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‘Fear the Walking Dead’: Melvin Was My Ride

I mean, if I want to see an obscenely wealthy, morally repugnant real estate magnate battling mindless zombies, I’ll just watch the Republican presidential debates again.

The first season of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead is over, and it wasn’t everything we’d hoped. Not that our hopes were that high. After all, as I noted last week, after a strong pilot episode, it took The Walking Dead until well into its fifth to become the type of compelling, frightening, and morally complex work we’d hoped for from the beginning. And we’re still not 100 percent convinced we’re there yet. The gore helped tide us over. We are horror fans after all. But the weak characterizations, sometimes plodding storytelling, and the show’s embarrassing representation of women and non-white characters severely dampened our enthusiasm.

Fear started out with an advantage in the casting of Kim Dickens, who doesn’t know how to play a boring character. She gave us a way into the new series, and Madison was immediately a stronger presence than any of the women on The Walking Dead, at least up until Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) arrival. The writing on the new show hasn’t been impressive, in terms of plot, dialogue, or characterization, but the cast, overall, has been strong (again, Frank Dillane’s slightly over-the-top performance as junkie Nick has grown on me) and Dickens is the backbone of that cast.

There are several prominent Latino characters on the show, which you’d think would be standard for any show set in 21st century Los Angeles, and while some of them are problematic, they’re not presented as stereotypes. The three most prominent Black characters on the show died hasty deaths, and the introduction of the mysterious, manipulative Strand (Colman Domingo) was intriguing at first, but this week we learned that he seems to be a shady real estate broker, which is much less interesting than anything I might have speculated about his background. I mean, if I want to see an obscenely wealthy, morally repugnant real estate magnate battling mindless zombies, I’ll just watch the Republican presidential debates again.

The episode begins with a few nice shots of a full moon over a rapidly disintegrating Los Angeles, and then we’re at that arena full of zombies that Daniel (Ruben Blades) found out about from National Guardsman Adams (Shawn Hatosy) last week. You remember, by having his daughter Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) lure him to their house, tying him up in the basement, and torturing him. That act and its consequences hang over the season finale like a toxic cloud.

Anyway, Madison, Travis (Cliff Curtis), Daniel, the mildly traumatized Ofelia and those pretty but annoying teens, Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) and Alicia (Alycia Debnam Carey) are leaving town before… well, before something bad happens. (It’s not really clear what the military’s plan is for greater Los Angeles. Adams seemed to be saying that they’d all be wiped out to prevent the spread of the zombie infection, which, in this paranoid anti-government fantasy, makes a kind of sense, but on this episode we see Dr. Exner [Sandrine Holt] arranging for a helicopter to carry the wounded to safety. Why would they take a bunch of critically injured folks away and wipe out everyone else? It doesn’t pay to think too much with this show.)

Before they can head east, they need to get into the medical compound, and rescue Nick and Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and Griselda, who has already died from her injuries, but they don’t know that.

After getting the information he needs, Daniel is ready to murder Adams, but Travis intercedes, pointing out that Adams can still help them find their loved ones at the compound. Madison, apparently now okay with torture and murder, tells Travis he has to take Adams in his truck. With the others driving off, Adams convinces Travis to let him go, because otherwise Daniel will definitely kill him. Seems reasonable.

The gang then drives to a parking garage I guess Adams told them about, where for some reason they leave Chris and Alicia with the cars and head into the compound. This show is like a primer on bad parenting. I’m sure Chris and Alicia will be fine, right? What could go wrong?

