Fear the Walking Dead Season 1 discussion and spoilers.

[TREK_GOD_1]

But yeah, this show isn't about answering that question, nor should it be. It's not about these guys surviving and then making a cross country trip to Virginia to meet Rick's group in a few years either.

The nature of a prequel demands more attention to the cause, instead of just turning into another face of TWD. FTWD begins when the media and government will still be active and dedicsting 24/7 to an outbreak of cannibalism.

Since there's no bath salts use/addiction epidemic, that suggestion would be dismissed within a week, but FTWD cannot gloss over cause, otherwise, fans can just stick to the parent series.

Is it bad that I don't like any of them at all and I just want them all to die and come back in the main show so Michonne can chop their zombie heads off? That's the way I was feeling about ten minutes in.

The son's supposed to be a street-living crackhead but they went out of their way to try and make him look like a boy band refugee.

Yeah, it is too typical of modern TV to play the "outcast" who is really the hero angle. His being addicted helps this story how? Merle used drugs, but that did not influence or help his character. Just seems like a preachy, soap opera move.

The girl is just a flat-out walking teen-girl stereotype. ("Like, OMG I hate my mom's boyfriend and my brother and stupid school and stupid life and I'm so outta here!") The boyfriend is the type of "thought-provoking" schoolteacher fantasy that ONLY exists in the fevered imaginations of TV and movie writers, and I just want mom dead on principal for raising the brats and dating the myth.

Yeah--domestic disputes aside, I hope the characters are given some reason why we should care about their ability to avoid zombi-hood.

One thing to keep in mind is that the rumors of walkers or an epidemic clearly was spreading. Many parents were clearly holding their children out of school (and not just on that final half day). That kid brought a knife to school because he knew he'd need protection.

That's where its similar to the 2004 Dawn of the Dead; by the time random characters are introduced, it's clear they are well aware that the dead are eating the living. It should not be long before official acknowledgement is all over the media of FTWD's world.

what are the odds that the listening device/eavesdropping/teacher monitoring thing that the principal was using to listen in on different classrooms will be used sometime in the next few weeks?

From the previews, I believe the big-eared teacher is a walker who attacks the knife kid and the unappealing wife character

 

[sojourner]

But yeah, this show isn't about answering that question, nor should it be. It's not about these guys surviving and then making a cross country trip to Virginia to meet Rick's group in a few years either.

The nature of a prequel demands more attention to the cause, instead of just turning into another face of TWD. FTWD begins when the media and government will still be active and dedicsting 24/7 to an outbreak of cannibalism.

Since there's no bath salts use/addiction epidemic, that suggestion would be dismissed within a week, but FTWD cannot gloss over cause, otherwise, fans can just stick to the parent series.

You keep beating this dead horse. Give it up. They're not interested in exploring the cause or the cure. It's about how normal people learn to survive.

 

[Borgminister]

But yeah, this show isn't about answering that question, nor should it be. It's not about these guys surviving and then making a cross country trip to Virginia to meet Rick's group in a few years either.

The nature of a prequel demands more attention to the cause, instead of just turning into another face of TWD. FTWD begins when the media and government will still be active and dedicsting 24/7 to an outbreak of cannibalism.

Since there's no bath salts use/addiction epidemic, that suggestion would be dismissed within a week, but FTWD cannot gloss over cause, otherwise, fans can just stick to the parent series.

You keep beating this dead horse. Give it up. They're not interested in exploring the cause or the cure. It's about how normal people learn to survive.

If there's no new wrinkle, what makes it different than TWD? After 2-3 episodes, it'll be obvious what's going on. Then?

It's like Better Call Saul has to live and die on it's own merits, largely based on the talents of the lead, frankly, and not piggy back on Breaking Bad.

Maybe they will figure out a new wrinkle or a breakout actor/actress wills steal the show. We'll see.

 

[Trekker4747]

In fact, that would be a neat way for the show to go with it. Have the media speculating that there's a new highly addictive form of bath salts behind the rash of biting attacks.

there is no zombie fiction in the WD universe?

That's a pretty common conceit of pretty much every form of zombie movie/fiction. It comes down to the notion that if zombie-fiction exists then our characters would know how to deal with it and wouldn't be surprised to see reanimated bodies or need to be told/learn to shoot for the head and that if you get bitten you turn. So zombies as a fictional thing or as a mythological/other-worldly creation doesn't exist in TWD universe and this has been clear all a long right down to no one ever using the word "zombie" or saying how everything that's happening is like in "Night of the Living Dead." (another movie where zombies were around in the world where the idea of them didn't exist and the word "zombie" is never used.)

