When season five of The Walking Dead ended, it left a big hole in my weekly entertainment lineup and sent me into immediate zombie withdrawal. I know there are other zombie shows to watch. They just don’t quite do it for me. I could explain why in detail but that would be whole post all on its own. The point here is that news of the prequel series Fear the Walking Dead filled my little heart with just enough hope to make it through the summer zombie drought.
So with great anticipation I settled into my spot on the couch to watch the pilot last week. In a move I interpreted as demonstrating supreme empathy for Walking Dead groupies everywhere, the producers made the pilot extra long — 90 minutes instead of the normal 60. Yay! That was my initial reaction, at least.
Somewhere just before the hour mark my reaction turned to “Yay?” So far there had been a lot of show and only the briefest glimpses of zombie action. It began to dawn on me that the extra 30 minutes of the pilot had been tacked on because without sending this little game into overtime, the viewers would be consigned to yet another week of zombie withdrawal, which this particular fan would have deemed totally lame.
This mid-episode revelation freed my mind for the next 25 minutes or so to contemplate this show in the larger scheme of things — because, as predicted, the main zombie action in the show happened in the last three minutes of the 90 minute pilot. Now, I know The Walking Dead has become popular with its fan base for reasons way beyond the sheer tonnage of zombie slashing in every episode. It appeals to a lot of people only because it takes the basic cable horror format and adds complex character development, social themes, and, increasingly, psychological drama.
The Fear the Walking Dead pilot certainly signaled strong intent to live up to all those high-minded parts of the original series. That’s fine, admirable even. We met some new characters, including an overly sassy teenage girl. Hmmm. They’re all kind of dysfunctional yet we know we are supposed to connect with them. The tension builds slowly. It hangs in the air, getting a little heavier with each scene. In short, the writers are spot on with their rendition of the suspense drama template. Well done.
Here’s my problem. The characters are the only ones feeling the suspense. All I’m feeling is annoyance. This isn’t like some slasher film where part of the fun is the audience knowing when the stupid teenagers are making fatal teenage mistakes. No! Don’t sneak into the woods to fool around with your boyfriend in the middle of the night. Don’t do it! Think “abstinence,” at least until they catch the psychopath with the chainsaw.
No, this felt different. This show is a prequel to a series built on the premise that the zombie apocalypse has already happened. There is frustration instead of suspense as we watch our messed up little group of protagonists disbelieve everything they are seeing and hearing. Sure, I have no doubt that is exactly how the end of the world will happen. Unless it’s all one big blinding flash of light, people with be in total denial for as long as they can sustain the delusion. I get it.
What I don’t get is why the producers think Walking Dead fans need 87 minutes of that. Yes, yes, we understand. People don’t deal well with really crazy stuff. But your whole audience knows the zombies are coming. We are completely numb to the gruesome special effects you will employ to make the zombies look scary. You have spent season after season trying to top yourselves in that department. Get. On. With. It. People tuned in to watch your show for one basic reason. Zombies. If that hurts, get over it.
The truth is you know deep down that if the new season of The Walking Dead started now instead of in October, we wouldn’t need to “Fear the Walking Dead.” On our end this is about needing a zombie fix. On your end it’s about recognizing and exploiting our zombie addiction. All you need to do is give us some zombies!
And don’t even try to say you needed to delay our zombie gratification in order to support character development, build the dramatic tension, establish meta-themes, or blah, blah, blah. Those coattails you are are blatantly clinging to belong to a series that does all of those things and still grinds its way through a few dozen zombie slayings every week. So just stop it.
Anyway, that is what I was thinking until the last few minutes of the show. The zombie payoff in those last few minutes was adequate, no more. In short, it wasn’t a great start for a series that, sadly, seems to understand it doesn’t need to stand on its own. Watching it almost makes me feel cheap, like I know I’m being shamelessly exploited because of a weakness in my character relating to zombies, and yet I’m powerless to do anything to stop myself.
That was pretty much my mindset going into episode two on Sunday night. Thankfully, as the plague begins to spread through Los Angeles, zombie frequency is going up quickly now. And there was more immediate payoff on some of the themes introduced with such agonizing patience last week, like when the social outcast high school kid starts predicting the details of the breakdown of society — specifically, just how fast things crumble once it all starts. In fact, there were moments when it almost felt like we were going to dive headlong into the disaster movie format, and the teaser for next week makes clear we will at least continue to skirt around the edges of that — rioting in the streets, burning buildings, general hysteria, etcetera.
It was a better effort than the first, which freed me from my original cloud of aggravation. What I’m left with now is one big question. What is the purpose of this series? I mean we all know its driving purpose is a sleazy exploitation of the rich vein of goodwill built with a ginormous fan base by the original series. But if they don’t at least try to coat it with a veneer of artistic purpose, the whole endeavor could end up tarnishing the larger brand. That would be bad because with five seasons of basically the same show every week, The Walking Dead has reached the point in its run where it will be working really hard to stay fresh week by week.
A really good prequel series might change everyone’s perspective on the original series when it starts up again in October. To do that, it has to connect back somehow. We have to learn some important things in the next six weeks about how the world fell apart. Ideally, we will see some character crossover in one direction or another. Right now I just have questions. I’m sure that’s right where I’m supposed to be after two weeks. I just hope the producers and writers understand that every week they keep me waiting for answers means the answers have to be that much more amazing when they finally come. So far, color me skeptical.