[chiwoo18]

A “Character Rich Plot” has been widely debated, but that’s not the point of this review of Fear the Walking Dead.

 

I lived an hour south of L.A. for 7 years. So I have a decent concept of how a Zombie Outbreak of this magnitude would look.

 

So episode 2 leaves us on the night of what, day 4 or 5? It doesn’t really matter. By the end of day two the story’s characters should have already been hunkering down or attempting to get out of dodge. All hell should have been breaking loose.

 

In episode 2 a huge protest quickly turns into a mega riot, beginning over the shooting of a walker who was a homeless man. Has anyone been too Skid Row in L.A.? It’s basically a town of homeless people within a city. To get a better idea, Google Map it and also check out some images. Plagues of any kind often hit poverty areas the quickest and hardest. Skid Row is like kindling for a zombie apocalypse. One spark/zombie and Skid Row would become Zombieville, USA overnight. The thing about zombies is they always have places to be, people to eat. They are not going to stand around waiting for a thickening plot and character development focused on dysfunctional families. If this version of L.A. does not have Skid Row then it really isn’t L.A.

 

A list of the leading top ten, non-criminal related deaths was documents by "cdph. ca. gov". The list reported nearly 60,000 deaths occurred in the L.A. area in 2013, including suicides and accidents. 60,000! Averaging 164 deaths per day. 16,000 of those were heart attack related deaths which can happen anywhere.  Let’s throw in homicides, gang war killings and other misc. deaths. Now image every person who has died from non-head trauma turns into a walker. And those walkers start killing people. Sure there may have been walkers trapped, away from the public. Still, given the numbers there would have been far more than a few odd shootings and some skeptical videos on YouTube. If there were more, then the writers should have advertised the point with more than a few vague side comments and sparse intermittent new reports.

 

How was this so-called bug manifesting to the point schools were being closed. I saw a few coughs in the episodes, which is the beginning a fatal and extremely painful burnout after being bitten. If the principle was savagely attacked and bitten before the authorities were stretched to the breaking point, was his bite bad but not enough to keep him from seeking help? Would he have not gone to  the hospital? After almost getting his neck ripped apart by a lunatic, why did Matt stay home and not go to the hospital or call 911(if busy beg a neighbor for help)? Situations like these were occurring before Nick woke up to find Gloria devouring a boy’s insides for breakfast at the beginning of the series. There is no doubt these situations were popping up all over L.A. and Orange County(which has plenty of ghettos which would excellerate the spread). The authorities and hospitals can only keep so many cases underwraps.

 

This series should have been about the logistics of how the Walking Dead world came to exist. The character driven storyline can come later. Right now the Walkers should be the stars of the show.

 

The only answer I can think of why walkers were arriving late to the party is not everyone had been unassumingly exposed to an infection turning people into zombies after dying. Unless the concept is  made reasonably apparent, it should not be used to explain why the core apocalyptic event is taking so long to occur.

 

 

 

- YOU CAN STOP READING HERE IF YOU WANT. I JUST RAMBLE(unless I was rambling already ) I BELIEVE THEORECTICAL APPLICATIONS OF FACTS SHOULD BE PRIORITY WHEN REVIEWING THIS SERIES. -

 

 

I love the tension of the calm before the storm in these types of stories. I enjoy the quick transition leading to the downfall over civilizatIon. A quick transition can be milked by slowing how much time passes in a story arc. If the writers are up to the task it can be done well. The show has so far given me a similar feeling when driving behind a 90 year old man who can barely see over the wheel driving 15 in a 45 zone. Bless his little old heart, but get moving or get off the road!

 

Since reading the Walking Dead comics when they first hit shelves, I have enjoyed the excellent balance between story and common sense. Fear the Walking Dead has been sub-par in both of these areas. The damage is done. The writers have missed the boat.

 

I will still continue to watch the series just as I am willing to watch bad zombie movies. But at least the bad zombie movies have zombies in them. Sure, sure, the zombies will emerge more as this series progresses and the full apocalypse will ensue no doubt. The writers for the Walking Dead have taken logistics into account more than most horror and disaster stories but not with Fear the Walking Dead unfortunately.

