Other humans have long been the scariest thing on the show, something that appears to be the case in Fear The Walking Dead too. Iām about five episodes in, and very much enjoying it. Though inhabiting the same universe, the tone feels different immediately. The first season reminds me a lot of the end of 28 Days Later, where the military are not all theyāre cracked up to be in the saviour department.
Back in the main verse, decent episode last night. Only two episodes of Rick left this season. There are strong hints that it may not be the (ahem) usual exit for the Grimester.
Big changes going on in the main season. Andrew Lincoln has left the show, and weāve jumped six years into the future in the space of one episode. Itās like a reboot with all the same characters.
Let me guess, a bald (but tall, handsome and charming) man, wearing a ridiculous (but somehow stylish) shirt, appearing to walk past a faded sign for Magners Cider before becoming instantly and incurably drunk?
ā¦go onā¦
I should probably declare that I donāt watch TWD.
So season nine is in the memory banks, and by all measurable yardsticks, such as previous seasons. In the real world, Andrew Lincoln, who played the ever-present Rick Grimes, departed the cast. Normally this means death and perhaps a bit of undeath if the brain aināt destroyed. Iāll leave that there, but for a series that lost two of its lead characters, it managed to fill the void spectacularly.
In a move Iāve only seen done once before on television, the series takes a giant, permanent leap into the future. A whole seven years. When Battlestar Galactica performed its great leap, it only jumped two years ahead, and it was quickly pretty apparent as to what had happened in those years.
TWD handles it much more deftly, requiring both audience and show to fill in some gaps. They commit too - I was dreading a season full of flashbacks, but most of the time is spent exploring the brave old world. All the petrol has been found and used. Our heroes spent their time getting about in literal horse drawn cars, and there is a new and deadly opponent to face.
I will not describe what the Whisperers are. The show does that well enough. What they do is make the show scary again. Other humans have been the main threat ever since season three. Most of the cohort we cheer for are utterly competent at dispatching walkers by then. The Dead just arenāt that scary.
The humans are, whether its The Governor of Woodbury, a psychopath maintaining the veneer of civility, Negan, a narcissistic psychopath that still doesnāt give a fuck what anyone thinks of him (save perhaps two people) or Alpha, chillingly brought to life by Brit actor Samantha Morgan. She doesnāt give a fuck about humanity full stop.
Itās an excellent TV show again, and in Trumpās America, will probably end up being a survival manual for the future.
I really like both the Walking Dead shows, especially now that theyāre doing different things.
What I like about Fear is that it prods at questions thatāll probably be in your zombie apocalypse plans. For example, a common plan is to fuck off out to sea on a nice boat with loads of supplies.
They tried that. They found an ocean full of human pirate cunts, looking to kill them for their shit.
Fear is also a much more mobile show than the one that spawned it. The group we focus on really shifts, travelling much bigger distances than the Georgia plod-a-longs.
Where the main show is settling into what happens when people settle down, Fear explores the kinds of things that can go wrong.
In the last season, theyāve crash landed in somewhere they cannot easily escape, and worse, a no longer maintained nuclear plant is about to go Chernobyl.
Iāve just watched the season finale of The Walking Dead. It was the conclusion of my favourite arc of the show to date; the Whisperers. They are unlike anything our band of survivors have faced before.
The show stayed pretty faithful to the source material in terms of overall beats, although different characters wound up getting killed. Something that has been going for ten years really shouldnāt be this good, and what makes it more remarkable is that the show was in a rut at one point.
I also watched the pilot episode of the Walking Dead : The World Beyond. Set ten years after the outbreak, it looks like itās going to focus on younger characters. It has gotten mediocre reviews according to users on Amazon, but I thought it was decent enough and am interested to see where they take it.
Yeah, again, I think theyāll get the wedge and theyāll cast young elsewise.
I think itās an interesting universe. Nowhere near as brutal for as fuck laden as its comic book inspiration, but thatās not as important as the rut.
For too long, the show just repeated a beat. Get somewhere safe. Place becomes less safe. Get somehwhere else safe.
The main show got into that rut and funnily enough, got itself out of it the minute it settled down, perhaps not immediately, but the moment it became about planted human communities pitted against each other it expanded.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan has owned Negan throughout his arc.
