Fear the Walking Dead

[DanaC]

Is anyone watching this?

I am drawn to continue watching out of morbid curiosity.

[fargon]

Keryx binged on it. I rarely watched it. I found it to be way to violent for my taste.

[Pamela]

I am an avid watcher. I can hardly wait to settle in with a big bowl of buttered popcorn, my jammies and my dog and binge the first season.

[Zathris]

I ain't touchin' it with a ten foot Bat'leth.

IMO, all this hooplah over the unrealistic scenario of a zombie apocalypse is pure hokum.

[DanaC]

The Walking Dead, I love. One of my favourite shows. Fear the Walking Dead - I dunno - it has its moments but there's a lot about it that just doesn't work for me. I'mma keep watching to see if it grabs me - but aside from the drug addict son, I'm not really clicking with the main characters.

[DanaC]

Thinking about it - there are some specific things that are pissing me off about it. First, the idea that the only teenager aware of what is happening, is the geeky loner kid is ridiculous. There's been like one video that went out on social media and the only person who saw it seems to be this kid. This is like the internet circa 2000, the speed that information and buzz is happening.

We're like 24-48 hours into the beginnings of people eating other people's faces off and hardly anybody is talking about it - videos haven't gone viral and school kids are clueless.

The second thing that is pissing me off is that the characters, for the most part seem pretty flat and uninteresting. I'm hoping they'll get better and draw me in, but right now I'm so not feeling it, for the most part. They seem like a family designed by a committee to show-case the modern concept of family. Aside from the drug addict son, none of them seem to have any on-screen presence or charisma.

It is tense at times - I'll give it that. And some really lovely moments where, with what we know of where they're headed we see people doing very normal things that we know will become very dangerous things, very quickly - like the paramedics wrapping the bite wounds of the police officer who was bitten in the riot and climbing into an ambulance with him.

Not sure how long us knowing what they're about to face can sustain the narrative though. I'm hoping if I stick with it that I might warm to the characters a bit. Walking Dead would not have sustained as long as it has without compelling and charismatic characters. During times when the meta story hasn't been up to scratch, the characters kept me watching. I'd watch that cast of characters for a whole season of narrative stalling.

[Pamela]

I think Dana has a good point there. Perhaps this should have been released first and followed the book from there. It may be that because we already know the aftermath, the early story may be underwhelming and will require a high degree of talent to keep the audience.

[it]

Wait, is this actually connected to The Walking Dead show or is it just another zombie series?

[henry quirk]

Rick was in a coma for a month or two. When he woke up and got movin', the world had already gone crapsack.

Me: gonna wait till a month or two has passed 'in-show' before tuning in.

Later, I'll go and watch the opening episodes as flashbacks.

Besides: 'The Strain' is on at the same time...just love me some vicious penis-like feeding tube action...and worms...lots and lots of worms.

[DanaC]

It is connected Trace, yes - it is a prequel of sorts showing the beginnings of the outbreak that preceded Rick awakening in hospital to an apocalyptic world.

The strain ... I wanted to like it. I had the audiobooks of the trilogy and I made it to halfway through the second one before the cardboard characters and cliched dialogue finally beat me into submission and I gave up. At the time I thought it read like a screenplay more than a novel (as it turns out, they wrote it with a view to making it into a tv show so not so far off in that assessment), and a really creaky screenplay at that. Then the tv show started and I was hyped thinking it would make much more sense on the screen. But the dialogue is, if anything, even worse on the tv version than it was in the books. The characters piss me off. They routinely do stupid shit. And neither of the writers has the slightest concept of how to write a female character that is anything other than a crutch, or spur for the male characters. That annoyed me in the book, but I figured with a tv budget and a writers room maybe they'd do something about that. Nope.

I dunno. I like the gore and stuff. I like some good schlock horror. But it has soooo much wrong with it.

I'm not even gonna go into the baaaad wig that Eph's sporting. That's the kind of thing I'm happy to forgive if the show earns it in other ways.

[Happy Monkey]

He lost the wig.

[DanaC]

Well, that was careless of him...



[eta] I really shouldn't trash the show though - it doesn't have any pretensions to being anything other than a gory funfest. They're clearly having fun with it.

[DanaC]

I Just watched episode three of FtWD. I think it is getting better - the characters are getting more interesting. There were a couple of proper shiver down the spine moments too. The drive past the hospital, and then the view over the hills were both really well done.

[Happy Monkey]

It has a decent "leading up to something" feel, but halfway through a 6-episode season, something about the pacing seems off. Also, characters seem to receive knowledge about the walkers by revelation more than experience.

[henry quirk]

The Strain: yeah, it's pretty bad, but I still like it...a nazi vampire...a jewish vampitre hunter...a dismembered angel...surly child...and worms.

Worms: knowing the worms are the source, and that the little buggers are pretty insistent in gettin' inside, seems to me all the characters (except, mebbe, for the Abe) ought to be constantly checking themselves, scratching and lookin' and touching just to make sure that 'itch' any one would normally ignore isn't a worm burrowing deep.