After more than a year of playing the guessing game on how good it could be, FEAR THE WALKING DEAD premiered last night, and while some found it thrilling, fresh and exciting, some found it slow and boring. I'm here to share my thoughts on what I thought about the new show.
SET UP:
FEAR THE WALKING DEAD was created by WALKING DEAD creator, Robert Kirkman and also Dave Erickson. The premise of the show is to get a different perspective on the Zombie (or Walker) apocalypse. The show (currently) is taking place in the month that WALKING DEAD character (and certified bad ass) Rick Grimes is laying in a hospital bed, enjoying his coma. The show does a nice job spicing it up and giving us a new setting with the L.A backdrop, the city is a refreshing new setting instead of the woods of Atlanta. FEAR also does a great job making the city feel as alive as its population, even though when we start there are a few walkers right off the bat. We open up with discount Johnny Depp, Frank Dillane, who plays the character Nick. Nick is perhaps the most complex character in the show so far with his struggle to over come a drug problem, distances himself from his moms fiancee Travis, and being the only one aware that there is something going on. That is until more and more mysterious deaths and people gone missing continue. Before the world goes to crazy though we are introduced to our characters, who I think it is safe to say will be apart of the new “group.”
CHARACTERS:
Kim Dickens- Madison Clark, a high school guidance, shes the mother of Alicia and Nick and is dating school teacher Travis. She struggles to connect with her kids but does the best she can with the support from her fiancee.
Cliff Curtis- Travis Manawa, the English school teacher and Madison's fiancee, he has a son named Chris from another marriage with his ex wife Liza. He struggles to relate to both his soon to be step children and his actual son. A refreshing take on the main male lead from what we are used to in TWD, he's vulnerable and not much of an authority figure or leader.
Frank Dillane- Nick Clark, a kid who has no future and is battling a drug problem. We focus a lot of attention on him and his misadventure throughout the first episode.
Alycia Clark- Madison's daughter who is the exact opposite of her older brother Nick. She has high grades, a future and a boyfriend who she is is really ambitious about.
THOUGHTS:
Fear The Walking Dead does a fantastic job setting up the tension and building it throughout the course of the episode. You can see hints the the apocalypse is coming whether its as obvious as the main characters watching news broadcasts of the walkers being shot, or just MISSING PERSON's posters hanging on a wall in the background. Some people might be discouraged knowing more about what is about to come than the main characters do, and that is understandable, but it could also be quite fascinating. Think of it as your on the outside watching what is going to happen, knowing that millions upon billions are going to die and the world as we know it will end, and you know it is inevitable, like watching Anakin Skywalker become one if the greatest villains in the galaxy, it has to happen. The problem is that the story does take a few boring stops along to way, mostly to focus on Nick and his struggle with drugs, avoiding the family, and having a few other things that I wont mention for spoilers sake. There was to many scenes of him in the hospital, to many times where the sentence “Where's Nick?” is used. The hour and a half episode spend a good amount of time finding its footing, it does a good job building the characters, even though none are as fun to watch as Rick and company. They could have left more of the character development out of this episode and saved it for future episodes. If you are looking for start to finish action, this isn't the episode for you, although, the few action scenes they have are thrilling and exciting to watch. Another plus for the show is that they make the walkers scary again, in the original show walkers have become more of an obstacle than a threat, but that's the idea. When you have characters living in a world with zombies for over a year, you learn to deal with them, where as here we see them more fresh to the humans than ever in the universe of The Walking Dead. However as I previously stated, the show does have its lacking parts, I still have yet to find a whole lot of interest to invest in the characters because there where a few that I found myself saying out loud, “I can't wait to watch them die,” but the show has a chance for the characters to grow and become people in which we can get behind and want to see eventually live.
Going into this show with no expectations to be impressed, the action did outshine the boring exposition. I found myself really enjoying the horror/action elements and, for me at least, even though its the kind of things you might have seen before watching Dawn of The Dead or Night of The Living Dead. The episode itself severed as a classic Zombie movie that will stretch 6 episodes this season, which raises the question, what will the show do once we get past the month that Rick is in the hospital, and the show just becomes another Walking Dead. That question will have to wait for the future, as for the first episode the threat is more alive than ever, the walkers are harder to kill because their not rotting corpses, the chaos is built and the whole city of L.A has only gotten a taste of what awaits them. FEAR THE WALKING DEAD: EPISODE 1 gets a........
6/10
It's better than I thought and I'm excited to see where the show goes next. However the hour and a half was a little bogged down on trying to make us like characters a little to quick, and not allowing us to just take our time with them.