Fear the Walking Dead Season 1 discussion and spoilers.

[Admiral2]

Yeah, but how did zombie Pete get into the back yard to begin with? The family had to climb the fence to get next door. I don't see a zombie doing that.

They initially saw Zombie Pete in front of the house and went out the back, then took the quickest route to the neighbors' house which was over the fence. But there is no fence around their house, so it's not like Pete couldn't have walked around from the front while the Mom and the teens were pissing around looking for firearms.

 

[Beagleman]

"I need my meds," he says like a person recovering from cancer treatments and needs the medication in order to live. You're a junkie, dude. You don't "need" anything. You need to be locked into a room and strapped to a bed so you can tough it out for a few days.

I haven't yet read the rest of the thread but I just have to get this off my chest, that statement makes me sick to my stomach, it's ignorant, stupid and disgusting. You know what addiction is, it's a fucking sickness. Just like cancer, noone chooses either one. (Sorry for ranting but I hate this bullshit in any context.)

 

[Admiral2]

"I need my meds," he says like a person recovering from cancer treatments and needs the medication in order to live. You're a junkie, dude. You don't "need" anything. You need to be locked into a room and strapped to a bed so you can tough it out for a few days.

I haven't yet read the rest of the thread but I just have to get this off my chest, that statement makes me sick to my stomach, it's ignorant, stupid and disgusting. You know what addiction is, it's a fucking sickness. Just like cancer, noone chooses either one. (Sorry for ranting but I hate this bullshit in any context.)

No one chooses to get cancer because that's a biological condition that develops without conscious input. Everyone, however, addicted to an illegal drug, like the character here, had a choice at one point to take or not take that first hit. A disease that develops from you doing something you shouldn't is not the same as a disease that can literally just happen to you.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

The clothes that Drug Boy is wearing have to reek of old man musk. Can't he change into something -- anything -- else?

 

[kitik]

yeah, now that he's "home", there must be some clothes that fit him in that house

 

[hux]

Episode 3

God these people are annoying. I want every single one of them to die! Here comes the army. Let's hope they do something (other than stupid things like the other characters I've been forced to endure thus far). Yawn.

 

[kitik]

Spoiler alert: Army is pretty much guaranteed to fail.

 

[hux]

As long as they fail in an entertaining and watchable manner, I'll be happy considering all I've seen so far is people failing whilst being painfully dull to watch.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

The one thing that took wifey and I out of this episode was the ignorance of public safety operations. The use of media in an emergency was basically ignored this week.

To be fair, in the first two episodes most of the zombie stuff was being communicated to the characters by media, over the TV and even streaming to their phones (which in 2010 may have been pushing it a bit - in 2010 iPhones didn't have LTE for decent HD streaming and THAT'S THE ONLY PHONE ANYONE IN THIS SHOW HAS). Still, in this episode they listen to the radio for a little bit and then turn the thing off!

Even if the phones and internet go down in a crisis (which is reasonable), emergency services would have radio and/or TV stations going as a priority. That means that they SHOULD have access to updates on what the hell is going on. Through most of this episode, while stuck in their (electrified) house all night, SOMEONE should have been glued to the TV or radio to hear the latest. Instead, they conveniently ignored this to focus on the drama. Poor writing - if they wanted to avoid the radio, they should have just left the power off.

Anyway, I'm more curious about who the heck puts a MAZE in their backyard? What was that thing, anyway?

Mark

 

[davejames]

I'm sure this has been discussed, but seeing how incredibly efficient and ruthless the soldiers appeared to be in this episode just makes me question even more how they could ever be overrun or defeated in the space of the 2-6 months Rick was in a coma.

I suppose some units could have succumbed to panic and fled, or abandoned their units to be with their families... but the entire freakin military?

Part of me thinks it would have better if we didn't see them at all on this show, suggesting that they had simply been caught off guard or just never had time to properly mobilize against the threat to begin with.

 

[Ryan8bit]

Anyway, I'm more curious about who the heck puts a MAZE in their backyard? What was that thing, anyway?

I'm pretty sure their neighbors are minotaurs.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

VIETNAMESE MINOTAURS. Led by the inscrutable Dr. Tran.

Re: Military, I'm okay with thinking the soldiers could have been mobilized and on the bounce quickly, and started dealing with pacifying the situation in some sort of logical way (to them). They showed the soldiers doing Katrina-esque painting on the houses as well as taking a census of the locals before moving on. My guess is that they've seen some action against zombies and MAYBE have figured out the whole headshot thing; other than that they still haven't realized that everyone is a potential target.

Thinking about the timeline, Dr. Jenner said in the first season that at the time of his first appearance it had been about two months since the situation "went global" and over six months since "wildfire was declared". Rick went into his coma about a month prior to Jenner's introduction, so while we don't know exactly when our "Fear" family is located in this timeline, but I'm guessing only slightly after the first episode of the other show as all the various scenes with Rick and company in the hospital showed little indication of anything wrong.

The three episodes of "Fear" thus far have covered, what, one day? This in turn suggests that the cavalry showing up will not last long at all. How this all disintegrates probably holds more interest for me than the fate of any of the current characters, but I'll still tune in next week.

