![]() ![]() The real danger comes from huge hordes that can cut off every exit and win a war of attrition, but huge hordes are expensive CGI rarities typically reserved for premieres and finales.Ī Stat to Explain Barb, the Internet, and Television They can’t climb, run, or open doors, which means that an able-bodied adult can elude any number of the limping, decaying undead just by walking away. Cocreator Robert Kirkman’s Romero-esque zombies are loud, slow, and stupid, like nightmarish toddlers who never nap. We know what’s in store instead: several more seasons of the same circular discussions, occasional cullings, and confrontations with tyrants in outwardly safe settlements that are clearly too good to be true.įear also suffers from the same plausibility problems as the original series, most of which can be traced to the walkers’ weakness as adversaries. Thus far, Fear hasn’t made any of the first series’ feints toward finding a cure - we’re too well versed in the way The Walking Dead universe works to fall for false hope. While wandering around Mexico, the characters recycle the same exchanges we’ve watched on The Walking Dead: whether to move on or stay put whether this is the end of the world or just a blip before the rebuilding whether surviving means becoming a cutthroat killer. It’s an ensemble not even Kim Dickens can save, dragged down by the wishy-washy Travis and not one, but two troubled teens - including Chris, a relentlessly sullen lost cause who smolders with generic rage. Since its midseason break, the show has borrowed The Walking Dead’s tactic of splitting up the cast and devoting whole episodes to one or two leads at a time, with similarly mixed results. Not only has the show failed to establish a breakout character in the class of Daryl, Carol, or Michonne, but at least half the recurring characters have lower favorables than whatever walking corpse is currently trying to kill them. ![]() Now that the crew has abandoned the boat, it’s The Walking Dead with a less likable cast. By its second season, Fear was Walking Dead on a boat, which turned out to be boring. In deciding not to draw out the death rattle, though, Fear destroyed any distinction between it and the flagship show (other than the distinction of being “the worse Walking Dead”). Maybe there wasn’t much new material to mine from another “end of civilization” scenario. Instead of lingering in that liminal period for a full-length season, though, Fear hit the usual marks and moved on, blowing up Los Angeles in Episode 7. ![]() ![]() As a series set in the epidemic’s early days, Fear drew the difficult storytelling assignment of depicting that downfall for the umpteenth time. The Walking Dead did its audience a favor by fast-forwarding past the sequences we’ve seen in countless other on-screen apocalypses: the rumors of the dead dining on the living the first horrific encounters that dispel all doubt the spiral into anarchy as order breaks down. The Walking Dead halo effect might obscure some of Fear’s flaws, but the spin-off still doesn’t stand on its own. Still, the spin-off’s declining numbers are now nowhere near the original’s if we were to plot the ratings for The Walking Dead’s sixth season on the same scale, all but three episodes would be off the chart. Most showrunners would give their right eye for its audience, and the show was renewed for a third season shortly after its second-season premiere. Even after that dramatic reduction, Fear’s ratings are still solid. Through the first nine episodes of its second season, Fear’s ratings had fallen almost 40 percent from its first-season average, and the ninth was the least-viewed of all. But as its 15-episode second season heads into the home stretch, the show is testing the extent to which the Walking Dead brand guarantees great ratings. After three showrunners and six uneven seasons, the record-setting AMC series is still sailing along, retaining an NCIS-esque audience unmatched by any other scripted series on cable.ĭrafting in The Walking Dead’s wake worked well at first for Fear the Walking Dead, which had the highest-rated series premiere and (abbreviated) first season in cable history. Even if you never watched or long ago gave up on The Walking Dead and its Hardwick-hosted aftershow, though, odds are that the Dead-industrial complex is still subsidizing something you like - a less successful comic, maybe, or a critically acclaimed TV show that depends on The Walking Dead’s ad dollars. Walking Dead watchers are familiar with this formula: an act of violence diverting the viewer from a combination of clumsy editing and a protagonist doing something nonsensical. ![]()
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