Zombies, however, are in actual myths that are hundreds of years old so it's "possible" this idea exists in TWD universe along with other myths of the supernatural like vampires, werewolves and ghosts -all having some origins in ancient beliefs. Just that in TWD universe zombies never entered popular culture and remained in ancient, and obscure, culture.

I've not yet watched FTWD. Likely will sometime this evening or tomorrow. I think the premise could be interesting so long as it doesn't rely too much on the idea of the characters having to learn how to handle walkers. It'd be interesting to see how it all started, how society collapsed and what the initial days were like while Rick was in a coma through everything but I wonder how long that idea can be stretched out?

Let's talk about the timeline again!

The entire run of TWD so far has lasted around 2 years, we could probably be really fair and say 2.5 years. Again, Judith's age is the guide since the show started around her conception (when Rick and Shane had both slept with Lori who early in S2 discovered she was pregnant.) However old Judith is, add 9-months and that's how much time has passed.

The show started in 2010 which we'll link with the series, so it's presently 2012 maybe sometime 2013 in TWD's timeline. So roughly 3 years behind us.

FTWD beings at the start of the apocalypse so, 2010. The internet, social media and everything in 2010 wasn't too vastly different than they are today. Smart-phones with unlimited data plans were probably a little more rare but social media and everything was still there. Remember, social media played a huge role in the 2008 election and is sometimes credited with Obama's connection to Millennials since he was one of the first presidential candidates to really embrace it in order to reach potential voters.

So it wouldn't out of line or question for any bizarre behavior captured on camera and uploaded to the interent to go viral and gain attention. But even in our own, real world, media and world that kind of nonsense happens all of the time, and in some cases threats of the latest strain of flu, or flu variant or some other disease happen often and many times can be dismissed by the public, knowing the media hypes things up more than it needs to be. (Swine Flu, anyone?)

So even in our internet day-and-age any reports of odd human behavior would take a while to get-hold, not be dismissed as another internet-thing, or media-hype and for people to realize what is going on. Especially if what's going on is the utter collapse of all society.

The basic premise of the show of people not knowing what is going on, it being isolated, or people dismissing it as rumor or media-hype holds. Because the last thing you think when you hear of people getting sick and dying, there being riots breaking out, etc. is that society is going to collapse in the next couple months as the military gets overwhelmed. You'll think it's isolated and that our government can handle it and contain it.

We could probably make a case that some of this early-days stuff was happening during the early segments of TWD's pilot episode and no one was worried because it was dismissed as rumor, the media making a bigger deal out of it than it was, or it was isolated and soon to be contained.

 

[davejames]

If there's no new wrinkle, what makes it different than TWD? After 2-3 episodes, it'll be obvious what's going on. Then?

It's like Better Call Saul has to live and die on it's own merits, largely based on the talents of the lead, frankly, and not piggy back on Breaking Bad.

Maybe they will figure out a new wrinkle or a breakout actor/actress wills steal the show. We'll see.

Well I think the difference is supposed to be that Fear is much more about a regular family surviving and adapting to the zombie apocalypse, versus a cop and a bunch of other larger than life types who are already pretty familiar with how things work (and good with all kinds of different weapons) the first time we meet them on the main show.

 

[sojourner]

I'll admit I do have reservations about how long they can drag the show out before it just becomes TWD:LA.

Eventually our characters are going to become just as "battle hardened" as the Georgia crew

The first season should be OK and give us some new angles, but by season 3?

Maybe they'll go with something really different and have the west coast actually manage to recover a bit after the initial fall of civilization. Make the story more about rebuilding what they have with the few survivors.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

You keep beating this dead horse. Give it up. They're not interested in exploring the cause or the cure. It's about how normal people learn to survive.

...then...

If there's no new wrinkle, what makes it different than TWD? After 2-3 episodes, it'll be obvious what's going on. Then?

Exactly. Stretching out the early days from we already witnessed in TWD and the webisodes accomplishes what? If the series does not pay any more attention to what--logically--would be a major focus during an extended early days show, then its just a clone of TWD in another city.

