I have mulled just diving right into both Walking Dead series but every time I do, I end up spending just brief visits before moving on to something else. I watched the Pilot of Fear the Walking Dead, and I think the seed of the idea seems quite promising. It was really the germination process in need of creative sustenance. I think perhaps the series should have been operated by a completely different creative group than The Walking Dead. I was really hoping we got that visual on the cover of first season's set with teenagers playing basketball when a zombie emerges to disrupt their game. When Madison and Nick depart the show in the fourth season, seeing how it all started here, kind of smartens us up that no one is safe, rather if you are Dillane wanting out or Dickens who is dispatched by the producers/writers for shock value. It all starts interestingly even if there's a general lack of excitement or energy. Nick awakens after a bender with the powder, inside an abandoned church now functioning as a junkie commune. He find Gloria, a junkie friend, chewing off a victim's mouth (gruesome effect revealing lips and partial chin gone, displaying open face with teeth) after discovering another squatter's neck torn out. Gloria rushes him out of the unflattering building, where Nick is hit by a car in the middle of the street. Madison, his mother, is a counselor at an LA school, dating schoolteacher, Travis (Cliff Curtis).
Because I have only seen some of the fourth season I guess I spoiled it for myself because Travis is nowhere to be found. Anyway, he has a son from a previous marriage who wants nothing to do with him even though Travis is a very likable guy...divorce troubles and a new relationship with Madison perhaps. Nick tells Travis about the experience in the junkie church with him visiting the dark, depressing building, finding blood and viscera but no zombies...he does find a vagabond, frightened and fleeing. Madison talks to a paranoid student at school carrying a knife, just sure a virus of serious magnitude is sweeping the country. How right he is! Nick escapes the hospital, capitalizing on a flatline patient, eventually meeting a supplier in a diner, Calvin. Madison and Travis thought Calvin could help them find Nick due a previous association although Calvin claims he isn't of that life anymore. Calvin feels threatened by Nick, so a trip under a bridge by train tracks through a tunnel seems like the perfect place to bump his junkie problem off. Gun goes off, scuffle resulting in Calvin on the concrete and Nick awaiting Madison and Travis. In the Pilot's impression of how the virus has taken hold, Calvin, having been shot in the chest, pursues them, eventually put down by multiple truck splats as Nick backs into him and finally hits the brakes, hurling him feet ahead into a pile of mashup body. With a traffic jam revealing a recording of a zombie gunned down by police released on social media, teachers at Madison's school, misunderstood by the public as unlawful use of force, are gripped by the event. Students also see it and question what is going on. This does remind me of Romero's early work in regards to an outbreak gradually, sometimes subtly, and assuredly overwhelming a big city. News indicating something seriously wrong, kids not coming to school, others noticing that so many are missing, including Madison's daughter, Alicia, who becomes concerned about her graffiti artist beau, when he quits answering texts and showing up at the beach boardwalk. This all sets up the next film.
Because I have only seen some of the fourth season I guess I spoiled it for myself because Travis is nowhere to be found. Anyway, he has a son from a previous marriage who wants nothing to do with him even though Travis is a very likable guy...divorce troubles and a new relationship with Madison perhaps. Nick tells Travis about the experience in the junkie church with him visiting the dark, depressing building, finding blood and viscera but no zombies...he does find a vagabond, frightened and fleeing. Madison talks to a paranoid student at school carrying a knife, just sure a virus of serious magnitude is sweeping the country. How right he is! Nick escapes the hospital, capitalizing on a flatline patient, eventually meeting a supplier in a diner, Calvin. Madison and Travis thought Calvin could help them find Nick due a previous association although Calvin claims he isn't of that life anymore. Calvin feels threatened by Nick, so a trip under a bridge by train tracks through a tunnel seems like the perfect place to bump his junkie problem off. Gun goes off, scuffle resulting in Calvin on the concrete and Nick awaiting Madison and Travis. In the Pilot's impression of how the virus has taken hold, Calvin, having been shot in the chest, pursues them, eventually put down by multiple truck splats as Nick backs into him and finally hits the brakes, hurling him feet ahead into a pile of mashup body. With a traffic jam revealing a recording of a zombie gunned down by police released on social media, teachers at Madison's school, misunderstood by the public as unlawful use of force, are gripped by the event. Students also see it and question what is going on. This does remind me of Romero's early work in regards to an outbreak gradually, sometimes subtly, and assuredly overwhelming a big city. News indicating something seriously wrong, kids not coming to school, others noticing that so many are missing, including Madison's daughter, Alicia, who becomes concerned about her graffiti artist beau, when he quits answering texts and showing up at the beach boardwalk. This all sets up the next film.
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