STRAND YOUR GROUND IN FEAR THE WALKING DEAD

Victor Strand playing with an empty head in FEAR THE WALKING DEAD Season One, and he's progressed in Season 2..

Victor Strand played by Colman Domingo. Right on, bro! Is it racist to enjoy seeing an old school black dude on a series that really needed an, um, old school black dude? Seeming from the 1970's blaxploitation genre, lean and mean and swift and cool, Strand takes us back to basics and, putting color aside, his character is, so far, the best on FEAR THE WALKING DEAD, which began on pretty decent ground, at the beginning of Season Two, by simply getting off it...

Episode 1 Season 2: ***1/2

Although what's becoming clear is the show is about questioning the answers had by fans of THE WALKING DEAD, and even the characters... like when Michonne tells Lauren they could go and live forever on an island... Yeah, that's it... Water is the safe place... But that famous JAWS 2 tagline JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO... Escape the zombie apocalypse, think again... For now we know, Zombies are able to swim... Or rather, float... Kinda makes sense since they can't drown... Recalling a memorable Governor's victim from way back when... That square-jawed dude, too good to be true, about to set things straight, at the tail-end of the episode he's tied underwater and trying to get up... We should have known right then, right there at the lake... 

Strand stands alone

So now Walkers are Floaters, and that yacht is pretty damn sweet: especially with a character like Strand in charge, not giving into anyone or anything and he's ambiguous like, say, a Shane or Merle yet he's kinda Rick but the Rick after Rick learns about living past the end of the world without trusting anyone, and, after playing with that dumb kid's head in Season One, now he's staying ahead of the game by knowing it's a game he's playing...

Meanwhile, didn't you wanna punch that stupid teenage girl for messing with the CB Radio? Although it led to a pretty decent cliffhanger, which hasn't happened yet on FEAR... The entire First Season was a rushed urban/downtown L.A. nightmare, hanging with people who weren't very relatable or likable, from Edward Scissor-Junky to just about everyone else except for maybe GONE GIRL girl and a different kind of Moral Compass who's far from passive in Rubén Blades. All are pretty good actors, yet there was something missing... And let's hope it's made up for because THE WALKING DEAD covers enough ground, trudging from town to town to town... It's nice to be where we're at... So let's hope we stay there, for a spell, or perhaps even longer than that.