‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Recap: I Saw the Light

Before we begin today’s review, an exercise.

Step One: Using a personal copy or your online rental service of choice, cue up and watch Danny Boyle’s 2003 zombie-horror classic 28 Days Later.

Step Two: Reflect for a moment on what you have seen.

Step Three: Answer the following question: Does Fear the Walking Dead need to exist?

Step Four: If your answer is “no,” proceed with the review. If your answer is “yes,” return to Step One.

While great art generally fills some kind of need in the hearts and minds of its audience, art need not be as utilitarian as all that. Fabergé eggs, extended remixes, the Wet Hot American Summer fart track: In these cases and many others, enjoyment is self-justifying. Hell, by some definitions, art is inherently unnecessary, which is precisely what elevates making it from the pursuit of food, shelter, sex, and survival.

But this ain’t dancing when nobody’s watching or writing the great American novel we’re talking about here. This is “Not Fade Away,” the fourth episode in what looks increasingly likely to be the entirely superfluous first season of Fear the Walking Dead. With the largest fanbase in television built right in, this spinoff series could have gone anywhere. Instead it made an infected-style beeline straight for one of the most traveled paths in the history of the zombie genre: When the dead rise, the army runs amok. Whether you’re talking about 28 Days Later and its sinister soldiers, its sequel 28 Weeks Later and its well-intentioned but incompetent and ultimately indiscriminate occupying army, Day of the Dead and its tiny band of undisciplined bullies and martinets, this story has been told over and over, in a much tighter and more engaging way. It’s difficult to watch Fear and think this particular take on the tale is worth telling.

The Army’s piss-poor opsec alone ought to be disqualifying. When we join the action this week, to the tune of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” (another thing Danny Boyle’s done much better; adding a famous Trainspotting music cue to your uninspired 28 Days Later rehash is truly a portrait in chutzpah), we learn it’s been nine days since boys in green took over the town and erected a fence to keep the dead out…or to keep everyone in? But despite their total control of the area and desire to keep their goings-on outside of town a secret, they don’t notice Madison Clark slipping through the fence and roaming the corpse-strewn streets beyond, where she encounters walls covered with hand-scrawled missing-persons signs (a direct 28 Days swipe) and signs of massacres. Nor do they stop her and her fiancé Cliff and his son Chris sitting on a goddamn roof sending signals to potential troublemakers. First Benghazi, now this, am I right?

Not that our heroes are any more observant. Despite the presence of like six grown-ass adults in the Clark-Tanawa-Salazar household, no one notices junkie son Nick breaking into his neighbors’ house and siphoning a sick old man’s pain medication directly out from under him. This loathsome behavior isn’t outside the realm of possibility for a hurting addict, but Nick had previously been a much more sympathetic character than his sullen siblings Alicia and Chris. Now, since they spent the episode giving themselves stick-and-poke tattoos in the midst of an apocalyptic plague and attempting to communicate with people in a quarantine zone manned by heavily armed soldiers respectively, it’s not like they’re winning any awards for Character Most Likely to Do Something That’s A Good Idea either. Even so, Fear suffers from a lack of characters worth caring about; sacrificing Nick isn’t a smart move. Hey, at least Madison seems to agree…

The ensuing beatdown, alas, is the sole cool thing the alleged adults in the room get to do this week. Cliff maintains an implausibly pollyannaish attitude about the troops, insisting that Madison’s fears regarding their true intentions are just “talking paranoid.” The dead just rose from the grave, you dope. Paranoia is mandatory! Certainly Cliff’s ex-wife Liza could use a Nick-style mainline dose of the stuff, considering how easily she’s duped into helping a creepy military doctor round up sick people for almost certain execution. Daniel Salazar issues his usual series of cryptic tough-guy proclamations with the usual blunt bluster—you could see him get ready for his big “When I was a boy” speech about the old country like a slugger stepping up to bat with the bases loaded—but the advice component is garbled, and since he appears taken aback anyway when the troops start misbehaving the whole speech is pointless. And the officer in charge of the operation is such a cartoon villain, playing golf while discussing kidnapping a father from his family and laughing at his own jokes about shooting people while on stage attempting to pacify his restless public, that he makes Cobra Commander look like Tony Soprano.

About the only thing the episode really did have going from it was its Stephen King-esque final twist. After the soldiers raid the family home, taking away Daniel’s injured wife Griselda and violently hauling off Nick while forcing the rest of the family—except Liza, who inexplicably goes along for the ride—to watch helplessly, Cliff takes to the roof, where he sees the same lights as Madison and Chris. But in the pre-dawn quiet, he hears their source: gunshots, presumably fired into the bodies of the sick. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, storywise: Rounding up and executing everyone with any ailment is surely a drain on time, resources, and ammo alike. Still, it’s an “oh shit” moment on a show that has little else going for it at the moment. Even the zombies took the week off. Let’s hope both they and better writing clock in for next weekend’s shift.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) is a freelance writer who lives with Diet Coke and his daughter, not necessarily in that order, on Long Island.