FEAR EXCEEDS WALKING WITH PLOTS ABOVE PEOPLE

Promotional Poster for FTWD

There has been a problem with THE WALKING DEAD. People have noticed. New fans probably not so much. Old fans, definitely. New fans love the show for the same reason the old fans are growing tiresome. The characters are so good, the show has run out of stories, and simply relies on things like, "Did you see Daryl's arms this week?" "Carol sure was acting strange, wasn't she?" "Will Rick go into another deep depression and leave the others hanging?" "Who will die... it has to be someone?" And especially now, after that baseball bat bashing the likes of THE UNTOUCHABLES. The characters are like family, so we don't care what they do, we just enjoy them there; and yet, sometimes, are annoyed they don't do enough... for us!

Now, onto FEAR THE WALKING DEAD, a sort of urban, dark, grittier version of WALKING as in, downtown L.A. was a harsher place to be before "The Turn" than woodsy Georgia, and the characters, while far less interesting, all looking very similar and with a few expectations, not really standing out from each other, following a lackluster first Season that seemed like grainy newsreel footage, we have set out to sea and, so far, each and every episode is doing what the first two seasons of Frank Darabont's WALKING DEAD did... providing twists, turns and unpredictable endings along with scrapes and last-minute plans and attacks, and other things spontaneous and nail-bite exciting, setting the plot up front and the people to the back... Where frankly, they need to be on THE WALKING DEAD. For as much as we love Rick, Daryl, Carol, Maggie, Michonne, and the rest, now all captive by a guy who makes the Governor seem like Tinkerbell, there needs to be episodes that, while providing a serialized continuation, have a beginning, middle, and... almost an end: This is what FEAR THE WALKING DEAD i.e. DEAD IF BY SEA has been doing, and, finally off that boring urban landscape and into the modern day pirate-filled sea, it's getting better and better. Meanwhile, so, Daryl has muscles, and Carol's not your usual soccer mom type, and Rick gets angry: So f---ing what! We know this already! Yes, sure, character-driven is everything... but let's go somewhere like before, or characters will hinder instead of delivering, like they used to...