Nov 02, 2015 by Alex Castle
After ending last week’s episode on a huge cliffhanger – Glenn at the bottom of a pile of hundreds of walkers with no apparent means of escape, whether or not the entrails being pulled out were his, and Rick in a non-functional RV surrounded on all sides – showrunner Scott Gimple continued with this season’s experiments in storytelling structure by cutting away to an extended flashback detailing how Morgan came to be the bo staff-wielding pacifist that found his way to Alexandria in the season 5 finale.
How you felt about this narrative detour, I suspect, will depend largely on how you feel about Morgan as a character. I happen to be fascinated by him, and as eager as I am to find out what happens to Rick, and... Read More
Oct 19, 2015 by Alex Castle
As different as The Walking Dead is from just about any other TV show either before or after it, it has always been very straightforward and conventional in its storytelling. It is just about always a straight line from point A to point B. The most formally daring move it ever made was in the pilot, when Rick woke up from a coma to the zombie apocalypse.
These first two season 6 episodes suggest that the show is going to be experimenting a little more. Last week’s premiere was split between black-and-white flashbacks to the immediate aftermath of Morgan’s arrival at Alexandria and Rick’s killing of Doctor Pete, and plan to lead thousands of walkers out of a quarry and away from Alexandria, a plan that was going great... Read More
Oct 12, 2015 by Alex Castle
“I don’t take chances anymore,” Rick tells his long-lost neighbor Morgan, who after being the one to fill Rick in on the zombie apocalypse and then declining to join Rick’s travel party, has been found by Daryl and brought back to Alexandria with a spiffy new set of staff-fighting skills.
Rick means that in the five years (or however long it’s been in in-show time) since he saw Morgan, he’s learned that some people can’t be saved, some people can’t help, and some arguments are best settled permanently. We don’t know what Morgan’s been doing for all this time, other than practicing staff-fighting, but it appears that he still retains a little bit of the optimism and faith in humanity that made Rick such a conflicted, at times unsteady leader... Read More
Oct 08, 2015 by Alex Castle
I once was lost, but now I’m found.
I was just as excited about The Walking Dead as everyone else when the show premiered in 2010, and played my part in making it the biggest hit in the history of basic cable. But I must confess that somewhere between Herschel’s farm and the Governor, I got bored. Bored with the thinly drawn characters, bored with the endless debates about whether to stay or go, to kill or spare. It seemed this show couldn’t have someone go to the bathroom without a 7-minute scene of grim deliberation. I quit watching, and I totally missed the prison season and the Terminus season. When I stuck my head back in midway through season 5, I was delighted to see that all the... Read More
Oct 05, 2015 by Alex Castle
“You can’t save everyone,” Alicia tells her stepbrother Chris with a chilling matter-of-factness, echoing her mother and his father’s difference in approach to the zombie apocalypse. Each episode has carried the characters a little closer to understanding that Things Are Never Going to Be the Same, but this was the one where they really started acting like it, with often fascinating results.
As the Clark-Manawa-Salazar clan plots to bust into the impromptu military base where junkie Nick, Nurse Liza, and deceased Griselda are being held, Andy the captured soldier offers to draw them a map in exchange for his life, an idea Daniel rejects because as we learned last week, Daniel is a ruthless bastard. Sensing Travis' weakness, Andy persuades him to let him go, and Travis does.
... Read More
Sep 21, 2015 by Alex Castle
Where each of the previous episodes of Fear The Walking Dead has begun almost at the exact moment the last one left off, this was the first to let a little time elapse, to let a few things develop offscreen, to let the characters change and adapt so that when we rejoin the action things are a little different than when we left.
Nine entire days have passed since the Manawas’ neighborhood was secured by the U.S. military (calling forward to the Alexandria storyline on the original series), and things have settled into a New Normal, with Travis positioning himself as a liason between the community and the military, his ex-wife Liza providing nursing services to everyone inside the fence in need, their son Chris making video journals, Ofelia... Read More
Sep 01, 2015 by Alex Castle
“When society ends,” pimply-faced high school student Tobias, who seems to be the only person who fully grasps what’s happening, tells his guidance counselor Madison just before she saves him from their shambling, undead principal, “it ends fast.”
This second episode may be disappointing the more bloodthirsty segment of Fear the Walking Dead’s audience, who are eager to get to the free-for-all zombie killing sprees of its parent show, but I found it fascinating in the ways it imagines the beginning of the end in Los Angeles.
In a lot of ways, society is still holding together, as police are still out on the street trying to control the chaos – and in a very clever inversion, incur the wrath of street protesters who don’t understand the nature... Read More
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