"The Walking Dead," while entertaining, is not what you would call a critical masterpiece. Its survival in a post-apocalyptic world hinges on the threat of death instead of the reality of life. Rather than investing in the everyday stakes and relationships of the characters, viewers tune in just to make sure Daryl Dixon doesn't become zombie chow. While that formula has proven successful - "The Walking Dead" is TV's most popular show with a weekly average of 14 million viewers - it doesn't leave a lot of room for substance. So when AMC announced that they were developing a spinoff, I figured the network wasn't interested in testing our brains, only devouring them. Perhaps that assessment was a bit premature.
"Fear The Walking Dead" premiered last night and the pilot episode purposefully differed from that of its predecessor. It was slow paced and decidedly not action packed, choosing to focus on the main characters rather than the creatures attempting to eat them. AMC isn't giving us the end of the world with "Fear The Walking Dead," they're giving us the end of civilization, and that is immediately more interesting.
The episode kicks off with Nick (Frank Dillane) awakening from a heroin nod, groggily aware that his junkie pal Gloria is nowhere to be found. As he probes the empty rooms and hallways of a dilapidated church, he comes across a dead body with its throat chewed out. Red flag number one. He then finds Gloria, hungrily chomping on someone's face in a mess of blood and gore. Nick isn't like your typical horror movie character who stupidly sticks around the danger. He instantly books it out of the church and straight into oncoming traffic where he takes a nasty hit courtesy of one of L.A.'s many commuters.
I love how "FTWD" hits us with a classic seduction technique: tease the audience with the first Walker and then snap back to reality, leaving us wanting more. The show uses the viewers' knowledge of what's to come to its advantage as the camera looms over Los Angeles' skyline, providing a glimpse of the society about to be turned to ruin. Well played.
It turns out that Nick is the son of Maddison Clark (Kim Dickens), a guidance counselor at the local high school. She's dating Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis), an English teacher, who has moved in with her and her straight A-student daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey). They get the call that Nick's been in an accident. He's at the hospital playing coy with curious police. But internally, he's beginning to break down. Did he really see what he thinks he saw or was it a drug-induced hallucination?
Travis naturally isn't welcomed by Nick and Alicia (and he's at odds with his old family, ex-wife Liza and son Chris), but he offers to stay with Nick at the hospital while Maddie and Alicia get to school.
At school is where the show starts dropping hints: kids are out sick, a new form of the flu is going around, etc. Yet only loner student Tobias, carrying a blade for protection, seems to be taking the seemingly innocuous news reports seriously.
"If there's a problem, we're going to know about it. The authorities will tell us," Maddie reassures him. It's funny to see the child dismissing the adult's naiveté and it's interesting how "FTWD" is setting up the failure of the power structures that we all rely on. A nice inversion of societal norms.
Elsewhere on school grounds, Alicia enjoys a few cute meets with her boyfriend where she expresses her frustration with her stagnant life. She wants to break free and escape to college. This may be typical teenage angst, but at least it rings true. Her boyfriend, by the way, seems like a genuinely good dude which all but guarantees he'll be dead by episode's end (spoiler alert: he goes missing in the next scene).
Back at the hospital, Nick tells Travis what he saw at the church. It would be so easy for Dillane to lapse into the standard detached superiority that most actors assign to drug addict characters. But Nick is questioning his own sanity at the moment and you have to give the actor credit for brandishing the cracks in his psyche instead of trying to hide them.
Travis decides to investigate the church where he promptly slips in a pool of blood and guts. Ew. Okay, maybe Nick isn't crazy after all. Something grisly definitely went down there.
But before he can figure out what, he heads back to school where he is discussing author Jack London with his English class. London was a famous fiction writer known for his socialist beliefs and worldwide celebrity. He also lent himself well for on-the-nose thematic announcements in "FTWD" - "He's trying to teach us how not to die" Travis says to his class. Hmm, I wonder how that connects to this series?
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Later, he and Maddie are driving when they come across a traffic jam of police cars, fire trucks and pedestrians. Something is going on up ahead but no one can see what it is. It's in these types of moments that "Fear The Walking Dead" proves its worth. Everyone knows the scariest part of a roller coaster ride isn't the plummeting drop. It's the moments leading up to it in which you brace yourself for what's to come.
The prequel element of "Fear The Walking Dead" gives the episode's proceedings an underlying layer of tension that really helps establish a something's-not-quite-right tone. That notion is only reinforced when grainy footage of a corpse attacking paramedics and absorbing multiple gunshots hits the Internet. Something about displaying this through the news gives the event a hint of realism and that helps the horror aspects of the show. The proverbial s--- is hitting the fan right in front of everyone's eyes and yet no one seems to realize it.
Meanwhile, Nick escapes from the hospital and meets up with drug dealer Calvin. Nick wants to know if the drugs were laced with anything or if he really is going insane. Again, I liked Dillane's feral desperation in this scene.
Calvin, recognizing Nick's instability and worried what he might say to police, carefully soothes Nick so he can lure him into a trap. But apparently he's the world's worst trap setter because he doesn't even attempt to hide the gun he plans to kill Nick with. Come on, bro, that's gangster 101 right there. The two struggle over the weapon before it goes off, putting a neat hole in Calvin's chest. At this point, Nick has nowhere else to turn so he calls his mother and Travis who come to the scene only to find that Calvin's body is gone.
But it's not gone for long. As the three begin to drive away, Calvin's reanimated corpse attacks. Nick runs him over but, somehow, Calvin gets up. Nick hits him again and still Calvin's mangled body tries to move. "What the hell is happening?" Maddie asks. Boom, there's your Not-In-Kansas-Anymore moment.
What I like about "FTWD" is that it focused squarely on the characters with the escalating zombie virus as a mysterious backdrop. So far, the show isn't about Walkers. It's about a mother who cares for her children, a young man questioning his own sanity, a teenager searching for meaning and a normal guy trying to be a good man. These are actual people and not just general archetypes for the end of the world. Sure, there are some tired cliches in here and I realize that no one is going to confuse "Fear The Walking Dead" with a classic Shakespearean drama. But I'm pleasantly surprised with the series premiere's attempt to make us care about its characters instead of just marking them as sacrificial lambs for down the road.
Can the show keep up its refreshing character focus as it wades deeper and deeper into the zombie outbreak? We'll have to wait to find out.
