![]() There are two moments in the episode that remind viewers of what a really good zombie drama can do when its creators unclench, and emphasize slow-motion choreography and wracked body language over blunt dialogue and contrived conflicts. Nick’s subplot is the most compelling in tonight’s episode for that reason. We know that zombies are about to break out, but characters like Nick (Frank Dillane), a drug-using teen who is among the first to spot zombies in the wild, isn’t so lucky. That being said: The best parts of “Pilot” are, tellingly, the scenes that plunge viewers into experiential terror. So while “Pilot” doesn’t always work, it’s rarely boring, and always at least strives for a humanistic/optimistic effect that the last two seasons of AMC’s The Walking Dead haven’t achieved. Tonight’s episode doesn’t always convey its big ideas well, but it does have a messy, personal quality reminiscent of the early years of the Walking Dead comics. Written by Kirkman and co-showrunner David Erickson, “Pilot” overenunciates some of the key ideas that will presumably unfold over the Fear the Walking Dead, or maybe just the show’s first season (it’s hard to tell after one episode). Tonight’s Fear the Walking Dead pilot reminds us that on some level, The Walking Dead has always been a progressive show designed by creators who don’t always know how to present their characters as signifiers of that ideal human behavior. While The Walking Dead assumed that we didn’t need to know how zombies took over the earth, Fear the Walking Dead focuses on the early onset of the zombie crisis for the sake of reinforcing the latent aspirational sense of ethics that Kirkman and co-creator Tony Moore used in their original comics series to show humanity as it should be, not as they think it really is. By contrast, Fear the Walking Dead assumes a different kind of status quo: No matter what happens to the show’s human protagonists, zombies will break out and decimate the human population of Los Angeles. Rick can lose limbs, loved ones, and his sanity, but Rick cannot die. Almost 12 years later, that series is still a frustrating formal experiment, as Rick’s longevity ensures a certain stifling level of normalcy in The Walking Dead’s shambolic narrative. Kirkman originally wanted to create a series that would pick up where most zombie narratives left off, and follow a single character (i.e., Rick Grimes) for as long as the series lasted. Kim Dickens and Cliff Curtis in Fear the Walking Dead.įear the Walking Dead is a spinoff of (wait for it) The Walking Dead, a series that co-creator Robert Kirkman, writer of the original Walking Dead comics and co-author of tonight’s Fear the Walking Dead pilot, conceived as an endurance test.
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