Because the place is still heavily guarded, Daniel has a plan. An illogical plan that will put his own loved ones in harm’s way and cause the deaths of many innocent people, but still a plan. I just wished the show had shown Daniel setting things in motion instead of having it be this funny reveal, where he tells the soldiers guarding the compound, who threaten to shoot him as he approaches, “You should save your ammunition,” and then casually nods his head toward the zombies coming around the bend. Yes, Daniel has freed the zombies from the arena — thousands of them — and somehow this groaning, shuffling mass of undead has gotten to within a few hundred feet of the compound without anyone noticing it. Let me just state it again: Daniel freed thousands of flesh-eating zombies from the arena and led them to the medical compound. You know, the one he thinks his wife is inside. The one where the National Guard are holding hundreds of innocent people, including Nick. Again, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, a lot, it turns out. Daniel’s zombie pals successfully distract the soldiers, but, their job done, they continue to advance on the compound. Eventually, they break through the fences. Because the compound’s been breached, Dr. Exter finds out that the evac has been put on hold. She orders her staff (including Liza) to run while she “takes care of” the wounded. With chaos ensuing, Strand uses the key he stole to get out, taking Nick with him. As the place is overrun with zombies, Strand refuses to help the other prisoners trying to get out of their cages, and Nick just goes along. Later, Madison and Travis pass through the same corridor, and decide to free who they can. Hooray, humanity!

Strand has plans to meet up with that Guardsman he gave his watch and cufflinks to, Melvin (Toby Levins). Melvin is still alive when they find him, but he’s badly injured. Worse yet, his legs are being eaten by a zombie. Strand must really treasure those cufflinks, because he goes over and takes them back. Melvin’s legs must be super-delicious, because the zombie doesn’t even look up from his meal.

Eventually, Madison, Travis, Nick, Strand, Daniel, Ofelia, and Liza come together and, after a few close calls, make their way out of the facility. Thankfully, Travis has finally stopped trying to reason with the undead.

While all that was happening, Chris and Alicia were hiding in the car in the parking garage. Some guardsmen found them and demanded their SUV, but not before making us worry that maybe they’d sexually assault Alicia. The show cuts away from this heated confrontation in the parking garage, and when the rest of the characters arrive, Nick and Alicia are nowhere to be found. This gratuitous creepiness concludes with Nick and Alicia bursting into the parking garage exclaiming that they’re alright. They were just hiding in a stairwell or something! What a relief.

But, you know, just when it looks like a happy ending, despite all the death and destruction their rescue operation caused, up pops Adams! It’s not clear why he’d bother sticking around to get revenge on Daniel, but there he is, in the parking garage, pointing his gun at Daniel, before he gets even more irrational and decides to shoot Ofelia instead. And then Travis jumps on him and beats him to a pulp.

Now, from the show’s perspective, it’s clear that Ofelia getting shot is Travis’s fault, for being a big ol’ softy and letting Adams go, as opposed to maybe being Daniel’s fault, for using his daughter as bait to lure Adams in so Daniel could bound, gag, torture, and — if everything had gone according to plan — murder him. Shame on you, Travis! You’re still living in the old world!

Now that everyone’s together, and Ofelia’s okay — just a flesh wound — they all follow Strand to his place, a luxurious gated mansion on the Pacific coast, which he has stocked with supplies. Like Daniel, though I guess for different reasons, Strand is alarmingly well-prepared for the zombie apocalypse. It’s almost like they wanted it to happen. Strand tells Nick they’re not staying, though. “The only way to survive in a mad world,” Strand says, “is to embrace the madness.” But really, they’re just going to get on his fancy yacht and sail away.

Before our “heroes” sail into the sunset, Madison follows Liza out onto the beach, where Liza reveals that during all the chaos escaping the compound, she got herself a zombie bite. She wants Madison to put a bullet in her head, just like Madison asked Liza to, back when they saw what happened to her neighbor Susan. “Come on,” Liza goads her, “You never liked me that much.” What a trouper. I don’t know why these folks don’t get further from the house, or find a quieter way to kill one another, but Travis follows Madison out to the beach, and decides to take matters into his own hands, shooting Liza in the head, which of course brings the kids running. Guns are loud! Then Madison and Travis sit on the beach and cry as the tide comes in, shedding tears over not just Liza, but their lost innocence, and perhaps, I’d like to think, their contractual obligation to appear in 15 more episodes of Fear the Walking Dead next summer. It’s true what they say. You can’t save everyone.

Recommended Reading

Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?

Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First

Fear the Walking Dead: Liberals Try to Stop Zombies with Words!

