Fear the Walking Dead, AMC’s Walking Dead spin-off, wrapped its 6-episode premiere season on Sunday night, capping a quick run that polarized audiences raised on the bloodthirsty gore of its big sister. After taking in the pilot in the end of August, I decided to wait to absorb the entire series as a complete whole, particularly after hearing it was something of a slow burn. For me, that strategy worked best, giving the persistent tension and overwhelming sense of dread that the series seemed to ooze. By the time Sunday’s season finale rolled around, I was able to take it all in as a complete work, and I found it ultimately a compelling side note to The Walking Dead even if some of the punches it packed felt a little muted.
So, what ultimately does Fear the Walking Dead contribute to the overall Robert Kirkman-inspired televerse? It was conceived – clear ratings ploy aside – as a way to turn the clock back on the United States before the zombie apocalypse took over and life as we know it ceased to exist. It gradually introduced us to the outbreak and to social reactions that ran the gamut. One of the most compelling images of the series to date has been the quick clip in the pilot of a videotaped zombie attack on a Los Angeles freeway and the YouTube-obsessed teens’ reactions to it. It was an eerily “now” way to tie the outbreak with modern customs, particularly the burned-out teens’ reactions to the violence. Later, the series explored the militarization of everyday life and, eventually, how that conceit deteriorated as well. It also illustrated the rapid tear-down of socio-economic boundaries, best highlighted by two middle class characters’ vandalism spree in an upper class home. To me, Fear the Walking Dead actually seemed more about class warfare than actual zombie gore, which is intriguing given the object cash grab the series had to be. Perhaps they were trying to reach a little higher than cynics gave them credit.
The characters were a more mixed bag. Only Kim Dickens really broke through with her Maddie Clark, the high school guidance counselor well on her way to Carol-level violence. Dickens gave a tremendous, fully realized performance that ran the gamut from steely determination to ruthless practicality to the emotional moments of a mother’s love and bitter disappointment. This role provided Dickens the material she really needed to break out, and I hope it makes her a star. She’s really the very best thing about the entire series, in my humble opinion. Second place goes to Ruben Blades as Daniel Salazar, a completely ruthless barber who proves adept at cutting more than hair. I found Blades performance subtly terrifying in the clarity Salazar experiences as he uses violence to achieve his goals. On the flip side, I personally found Dickens’s son Nick (Frank Dillane) a whiny, redundant brat, and the series was weaker for all the screen time it dedicated to his cliched drug problems. And, to no fault of the actor, Cliff Curtis’s Travis was written as a comically optimistic person, hilariously oblivious to the deterioration around him.
Reactions to the series have, as I’ve mentioned, run the gamut as well. Some find it redundant and lackadaisically paced. Some find it a compelling exercise of slow-building dread. I fall in the second category for sure, seeing real benefit and potential in the vastly different rhythms that Fear follows. For better or for worse, this is not The Walking Dead. These characters aren’t as brutally efficient as Rick and company have grown to be. This Los Angeles-set location offers vastly different visuals and color pallets to differentiate it from The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead through Season Five has become something of a “wait to see who dies” exercise while Fear focuses more on the impending doom we all know is over the horizon. Yet, and this probably is the biggest complaint people have against it, it resets the zombie clock back to a time when people didn’t understand what they were up against. We have to relive the education process. We have to experience their gradual understanding again. That didn’t bother me, but I can appreciate why it would bother others.
However, the season finale provided everything audiences have been begging for since Day One. Having learned the true intent of “Cobalt” (effectively, the military would leave the safe zones and kill everyone left alive), Travis and his gang fled to the local make-shift hospital to rescue his (dead) wife and Nick. Questionably unleashing an arena full of zombies on the unsuspecting military, our heroes break into the military outpost and have multiple tense, near-death experiences as they wind their way to safety. Most promising is the pick-up of a smart new character, Victor Strand (Colman Domingo), who bargains his way to safety and leads the survivors to his seaside home by the end of the episode. Having plans to abandon the gang and flee to his yacht, Victor is a compelling character, freshly and confidently played by Domingo. I hope to see more of him next season. Plus, the promise of zombie adventures on the sea holds particular interest for me as it is dramatically different than anything we’ve seen on The Walking Dead.
The finale’s shocking moment involves the anticipated death of a particular character who made a gradual shift from bitchy to angelic in preparation for her graceful exit. The method of death is designed to be tormenting and haunting, but, for anyone raised on The Walking Dead‘s “The Grove” episode, it sadly takes on an anti-climactic air.
So what to expect from Season Two? I suspect the zombie ante will be upped significantly to give the audience what they crave: violence and gore. Given that, I suspect Fear the Walking Dead will become exactly what many believe it to be right now: monotonous and redundant. Then, we’ll have two zombie massacre shows about our “walking dead” characters without a home, waiting to die. For now, Fear is unique enough to merit a kind word or two, largely thanks to the mileage it obtains from Kim Dickens’s great performance. Even in the zombie apocalypse, you can’t fake great acting.