Will California Walkers Have Perfect Tans???? A Quick Look At The Premiere of “Fear The Walking Dead”

AMC

On Sunday night, a record setting 10.1 million viewers tuned in for AMC’s premiere of Fear The Walking Dead.  Teased for months and pushed as a series that begins with the beginning of the zombie outbreak, expectations were high for Fear.   The record viewership doesn’t surprise me one bit, as the show has a loyal, built-in audience thanks entirely to its predecessor, The Walking Dead.  I’m one of those loyal fans, and I was extremely interested to see just what Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson (the creators of Fear) had planned for me and other fans.

!!!!!!WARNING!!!!!!  MILD SPOILERS (FOR BOTH FEAR AND TWD) POSSIBLY AHEAD!!!  You’ve been warned!

So how was the show?  Well…..it was a start.  In all honesty I wasn’t that impressed.  Now before you get angry and accuse me of being a mouth-breathing simpleton that only watches zombie movies and television shows for the zombie action, know that the primary reason that I watch and love The Walking Dead is for the brilliant character development.  I love how characters like Beth (RIP), Carol, Glenn, and Carl have developed from stereotypical characters that would end up as nothing but window dressing in other programs into fully fleshed out characters that have matured, become empowered, and transformed into entirely different people as the show has progressed.

But wait, Ken, this was only the first episode of Fear The Walking Dead!  You can’t judge the show’s character development after just one episode!  Really???  Why not?  After one episode I knew that I liked Rick and wanted to learn more about him.  I didn’t trust Shane, but he seemed like a guy who was at least trying to keep it together.  Morgan moved me, particularly in the scene where he sees his zombified wife in the street and he can’t bring himself to shoot her.  Glenn’s cocky voice over the radio to Rick made me want to meet the kid attached to it.  That first episode hooked me.

The characters in Fear The Walking Dead didn’t hook me at all.  Frank Dillane’s drugged out Nick opened the show, waking up in a haze in an abandoned church.  He fumbles around looking for a girl named Gloria and quickly finds out that some serious business had gone down in the house of worship.  He’s so high, though, that he’s not entirely sure if what he’s seeing is real or a byproduct of bad medicine.  He then runs out into the street and is hit by a vehicle.

Enter his mom, Madison (Kim Dickens), his future stepfather, Travis (Cliff Curtis), and his sister, Alicia (Alycia Debnam Carey), who are getting ready for another day at school.  Madison is the local school counselor who is attempting to blend her family with Travis’ family.  Travis is a teacher at the same school where Madison works.  Alicia is super smart and ready to move out on her own in college.

More characters were introduced and more are on the way in future episodes, but the first batch of characters we get to see were unlikeable, annoying, and bland.  Nick is a putz.  Perhaps he will develop into an interesting character (I’m especially interested in seeing him fight his drug addiction in a world that is falling apart), but I honestly do not care if this character lives or dies before the end of the season.  Alicia didn’t draw me in either.  She’s just sort of there for the entire episode.  Travis has potential, as he seems to be the only person that is honestly trying to get to the bottom of Nick’s story about seeing Gloria eating people in the church.  His heart is in the right place, but again, he didn’t grab me like Rick or Shane did in the TWD premiere.  The most unlikeable character of all (with Nick being a close second) is Madison.  She’s abrasive and the stereotypical uber-attack mother/cool school counselor who defends her loser kid against the cops even though he’s done something illegal (and the cops say that they have no intention to arrest him while interviewing him).  I can understand her being a mama bear, but she also needs to let her kid take responsibility once in awhile.

The episode spent a lot of time with Madison and Travis trying to find Nick and Nick stumbling around town looking like a walker and calling his dealer.  Alicia watches a video with her friends of a man getting shot multiple times (and only the head shot taking him down) and arguing whether it’s real or not.  Madison and Travis finally come face-to-face with a walker after a confrontation between Nick and his dealer.  Then the episode calls it a night.

Is their potential for this show to get better?  Absolutely.  It will be interesting to see how the characters react to what’s happening around them in the early stages of the zombie outbreak and how society as a whole breaks down in response to the world collapses right in front of them.

I have high hopes for this show, but the characters lack the charisma that the characters on TWD had right out of the gate.  I’ll give it a couple of more episodes, but as of right now it’s not must-see TV.

Let me know what you think about the show in the comments section and, as always, thanks for reading.