Fear The Walking Dead EP.01 Review By Bryan Quevedo
I will start by saying this; The
Walking Dead at its core has created an amazingly immersing world where the
eventual extinction of mankind is inevitable.
Through its now 5 season run, the zombie outbreak looks to be the clear
winner, with every episode having the survivors escaping troubles that once
brought sanctuary to their group. It is
an interesting drama and one that captures viewers with a dark atmosphere that with no doubt, wants you to care about the characters more than you should. Although this formula has proven effective in
increasing viewership every year, it is also becoming very tiring. This has shown to be Fear the Walking Dead’s weakness in this episode.
The pilot episode was meant to create alias
for each character within this family.
You have the dad who is a teacher that is invested in giving the kids the
benefit of the doubt, a mom who wants concrete evidence about literally everything, a daughter with a “caring” boyfriend and lastly the drug addicted
son that we all know will eventually create more problems for everyone. That’s basically it. The rest of the episode was filled with
self-conflicting problems that I personally thought could have been avoided
that added nothing to progress how the zombie outbreak will eventually reach
LA. The show simply brushed it aside
with the one witness of the occurrence denying his allegations within a couple
minutes. It made people look stupid and
ill-informed. The show felt like it
wanted to scream “ZOMBIE OUTBREAK INCOMING” but it was never allowed to do
so. Even the one scene with the student
who brought the knife was a missed opportunity to push the plot forward; it was
just awkward to see the student failing to explain what news he had found on
the epidemic. The evidence of something
strange was clearly there and was shown to us several times. The dad seeing the blood on the church floor,
his son’s weird behavior and the missing person signs popping around town are
all massive hints that something strange is going on. It isn’t until the very end of the episode
that they finally discover what was going on, and they find out using a tool
accessible from the very beginning. This
was the biggest let down of the entire episode because our first walker outside
the church was presented to us on TV, and one that attacked the public. It didn’t fit the flow of the episode and it
felt more like the show didn’t realize what it was until the very end of the
episode. Denial seems to be a very big
key component of the how the epidemic will reach LA, and it just seems that
humanity is too stupid to accept abnormal situations.
Not that real life humanity is
smart enough to prevent a massive zombie epidemic but the show suffered from
making these simplistic problems bigger than what it should have been. It brushed aside the main idea of the show
too early to make way for character development. None of the main characters in the show
seemed to show heroism but seemed to foreshadow that they will all eventually
create problems in later episodes. It is
a growing problem in The Walking Dead and it is one that I hope not to see in
this spin off.
Overall, EP01 “Pilot” does create the famous and well created atmosphere that The Walking Dead is known for and attempting to develop characters for future episodes by taking its time; however, it suffers from
missed opportunities explaining the zombie epidemic, unnecessary scenes of
character development, problematic and uninteresting character development and
the same tiring formula The Walking Dead has had for the last couple of
years. Score:
6/10
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