Mark

 

[kitik]

I'm sure this has been discussed, but seeing how incredibly efficient and ruthless the soldiers appeared to be in this episode just makes me question even more how they could ever be overrun or defeated in the space of the 2-6 months Rick was in a coma.

It's going to be more like in the space of the next 2-3 days.

It'll be interesting to see how they fail. Could be due to bad leadership or decisions at a local level, or it could be due to shooting "innocent rioters" or druggie limping kids, and thus losing public support.


A week or two ago, I would have guessed that the military would fail due to a lack of understanding of the specifics, and thus storing "dead" bodies in an unsecure location, or something like that. But with the way they shot neighbor lady this week, they seem to have an idea of what they need to do.

There may also be a question of not being able to tell the difference between sick people and dangerously ill people. For example, the El Salvador mother (Griselda I think) with her broken ankle. If they try to separate her and put her in with folks dying from bites, that could lead to a small revolt against this local military.

And it may also become a case of there being too many people to take care of. The military can easily handle a small friendly neighborhood in Los Angeles. But they don't have the resources to handle 5 or 10 million or however many folks live in the LA region these days. And I'm not even sure they could handle an "unfriendly" neighborhood. There simply is not enough military to check on and protect all 300 million people in this country. The national guard is good for localized disaster response, but when you've got zombies actively trying to kill people in every single populated square mile of the country, that's a battle you can't win.

There may come a time when they simply say "not enough resupply, not enough reinforcements" and decide to fall back to their more secure home base.

 

[kitik]

One thing I would like to see is an end to the riot. I think we can all agree that the reasons for the riot, and actions of the rioters, are pretty believeable. The riot made sense. But now that people have made it through the night, and reached a new dawn, word has to be getting around that there is a major threat to public safety going on here. Word has to be getting out that people all over are biting and eating other people.

 

[davejames]

And it may also become a case of there being too many people to take care of. The military can easily handle a small friendly neighborhood in Los Angeles. But they don't have the resources to handle 5 or 10 million or however many folks live in the LA region these days. And I'm not even sure they could handle an "unfriendly" neighborhood. There simply is not enough military to check on and protect all 300 million people in this country. The national guard is good for localized disaster response, but when you've got zombies actively trying to kill people in every single populated square mile of the country, that's a battle you can't win.

There may come a time when they simply say "not enough resupply, not enough reinforcements" and decide to fall back to their more secure home base.

Yeah it's not surprising to me that the military might be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the situation, and not have the resources they need to stop it. But what throws me is the idea they would actually be overrun or wiped out in the process.

Even if they were only operating in small areas at a time, there would still at least be a military presence of some kind in the country, I'm sure.

 

[kitik]

But what throws me is the idea they would actually be overrun or wiped out in the process.

As they say, a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

If your brother (in arms) gets bit, are you willing and able to put him down? Person A might, and Person B might, but if Person C over in the corner can't, then the whole darn thing could come crashing down.

I think a fair assumption is that half (or more) of the military left their posts to be with and protect their own families. How long are you willing to stay in Los Angeles while you know your wife and children up in Fresno are in danger?

And for that matter, who saw the movie San Andreas this summer? Even the freaking Rock abandoned his post to go save his family.

 

[Trekker4747]

Thinking about the timeline, Dr. Jenner said in the first season that at the time of his first appearance it had been about two months since the situation "went global" and over six months since "wildfire was declared". Rick went into his coma about a month prior to Jenner's introduction, so while we don't know exactly when our "Fear" family is located in this timeline, but I'm guessing only slightly after the first episode of the other show as all the various scenes with Rick and company in the hospital showed little indication of anything wrong.

Well, they were in a smallish-area in Georgia on the otherside of the country. The latest episode of FTWD could be taking place a month before the events of the first episode of TWD and Shane and Rick and others weren't aware of it because some odd virus going around and some riots just weren't seen as earth-shattering news and things in their area hadn't reached any noticeable point yet.

 

[Guy Gardener]

90 percent of that riot was about pissed off poor people.

It had nothing to do with the Zombies.

They thought that the cops were shooting human beings and therefore rioted, not corpses. If they were full of the knowledge that the dead were rising, and attacking the living, the reaction locally would have been to form a militia and help the police shoot the recently dead.

If you suspect that you might get big orgasms from setting fires, then I suppose that half way through a riot is a good place to test that life style, but really if you are not using a riot as a cover to steal a new flat screen TV, then you are an idiot.

It was sheer coincidence and happenstance that some zombies happened to take advantage of that riot.

 

[Borgminister]

Lots of fast forwarding. Admitedly good scenes, but it's like slo-motion through events we know (the audience) are gonna happen.

Meh.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I think it's great. I think the Zombie Apocalypse is unfolding pretty believably, from the Zombie chowdown going mostly unnoticed in the rioting to the ominous shadowy figures shambling into houses. I'm a little disappointed that the military showed up before they got to the desert, because I was kind of curious about how that would work out, but maybe it will still happen.

One thing that was kind of stupid was the wife lying to the soldiers. I could understand lying about exposure to Zombie blood, but lying about the grave? Like they can't just dig it up?

The Monopoly game cracked me up. Everybody complained but they all jumped right up to play.