TV Review: Fear the Walking Dead

Part of the beauty of  the pilot episode of AMC's hyper-hit The Walking Dead was the way it elided over the collapse of civilization. Deputy Rick Grimes was shot in the mundane world, and awoke from a coma into a nightmare. We hear bits and pieces of the fall of Atlanta, but by the time we are eye-witnesses the collapse of American civilization is fiat accompli. As a narrative device it was riveting. We were forced to learn the rules of the new world along with Grimes. So much so, in fact, that even when the show went off the rails for whole seasons at a time (the farm, the Governor) the turbo charged power of the opening hour was enough to keep audiences locked in. Now, with the 90 minute pilot of the "spin-off" (more technically we might call this a parallel narrative than a spin-off), Fear the Walking Dead has provided us another glimpse into the first hours of the collapse, and a laser focused view on one families attempt to survive it.

It is silly to try to stake strong critical opinions on 90 minutes of television. Fear the Walking Dead could quickly descend into the realm of the painfully dumb, or, worse, into the rote and routine. That is the potential trap of all excursions into the world of genre narrative. In fact, the switch in shooting location from L.A. to Canada for the rest of the season is already a little concerning. There is a certain light and life in L.A. that Canada has been notoriously bad at mimicking, and if the show loses even a little of its panache, that would be a shame.

That being said, the opening episode demonstrated a clear approach and a steady hand. Instead of a world destroyed, Fear the Walking Dead's pilot asks us over and over again how it is that we can ever come to terms with the horrifying images inside of our own heads, and how we separate the horrors that we take in from the world from the ones we invent in our own minds. As one character says "what I saw either came from the dust, or from my mind...and if it came from my mind, then I'm insane." That all of this is happening inside of a civic structure that is still, for the time being, entirely in place is fascinating. At what point does one begin to notice the fall of civilization? At what point does the slide into mindlessness become impossible to stand against. Fear the Walking Dead has set up the questions with a brilliant opening salvo. All that's left is to see if they have any answers.

Rating: 3 / 4