Originally written October 12, 2015

Given the massive popularity of The Walking Dead TV series, it isn’t surprising that the show would get a spinoff eventually, and that’s finally what we’ve gotten with Fear the Walking Dead. Due to the large world that The Walking Dead has established, a spinoff could have taken any number of different directions, and so truthfully Fear the Walking Dead decided to go with something that I felt was a pretty good idea.

See, in the regular Walking Dead show, in the first episode the main character Rick gets put into a coma during police duty and wakes up to find the world has gone to hell and people have become infected and became zombies. Since we’re following Rick’s story in that show, we basically saw the world go from completely normal to completely destroyed and overrun by zombies with little explanation of what happened in between. Fear the Walking Dead decided to show the start of the zombie outbreak from the point of view of a new cast of characters in a new setting.

The show takes place in Los Angeles, which is great because a huge city provides a great contrast to the forest type of areas from Georgia that we’re used to seeing in the main series. This spinoff follows English teacher Travis, his wife Madison (who is a guidance counselor), and her two kids, Alicia and Nick (who is a drug addict). They’re your typical dysfunctional family, each with their own quirks and problems.

However, their world is turned upside down when stories in the news start to show people that have caught a disease that seems to turn them into ravenous beasts, trying to eat the flesh off of other humans. The outbreak starts to spread, and soon people are starting to riot in the streets when police start trying to stop the infected people from attacking others by killing them. Eventually problems keep building on top of each other, and soon power grids are failing and the military is quarantining whole sections of the city. At this point Travis and his family realize it might be time to try and escape.

Quite honestly, I thought Fear the Walking Dead was a pretty fresh idea. I feel that spinoffs generally aren’t that good usually, and while it’s certainly not as good as the main series (although I’m sure nobody expected it to be), it really manages to set itself apart from it and become its own thing. I think that covering the start of the outbreak was a really smart idea, and while it might frustrate fans of the franchise by still not answering the question of HOW the zombie outbreak started in this universe, it still does a great job of showing the collapse of society in a natural progression of events after the outbreak begins.

I do, however, need to express some concern for where this series might be headed. The show’s first season is a mere 6 episodes long (which is the same length as the first season of The Walking Dead, to be fair), and by the end of the season we seem to start going into the territory of the kind of world Rick woke up to in the first episode of The Walking Dead. Season 2 of Fear the Walking Dead was already confirmed long ago to be 15 episodes long. My concern is simply that I’m not sure how long of a life this spinoff series will really have to it.

See, while I did think this first season of the show was pretty good, the main reason I thought it was good was because it was different from the main series by being set in a different time period. Once the outbreak goes into full swing, I’m concerned that the show will start to become really similar to the main series, and will lose any sense of uniqueness that it gained in its first season. To be honest I think Fear the Walking Dead would have worked best as a miniseries, but unfortunately these type of things tend to get milked for all they’re worth.

At this point in time my concerns are mere speculation, but all of that being said I do still have to commend Fear the Walking Dead for delivering a pretty solid first season. The overall plot of the season was handled really well, with the outbreak being carried out in a sensible fashion. The main cast isn’t nearly as memorable or likable as the cast of The Walking Dead, but that’s just in comparison. The characters aren’t necessarily bad or anything, I just don’t care for them much yet. My main criticisms of the season are that the stakes and tension didn’t feel as high as they should have been in certain moments, there weren’t enough “big” moments to keep the viewer hooked, and that even though it was the start of the outbreak there just wasn’t enough zombie action as there could have been. While I’m concerned for the fate of the future of the series, I do feel it has some room to grow and for improvements to be made. However, for the most part Fear the Walking Dead managed to be better than most spinoffs are in their first season by really setting itself apart from the main series.

3.5/5