by Chris @Movieguy84
Its almost fall, which means its almost time for the return of AMC’s The Walking Dead. This year though, AMC has created a spinoff show called Fear the Walking Dead to keep us pulled into the channel before the original series returns in October.
Fear the Walking Dead is a separate show that doesn’t require any knowledge of the original series. This show takes place in Los Angeles as the zombie outbreak begins, following a blended family attempting to survive.
SPOILER ALERT
The show starts off in a heroin den with a young man, Nick, looking for his girlfriend. He ends up finding her with another man, but she... is eating his face. He ends up escaping only to wind up in the hospital. We then meet the rest of his family: his mother Madison (played by Kim Dickens who starred in Treme, and recently in one of my 2014 favs, Gone Girl as Detective Boney) a high school counselor, his sister, and his mother’s boyfriend, Travis (played very well by Cliff Curtis), another teacher at his mother’s school.
This family is attempting to deal with Nick's drug addiction while also attempting to join their families together. Travis seems to be trying to connect with Nick as a way to cope with the straining relationship going on with his birth son who lives with his ex-wife (played by Elizabeth Rodriguez who you’ll recognize from Orange is the New Black). Madison warns him that Nick is just going to go back to drugs, but Travis has faith in him. That faith eventually leads him to check out the heroin den Nick escaped from at the beginning of the episode.
Events slowly begin to unfurl as this family drama happens, giving the viewer hints that something bad is about to go down. A kid attempts to bring a knife to school to protect himself from something, and an accident on the freeway involves a once dead man attacking the EMTs trying to save him. When things start to really hit the fan zombie wise, the episode ends.
I did enjoy the pace of this episode and that we got to know these characters a bit before the writers decided to throw all these zombies at us. The episode looked great as well, with the lighting and music creating an eerie atmosphere at all the right times. The cast was great as well; they all were earnest and their characters interesting. I’m still not sure if I’m gonna love them as much as characters like Daryl Dixon and Carol from The Walking Dead, but I didn’t immediately like those characters at first either.
I feel like there will be a lot going on to carry this season and keep viewers tuned in to see if this family survives, but hopefully it will bring something new to the zombie genre. The episode did at times feel a little same-old, same-old. If they want people watching more, the writers need to up the stakes in some way. With the zombie outbreak just occurring, they have so many chances to do something different from the original series.
I’ll be checking out the second episode for sure, and reviewing that as well, giving you my final verdict if I’ll stick it out and see the rest, or if I’ll call it quits.
Its almost fall, which means its almost time for the return of AMC’s The Walking Dead. This year though, AMC has created a spinoff show called Fear the Walking Dead to keep us pulled into the channel before the original series returns in October.
Fear the Walking Dead is a separate show that doesn’t require any knowledge of the original series. This show takes place in Los Angeles as the zombie outbreak begins, following a blended family attempting to survive.
SPOILER ALERT
The show starts off in a heroin den with a young man, Nick, looking for his girlfriend. He ends up finding her with another man, but she... is eating his face. He ends up escaping only to wind up in the hospital. We then meet the rest of his family: his mother Madison (played by Kim Dickens who starred in Treme, and recently in one of my 2014 favs, Gone Girl as Detective Boney) a high school counselor, his sister, and his mother’s boyfriend, Travis (played very well by Cliff Curtis), another teacher at his mother’s school.
This family is attempting to deal with Nick's drug addiction while also attempting to join their families together. Travis seems to be trying to connect with Nick as a way to cope with the straining relationship going on with his birth son who lives with his ex-wife (played by Elizabeth Rodriguez who you’ll recognize from Orange is the New Black). Madison warns him that Nick is just going to go back to drugs, but Travis has faith in him. That faith eventually leads him to check out the heroin den Nick escaped from at the beginning of the episode.
Events slowly begin to unfurl as this family drama happens, giving the viewer hints that something bad is about to go down. A kid attempts to bring a knife to school to protect himself from something, and an accident on the freeway involves a once dead man attacking the EMTs trying to save him. When things start to really hit the fan zombie wise, the episode ends.
I did enjoy the pace of this episode and that we got to know these characters a bit before the writers decided to throw all these zombies at us. The episode looked great as well, with the lighting and music creating an eerie atmosphere at all the right times. The cast was great as well; they all were earnest and their characters interesting. I’m still not sure if I’m gonna love them as much as characters like Daryl Dixon and Carol from The Walking Dead, but I didn’t immediately like those characters at first either.
I feel like there will be a lot going on to carry this season and keep viewers tuned in to see if this family survives, but hopefully it will bring something new to the zombie genre. The episode did at times feel a little same-old, same-old. If they want people watching more, the writers need to up the stakes in some way. With the zombie outbreak just occurring, they have so many chances to do something different from the original series.
I’ll be checking out the second episode for sure, and reviewing that as well, giving you my final verdict if I’ll stick it out and see the rest, or if I’ll call it quits.