After month of teasing and anticipation , The walk Dead prequel dread the Walking Dead protrude Sunday and perchance it ’s because we ’ve had five blood - gazump season of The Walking Dead as lead up , but it was a dashing hopes . Very tiresome , very obvious and very long .
Basically , Fear the Walking Dead lease piazza before The Walking Dead , on the other side of America . It ’s a prequel to the Atlanta - centric show and , hypothetically , will show us how Los Angeles reacted as the zombi encroachment — that ’s now class old in the big show — embark on .
First we assemble Nick ( Frank Dillane ) , a young drug junkie who sees his girlfriend , Gloria , eating someone . He extend away , gets hit by a railway car , and we meet his family . That ’s how the show starts . There ’s his female parent Madison ( Kim Dickens ) , sister Alicia ( Alycia Debnam - Carey ) and mammy ’s young boyfriend / pseudo stepdad Travis ( Cliff Curtis ) . This evidently is n’t the first time Nick has had these issues and everyone is only partially sympathetic at this point . Their family moral force , which also extends beyond just the four of them , is the heart of the pilot episode and , frankly , slow up things down a lot . It ’s introductory , necessary character edifice , but in the pilot , it mostly detracts from the hope of global disintegration .
Taking a quick tangent from the recap , that ’s the most disappointing matter about the archetype to reverence the Walking Dead . It develops too minuscule of the zombie story we want to see , or else sharpen on character hooey that feels superfluous this early in the run of a show . Okay , mayhap wanting to see zombies in the first installment of a zombi origin story is greedy . But blame it on The Walking Dead .
On The Walking Dead , over five seasons , we ’ve been desensitize as the fiber mop down scores of zombies every installment . In Fear the Walking Dead , it ’s a lot of boding and brooding leading up to the wowed reaction of the graphic symbol to a exclusive living dead being created , not even shoot down . That absolutely makes sense in the story sense but from a pure amusement standpoint , it ’s boring .
The radical - calculated pacing also feels like the show is being made with an eye on an inevitable second time of year . Of course , that second season has already been announced but it was n’t when they made this episode . When the show spends its all important first episode doing almost nothing of narrative significance , and the whole season is only six episodes , you have to marvel if it ’s not setting its flock a bit too high . I ’d choose the first six episodes go down on our minds leaving us desperate to know what they could perchance do in time of year two , rather than set up a story that ’s already aiming there .
From a character standpoint , it ’s nice to see that Madison sense inadequate as a mother , Travis inadequate as a Father of the Church and the Nick and Alicia both decline them in certain agency . The performances are good too . But we get it . This show should feel different from The Walking Dead , but not this different .
And it did n’t even have to go too far over the edge . We do n’t demand to find out where the outbreak follow from ( a enigma that ’s likely being held for another potential spinoff , or maybe a grownup reveal on The Walking Dead ) , but I did need to see more than one zombi fundamental interaction with our chief character in an extended , 90 moment cowcatcher .
Anyway , back to the recap . Nick being in the hospital give each character a luck to showcase themselves . Madison is question what she did as a mother to deserve a druggie boy . Travis is dealing not only with Madison ’s kids , but his own son who – surprisal , surprise – it also unbalanced at him . Alicia feel sad for Nick , but also superscript . And of course , there are small side characters around all of this . Alicia ’s boyfriend who perish miss , the dealer who gets teased as a zombi . But when Travis and Madison go visit the locating Nick escort his girlfriend eat someone , they realize something is up .
Nick then escapes from the infirmary and sends everyone on a slipstream to find him . It leads Travis and Madison to see one of Nick ’s friends , Calvin ( Keith Powers ) , who says he has n’t learn him , but we before long realize this is Nick ’s drug monger . Calvin beleaguer out , meet up with Nick and seek to kill him . Nick turns the mesa and , well , people do n’t really die in this cosmos , do they ?
There are also a bunch of asides that hint at the world around them . A student mention Tobias work a knife to school and tells Madison he ’s worried about a computer virus or something that ’s already spread in five res publica . A school double-decker arrives with only five Thomas Kyd , because the residue are sick . Teachers teach Jack London ’s report of man vs. nature ( where nature always wins ) as well as topsy-turvydom theory , where there ’s a situation that ’s impossible to control .
That ’s all well and good but none of it feel quick or spectacular . It ’s all just set up for a narration that , at this pace , wo n’t come for another season . Which is pretty disappointing .
On the plus side , dread the Walking Dead look beautiful . The filming by Michael McDonough truly makes the show feel more way more cinematic than it should . Whether or not that ’s just the cowcatcher or will continue , we ’ll see . Also there are also a few interesting tale beats , such as the eccentric first really seeing zombies in a viral picture ( which would believably be the way we would see it ) and the show ’s more rural representation of Los Angeles .
Because dread the Walking Dead is The Walking Dead , I ’m going to stand by with it . The showrunners on that series have establish time of year after season that a slow start can be pull through by a potent finishing . But on its own , this pilot did n’t cheer confidence that Fear would beat Walking Dead in terms of turmoil or momentum .
Photo acknowledgment : AMC / Justin Lubin
reach the author at[email protected ] .
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