Fear the Walking Dead: I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Help

Fear the Walking Dead: It’s Torture!

‘Fear the Walking Dead’: It’s Torture!

There’s only one more episode left this season, and the ratings are dropping, maybe because people like their zombie shows about bad parents to have more zombies in them, and less teen angst. Season Two is going to be 15 episodes, so they’ll have to come up with a lot more story, or take another six scripts and stretch them out the way the parent show does.

There was some hope last week that AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead might actually be getting interesting, that perhaps we’d written it off too quickly as a crass and shoddy cash-grab capitalizing on the astounding success of the original show. But then it took The Walking Dead itself four full seasons before it turned into a compelling drama. We should have known better. This week’s episode, “Cobalt” (once meant to be the title of the series), was possibly the weakest yet, and exacerbated the show’s representation issues, introducing another morally repugnant Black character (the flashy, beguiling Strand, played by Colman Domingo, who played Ralph Abernathy in Selma) and revealing that its most prominent Latino character is actually a psychopath.

On top of that, the only undead we got a good look at was some slacker donut shop zombie who apparently still felt enough residual sense of responsibility that she didn’t want to leave the store.

It starts in a holding pen at that mysterious medical facility, where they apparently put potential troublemakers like Nick (Frank Dillane, disappointingly subdued this week), Strand, and poor Doug Thompson (John Stewart), the muscle car nut who had the breakdown last week. After goading Doug into freaking out, so that he’s carted away, Strand sets his sights on Nick. Sadly, he doesn’t try to drive Nick crazy. He apparently senses that Nick has ninja skills or perhaps zombie-imitating talents that will come in handy, so he bribes a guard to prevent Nick from being carted off. Strand’s appearance is brief, but he manages to surpass both creepily cheerful Lt. Moyers (Jamie McShane) and quietly psychopathic Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades) as the most interesting character on the show.

Back in town, Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) is raising a ruckus, throwing bottles at the chainlink fence that separates her from the National Guard, demanding to see Griselda (Patricia Reyes Spindola), who was dragged out of their temporary home for “medical treatment.” Eventually, her guardsman beau Adams (Shawn Hatosy) shows up, and convinces Ofelia to let him take her home.

This turns out to be part of Daniel’s bizarre plan, and the next time we see Adams, Madison (Kim Dickens) finds him tied up and gagged in the basement, with Daniel preparing to torture him. See, it turns out that Daniel was not an innocent kid back in El Salvador, but a torturer for the government. Sure, he was young, and sure, he claims they forced him to do it, but seriously? Are we still supposed to root for this guy? Even though he slips right back into torturer mode at the first sign of trouble? Daniel tells Ofelia some cockamamie story about trading Adams for Griselda and Nick, but really Daniel just wants information. And he gets it! Who says torture doesn’t work? Weak-kneed liberals, that’s who! It turns out “Cobalt” just means that the military is going to evacuate the L.A. basin the next morning, “humanely terminating” everyone left in the medical facility. Or in all of L.A. It’s not clear. Still, nothing that drastic seemed imminent, so it’s a good thing Daniel still remembered some things about torturing people, right?

Madison happens upon all this while she’s looking for her teenage daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam Carey), who has run off to get into mischief again. Of course, Madison promptly forgets she has a daughter once she gets involved in Daniel’s nutty plans. Alicia recruits Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), Travis’s (Cliff Curtis) equally forgotten son, on a little day trip to the wealthy part of town, where she tries on a sexy evening gown (the closest Carey’s gonna get to Emmy’s red carpet, I’m afraid) and the two of them smash up the place because nothing matters anymore and now they are rebels without a cause. You would think they could at least make trashing a rich people home look fun, but it all seems kinda pro forma.

Travis has the most exciting adventure, convincing Moyers, who has a rather capricious attitude toward his protective duties, to take Travis to the medical facility, with a couple of key pitstops. First, Moyers tries to goad Travis into blowing away the aforementioned donut shop zombie with a high-powered sniper rifle. Travis declines. What a wimp, this guy. Though I have to say it was pretty gutsy of him to even approach the military after essentially witnessing them gunning down civilians at the end of the last episode. What was the point of that scene if Travis didn’t learn anything from it? In any case, next up, the squad Travis is riding with gets called to help out a SWAT team pinned down at the local library. That turns into a clusterfuck, all off-screen, Moyers vanishes, and some other guardsmen bring Travis home. Sorta anticlimactic.

Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) is at the medical facility, helping out Dr. Exner (Sandrine Holt), patching up wounds and such, and hey, while you’re at it, would you mind shooting Griselda in the head with this captive bolt pistol (normally used to put down cattle) after Griselda suddenly dies of septic shock from her ankle injury. Liza gives lip service to caring about what happened to Nick, but mostly seems like an adaptable sort. She doesn’t really flinch at the notion that this is how things work nowadays. She’s apparently a good little soldier, just like Daniel was, back in El Salvador, all those years ago.

Recommended Reading

“Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?”

“Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First”

“Fear the Walking Dead: Liberals Try to Stop Zombies with Words!”

“Fear the Walking Dead: I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Help”

‘Fear the Walking Dead’: The Black Guys Die First

There’s a conservative bent to much horror, but this conflation of real-life police brutality and genuine tragedy with the killing of zombies crosses a line.

The second episode of Fear the Walking Dead was an improvement, in some ways. It seemed to move a little faster, and there were some genuinely strong moments amid the show’s touted “blended” family. (Yes, Kim Dickens is a substantial talent.) But it was also one of the most reactionary pieces of entertainment I’ve seen in years.

The episode picks up right where the pilot left off. Nick (Frank Dillane), Travis (Cliff Curtis), and Madison (Dickens) are fleeing the scene of Calvin’s (Keith Powers) death and re-awakening. They race home, stopping along the way to pick up Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey). While Nick deals with withdrawal (and I have to assume that there is hours of footage of the exuberantly over-the-top Dillane, wailing and rolling his eyes back in his head, that was left on the cutting room floor), Travis drives off to find his son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) (great, another annoyingly petulant teen!) and ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez).

Madison eventually decides that she needs to leave, too. She heads to the school to find some confiscated meds to help Nick through his crisis. There, she runs into young, middle-aged-looking Tobias (Lincoln A. Castellanos), who dispenses more wisdom about the weird apocalypse that’s just started. What exactly is Tobias doing at the school? Well, he came to get his knife back. Yes, he went out during the zombie apocalypse to retrieve the common steak knife that Madison had confiscated from him the previous day. That must be one special steak knife. Maybe he just hates doing the dishes? He also decides to loot a shopping cart full of food from the school cafeteria, with Madison’s help.

As they’re leaving, they run into Madison’s boss, Art Costa (Scott Lawrence), the principal. Art apparently likes to spend his off days roaming around the school jingling his keys and, I dunno, investigating stuff, so yeah, he seems to have been bitten and turned into a zombie. Even though Madison’s had some experience with Black zombies, and there’s blood all over Art’s shirt, she decides to approach him and offer aid. Luckily, Tobias has that steak knife. When that fails, Madison leaps to the rescue and bashes Art’s head in with a fire extinguisher. Congratulations, Madison. You’re the first character on this new show to figure out how to kill a zombie.

After saving Tobias’ life, Madison brings him home and they wish each other luck. At this point, Gidget, my viewing companion, lamented, “All that and he didn’t even get his food.” I realized she was right and indeed, Tobias had neglected to bring all his purloined food home with him. “Who can think of eating after that?” I imagined him saying to Madison as they grimly left the school. But he might regret that decision in a week or two. Hey, at least he got that steak knife back!

Alicia, who’s mostly avoided the horror so far, wants to leave the house to check on her “sick” boyfriend, Matt (Maestro Harrell), but Nick manages to stop her by having a seizure and vomiting everywhere. “Not now!” Alicia exhorts him, but really when is a good time?