The one thing I do not like is writers being too afraid or lazy to even touch a plot element that has been a natural part of cannibal/zombie productions since Romero. No one is saying the cause will be thoroughly laid out, but to avoid it at the start of the outbreak is an obvious dodge.

TWD's "TS-19" comes sometime after the fall of society, yet the series dedicated an entire episode to someone dealing with the infection. If TWD dealt with it (and the expected character interest in a cure) well into the ZA, then FTWD and the characters cannot skip over what should be government / medicine's fevered investment into the cause.

It's like Better Call Saul has to live and die on it's own merits, largely based on the talents of the lead, frankly, and not piggy back on Breaking Bad.

Yep.

That's a pretty common conceit of pretty much every form of zombie movie/fiction. It comes down to the notion that if zombie-fiction exists then our characters would know how to deal with it and wouldn't be surprised to see reanimated bodies or need to be told/learn to shoot for the head and that if you get bitten you turn.

Except Return of the Living Dead, where characters not only described the basic plot of Night of the Living Dead (without naming the film, I believe), but tried to follow the movie's idea of destroying the brain of zombies (although that did not work with ROTLD's creatures).

 

[Turtletrekker]

WD and FtWD make-up guru and producer Greg Nicotero said this at SDCC...

Robert and I had a conversation about the word "zombie." He said, "that word doesn't exist in our universe. Those movies never were made, so that word doesn't exist and you'll never hear them called zombies."

 

[sojourner]

Exactly. Stretching out the early days from we already witnessed in TWD and the webisodes accomplishes what? If the series does not pay any more attention to what--logically--would be a major focus during an extended early days show, then its just a clone of TWD in another city.

It's just not the story they're interested in telling. If that's the story you want to watch, I suggest you switch over to The Last Ship.

 

[davejames]

Yeah I'm not really sure what the point would be in learning the cause of the outbreak. So we learn that it was all caused by the government or the military. Well ok, then what? How does that really change what Rick and the gang are going through as they struggle to survive from one day to the next?

The new show clearly needs to work a bit harder to justify it's existence, but I don't really think that's the way it should go about doing it.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

My friends that are public school teachers thought it was hilarious when Cliff Curtis and Kim Dickens pushed past students heading for the bus so they could "beat the traffic" getting out, like they were exiting a sporting event or concert. Granted the audience knew they had good reason to urgently leave, but it must've appeared like George Costanza running out of a fire to others.

"Make way, kids! Lead characters coming through! Hope y'all make it home before the riot starts."*

*Fear of a coming riot over the police shooting was the reason for their unexpected half-day, right?

 

[dansigal]

In fact, that would be a neat way for the show to go with it. Have the media speculating that there's a new highly addictive form of bath salts behind the rash of biting attacks.

there is no zombie fiction in the WD universe?

That's a pretty common conceit of pretty much every form of zombie movie/fiction.

That's not true. There is plenty of zombie fiction where zombie fiction exists in universe. iZombie is one. My favorite is Mira Grant's Newflesh trilogy, where not only do zombies exist, but George Romero is considered a hero because his popularization of zombies is what basically saved civilization, because when the zombies showed up, people already knew what they were in for and how to survive it. And George and Georgina have become the most popular baby names.

 

[sojourner]

there is no zombie fiction in the WD universe?

That's a pretty common conceit of pretty much every form of zombie movie/fiction.

That's not true. There is plenty of zombie fiction where zombie fiction exists in universe. iZombie is one. My favorite is Mira Grant's Newflesh trilogy, where not only do zombies exist, but George Romero is considered a hero because his popularization of zombies is what basically saved civilization, because when the zombies showed up, people already knew what they were in for and how to survive it. And George and Georgina have become the most popular baby names.

Your examples are more the exemption than the rule.

 

[Mojochi]

Didn't do much for me as a pilot. It felt like they were taking the WD audience for granted, & just jumping headlong into the soap opera, druggie son, estranged stepdad, yada yada yada.

The trailer for the upcoming stuff seems more promising, but they really should have tossed more of if into the pilot. I hate lazy, & if you make a pilot, it should be what draws us in, & if you just assume everyone will be invested because of the main show, then you're lazy, figuring you got a freebie, & yes, that is a bad way to start off... a tease in the intro, & a couple chain yank scenes, with the guy eavesdropping on classrooms, etc... cheap.

