one occasion at the absurdities on screen, and that's worth the use of the word “entertainment” in some capacity. It still sucks, though.

Fear the Walking Dead - "Not Fade Away" Review (TV)

  This show is a real piece of shit. With two episodes left in the first season Fear the Walking Dead is a hopeless, floundering waste of time. I don't give the slightest iota of shit about any one of these characters, so even if these last two episodes are master classes in television horror I still feel like I've wasted four hours of my life watching this pointless drivel. Normally I'd get some satisfaction dissecting the ridiculous coincidences and inconsistencies that have become par for the course in this series, but seriously fuck it. I'm debating whether or not to even bother watching the rest of it even though I've already paid for the season pass...

  “Not Fade Away” manages to impressively grind the already glacial pace to a dead halt. Thought we were going to at least be going along on one of the blandest TV family's ride into a slowly emerging apocalypse? Nope. Now we're stuck with them in a fenced-off quarantine zone under military control. The “fenced-off quarantine zone” is their LA suburban middle-class neighborhood, I mean. And “military control” is... well, every stereotypical, shady, manipulative, hostile takeover you've seen countless times in better media; Day of the Dead, 28 Days Later, State of Decay, the cops in the good Walking Dead series... take your pick. The commanding officer even drives golf balls and sends a government approved doctor house to house to abduct civilians for “relocation” to make sure you know he's by-the-numbers bad guy.

  The main family gets into their usual mundane domestic shenanigans. Junky Depp is still a junky, mom is still a nosy bitch, dad is still a bland slackjaw with a big heart, 'lil sis is moping about her zombie bait boyfriend and henna tattooing his artwork that's been on her forearm for about two weeks (gross), and brown son is making shitty YouTube videos on the roof. When they get together they whine and cry, and make you hate them even more with each passing scene. The only worthwhile interaction they have is when mommy slaps the shit out of Depp-lite for stealing drugs and being one dimensional. Turns out he's a junky and a pussy, which is an awful combination. Oh, and there's still a Venezuelan family living with them.

  That's honestly about it. Thinking about the episode all I can come up with is: military bad. So is this show. Really, fuck this show.

Fear The Walking Dead - "Cobalt" Review (TV)

  The stakes are raised. And they're stupid. Last episode of Fear the Walking Dead introduced us to some cartoon villain military forces occupying the only suburban Southern California neighborhood the gimped budget can afford for some reason... turns out the reason is because they're going to leave soon. Scandalous. Maybe they're going to kill everyone in the town (again... for some reason?) before they exit, but since all the inhabitants are a bunch of wieners who cares? If you didn't get the “absolute power”, anti-military propaganda hammered into you the previous episode, at one point Colonel Twirlystache lets it be known, “I can do whatever I want. I have guns.” Subtle.

  In the show's time line it's been roughly two weeks since the (off screen) outbreak proper, and things have gone from zero to retarded at breakneck speed. Old man Salazar has gone full terrorist, kidnapping a soldier to find the secret location of the military detention camp/hospital where his wife was taken. Turns out he was some sort of Venezuelan bad guy back in his home country, so he has no problem putting the screws to Pvt. Pyle. The gruesome torment includes cutting a small square of skin off the soldiers arm... and that's about it as far as I can tell. The setup seemed like it was there to make Salazar some sort of monster, but either the budget, imagination, or gore makeup talent held back any sort of payoff. Humans are the real monsters... is what I understand from better, more entertaining media.

  Not to be outdone in the missed opportunities department, Main Character Guy (if you can't tell I'm so done with this show) goes on a ride along with the military. The grunts let it be known they've seen Aliens by being a gang of tired tropes, spray painting skulls onto the side of their Humvee to mark the count of walkers they've gunned down. Keep in mind this is about two weeks after an outbreak they don't fully understand and they've been shooting slow moving civilians in bad makeup. They stop to give MCG a chance to whip out his manballs and shoot a diner waitress zombie with a .50 caliber sniper rifle even though a thrown rock with some decent velocity behind it would suffice. He pussies out because he's a pussy, and they want to drive home the point that shooting people isn't easy. Then they shoot her... to drive home the point that MCG's a pussy you shouldn't care about. Then it's off to a hospital for some reason (...yep...)  where they charge in for some off screen zombie action. “Stay in the car”, they tell MCG, “Our budget is gone and we suck at action scenes.”

  In subplot D or E the stepbrother and sister want to fuck each other. Yeah, it's not really incest, and her boyfriend kind of died a couple weeks ago, but whatever. She's kind of cool and cute when she's not moping and he's completely off-putting and unlikable. Almost inappropriate sexual tension in a show completely devoid of any other tension is something, I guess. Just fuck each other. Why not? Or get eaten by zombies. Anything.

  “Cobalt” also introduced some guy in suit who opened the show taunting some other minor character, letting him know he's a failure and his hot wife is going to fuck other dudes while he's locked up in the detention center. He seems pretty out of place in the show, but his opening monologue was pretty effective and brutal. Then Junky Depp arrives in his cell, and he saves him from being dragged away because he needs his “talents” to escape. Someone should probably tell him Junky Depp sucks. And this show sucks. One fucking more...