Fear the Walking Dead – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 16 – Wrath

“All this is just what was. There’s gotta be something after.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

So finally, FINALLY, that’s a wrap on the All Out War, in a mostly satisfying and thoughtful season finale for The Walking Dead. It’s been two and a half seasons since we first encountered antagonists the Saviors; that’s over two years ago now. Their presence has been, since then, almost a default format for the show, and it’s a format that’s got real tired. Thank heavens the series can finally do something else. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 16 – Wrath”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 1 – Monster

“It’s mob rule on land. What makes you think it’s any different out here?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After a storming season finale for AMC’s ratings behemoth The Walking Dead, the long wait for resolution to that controversial cliffhanger ending is now being filled by the return of previously lacklustre spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. Fear’s first season was mediocre at best, seemingly taking an age to reach the point of its zombie apocalypse, then avoiding showing us any of the actual detail in favour of following a group of unlikeable characters in a military quarantine. It was (eventually) interesting enough, but felt like a missed opportunity. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 1 – Monster”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 6 – The Good Man

“It doesn’t matter how you die. You come back. We all come back.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

This week saw Fear the Walking Dead reach its first season finale, and (finally) show some action. And some zombies. You know, more than one at a time. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 6 – The Good Man”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 5 – Cobalt

“The game is changed. We return to the old rules.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

“Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”, as WB Yeats writes in his apocalyptic poem The Second Coming. In this penultimate ep of Fear the Walking Dead, we see that process in action, as even the Gestapo-like National Guard start to crumble and run, while the understaffed ‘hospital’ is seen to resemble the sort of battlefield infirmary you might have seen in the Civil War, complete with prison stockade. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 5 – Cobalt”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 4 – Not Fade Away

“We’re safe inside the fence. Outside, everything’s dead. Everything’s gone.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

As a neophyte, fledgling series coasting on the coat tails of its phenomenally successful parent series, Fear the Walking Dead has thus far been wildly uneven in terms of tone, style and pacing. And yet episode 4 feels like the first time the show has properly realised its USP. It’s the most unsettling ep yet – despite the fact that, for the first time in the run, there wasn’t a single zombie to be seen. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 4 – Not Fade Away”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 3 – The Dog

“She’s not sick. She’s dead.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Fear the Walking Dead continues to get pacier in this third instalment, though there’s still a fair bit of the soap opera that pretty much dominated the pilot episode to the exclusion of most everything else. Like the second episode, this one follows the quasi-real time approach (with a significant gap in the middle) which is apparently going to be the show’s style – a nice way to extend a narrative that logically would be over pretty quickly otherwise. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 3 – The Dog”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 2 – So Close, Yet So Far

“When civilisation ends, it ends fast.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Civilisation may be ending fast, but there was still fairly little plot advancement in this second ep of AMC’s cash cow spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. And yet, despite that fact, this was a much tauter, pacier instalment than the pilot, due in no small part to being told almost entirely in real time. Like 24, but with zombies. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 2 – So Close, Yet So Far”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot

“She was eating them!”

(SPOILER ALERT!)

There’s a fundamental problem with prequels, which is that you know how they’re going to end. Along the way, you often have to contort your story to make it fit with the pre-existing outcomes (“have the protocol droid’s memory wiped”). Of course, knowing broadly how a story will end doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyable – otherwise nobody would have gone to see Titanic (SPOILER – the ship sinks). The challenge is to get your audience invested in the characters living through what you already know is going to happen, and hopefully show some spectacle along the way. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot”