L.A. Zomfidential.
By Matt Fowler
Warning: Full spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead’s first season follow…
The idea itself was solid. The notion was supportable. AMC would spin off its blockbuster hit The Walking Dead and feature a brand new set of characters over on the opposite side of the country. Surely, there’d be enough undead chaos to spread around. And so Fear the Walking Dead hit our airwaves this past summer with a quick six-episode first season (much like The Walking Dead did years back), ready to take us on another perilous journey through zombie terrain.
But there was an additional twist. Not only would there be new characters and new locations, but things would take place in the past. Not a prequel series, per se, but a story detailing the early days of the zombie outbreak in Los Angeles. The time period Rick Grimes skipped over while he was comatose in a hospital bed. Again, an interesting set up. Who wouldn’t want to see L.A. succumb to large scale mayhem and madness?
And during the first few episodes, there were definitely some effective moments/beats featuring a city in turmoil. From cops trying to take down a zombie on the freeway to a hospital surrounded by SWAT team members, all shooting at stumbling “patients” who won’t go down. It was different from the woodsy intimacy of the original series, sure, but in a chilling way.
Alycia Debnam-Carey in Fear the Walking Dead.
Now, I won’t repeat too many of my various specific gripes with this first season as you can read those in the individual episode write-ups I did (if you’d like). But I will say that there was a lot of potential here. A lot of intriguing ideas that led to fizzling, or nonexistent, payoffs. I was okay with the focus of the show being on a dysfunctional blended family, though my approval came with an asterisk. I would be fine following the selfish, counter-productive feelings of bitter teens and resentful ex-wives as long as the ensuing craziness and carnage moved to galvanize everyone. And, by the end, it did. Not everyone made it, but characters definitely seemed to shed their irksome bulls*** by the final episode.
Nick (Frank Dillane) had sobered up and found a candidly wise role in the new world. Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) eventually stopped mourning over her dead boyfriend and started bonding with Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), who himself wound up dropping a lot of petty resentment toward his father. It wasn’t a smooth ride, but the Clarks (and company) did wind up getting out of the city (heading to the beach though instead of the desert) and away from most of the danger. And hooking up with Strand – whose monologuing often made him feel like he was from a different, more-heightened story – meant that they could all chillax inside a one-percenter mansion, complete with food and power.
We want to hear it.
Did we have to trudge through a giant ditch of dumb decision-making to eventually get in the clear though? Yes. As usual with regards to the survival horror genre, viewers are extraordinarily impatient when it comes to characters being boneheads. I won’t deny feeling frustrated many times through these first six installments. Beginning with Travis’ refusal to have stark, serious conversations with his loved ones about the specific zombie he encountered in the LA river. Which meant they were kept in the dark. Which meant they, in turn, would attempt to do dumb things. In fact, the “in the dark” aspect sort of acted like a unnerving security blanket for Fear’s whole Season 1 run. People not knowing things, having information kept from them and/or not seeking out correct intel made for, at times, an extremely infuriating block of central characters.
And while everyone in the cast was guilty of this in some form or another, Cliff Curtis’ Travis took biggest portion of the cake. I’m not knocking anyone’s performance here. Fear contained solid acting from its leads and Curtis, along with Kim Dickens’ Madison, provided a good adult anchor for most of the show. But Travis was so painfully slow to act on any front that he became a giant liability. He started out as the one guy who actively believed Nick (enough to go waltzing through shooting gallery at night by himself!) and then wanted to get the hell out of town, to a guy who barely did anything. Even when hard-pressed.
As one of the first people in the city to see, up close, the horror of a zombie, he was also the only one who didn’t want to kill zombies. And he’d stand by and just witness things happening (soldiers shooting survivors out in the distance, soldiers taking his girlfriend’s son, swiping his neighbors, etc) with no follow-up plan. Others would have to figure things out for him. By the end, we did get a moment featuring Travis finally snapping and beating a man to (near?) death, but it was too late. I don’t know. Maybe if they’d cast someone more meek looking than Curtis. Travis was an English teacher, but he looked battle-ready. This may have also contributed to our frustrations.
Cliff Curtis and Jamie McShane in Fear the Walking Dead.
While on the topic of specific characters, I should say that Ruben Blades’ Daniel was a seasonal highlight. No, I didn’t think much of the torture stuff with Shawn Hatosy’s Andy was handled well, but Daniel’s cold pragmatism (contrasted with his stubborn love for his obviously dying wife) made him an early fan favorite. And the twist/reveal about his backstory was pretty cool. Likewise, Madison’s early non-altrusictic decisions to “protect her own” were appreciated.
Where the series faltered the most though was with the military intervention aspect. The premise that changed the entire back half of the season, having stopped our main characters from ditching town halfway through. And look, despite the week-or-more time jump that accompanied it, it initially felt good. I thought the Clarks trying to battle gross army negligence and abuse would breathe fire into the show. But it was never handled right. There was no central character on the army side to focus on, or to play the enemy. And while the military seemed to be actively trying to help the wounded, they were also, like, shooting people for crying too much. And shooting people for sending mirror signals (did we ever even find out what happened there?).
At one point, a lead candidate for a show villain was Lt. Moyers, but he was abruptly killed off-screen and nothing came of him. And because the army’s role was never quite portrayed coherently, the massacre in the finale felt a bit wonky. Some bad guys got torn apart, but a lot of good people also died. Including Elizabeth Rodriguez’s Liza, who got bit in the midst of it all. In the end, the entire army angle only served to incorporate Victor Strand into the mix while keeping our main players sheltered from information and walkers for far too long.
Fear the Walking Dead contained some chilling and heart-pounding moments. It wasn’t without scares here and there. Or full-scare gore for that matter. But it spent three episodes setting up a core cast of characters with a solid plan and then shut it all down and kept them caged up for the remaining three more chapters. Which only served to keep them mostly inactive and ineffective until it was time to release a giant stadium full of zombies, causing a ton of death and destruction
