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'Fear The Walking Dead' Season 2 Premiere Review: Monster

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Spoilers through Season 2 of 'Fear the Walking Dead' follow.

Fear the Walking Dead picks up where the short first season ended, as our heroes flee the shores of Los Angeles for the safety of a small yacht, Abigail.

Tensions are high as L.A. burns behind them, fire-bombed to hell by the military. Most of the crew are strangers to one another, brought together by the apocalypse, their old lives a fiery ruin.

Travis (Cliff Curtis) had to put a bullet in his ex-wife in the season one finale, since she was bitten and would turn soon, and their son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) is having a hard time getting past that---to the point that he's brought his mother's body on board the ship.

And there's tension between the survivors and their savior, the mysterious Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) who constantly reminds them that this is his boat, and he calls the shots. Madison (Kim Dickens) really hates this, especially when calling the shots means Strand leaves a bunch of people they pass by stranded at sea. (He's not called Strand for nothing!)

Of course, Madison wants to help them. But I'm with Strand and Travis. You simply can't bring on that many people and expect it to work. They would run out of supplies instantly. Crowding and sickness would almost certainly follow, and then a zombie outbreak and death. Sometimes, in the apocalypse, you have to be cold and selfish. Madison wants to be everyone's hero. It's actually a little annoying.

I'm more forgiving of the teenage Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey,) Madison's daughter, even though she makes the biggest mistake of the episode when she naively reveals their location to pirates. Yes, there are pirates in Fear the Walking Dead, the seafaring counterparts to The Walking Dead's various evil groups, like the Saviors. Pirates are cool. This makes me more excited about Fear than I have been, pretty much ever.

So Alicia screws up and, out of kindness, leads the pirates to Abigail. In the meantime, they find the detritus of some kind of serious wreck, riddled with bullet holes. Aquatic zombies (this show has aquatic zombies and pirates!) drift along the waves, but Nick (Frank Dillane) thinks he hears someone trapped in the wreck and goes swimming to get them, through zombie-infested waters.

Can you hear the screaming eels, Clarice?

Nick is an interesting character. He's a junkie, and with that addiction comes a very real level of selfishness and self-destructiveness. On the other hand, he's consistently shown to be one of the smartest, bravest, and most intuitive characters on the show, putting both Madison and Travis to shame over and over again. Only Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades) and Strand are as savvy as Nick. I guess his street smarts are paying off. (Tobias was smart in Season 1, but we never saw him again.)

Anyways, with nobody but zombies found in the dark waters, and pirates suddenly on the radar, the crew of survivors rushes to escape...and credits roll.

Verdict

I actually enjoyed this episode quite a bit. Madison drives me crazy, and I'm still waiting for Travis to lose the nice guy/please everybody routine and just man up for the apocalypse, but overall this was a pretty good premiere to the Walking Dead spin-off.

That's important, since the first season of the show was kind of a huge disaster. This season getting off to a good start makes me hopeful for the rest of the season. I think it's really a nice change to see our survivors out at sea, navigating a whole new set of conflicts, like sea zombies and pirates.

I also like that this means our heroes will be on the move going forward, at least for a while. They're on a boat, after all---or a ship, rather---and there's "no safe harbor" as the season's slogan reminds us, which means they'll never be able to lay anchor for long. That's one of the biggest problems of The Walking Dead, where our characters languish over-long in location after location, from farms to prisons to walled-in settlements.

My biggest complaints remain the two lead characters. Madison and Travis need to start changing because they're just the worst sort of survivors, totally sure of themselves while totally in denial of this brave new world. Nick, Daniel, Strand, even Alicia and Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) all have a better chance of survival based on the merits (and not billing.) I have hopes, though, that this will simply provide the show's writers a chance to pen an interesting arc for the couple.

All told, I think we have a better season 2 than season 1 on our hands. I could be wrong, but my optimism level has gone up. This may not be as gripping or have as many great characters as its big brother, The Walking Dead, but it's got potential. The maritime theme may not last forever, but I hope it lasts a while. It's a great change of scenery and pace, and I can see some really interesting episodes in the future where they have to dock to resupply and fuel up and run into various problems along the way.

In other words, I'm curious to see where this goes. It's got some big glaring problems still, but Fear the Walking Dead may be on to something here.

I leave you with these closing thoughts...

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