Margaux and I bid farewell to the uneven debut season of Fear the Walking Dead.
Trevor: Imagine if Fear the Walking Dead had been as good as “Cobalt” or “The Good Man” from the get-go. Don’t get me wrong, nothing is perfect out of the gate, but if your two best episodes are your last two, it can get frustrating. In a pleasant way. Season two should be solid. What did you think of the finale?
Margaux: “The Good Man” was entertaining, but as a whole, I can’t help but feel like this first season was totally squandered. For one thing, WAY MORE main characters should of died. And I understand the need to inject a little mystery into the finale to hook you to come back for season two, but for me at least, it was too little too late. It hasn’t done enough, theme wise, to distinguish itself from TWD. “What is family now?” If I want to find out the answer, I’ll just stick with TheWalking Dead, whose first season is replaying on AMC right now (leading up to the season six premiere Sunday) and is just as perfect as when it first aired. I wouldn’t want to willfully revisit Fear’s first season.
Trevor: I’ll agree with you there, this season had a lot of missed opportunities. One wonders if FTWD would have been better served by a longer season, instead of trying to ape its predecessor’s format. It’s been firmly established that I enjoyed Fear more than you did – or at least I was more charitably inclined towards it – but that doesn’t make me blind to the show’s problems. Let’s just hope that the course-correction we saw at the end of season one will carry over to season two. And if season two brings us more of Strand (Fear’s only standout character besides Daniel Salazar), then I’m all for it.
Margaux: Daniel did a lot this episode to destroy any goodwill/badassness he’d worked up over the season. Look, I get the point they’re trying to make, do whatever it takes to get your family back, but to unleash the 2,000 plus zombies from the stadium (that no one was equipped to handle, obviously) just to can infiltrate the military hospital (and ultimately compromising those inside of getting out alive) to have a semi-flippant response to Liza telling you your wife was humanely put down was annoying to watch. They basically used his recently revealed bad man backstory as an excuse to be a careless asshole.
Trevor: Yeah, I’ll have to agree with you again, but it was a pretty cool shot, seeing him strolling up to the National Guard compound like a boss. “I would save your ammunition.” I guess the problem with Fear is that the growing pains are so obvious. The Walking Dead got away with a lot of this, because A, the first season is, as you said, beyond reproach, and B, they used archetypes, people who were more defined by their jobs. It was easy for us to identify right away with Rick in the beginning of “Days Gone By,” because we’ve all seen cop protagonists before. Having that established gave the episode time to pump the brakes, set him up with Morgan, and flesh out the character. FTWD has two teachers at its core – well, one teacher and a guidance counselor – but the only time that that’s come into play was with the (admittedly pretty good) scenes with Tobias. Maddie, Travis, and too many other characters have been blanks to be filled in. For instance, when Travis just beat the absolute shit out of Adams for shooting Ofelia – where did that come from? That violence, that rage? We haven’t seen that before.
Margaux: Surely Travis felt guilty about letting Adam go in the first, but I agree, his jump from “nice guy, Mr. Mayor” type to Ed Norton in American History X was a bridge too far. Nowhere in this “slow burn” first season did they establish that this was part of his personality, and I don’t know why OFELIA getting shot inspired such a reaction, while everyone watched on calmly, too. It was strange, but at least not as laughable as Strand and Madison discussing freeway escape options like they’d recently seen “The Californians.”
But for all my bitching, the zombie action was really well done and tense, between Strand and Nick being trapped in a hallway full of oncoming zombies – I really thought Nick was a goner when he told Maddie to “go”, usually the kiss of death, but Liza saves the day – what are the fuckin’ odds. The kitchen fight scene was great too, these scenes had the pacing and zombie headshots I was hoping would come into play a little bit earlier.
Trevor: Absolutely, you don’t know how much you miss zombies until the zombie show sidelines them for, like, three episodes. There was some nicely striking imagery in “The Good Man,” too; I’m thinking in particular of the huge pile of ash that must have been a mass cremation site. And Dr. Exner sitting in a room full of people she had to euthanize. I think we can agree that the hospital escape was the best part of the finale. I thought Nick was a dead man too, so I was surprised that the show killed off Liza so quickly. Disappointed, too, if I’m being honest, because I vastly prefer this Elizabeth Rodriguez role to the one she plays on Orange is the New Black.
Margaux: I’m doubly disappointed that the teenagers all managed to make it, but Liza is the one who gets bitten. I loved Liza’s scene when she’s first told by Exner to “run” and she gets outside and it’s a full-on war zone (where we get watch a soldier decapitate himself via helicopter propeller), for me, that held way more emotional weight than Ofelia and Daniel fawning “shock” over pile ash that used to be people. Didn’t Daniel give exactly one million speeches about how good people die and so on and so forth?
Trevor: Yes, but Fear the Walking Dead isn’t exactly a subtle show (and to be fair, The Walking Dead can’t really make that claim either, although it is obviously the better program). There’s potential here. I like the setting. I like a lot of the actors, and I like a lot of the characters (Chris remains the worst). But six episodes might not have been enough, or maybe there’s just not enough of a story to be told here. Regardless, I’ll tune in for season two, because as uneven as this first season was, FTWD showed juuuuust enough moments of greatness to be worth watching, if only to see if it fulfills that promise.
Margaux: And would that promise be named Abigail the mega yacht? Because like you mentioned before, Strand (and to a now lesser extent, Daniel) is the most interesting character with the most shadowy albeit very intriguing plans. When Madison, Travis, and the rest decide to follow Strand’s lead and head west to his abode on a cliff side beach, I couldn’t help but feel like this was an elaborate trap. Strand tells Nick earlier that he doesn’t want to let out other people in the holding cells they were confined to because they’re “dead weight,” yet he saddles himself with an ENTIRE deadweight family. Also, he seems to only pack fancy, designer shirts in his go bag, which is highly suspect.
Trevor: Just cause the world has been overrun by the dead is no excuse not to look good. Remind me not to include you in my swaggy fleek squad goals zombie survival crew. You’re evidently too basic.
Okay, now that I’ve thoroughly burned you, you wanna talk stars? I feel like “The Good Man” is a 3.5 star episode of a 3.5 star season.
Margaux: I don’t agree that your millennial girl burn was a good one mainly because we both know you don’t know what those words mean, but I do agree with your episode and season star ratings. I can’t say this season did enough to guarantee me to come back for season two unless they’re going to explore different themes than its namesake, but it was a good effort. Kinda.
“The Good Man” score: 3.5/5
Fear the Walking Dead season one score: 3.5/5
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