1 out of 5

Created by: Robert Kirkman, Dave Erickson

covers season 1

Is Fear the Walking Dead a horrible show?  No.  But it is a show that exists completely without a point.  It’s a show with, thus far, only shells of characters, too many to focus on one in which to get interested – Walking Dead made sure to give us some time with Rick and Shane so we were able to see them as main characters – and a small 6-episode timeline in which to differentiate itself from the fully-established show from which it sprang.  …Which it intended to do by showing us the initial days post Zombie, which we sort of skipped over with TWD; alas, a moment’s thought should reveal that that’s a limited concept that expires as soon as ‘the walking dead’ are accepted as the norm, which, indeed, they are by the midpoint of the first season.  Which means this then becomes exactly like the early seasons of TWD, all difficult decisions about friends with bites and close calls with swarms, except without the well established environment Frank Darabont gave us or, as mentioned, any character to really care about.  The show lurches about for a hook while a small town faces infection, then occupation by the military, then the inevitable ‘shit goes wrong’ moment, and never really finds it, just skimming over emotional surfaces it knows have already been fully explored by what’s come before.

And it’s just impossible to not rate this in comparison, because it exists in comparison.  I tried to consider my feelings toward the series as simply a zombie show, but even then it’s too generic to warrant too much interest, and had I not known the season was a short one, it’s probable I would’ve given it up.  Sure, there’s absolute potential for this to develop, but only to catch up to The Walking Dead; now that the zombies are loose, I’m really not clear what they could possibly do to make the show first stand on its own, then second make a play at actually making it uniquely worthwhile and not just something to fill up your zombie queue.

So to be clear – there are some okay moments here, and nothing that will make you throw popcorn at the screen, per se.  The one star rating is very much to underline the utter pointlessness of this existing, and that it never once managed to establish any hint of what a point could be except to rope in WD viewers.