I’m always a little leery about the stories that come before the stories that we love.  I’m still a little bitter about the Star Wars episodes 1, 2, and 3, that really didn’t deepen my appreciation for the first three films of the series that actually came later!?! (Yeah you get the idea)   And I really didn’t think Raiders of the Lost Ark was somehow clearer because Indiana Jones survived the Kali cult in the Temple of Doom.  But lets face it, AMC’s The Walking Dead has been a literal television phenomenon,  so an expansion of the universe was somehow inevitable, and with such a well established comic and television series, there was no way to just pick another city, find some some other survivors and throw them at a very loyal fan base.

So where the new mini-series Fear the Walking Dead, succeeds the most is by acknowledging that simple truth, and trying to craft not a story of survival and people coming together to achieve that, but by instead giving us a front row seat to the rapid chaotic destruction of human civilization.  This “while Rick was sleeping (well in a coma anyway)” approach at least hands the viewer a fresh perspective on the Walker’s world they already know, but it hasn’t happened yet. (and yet already has for 5 seasons…argh!!!)

Having watched the first few episodes, I am pleased to report that at least so far we haven’t seen 1) an attempt to explain what the heck the source of the infection is, and 2) glimpses of The Walking Dead regular characters in their pre-zombie apocalyptic state.  So I definitely applaud the show creators for placing one of the outbreak epicenters here in our own backyard of Los Angeles, and far-far way from Atlanta.  I also really appreciate the fact that the show at least so far is focused on a modern (non-nuclear) family.  This is a family with teen-ish kids that are dealing with the challenges of being a blended family with dysfunctional parts; Drug abuse, and abandonment issues definitely carry greater weight in a world that isn’t crawling with the un-dead.

The show creators also attempt to orient us with the familiar in the opening scenes of episode 1, as we wake up with Nick Clark in an obviously abandoned Church, now serving as a drug den, that very much looks and feels as rundown and squalid as something we might encounter in the regular series.  When Nick hears a scream he desperately searches the church ruins for his fellow addict girlfriend Gloria only to find her devouring another drug user.

He flees barefoot into a rundown neighborhood, and just when he feels he might have gotten far enough from the horrific scene to relax a little, he gets hit by a car.

Crisis always brings family together, but when it’s a family struggling with an estranged (often missing) hard-core addict, together takes many forms.  Nick’s mother Madison and her boyfriend (co-worker) Travis Manawa, struggle with how to care for him and understand the “drug-induced” horror hallucinations he is describing.  They are trying to keep him out of jail (as the police make attempts to interrogate him), but also want him restrained in hospital custody while they figure out which rehab approach he should fail at next.  We already see the stress it puts on Madison, as she fights the urge to care for her child as the expense of her daughter and herself.  while at the same time, Travis struggles to try and maintain a relationship with his own son Christopher, who obviously feels abandoned and therefore rejects the attempts of his father to spend any substantial time with him.

Again, this is pre-Walker Armageddon, so these things would make for a wonderful ABC after-school special, but so far the unspeakable terror of being a primary source of food for hordes of  slow moving land-sharks isn’t clearly understood.  And I think this is my biggest fundamental issue with the overall show.   Hearkening back to Star Wars again for a moment, the Anakin Skywalker kid is cute as he’s winning pod-races, but all the time we are watching him, we are aware that he and his midi-chlorian source of Jedi power (again, not really adding anything to the story…it was fine just to know the force ran strong in his family) are soon going to be running around neck-hugging the life out of fleet commanders and cutting off the hand of his own son (I guess discipline runs strong in his family too).   And as we sit in Los Angeles traffic with Travis, when he goes to investigate the church of horrors and find the truth for himself, we are all too aware that soon none of this stuff is going to matter.   We know that the news broadcasting the attacks, has no idea to how to describe or evaluate the strange behavior they are capturing on film.  While we, as 5 season survivalists are mentally sharpening our ninja swords and getting arrows ready for our cross bow, the show forces us to watch everyone lethargically discover something is wrong in the City of Angels, and in general explain it away as a bad flu?!?!

While Travis is validating Nick’s stories for himself, and Madison is forced to return to work,  Nick (with the help of a very naive nurse) manages to escape; is convinced that the whole experience has been a bad trip, and is determined to find answers from his longtime close family friend and personal heroin drug-dealer Calvin.   But this makes Nick appear to be a very unstable and possibly incriminating  liability, so Calvin drives Nick down to the Los Angeles riverbed, and attempts to shoot him.  In the struggle that ensues, Nick manages to get the gun lose, and ends up accidentally killing Calvin.  It’s at that moment Madison and Travis somehow find a way to track Nick to the riverbed channel and arrive just in time for Calvin to try and make them lunch.  After repeatedly hitting him with a car, in an attempt to fix his un-dead condition (and restore him to “dead-dead”).  Nick finally manages to hit him with the truck so hard it flings the body of now ex-Calvin far down the river embankment, the three of them stand perplexed as the badly mutilated ex-family friend once again turns his head towards them formulating another attack.

So it’s not that Fear the Walking Dead isn’t action packed enough to keep Walking Dead audiences happy, I think the show will continue to build in excitement towards the horde attacks quickly, nor is the failure of the tale the show creators have crafted around the end of a family in the end of the world as we know it.  It’s just that after 5 incredible seasons of survival, it’s just too hard to watch a new group stumble around the things we know to run from.   Much like Rick and his family had enormous difficulty adjusting to life within walls of the Alexandria Safe-Zone at the end of last season, it’s very hard to unlearn the preservation instincts now.

In any case, see you next week when we discuss Alicia (Madison’s daughter) and her strange dependence on a man who won’t return her texts, and Tobias (one of the more intriguing characters) who is a student that seems to be the only one piecing all the world wide clues together.