I've never been fond of Kim Dickens or Cliff Curtis either. They are very generic type actors. It let some gas out of my balloon to see them right off. Say what you will about the WD cast, but Norman Reedus, Michael Rooker & Lennie James aren't generic, B-list, but not generic. I was interested seeing all of them when they appeared

 

[Nerys Myk]

I've never been fond of Kim Dickens or Cliff Curtis either. They are very generic type actors. It let some gas out of my balloon to see them right off. Say what you will about the WD cast, but Norman Reedus, Michael Rooker & Lennie James aren't generic, B-list, but not generic

Dickens and Curtis are unknowns to me. In fact there is no one in the cast I recognized. So far they've been serviceable in their parts. No standouts.

 

[Commander Richard]

‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Sets All-Time Cable Ratings Premiere Record

Nielsen estimates that the 90-minute debut of “Fear the Walking Dead” became the No. 1-rated cable series launch on record with 10.1 million viewers, including 6.3 million adults 18-49.

The previous record in the 18-49 demo was AMC’s “Better Call Saul” (4.4 million) earlier this year.

I thought that Kim Dickens' character was bitten by a walker near the end but the actress had this to say...

There's a struggle between you and a zombie at the end of the first episode. Did you actually get bit?

It doesn’t appear that my character gets bitten. That’s for sure. There’s definitely scuffling, as our characters are certainly naïve of the dangers of what exactly is going on. So we get dangerously close to them.

Source

 

[Mojochi]

Dickens and Curtis are unknowns to me. In fact there is no one in the cast I recognized. So far they've been serviceable in their parts. No standouts.

I knew Reedus from Boondock Saints, Lennie James from Snatch, & Michael Rooker from... well a ton of movies, like Mississipi Burning, Cliffhanger, JFK, Tombstone, etc.... They are standouts in all of the above

I knew Dickens from her character on Deadwood (That I didn't really care for her performance in) & a stretch of forgettable parts on other tv shows, like Sawyer's forgettable girlfriend on LOST, & the forgettable chef in Treme, etc... She's been wagon hopping any edgy show for a decade since Deadwood got cancelled & I've noted her only because of my fandom of Deadwood

I just assumed everyone knew Cliff Curtis from his long history of playing every generic ethnic guy in every movie ever, from Three Kings to Blow, to Collateral Damage to 10,000 B.C. etc... He's been around forever, & just as easily forgettable imho

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Exactly. Stretching out the early days from we already witnessed in TWD and the webisodes accomplishes what? If the series does not pay any more attention to what--logically--would be a major focus during an extended early days show, then its just a clone of TWD in another city.

It's just not the story they're interested in telling. If that's the story you want to watch, I suggest you switch over to The Last Ship.

So, if what you say is true, they're interested in being The Walking Dead: Same Old, Same Old in Los Angeles. The only difference is location / demographics, because that's all you will get if this starts off as vague with any sort of exploration of the cause as TWD (pre "TS-19").

 

[kitik]

So, if what you say is true, they're interested in being The Walking Dead: Same Old, Same Old in Los Angeles. The only difference is location / demographics,

No, the difference is this is one of those zombie/horror shows where people don't know they're in a zombie/horror show. Yet. Not that characters in TWD have ever heard the word "zombie" before, as recently discussed, but they understand they're in a post-apocalyptic fight for survival. In episode 1 of TWD, Rick woke up and the world had already ended. But in FTWD, these people have no idea what type of shit they're in. Over the next few episodes, they're going to be thinking to themselves "hopefully a week from now, everything will be back to normal".

(Speaking of which, that scene on The Strain last week when some old lady ordered takeout Indian food for her apartment was pretty funny/interesting/jarring/odd.)

because that's all you will get if this starts off as vague with any sort of exploration of the cause.

The creators have stated on numerous occasions right from the very start that this wouldn't explain any sort of cause or anything. That's not what TWD is about, and it won't be what FTWD will be about either.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You keep beating this dead horse. Give it up. They're not interested in exploring the cause or the cure. It's about how normal people learn to survive.

You're acting under a foolish presumption to think that this "family" will survive.

Maybe some of it, or one of it will make it through to season 2, but #### it, this is The Walking Dead, people I've learnt to care about gotta die or I don't get that tingly happy feeling running up and down my spine when they're taken out savagely amidst panic and turmoil.

It's sorta difficult, but think back as far as you can, Rick used'ta have a wife.