Fear the Walking Dead (2015)

Rédigée par Edthegrocer le 26 juin 2017

FTWD is the kind of show you want to like before you have actually seen it. Like a spin-off of a popular movie from Marvel's Avengers. You think you know it already, that you almost love it already. I'll stop you right there. Think not.

FTWD is not TWD.

Well, there are still a few things in common :

• Characters are described very sparingly as they appear on screen. Wait for that episode where you will get a deeper story of your favorite character. The flashback method is still heavily used in FTWD.
• The main characters share the same (simple) psychologic schemes with TWD : violent and lonely. And that's it.

The rest is a very very very long and slow collection of episodes.

The rythm is badly handled. From the pilot. I mean, episodes go from 45min to a little less than an hour. You can't set many different levels of rythm, or your scenario is probably cut to little pieces of unnecessary scenes. When you deal with the TV show format, you set a whole rythm for an entire episode. Which will evolve through the season and give a pleasant, progressive (or not) flow. FTWD is full of unnecessary scenes. Full of it. I won't spoil the whole thing, but trust me. I was actually asking myself many times "who cares?" during the show. Almost never in TWD.

The cast. I apologize to all cast members for what I will say. It is not good. Not one bite.

• Kim Dickens has zero charisma. Maybe negative. The antithesis of Melissa McBride or Danai Gurira. Sorry Kim, you weren't made for this, I truly believe.
• Cliff Curtis is good when playing second fiddle in some indie movie. But he can't, and won't, carry the show alone, he is just not that guy we want to see survive the apocalypse. And the producers got this pretty quickly with season 3. Cliff, please, just go back play a cool scientist in some sci-fi B-movie and die before the one hour mark. Thanks.

The only guy who deserves a little attention is Nick. Because he's mad. Because we've known from the pilot that he is a former drug addict, which means weak, or human. And because he's the only guy who uses his fuc*** brain and makes clear, smart, true choices to survive.

What else? Too little action (which is complicated when you have 50min to go), too many secondary characters that we don't even remember their names or faces, and a very VERY VERY DISAPPOINTING intro.

Just the treatment given to the intro means like "we don't care. No money, no time".

I don't think my opinion is better than others', I only think it is widely shared.

Peace.