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

The audience knows so much more than the characters that at a certain point, it doesn’t work as dramatic irony anymore; it’s just frustrating.

I know I called Fear the Walking Dead reactionary two weeks ago (they took last week off for Labor Day), but I want to retract that. The show is not really conservative, in the same way that the current crop of Republican presidential candidates isn’t really conservative. It’s more radical and disturbing than a simple longing for a bygone fantasy era of law and order when everyone knew their place.

This week, tough, smart widow Madison (Kim Dickens, still doing better than the material deserves), heroin-addicted Nick (Frank Dillane, whose perpetually wild-eyed countenance and exaggerated limp are certain to get him mistaken for a zombie and shot some day), and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) are stuck at home waiting for Travis (Cliff Curtis) as the neighbors begin eating each other. Travis is stuck in an L.A. barbershop with his ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and their petulant teen son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie).

fear travis

The barber, an El Salvadoran immigrant named Daniel (the great Ruben Blades) doesn’t seem to like Travis much, and it’s not clear why. He takes offense when Travis reassures Chris, who’s worried about the rioting and looting outside, that they won’t break into the barbershop because they wouldn’t be interested in stealing a bunch of combs. “There’s more than just combs in here,” Daniel indignantly tells Travis, thankfully out of earshot of Chris, who would probably be terrified to learn that the shop also has scissors, shaving cream, hair gel, and other loot-worthy items. In any case, the writers clearly struggled with how to introduce Daniel’s mistrust/dislike of the generally likeable-enough Travis, and ultimately failed to come up with anything compelling. So, the combs thing.

Eventually, rioters burn down the building next door, forcing Travis, Chris, Liza, and Daniel to run, along with Daniel’s wife Griselda (Patricia Reyes Spindola) and their adult daughter Ofelia (Mercedes Mason). It’s mayhem on the streets, as protesters, rioters, and looters dissolve into a violent mass, including some who have turned and are eating each other. Kind of the way the mainstream media depicted Occupy Wall Street. Cops are eating each other, too, though, adding to the madness. While Daniel wants to split away from Travis and his people (you remember, because of the whole combs thing), Griselda is injured when cops using firehoses on the protesters knock down a scaffolding. Travis offers to drive them to a hospital, but hospitals are pretty much zombie central, so Daniel convinces Travis to take them to Madison’s home.

fear nick

Meanwhile, Madison and the kids are staying up late playing Monopoly. Hey, they don’t know it’s the apocalypse yet. It’s a reasonable way for a mom to keep her kids from thinking about what’s going on outside while they wait for Travis to come home. It doesn’t make sense for Madison not to tell Alicia what’s going on out there, but it’s for the girl’s own good, right, and I’m sure she won’t do anything stupid and reckless because she doesn’t understand the threat. Later, after a dog startles them, they decide to go to the neighbor’s house, because they have a shotgun, but for some reason they leave the back door wide open, which is unwise in L.A., even if you don’t know there are zombies everywhere. After they find the gun, they hear the dog barking, and look back at their house to see the zombie neighbor go in. Do zombies eat dogs? Why yes, they do. Then Madison sees Travis pulling up to the house.

fear madison

In a recurring motif, Madison is too slow, or doesn’t yell loudly enough to keep someone from entering a dangerous situation. Travis goes inside, followed by Daniel and them. He finds the neighbor munching on the dead dog, and surmises, “He’s sick.” While Travis struggles to keep the “sick” neighbor from biting him, Daniel comes up with the shotgun and fires. The first shot just gives us the best gore effect so far (and that’s what this is all about, for a lot of viewers), but the second one goes straight into the brain. It’s almost like Daniel has seen those George Romero movies that don’t exist in this universe.

Travis’ compassion is clearly meant to be seen as a liability. When he finds Daniel showing Chris how to use a shotgun, he gets angry. “You know how I feel about guns,” he chastises Madison. Yes, because gun control is not a reasonable response to the insane level of gun violence in our society, but something that weak-ass people will still be worrying about in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.

fear nick 2

And then there’s the neighbor, Susan. Susan was apparently Madison’s rock after her husband died. She tries to eat Alicia, so Madison considers braining her, but Travis has a hard time accepting that she’s not just “sick.” He convinces Madison not to end Susan, while Daniel looks on from a distance and pronounces Travis “weak.” When Ofelia tries to convince him they should leave with Travis and Madison because they’re good people, Daniel says flatly, “Good people are the first ones to die.” Well, on this show, after Black people, apparently.

The next morning, Travis, Madison and their families are set to leave town, but as they’re driving off, Madison spots Susan’s husband returning home. I didn’t catch the name of this actor, but his obliviously cheerful calling out to his wife as though he was in a soap commercial (“Honey, the airport was closed because of the zombie apocalypse! What’s for breakfast?”) was another welcome dose of unintended comedy. Anyway, Madison tries to warn him, but again, she’s too late. She needs to take yelling lessons, or something. Just as Susan is about to bite the poor guy, the army moves in and takes her out. It should be a poignant moment, after all the hand-wringing over Susan. Instead, it’s just more ridiculousness. Travis thinks the cavalry’s arrived, and they’re saved. Daniel, who probably came to this country fleeing death squads in El Salvador, knows better, yet again.

Fear-The-Walking-Dead-103-Susan-850x560

It would help if the show was more coherent and focused in its direction, and sure, if the writing were stronger, but the aesthetic problems already seem like they’re inherent to the premise. The audience knows so much more than the characters that at a certain point, it doesn’t work as dramatic irony anymore; it’s just frustrating.

Beyond that, the show’s themes are troubling. After killing off every Black character, and depicting police brutality protesters as ignorant buffoons and lowlifes last week, this week, the show slams gun control and suggests a dystopian future where the government stepping in during a crisis is the worst possible thing that could happen. Fear the Walking Dead is falling more and more in line with radical right-wing politics every week. It can only end with Donald Trump vanquishing the zombie curse while calling Travis a “loser” and selling his new book, The Art of Zombie-Killing.

 


Recommended Reading

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

Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First”

 

 

‘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.

fear madison and tobias

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?

fear nick

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.

fear daniel

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.

fear travis

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.

fear chris

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?