[kombat]

I agree with chiwoo in the sense that the show probably would've been better off if it didn't start off with character development, but instead, as he put it, the logistics of how it started and began to spread. The beginning should've been nothing but walkers. Maybe show the first walker in LA reanimating and it biting a few people. Do a couple show segments like that until we get to Gloria in the drug den/church and off we go. I love the show so far, but that was an opportunity missed. While the cold open was awesome in its own right, it was disappointing that a show that was supposed to show the beginning of the ZA actually started AFTER it began.

[Jamber]

this show is entertainment so .... adding real world stuff/reasoning to it, never works out 

 

and no that actually sounds horrible imo ... the show has never been only about zombies, it's about the people in the ZA and their struggles

[Lurwalker]

You can't make everyone happy and it is what it is.  Chiwoo I get what your saying and you would be correct in thinking that LA's skid row would be a very robust zombie making haven and he could've started there but didn't.  Then again we are presented with the fact that 5 states are beginning to struggle with this idea and its growing.  In this sense, any hospital at this point would all just be zombie making havens and there is no official first zombie to name but it seems like a group just died one day beginning the ever increasing numbers, most likely walking out of all the countries skid rows, hospitals, nursing homes, morgues, accident scenes, etc.  Just like Kirkman doesn't ever want to say what caused the ZA he apparently doesn't want anyone to fugure out where/when and who it first happened to either.  What I do think he is trying to do is separate the two shows and learn from things done in TWD.  He is beginning with character development right off the bat. This is something the fans on this board have mentioned for years.  He is also trying to make them more human and less graphic novel full on comic book characters at this stage and I hope its a long time before we really have to deal with a warlord in FTWD.  Honestly, if the first hour was about how every junkie hiding under a bridge od'ed, died or was bitten and then stumbled onto the next homeless person sleeping under cardboard boxes for the first hour I would've stopped watching then and there.  I agree with Jamber in that its about how the people begin to deal with the issues not the billion of zombies that's going to occur in the next few months.  Just my opinion at this moment.

[Steph]

There are no spoilers in here, so I took that out of the title. 

[General Ian Zane]

[Edited to tone down my hatred of the show, as that is off topic]

 I think they are trying to depict how waves of dysfunction would proceed the zombies as people just stopped showing up places and critical infrastructure started to tip over. That, and they want to do some jump scares.

[Logan5]

You can't make everyone happy and it is what it is.  Chiwoo I get what your saying and you would be correct in thinking that LA's skid row would be a very robust zombie making haven and he could've started there but didn't.  Then again we are presented with the fact that 5 states are beginning to struggle with this idea and its growing.  In this sense, any hospital at this point would all just be zombie making havens and there is no official first zombie to name but it seems like a group just died one day beginning the ever increasing numbers, most likely walking out of all the countries skid rows, hospitals, nursing homes, morgues, accident scenes, etc.  Just like Kirkman doesn't ever want to say what caused the ZA he apparently doesn't want anyone to fugure out where/when and who it first happened to either.  What I do think he is trying to do is separate the two shows and learn from things done in TWD.  He is beginning with character development right off the bat. This is something the fans on this board have mentioned for years.  He is also trying to make them more human and less graphic novel full on comic book characters at this stage and I hope its a long time before we really have to deal with a warlord in FTWD.  Honestly, if the first hour was about how every junkie hiding under a bridge od'ed, died or was bitten and then stumbled onto the next homeless person sleeping under cardboard boxes for the first hour I would've stopped watching then and there.  I agree with Jamber in that its about how the people begin to deal with the issues not the billion of zombies that's going to occur in the next few months.  Just my opinion at this moment.

 

You can't make everyone happy, so true! No matter how this season goes there will be folks who will have wanted something different/better/faster/slower.  I definitely had some issues with TWD. So far I am happy with the acting and the pace of the show. I am very curious to see where the next 4 episodes take us. Even more curious how this show goes once they get to the point where Rick has awaken. 

 

I don't think RK has any intention of ever letting us figure out how/why the ZA began or where the original zero point was (if there even was a singular zero point). It's not necessary nor important to his story.  I like your point that RK is trying to make them "less graphic novel", at least at first. And I agree, I hope it is a very long time before any "warlord" shows up.

 

IMO both shows are about how people deal with the ZA and the issues it brings and is not so much about the Z's themselves.