- SPOILERS AHEAD … AND LOTS OF ZOMBIES, SURVIVALISTS AND THE ODD HELICOPTER …
Any idea that Fear the Walking Dead is the poor, insipid younger sibling of the The Walking Dead – not an opinion I held but one that had been widely articulated online – were put to rest, and with strong declarative intent on the season 3 twin episode opener, “Eye of the Beholder” and “The New Frontier”.
Marrying the introspective tone of the first two seasons, which has proved a winning move for many, a marked departure from the parent show’s more gung-ho approach, with a far more action-oriented look and feel, the two episodes kicked off the season in fine style, echoing a recurrent theme throughout the franchise that there is no such thing in the apocalypse as a safe harbour.
With that in mind, it was reinforced again and again that whether you had a spoon at your disposal – Madison’s (Kim Dickens) eye-balling skills are second to none as sociopathic survivalist Troy Otto (Daniel Sharman) will rather ruefully attest – or a great big concrete brick as Travis (Cliff Curtis) showed in the ad hoc zombie games arena into which he was tossed, it was up to you to shape your own destiny.
Fine in theory, an appealingly inspirational bon mot that would look lovely on a Hallmark business card if anyone was actually still printing them (spoiler: they’re not: they’re goes the Christmas card mailout this year) but one encumbered by a whole range of other people who are also hellbent on shaping their particular destinies.
Take the Otto family, for instance, survivalists of a right wing, conspiracy theory bent who got ready for a whole other imagined apocalypse at their ranch on Texas, even spruiking their wares to the gullible, fearful hordes on the interwebs, only to find they were perfectly positioned for the zombie version that turned up on their doorsteps.
On the whole they are far from nutjob weirdos you might expect with father Jeremiah (Dayton Callie) coming across as a reasonable man; sure he believed that the USA was ending, not by zombies to be fair, and that the only way to survive was to hide away, but his approach to Madison, Nick (Frank Dillane), and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) was fare more gracious and welcoming than you might expect when the world is going to hell in an undead basket.
This spirit of unaccustomed apocalyptic welcome was matched by younger son Jake (Sam Underwood) who came to Madison’s rescue at the old military base where Travis & Madison, Nick, girlfriend Luciana (Danay Garcia) and Alicia first encounter the group when they’re securing fuel supplies.
Alas, older brother Tory, who comes across as the type of person who tortured kids as a child especially given his Doctor Mengele experiments on people in the basement lab of the base, is not quite so sane or inclusive, making Madison’s life hell and coming close to dooming the lives of Travis, Nick and Luciana.
That he didn’t succeed came down purely, in the end, to Travis et al fighting back at the 11th hour down in the lab, avoiding becoming fodder for Troy’s dubious value zombie experiments, and Madison proving that spoons are simply for eating soup nicely in polite company.
But he was a perfect illustration of the fact that all the early debates about keeping your humanity have gone out the window, in a simple bid for survival; hopefully not completely though since one of the things that separated Fear the Walking Dead from The Walking Dead is that it possessed a slow burn narrative that took the time to ruminate on why things were happening and not simply that were happening.
Forsaking that would be a mistake since it would render the show a simply blood-and-guts copy of its parent show, which has shown in season 7 particularity that it is a violent, hollow unthinking shell of its former self.
So far at least the moral core is very much present in Fear the Walking Dead, a reflection, possibly, of the fact, that we’re still fairly early on in the apocalypse mess.
Disturbingly thought humanity’s capacity to go all Lord of the Flies on its own arse, and take others down with it, was on horrifying display at the base where apart from the randomly systematic experimenting on survivors to see how long it took for them to turn, the grounds outside were strewn with multitudinous bodies decaying in the sun as some kind of weird zombie repellent.
That this kind of cruel, unfeeling behaviour emerged so quickly post end of the world is damning, and unnerving, testament to the fact that despite all the good in people there is a dark, nasty minority just waiting for the breakdown of everything to wield their bullying, malicious cruelty.
Thus far, everyone has been spared the worst of its effects save for Travis who, in a shock death (although the way he’s been going lately, what with his son’s death, he was looking a mite poorly) bore the brunt of a cold, calculating survival-driven selfishness via a stray bullet through the neck as the helicopter he was riding in was riddled with gunfire from far below.
Madison, as you might expect, was devastated by Travis’s death, accepting her new home with the new Ottos but cognisant that after their treatment at the hands of Troy’s rogue troop – tactics, disavowed by his brother and father but can he always be controlled thus? – there was really no way for them to be sure of anything anymore.
It’s a sobering reality and one that is going to have a powerful on the group going forward; while this progression was all but inevitable, I can only hope that Madison, who muttered something about taking the Ottos’ ranch for their own if needs be (shades of Rick and Alexandria anyone? Look how well that turned out!) doesn’t succumb to Rick-itis, a my-end-justifies-the-means approach that might make sense in an apocalypse but makes for incredibly shortsighted, boxed-in narratives that ultimately go nowhere.
I hope that the balance between keeping humanity intact and destruction corroding the human soul is kept intact; Fear the Walking Dead is too good for that to be lost.
- So what lies ahead for our intrepid band of survivors when next we check in with Fear the Walking Dead? “TEOTWAWKI”, the foreboding acronym that stands for The End of the World as We Know it, indicates not a whole of good things with the overall season 3 trailer giving the impression that complacency is essentially your death warrant …
And if you’re wondering how to survive TEOTWAWKI, fear not there is a guide, with or without zombies …