OT: Fear The Walking Dead - series premier

Submitted by natesezgoblue on
Im a west coaster from the board so I didn't see any spoilers, I expected to see and an open thread.

Seems like an interesting start to the WD spinoff. WD is obviously a huge hit, but FTWD follows the same apocalyptic story just from another staring point In LA.

saveferris

August 24th, 2015 at 7:59 AM ^

I like the premise of seeing how society collapses during the progession of the apocalypse, but I'm forced to wonder how the writers distinguish this show from the original once the lights have gone out and the water has stopped running?

Hail Harbo

August 24th, 2015 at 8:00 AM ^

I'll watch again next week to see if the pilot was merely a one off example of poor writing and acting; at this point I'm not holding much hope that it will be anything but a bad spinoff.

Perkis-Size Me

August 24th, 2015 at 8:08 AM ^

Thought it was pretty good last night. I've always been really curious as to why TWD never shed light on why the world went to shit or what exactly happened, so I'm looking forward to watching more.

I'm just wondering how, when everything completely falls apart, they're going to distinguish this show from TWD. As much as I love TWD, I'm hoping Fear The Walking Dead doesn't become the exact same show as its predecessor.




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In reply to by Frito Bandito

haiku

August 24th, 2015 at 8:17 AM ^

"Meh" was my reaction as well. The acting was BAD, especially in the final act of the pilot. It's only one episode and I'm hoping it turns out to be good, but I just wasn't feeling it.




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haiku

August 24th, 2015 at 8:52 AM ^

Good call. I didn't really consider that. I think the difference for me is the reaction to walkers. The Walking Dead pilot was great because you could see the horror from Rick's perspective. It felt so unsafe. I won't spoil the FTWD pilot for others, but that last scene was really rough. You are probably right though; it'll get better. 

 

 

lbpeley

August 24th, 2015 at 8:32 AM ^

The Walking Dead?

The last episode I watched of last season was where Rick was beating the shit out of that chick's husband and Michone knocks the shit out of him. No idea why that was my last straw for last season but I'm finding myself not giving a shit anymore. I think there were 2 more episodes left of last season when I stopped. I don't care of you give me spoilers on the last ones.

I DVRed Fear the Walking Dead and I will probably give that a watch. As far as the original though, that one may have finally just gone away for me. Too much "nothing" happening. 

lbpeley

August 24th, 2015 at 8:49 AM ^

Maybe I'll sit through those last 2 episodes with my finger on the 30 second skip ahead button and then give the first couple of this season's episodes a try before writing it off for good. Maybe it'll bring me back in.

gmoney41

August 24th, 2015 at 11:52 AM ^

TWD is the only show that I watch that I go from hating to loving week to week.  Last season is the perfect example.  I really liked the beginning and ends of the season, but almost quit watching through the middle of the season because it kind of sucked.  Tyreese's death was just bad.  I liked his character alot, but felt nothing from his death.

bluecervelo

August 24th, 2015 at 8:43 AM ^

I really enjoyed it. I liked that we knew more about what was happening than the characters, kinda helped build suspense. I also like that the walkers are an important focus of the show. I feel like on TWD they are just background noise now, it's all about the living people. Which is fine, I still enjoy TWD, it's just nice to kinda hit the reset button and see people freak out about zombies again.

HermosaBlue

August 24th, 2015 at 9:32 AM ^

Enjoyed it as well, but it felt like watching Alien for the first time having already watched Aliens. We already know what the monster (xenomorph, zombies/zombie infection) looks like, so there's dramatic tension for the characters as we do know more about what's happening than they do.

Unfortunately, knowing what the monster looks like when watching the prequel robs us a little bit of the thrill of watching the story in chronological order.

Half the fun of Alien was the anticipation of waiting to see the monster. Same with the zombies.

Still a good watch, but we don't get that anticipatory thrill here.




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Victor Valiant

August 24th, 2015 at 9:09 AM ^

My only complaint was the junkie not simply explaining what he saw in the church when asked numerous times as though he would lose his precious credibility by simply explaining he thinks he saw zombies.



The setting of the show seems to exist in a universe where the word zombie doesn't exist. Not one single person who saw the video of the ZOMBIE being shot by cops even hinted it seemed like the guy was a zombie.

saveferris

August 24th, 2015 at 9:43 AM ^

It's actually been explained by the show's producers that the concept of zombies don't exist in The Walking Dead universe.  There is no George Romero film franchise or anything like that to draw upon to explain the phenomenon that is going on with the outset of the apocalypse, so the scene where Nick tries to describe what he saw rings a little more true in that context.

lunchboxthegoat

August 24th, 2015 at 9:19 AM ^

I thought it was horrible. I'll give it at least half a season but Jesus that was slow, the acting was bad and there felt like a ton of just wasted screen time. ambitious to take on 90 minutes for a preimere so that might have been hurting it. 

