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'Fear the Walking Dead' Is Heading Down A Predictable, Dangerous Road

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Fear the Walking Dead was always going to have to prove it could stand on its own two feet. Without an actual “spin-off” character from the original to rely on, building an entirely new zombie show from scratch is a daunting prospect. And I’d even argue that the big Walking Dead fanbase as a multi-million audience guarantee puts even more pressure on the whole thing.

As a result, Fear the Walking Dead seems to be quickly assimilating many of the tropes of the original series. I wrote a column last week about how Cliff Curtis’ Travis Manawa was morphing into the worst elements of Lori and Herschel, first fearing the use of guns when they’re obviously needed, and then being in the “zombies are just really sick people don’t hurt them please” camp that will have any audience shaking their heads.

In episode four, however, Fear the Walking Dead has now already herded its cast into a situation that we’ve seen repeat itself over and over again on the original show.

Woodbury, Terminus, Grady Memorial. All are locations that promise safety and security, but they end up being run by corrupt people who range from megalomaniacs to psychopaths to cannibals, and everything in between.

While early on in this zombie apocalypse, the cast of Fear the Walking Dead probably isn’t going to see humans grilling each other over bonfires (“tainted meat!”), they’ve already gotten into one of these situations on their own with the US military.

It was sort of a weird transition to go from the chaos of week three to the relative calm and order of week four where in the new quarantine zone (and even outside of it) we didn’t see a single zombie all episode. Impressive, for a zombie show, and I’m not sure The Walking Dead has even done that.

But yet again, the idyllic peace has proven to be anything but. The military, with the aid of some “medical professionals” have started extracting “problem” cases from the quarantine zones. That includes the gravely injured, but also the mentally unstable, and drug addicts like Madison’s son Nick. The cover story is that they’re being extracted “for treatment” at a nearby facility, but the fact that they’re literally ripping people out of their homes in the cover of night and not allowing family members to accompany them is a pretty bright red flag that something else is going on here. The episode ends with soldiers entering the house outside the zone where Travis’s son saw survivors, and lighting them up with gunfire.

Tonight’s episode five would hint at some sort of rescue operation where Travis and Madison try to get their loved ones back. They have someone on the inside, sort of, as Travis’ ex-wife actually volunteered to go with the kidnapping crew, presumably to do some good, but in the process creating a bizarre scene where she leaves her own son behind. Even if you don’t like her character very much, that seemed like quite a drastic step.

Worst case scenario, the military/national guard is just rounding up and executing these “problem” cases because A) they’re still not sure how the virus spreads, so anyone who even seems remotely immuno-comprised might be a threat and B) they have limited resources and they’re not going to share them with the likes of mental cases or heroin addicts.

Best case? Maybe it really is a medical care facility, and they’re not just murdering everyone. But it’s probably run more like a prison than a hospital at this rate, because of both A and B above. Still, it does seem a bit early for there to already be one of these horribly corrupt and immortal “safe haven” groups taking advantage of everyone, especially since it’s the US government. Fear the Walking Dead has had kind of an anti-government bend from the start, so I guess the army being abusive and corrupt isn’t too much of a stretch from that perspective. But I thought that the show would at least have survivors fighting actual zombies for a while before we dove directly into the whole “man’s greatest enemy is man” thing that we’ve seen repeat itself on The Walking Dead time and time again.

I would argue that The Walking Dead has entered its most interesting era now that they found a community that isn’t secretly evil at its core in the form of Alexandria. Before I read the comics, I fully expected Alexandria to be just another Woodbury, but instead, it was exactly what it looked like, which was a refreshing change of pace. Yes, there are some idiots there (most of whom have died already), but now Rick and his crew have to be their shepherds against the wolves.

If you read further into the comics (spoilers ahead), you find other communities that are working and living together in peace, and when there are new villains (Negan’s crew, The Whisperers), they’re very, very up front about it. This game the show played with luring the group into community after community only to have them discover it was secretly horrible has finally come to an end.

But now it’s just starting in Fear the Walking Dead. Much like I said with Travis’ reluctance to embrace what needs to be done to survive, this is another situation where the audience is going to be ahead of the show for a good long while. We’ve lived through all these other situations on the original show, so there is no shocking twist anymore that surprise, the military is doing bad things and this safe zone is not the paradise it seems to be.

This continues to further my fear that Fear the Walking Dead is just doing a paint-by-numbers recreation of the earlier seasons of The Walking Dead, rather than bringing much of anything new to the table. The characters and setting is different, yes, but so far, FTWD is hitting all the same beats of the original show, and usually from an era when TWD was a sub-par (seasons 1-3, I would argue).

I’m curious to see how the quarantine situation is resolved, but so far a lot about Fear the Walking Dead feels like déjà vu, and I’m hoping it can develop into something a bit more unexpected and compelling as time goes on.

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