‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Season Premiere Recap: Lost at Sea

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They called it Fear the Walking Dead because The Walking Dead was taken and Sad-Faced People Walking Into and Out of Rooms on a Boat for an Hour was too long for twitter. But make no mistake: sad-faced people walking into and out of rooms on a boat for an hour was precisely what “Monster,” the premiere of FtWD Season Two, delivered. Sure, there were zombies on the beach at the beginning…

…and zombies in the ocean at the end…

…but for the most part, there were unhappy, underwritten characters, played by actors who treat their presence on the show like a trip to the county courthouse to dispute a parking ticket, entering the places where other such characters are, having a desultory conversation about mercy or family or safety or bravery or some shit, then leaving again. This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but a snoozer.

Not that you can necessarily blame everyone for looking so down in the dumps. When last we left the Clark-Tanawa-Salazar crew, they were preparing to board their mysterious benefactor Strand’s massive yacht after shooting Liza, Travis’s ex and Chris’s mom, in the head following a zombie bite. Chris begins the episode by insisting they drag her body aboard the boat, even as bombs rain down on Los Angeles, driving the zombies to the shore in droves. A pleasure cruise it isn’t. Nor is it an environment for anything but the most dog-eat-dog amorality possible. Last season established a pattern: Acting with kindness or restraint is always, always, idiotic at best and fatal at worst, while the willingness to kill others or let others die is your only salvation. “Monster” fits this pattern to a tee.

Early on, the people of the good ship Abigail pass by a stranded boat full of people shouting for help — too big a risk, you see. What if they’re infected? What if they’re trouble? What if they drink Strand’s expensive scotch? Best to leave them to their fate. “We can’t stop, Maddie,” Travis tells his fiancée. “It’s not safe.” Safety first, safety last, safety everything in between.

But the decision doesn’t sit well with several members of the party, including Maddie’s daughter Alicia. Using the boat’s CB radio, she gets to chit-chatting with a kid named Jack, who says he too is stranded on a boat with his brother and sister-in-law. They’re secure in a cove for a while, but they’re running low on food and water, and the boat springs a leak when they have to leave. Couldn’t that swanky-sounding yacht Alicia’s on swing their way and take them to Hawaii? They’ve got coconuts there! We can listen to David Bowie, who must be rolling in his grave, together! What could go wrong?

The answer is as obvious as it is inevitable. Alicia has given “Jack” their coordinates, and though a cliffhanger leaves the matter unresolved — wait, a cliffhanger leaving a matter unresolved on a Walking Dead show? Imagine that! — it certainly seems that not only is his boat less leaky than he made it out to be (“See you soon,” he cryptically tells her over the radio), it’s likely also full of the ersatz pirates who shot up another ship and turned its passengers into a floating zombie horde. Silly Alicia, human kindness is for suckers.

Maybe this would work better if the characters appeared to like each other, or had any kind of chemistry whatsoever, positive or negative. But even the ones who are part of the same family treat each other like co-workers who microwave fish dinners in the breakroom, if they’re even that intimate. When Travis delivers his eulogy for Liza, for example, his description is so half-assed and vague — she was strong, she was fierce, she liked to help people — that she’d sound like a stranger he’d just met if not for the concluding tribute to their son. For his part, Chris furiously dumps the body overboard and flees to his room. (Guess he didn’t like the eulogy either.) The only member of the cast who doesn’t seem to be on a low dose of sedatives is Colman Domingo as Strand, who’s so over-the-top in his elegant oddness that if they do run out of food on the boat, he could easily survive on the scenery.  The point is that it’s aggressively uninteresting to watch any of these people together, which is a problem if, as noted earlier, you spend them walking into and out of each other’s rooms for an hour.

There are some nice enough shots in this thing, I guess: The fiery vista of L.A. as the group leaves it behind is impressive, provided you don’t stop too long to think about what it means, and the underwater shots of junkie son Nick as he swims around while zombies lurk about are as lovely as underwater shots tend to be. (Though if you’re going to do underwater zombies, you’ve got a tough act to follow.) As for the zombies themselves, well, if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you like. Beyond that, however, Fear the Walking Dead is an experiment in how uninspired a spinoff can be without causing a fandom-wide revolt, in service of what is remains the most morally repugnant franchise on television. Suddenly burial at sea doesn’t sound so bad.
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Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) is a freelance writer who lives with Diet Coke and his daughter, not necessarily in that order, on Long Island. He also recaps Showtime’s The Affair and HBO’s The Leftovers for Decider.