Meanwhile, Travis goes to Liza’s and eventually they figure out that Chris is at that big, unplanned protest on TV, and they go to get him. In the chaos that ensues, they find themselves caught between riot police and looters, and convince a barber, Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades) and his family to let them hide out in his shop. We can tell Daniel is a man of high character because he insists upon finishing a customer’s haircut before closing his shop due to the end of the world happening outside.

For some reason, Travis doesn’t feel the need to explain to anyone what’s actually going on, with the dead coming back to life and everything. He’s just kind of a private guy, I’m thinking.

There’s a surprisingly effective moment at the end of the episode, when Alicia sees their neighbor across the street attacking some people, and starts to go outside to help, and Madison steps in front of the door and won’t let her leave. It’s a reasonable response, based on everything Madison’s seen, but it’s also a chilling indication of how quickly one can start to lose one’s humanity in a life-threatening crisis.

Anyway, what did I mean by “reactionary”?

Most blatantly, it’s a cliche these days that the Black characters are killed off first in horror movies and TV shows. There are Tumblrs about it and everything. The trope has been ridiculed in more than one horror film, but the creators of Fear the Walking Dead, in what seems almost a willful avoidance of political correctness, have just been killing off one Black man after another. First, in the opening moments of episode one, it was a nameless dude getting his face eaten in the church, then there’s Alicia’s boyfriend Matt, who vanishes, and then, of course, there’s Calvin, the evil murderous drug dealer wild-eyed Nick kills, multiple times, in self-defense. I thought it was unfortunate that the show’s creators made these choices, but based on how badly the original series dealt with non-white and women characters, especially early on, I wasn’t really surprised.

Episode two, though, doubles down on the trope to an extent that did kind of surprise me. First, we learn that Matt has indeed been bitten by a zombie, and is not long for this world. He nobly insists that Alicia leave him to die. The next character we see transformed is Art:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7hdK9UW8Qc”]

So that’s three Black speaking roles, and every one of the characters is a zombie in the first two episodes. That’s almost impressive in its obliviousness, assuming there isn’t some more conscious decision being made about the type of show this is. Even the homeless dude zombie gunned down by the cops offscreen (the incident that provokes the spontaneous protest) turns out to be a Black man.

Here’s an interview with the show’s co-creator and showrunner, Dave Erickson, where he essentially says that they wanted a diverse cast, and that they didn’t know who was going to die when they cast those roles. When The Hollywood Reporter is challenging you about decisions like this, you have to know you’ve done something wrong, right?

Beyond that, I found a couple of things disturbing. While Travis is on his way to see Liza, they speak on the phone. He makes it clear that he has to see Chris immediately. She launches into a tirade about abusing his visitation rights. The thing is, Travis doesn’t make a real effort to explain the situation, and under normal circumstances, she’s absolutely within her rights to demand that he limit his visits to when they’ve been scheduled, but my sense is that we’re not supposed to look at it that way. We’re supposed to see Liza as shrewish, controlling, and short-sighted. The brief scene made me wonder if the writer had gone through some sort of bitter custody battle with his ex, and I’m not prone to that type of personal speculation.

We see Chris arrive at the scene of a police shooting. Eyewitnesses are saying that the police shot an unarmed homeless man. Chris videotapes the aftermath of the shooting, and is told by the cops to turn his camera off. It’s not particularly clear why they insist on not being filmed, when the violence is already over. In any case, the mob gets increasingly upset, and again, under normal circumstances, their outrage would be perfectly understandable. They DON’T KNOW there’s a zombie apocalypse. But the show presents their actions as reckless and stupid, and then some punk rock girl zombie gets shot in the eye by a policewoman, and the riot cops show up, and all hell breaks loose. There’s a conservative bent to much horror, but this conflation of real-life police brutality and genuine tragedy with the killing of zombies crosses a line. There are nefarious reasons for the militarization of police departments across the country, and for police shootings of innocents, rooted in racism. The coming zombie apocalypse doesn’t have anything to do with it.

Key moments like this make it harder for me to enjoy the show as fun Sunday night entertainment. I imagine they’ll make it difficult for some viewers to engage the series at all. Nevertheless, I’ll be back next week with another recap.

Recommended Reading

“Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?”