We All Fall Down: Review for Fear the Walking Dead 202
Caution, this review contains episode spoilers.
Can we rename the show Neurotic People on a Boat? Pretty sure we’re seeing the emotional trend for the season: Trust No One. Unfortunately for FtWD, they’re not The X-Files and all the paranoid decisions the characters make don’t drag us into the tension the writers are trying to make happen. Much like “fetch” their attempt to make something happen with these characters isn’t working. Matter of fact, I believe I loathe Travis more now than before. Aren’t we supposed to be on the same side as the family? I understand writing Nick as the antihero, but Travis’ constant freak-outs over nothing, or at least anything he can articulate clearly, are driving me insane. He endangers the family by calling out for people who may or may not be friendly, babbles endlessly in an attempt to drum tension, and flips his lid when Chris learns the proper way to dispose of the infected. The only time he makes any sense is when he tells Madison no at the episode’s climax—if that’s what you want to call it—and she wants to take on more mouths to feed.
Let’s backtrack to the plot now that I’m done venting about a main character who needs to go back to the writer’s room for a rewrite.
The yacht is being tracked by a large vessel. Strand tells everyone the only way to shake them is to drop anchor in a cove and wait for the following ship to pass. Travis suggests Catrina Island, where he hopes to talk to the ranger on duty at the station. Lucky for them, the ranger George, his wife Melissa, and their three children are holding the infected on the island at bay with a fence. The yacht is allowed to stay at the dock for the night. Strand, Daniel, and Ofelia stay onboard. Daniel is only there to obsessively track Strand and pilfer through his things. Ofelia gets a one-off scene where she says she understands her father now because he’s cruel, just like the new world swarming around them. On the island, George fills Travis in about the outbreak. In a few sentences, the writing team takes the easy way out, using the forest service stations nationally as ground zero for outbreak information in each area. Essentially, they destroy fifty percent of the nation’s population off screen by simple telling Travis, “Well, these stations went dark so just assume every human there died.” We know they die. We’ve watched TWD and understand cataclysmic events. Why write this weird logic leap to explain what we already know or can guess? Again, the writers show they have no faith in the viewer’s ability to tell a story themselves unless they’re guided by the nose the whole time. I don’t like television which assumes the average viewer isn’t intelligent.
Then comes the meddling this show is infamous for, because what else will Madison do with her time? Somehow the episode comes around to Melissa begging Madison to take her youngest son and only daughter with them when they leave. Melissa can’t go, her MS is pretty much a death sentence and she knows it. George is a nutjob and won’t leave the island. Their eldest son is as unreasonably unstable about leaving their home as his father. While this is going on, Nick searches the house for drugs. He finds pills he says are bad news, but leaves them where he found them when the daughter finds him snooping. The next morning just as everyone’s getting ready to head out—including the children—the boy comes in to say the girl took a pill. It rolls downhill from there in predictable fashion.
These characters are cursed. Every time they touch something, people die in droves. One might say the writers do it to show kindness has its cost same as hatred and fear-mongering. I say it’s because they honestly do not know how to go about getting characters from their morning coffee before work to where Rick and his people are emotionally on TWD. It’s so much easier to jump into the middle of the story and build background in as they go. With FtWD, they’re at the beginning with only forward to progress. Yet they keep chaining down character growth by giving them emotional templates to fill, not actually delving into what makes the characters work. We should see different people now, subtle, but different. Travis and Madison are the same obnoxious people as in episode 101. The others? They’re dang near invisible, they’re so dull. It’s a shame. Alycia Debnam-Carey was amazing on The 100, but one wouldn’t know it from the lackluster material they’re giving her as Alicia.
What good does it do to say, “Hey, write this better,” when AMC keeps purchasing a new season before seeing the full numbers and fan reactions to episode 201? They have their moneymaker, they’re going to shake it until they break it. Which may be soon, given fan’s lack of interest only two episodes into the second season.