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“What the hell is going on?”

It’s safe to say that when AMC announced Fear The Walking Dead, a companion piece to the smash hit The Walking Dead set in the early days of the zombie apocalypse, that expectations for the show were understandably high. After reviewing tonight’s episode “Pilot”, I can say that the show will meet some fan expectations but not necessarily all of them, and that’s a good thing.

**SPOILERS BELOW**

One of the more interesting aspects of Fear The Walking Dead is the location. By placing this show in Los Angeles, we set up a brand new mythology that exists in the same universe as the original but can live and breathe on it’s own. Unfortunately that means that people will draw comparisons to the original series. Some of these will be fair, some not.

For instance, in The Walking Dead‘s pilot, we were treated to a fish out of water story. A man wakes up after being in a coma to find out he missed the apocalypse and has to survive the aftermath. Within minutes of the show’s credits we are treated to zombies shambling across deserted streets and carnage everywhere we look. It’s gripping and terrifying from nearly the first minute.

 

Fear The Walking Dead approaches the story from the opposite side of the spectrum. We see the world end, not in a wave of the undead spilling over an unsuspecting populace (though that could still happen), but rather pervasively, as a virus slowly killing off it’s host. As a result we’re introduced to a lot of characters with pretty average lives. They’re so average in fact it almost seems like an underwhelming scenario in comparison to the near one man show of Andrew Lincoln from the original series.

The sum total makes tonight’s pilot something closer to Breaking Bad than The Walking Dead, but that makes sense. By establishing the lives of the characters we’re able to see the contrast of their day to day life and how much it changes over a short period of time.

“But where are the zombies,” you ask?

Well that’s a nifty twist. At the start of the episode we’re privy to a worn out hollywood trope: the pho-zombie. Someone shambles along as if they were the undead only to find out that the person is just really tired, or high, or both. Unfortunately even the folks at AMC couldn’t avoid this one, but they don’t linger on the joke very long. Insteasd we get a gritty scene of Nick (Frank Dillane) wandering around an abandoned church looking for his friend Glory, only to find her gnawing on a junkie. In his panic, he dashes out of the church and promptly gets hit by a car. All in all, it’s a wonderful setup of what’s to come.


We see a girl, gory and new in her zombification (is that a word?) and the sheer “ook” factor is cranked up because of the freshness of these wounds. All the new “fresh” zombies should prove to be one of the highlights of the show. I say should because while we get a wonderful Glory Zombie at the top of the episode we don’t see another walker for nearly 70 minutes.

That’s part of the unexpected that may throw fans of The Walking Dead, there’s not a whole lot of dead folks yet, but I feel that’s to be expected. Instead the show runners work on building this feeling of unease as the homeless disappear off the crowded Los Angeles streets. Children stop showing up to school. More and more missing persons posters appear every day. All the while, we the viewers know what’s happening, we know what’s coming; and we can’t stop it.


The sense of dread is palpable, we have a window into these characters’ lives as they are stepping into a world of hurt they can’t possibly imagine.

So, while this may not have been the gore fest that one might have expected, we can see the foundation for some strong characters in the upcoming weeks.

What did you think of tonight’s pilot? Let us know in the comments below!

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Shaun Rosado

Shaun Rosado is creator and host of a weekly geek podcast called "Shauncastic!," where he and a rotating cast discuss everything geeky, nerdy and pop culture-y as well as the creator of "Meet At The Tavern," a blog dedicated to RPGs. He is also a frequent Twittering fool (@Pneumaz). He is married, has a dog, is a massive fan of The Flash and owns a spaceship. One of these is not true.