I tried "Fear the Walking Dead," I really did. I gave it three whole episodes of my undivided attention. It is time to face the facts. I hate it. It's just awful. I wanted it to be good. I had the best of hopes for it. I know the world is getting sick and tired of zombies, but that generalization does not apply to me. I love zombies. I plan for the zombie apocalypse on the regular. I think about it all of the time. Sometimes when I'm talking to someone I really don't like I mentally add them to a list of people I'll keep an eye out for in the zombie horde to make sure I take out. I am the person this sort of show was made for. Except, it's terrible and I hate it.
Here's why.
Poor production quality.
When I say poor I'm being nice. While watching the first two episodes, I kept thinking there was something wrong with my TV. Maybe the HD was going wonky or something. Nope, the production quality is insanely bad. What's worse is I'm starting to think it's intentional. I don't understand the purpose of such bad quality in this context. "The Walking Dead" started out with less financial backing than this show and it's first season had significantly better quality. "Fear the Walking Dead" looks like it might have been shot with an iPhone 4. It's that bad.
Bad acting.
Acting is one of the biggest differences between "Fear the Walking Dead" and it's predecessor. "The Walking Dead" picked effectively a dozen nobodies that also happened to be amazing actors and put out some seriously good television. "Fear the Walking Dead" chose a dozen 'hey, wasn't that guy from [you name it]?' actors that have only made it to vaguely familiar celebrity due to their only semi-convincing acting abilities. Personally, I'd rather watch a bunch of people I've never heard of before acting well rather than these people that were in that one thing that one time cry crocodile tears and stare blankly in the screen. Even the zombies aren't acted out well. Zombies are like the easiest acting job ever and somehow this show has messed it up.
They're trying way too hard to make zombies the secondary issue.
They're trying to make this a show about a struggling family. They're trying to make this a show about social and political issues like current police issues, protest groups, teenage drug abuse, immigration, and even interracial relationships. (In fact, every relationship in this show is interracial. Which is one of those things that when it isn't present it's odd, but when it's the only thing present it's more odd.) What they're not trying to make is a zombie show. But wait, you say. Isn't this show called "Fear the Walking Dead" Why, yes. Yes it is. This is a zombie show trying not to be a zombie show. It's working out about as well as it sounds.
I find myself constantly screaming at the screen.
The best thing about "The Walking Dead" is that I rarely scream at the screen. They never run up stairs when the bad guy is chasing them. They rarely do obviously dangerous and dumb things. On "Fear the Walking Dead" the whole world starts crashing, so much so that there is literally a zombie chilling in the back yard and they just finished burying another. What does our lead male character do? Take out the trash and drag the bins down to the street for... you know... apocalyptic trash pick-up or whatever. 'Nuff said.
I get what they're trying to do. They're making a comment on how blind we are to what is happening around us. How we refuse to see the truth of the world. Ok, sure. I agree with some of that. Crazy stuff is happening all around the world this very minute. People are killing one another and children are starving. All the while, I'm complaining about a crappy show. Although, I think if I watched my neighbor eat my other neighbor I'd be ready to jump into action, not arguing with my junkie kid about how many drugs I've stashed away for him. We may be a blind culture, everything is peachy-keen, until it isn't. When the -ish hits the fan we do something- not ignore it.
The people who are writing this show are the blind ones. They clearly have no memory of 9/11. They can't seem to recall our society's call to action and the people from all over the country racing to get in that pile of rubble and rescue someone. They let all those who died running into crumbling and burning buildings slip their minds. Even if they forgot one of the most monumental displays of heroism in the history of our country it's sort of surprising that the writers of this show never watched the show that inspired it. "The Walking Dead" time and again shows as a people how unwilling we are to just let everything fall apart and hope everything works out for the best while standing by and pretending we can't see it happening. This show is just wrong on so many levels.
Close but no cigar, "Fear the Walking Dead". I'll stick to your predecessor and keep myself from throwing a shoe through my television screen in frustration at you.
