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Five Reasons “Fear the Walking Dead” Simply Doesn’t Get It
Fear the Walking Dead is one of those television shows that I was really excited about at first. It was a great idea with the wildly popular AMC hit show The Walking Dead becoming a cult phenomenon. Why not start a show about how everything came to be? Fear TWD was supposed to be a good old fashioned origin show. When I was a kid, I would always love to find origin comic books about my favorite super heroes. An origin show about The Walking Dead made perfect sense to me.
Then, the show actually started. To say I am disappointed is an understatement on every level. The show has literally been terrible thus far and there are many reasons why. Can it be saved? Of course. Most any show can change course if they are willing to do something drastic. I am afraid that this show, however, is not likely to make it.
Here are five reasons why:
The Casting – From the mother that literally keeps the same expression no matter what is happening on the screen to the (now) maniac son who takes teen angst and grinds it into your psyche with cliche after cliche, the casting for this show was ridiculous. When your audience literally despises the main characters and hopes they are killed off on the show asap, that is not a good casting choice.
The Artistic Fails – The Walking Dead will often take an artistic approach with their story, characters and happenings and it works brilliantly. The reason it works is because we have lived with these folks for seven seasons and grown to love and care about them. Most importantly, we know who they are, what they might do and how they might react to certain things. The Walking Dead can afford to be artistic. Fear the Walking Dead is trying to mimic this but instead they simply confuse you by randomly starting and stopping story lines. That is not art. It is poor storytelling. Don’t get cute with the flashbacks and so on until your audience understands what the heck is going on.
The Lack of Zombie Action – Granted they are only at the beginning of the Apocalypse, but Fear the Walking Dead is so slow and grinding it bores you to tears. A zombie show should feature zombies, right?
Zero Connections – Other than the fact that you know there is a zombie Apocalypse brewing, this show connects in no way whatsoever to the original. When you have a powerhouse show that is supposed to be directly related, perhaps you should find some way to interest the viewers with connections or at least hint at it….right?
It Ignored the Epic Meltdown – The one thing that intrigued me about the show the most was the possibility of seeing Los Angeles (and the world) in the initial stages of zombiefacation. What would happen when these zombies started popping up? The show instead focused on the ridiculous story of the family and virtually ignored the devastation. It talked about. Oh man…did they talk about it. But they didn’t show it. That was the main draw and they ignored it entirely. When they came back from one season, LA was burning and the world was upside down. I wanted to see how that happened through the eyes of an interesting character. This show gave us neither.
Can the show be saved? Maybe. I would hope that the creators will turn back to what made The Walking Dead so popular. The zombies, the story, the unpredictability and the characters experiencing it all. Time will tell.
