‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Season Finale Recap: Bite Me
For The Walking Dead franchise’s tens of millions of fans, the heroes’ short life-spans are a feature, not a bug. Anyone can die on these shows — that’s what makes them so exciting. When the flesh-eaters are closing in, there’s no guarantee that the good guys are going to make it, prominent placement in the opening credits be damned.
So why get invested in the private lives of zombie-snacks? That’s a question that even the main series has sometimes had trouble answering satisfactorily — though obviously at no cost to the ratings, which keep rising along with the body- ount. And judging by Fear the Walking Dead‘s fairly shaky first season finale — “The Good Man” — co-creators Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson have just as much trouble getting viewers to care about their West Coast human survivors. The big question after six episodes is whether the duo have done enough with the Los Angeles branch of their Dead empire to pump audiences up for another season next summer. The answer? Yes and no.
To be clear: Neither of the shows has ever lacked for fleshed-out non-flesh-eating characters. (Over the course of five seasons, the parent series has built up a formidable stock company.) But there’s a moment near the middle of the episode when the undead hordes shamble down a flickering hallway toward Fear‘s stringy-haired, self-destructive junkie protagonist Nick Clark, and while the music, photography, and lighting are all creepy as hell, it’s hard not to hope — just a little — that maybe this annoying boy-band reject will get eaten.
That’s no knock against the actor, Frank Dillane; and really it’s not a major knock against the show as a whole, which has mostly been a well-crafted piece of action-horror. But this spin-off is still at its weakest when it focuses on the players instead of the game. And that’s a big problem with this first season fade-out, because after its rush of violence and danger fades, the drama settles back down to the Clark, Manawa and Salazar clans, all making major decisions that should matter more than they actually do.
Roughly the first two-thirds of the finale follows the three families’ escape from their suburban compound in El Sereno, and their attempt to retrieve their relatives from a nearby makeshift military installation. Maddie Clark, Travis Manawa, and Daniel Salazar keep venturing deeper into the darkness of the city, and further into a nightmare. These are scenes of raw-boned survival. There are monsters outside and unknown troubles inside, and every decision is potentially fatal. That’s what show can be when it’s really rolling.
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