I pay to see The Walking Dead. I wait to see Fear The Walking Dead. I only recently finished the second season and with no cable, I probably won’t see the third season until long after it becomes available on Hulu. AMC only makes the premiere episode available on its website or Roku app. Fear the Walking Dead resumes where we left off at the end of the first season: heading to the ocean and a destination known only to a detained guy in a suit with a yacht except everything is on fire. Apparently people thought it was a good idea to napalm cities to stop the dead. Considering my overreaction to insects being adjacent to me, I feel like I can’t judge.
Unlike The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead explores humanity’s less heroic and noble survivors, particularly the ones that had unconventional ideas before the crap hit the fan such as cults, preppers, criminals, dude bros. The most interesting dynamic is how this show depicts people who believe that the dead deserve to live and consider it murder to kill the walking dead. In comparison to Herschel, they are not depicted as sympathetically, but as charlatans, madmen or murderers.
I am not Mexican and know very little about Mexican culture so for those who are Mexican and knowledgeable, I would love to know your thoughts on Fear the Walking Dead’s portrayal of religion, particularly voluntary human sacrifice and the idea of coexisting and feeding the dead. Did it feel like a negative stereotype or like a logical creative leap given such holidays as Day of the Dead or the Aztec culture’s practice of human sacrifice to the gods? It felt like the show was recontextualizing the original clash of European/Catholic priests and colonization with Aztec priests and native practices for a modern audience, but I’m not sure if the experiment was successful and ambitious, ignorant and offensive, or somewhere else on the spectrum. There is something a little perverse about valuing the walking dead more than the living.
I do think that Fear the Walking Dead misjudges whom the audience thinks is interesting.
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Daniel is the most interesting character on Fear the Walking Dead, but we lose him fairly early during the season. He is a “man who inspires fear and never says how frightening he is.” He is a bad guy that I am sympathetic to and can watch all day. I have heard rumors that he returns in season 3, but I think that the show lost momentum by focusing on the fractured family, who should be called locusts because wherever they go, they eventually ruin everything. I only cared theoretically about Ofelia’s ghosting. Strand’s storyline was satisfying, but it felt like it was cut too short. Celia and Tom were great new characters that we got very little time to get to know. Travis is too annoying for the Chris’ storyline to be interesting, and I did not like Chris before the apocalypse so I thought the idea had potential, but not with those specific characters. Rick and Carl went through similar growing pains so I understand what the show was trying to do, but it did not quite work. Maybe if Travis slowly lost his mind and started killing people it would have worked.
Am I supposed to be hyped that Madison is the Rick of the group because I’m not. Her infantilizing of Nick and ignoring of Alicia is far too familiar and accurate a dynamic that reflects society for me to enjoy her. We raise our daughters and nurture our sons. Only Nick is the most consistently interesting character, but he too can be exasperating because he basically put his entire adopted home in jeopardy over a trip to the supermarket and in order to make a little girl feel good. I appreciate the impulse, but I’m sure that she would prefer to live. Thanks, Nick. Side note: his nasty looking self got a hot girl. Seriously? (No shade on the actor, but Nick looks like he smells worse than most people after the apocalypse.) Alicia will hopefully get a promotion next season because I like the actor, especially when she played Lexa on The 100.
The hotel scenario annoyed me the most. Fear the Walking Dead was just looking for an excuse why the main cast has to leave and go on more adventures. I agree that Travis would be exiled, but not the way that it went down. There are two factions, the wedding party and the hotel employees, who only unite to make a living space, but it is an uneasy alliance because understandable or not, the hotel staff did leave the wedding party to die-it is not right, but it is ok. When Travis loses his mind, he hurts someone from the wedding party, but the hotel employee faction gets so militant against Travis it was as if the factions were best friends. I did not buy it. I could like you, but enough to roll deep and lynch the guy who accidentally killed you because you tried to intervene when some dude bros admit to killing his son? Nope. Meanwhile wedding party mom is pulling a Miss Havisham, but with knives and a willingness to use them, but no one bats an eye.
Fear the Walking Dead is better than most shows, but is not as palatable as The Walking Dead. I know that the point is that everyone is supposed to be awful, but the trick is to be awful and interesting to watch, which the show has not quite achieved yet.