‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Episode 1.2 “So Close, Yet So Far” (7 out of 10) Created by Dave Erickson & Robert Kirkman; Starring Cliff Curtis, Kim Dickens, Frank Dillane, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Rubén Blades, Mercedes Mason; Sundays on AMC.
Two episodes into the season and ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ is starting to subtly set itself apart from its much cooler older sibling. It’s still not a perfect show about zombies, but it’s slowly evolving into a decent show about zombies—which is better than no shows about zombies at all.
The urgency of the zombie outbreak became more prevalent tonight, but the audience got to experience the chaos from behind closed doors along with our main characters. Travis (Cliff Curtis) and his ex-wife Elizabeth (Liza Ortiz) spend the episode searching for their angsty son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) while Madison (Kim Dickens) tries to keep her side of the blended family together by helping Nick (Frank Dillane) through his drug withdrawals. We get peeks at the impending zombie doom through video cameras and window panes which are stark contrasts to the in-your-face violence of ‘The Walking Dead.’ It’s a neat precedent to set for the show—it’s called ‘Fear the Walking Dead,’ and the scariest way to experience a zombie outbreak is indoors, uncertain of when your loved ones are coming back.
While there’s no shortage of blood thus far in the series, I admit that the violence level is way below that of ‘The Walking Dead.’ There was a moment when Madison clocks a zombified principal with a fire extinguisher, and I could feel my teeth clench as I eagerly awaited the head-splattering money shot. To my surprise, the whole ordeal was surprisingly clean. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved seeing a horde of the undead get pureed by a firehose in ‘The Walking Dead,’ but I like that ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ is keeping the violence low key in what I’m hoping is an effort to preserve the terrifying atmosphere of a city slowly losing its battle with a ghoul uprising.
Madison’s storyarc was superior to Travis’s, mainly because I think Travis’s ex-wife and son didn’t get great character development. There seems to be hostility among all of them, but it would be nice to get a little backstory as to why they hate each other’s guts. Holing up inside the Salazar family’s shop presents some interesting prospects for the show’s future. The Salazars could be wildcards when it comes time to throw down. On Madison’s side of things, she makes a solo run back to her school for some contraband OxyContin, saves Tobias (Lincoln A. Castellanos) from an undead school administrator, and makes it home before dark. Her quick and slightly ruthless thinking has me rooting for her since we know how beneficial a head like that can be when it all goes down the tubes.
Despite some poorly thought-out zombifications (thus far, the only casualties we’ve seen have been women and black men) ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ made some baby steps in the right direction tonight. I’m hoping they iron out a few things with Travis’s storyline, but Madison and her kids were fun to watch tonight.