The Mad Hatter

August 24th, 2015 at 9:21 AM ^

I've been looking forward to this show as I've always thought the societal collapse would be the most interesting part of any zombie story.

The thing is, slow zombies are just not scary.  It seems pretty clear that there are people (doctors and cops) who already understand that the dead are coming back to "life" and are attacking the living.  Why not just get the President on TV and have him tell everyone about a new "virus" that is causing all this mess?

Explain what's happening and let everyone know that dead people need to have their brains destroyed.  Sure, there will be some mass panic and crazy shit going on, but a crisis with slow moving zombies is entirely manageable.

The fast ones, ala 28 Days Later, are scary as fuck though.

saveferris

August 24th, 2015 at 9:52 AM ^

One slow zombie isn't scary, true.  100 slow zombies are pretty scary.  The thing that's cool as the omniscient 4th person observer is the knowledge that the clock is ticking on getting out of the city before things get dire.  At some point, you're going to have the majority of the city turned into walkers, at which point, you simply can't jump into a car and drive away when there are millions of undead milling about.

JFW

August 24th, 2015 at 11:14 AM ^

The scary part of the Zombies isn't their individual bad assed-ness; its their contagion, their relentlessness, and their swarming. 

The WWZ book did a great job of that. 

I never liked the 'fast, super strong' Zombies. As far as Zombies of any kind makes sense they break the paradigm for me. You don't start out as an overweight out of shape 50 yr old and then turn him into a track athlete with enough strength to rip someone's spine out. 

 

Jim

urbanachiever

August 24th, 2015 at 3:57 PM ^

Well, I'm not sure there's any sense in trying to apply logic to zombie transformations. I tend to agree that massive slow moving masses of zombies are more terrifying than "fast, super strong" zombies as well. But it's certainly not because I find the transformation more believable. It just seems more terrorizing

Jalm

August 24th, 2015 at 10:09 AM ^

I find myself watching FTWD just to give myself a fix for TWD during the "dead" time. pun intended. I think.

I did found it pretty slow and it was frustrating that the junkie wouldn't just talk.

saveferris

August 24th, 2015 at 11:24 AM ^

Actually, I think the approach to Nick's character was pretty realistic and nuanced in a good way.  Nick clearly is terrified about what he experienced and he's also not certain that he's not losing his mind.  He seems to realize that if he just starts to rant and rave about what he saw that he'll just get locked away in rehab again, which is something he clearly doesn't want.  Of course, he's also not sure if what he saw wasn't some bad trip which is why he seeks out Calvin.

The fact that Travis had to kind of pull the story of out of Nick is the only reason he goes to the church to check his story out for himself, because he seems pretty lucid and not like a raving lunatic.

Moonlight Graham

August 24th, 2015 at 12:53 PM ^

I don't find this set of characters as compelling as the WD pilot. After one episode I'm sot sure I'd feel all that bad if any of the characters introduced got zombified. Andrew Lincoln, Sarah Wayne Calies, and Jon Bernthal just gushed charisma and created instant tension, and you also had Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker come in early on. And Carol and Dale's characters ... geez I'm not sure how this spinoff is going to measure up with this comparatively lame, ho-hum cast. A heroin junkie in an abandoned chuch is your "Rick Grimes in a coma" entry into the story? Maybe Rueben Blades will add something next week.




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urbanachiever

August 24th, 2015 at 4:10 PM ^

I agree with most here - the acting/writing left a lot to be desired. What made the intial season of TWD so compelling was that it was truly terrifying to watch - I've seen my share of horror films and I don't think any were as brutally suspenseful as the first few episodes of TWD. I think this was mainly attributable to the characters being portrayed so well (Andrew Lincoln mostly). Their expressions of horror were completely convincing to me.

I didn't get any of that in FTWD. The only character that has been exposed to a walker for the first 95% of the episode wasn't even convinced that he didn't hallucinate the whole thing, so of course this pilot lacked that terror associated with the first.

Of course, TWD has gotten so much worse over time. Maybe I'm just tiring of the same main characters, but the dialogue is so terribly dull, and most episodes now are so slow and dialogue-centric that I find myself nodding off during episodes. That would have been unthinkable early in the show. This isn't to say that issues faced when reconstructing post-apocalyptic society can't be very compelling, but rather that the acting, and in my opinion mainly the writing, haven't been as good as they need to be once the show is about something other than frantically killing zombies.

So I think there's potential for FTWD because the storyline could be so captivating if presented effectively. But I don't have much confidence based on the pilot