Fear The Walking Dead
A whole bunch of great shows just came to Netflix courtesy of AMC, including the excellent historical horror-survival-drama The Terror which I can’t recommend highly enough. You can see all the new AMC shows that just arrived on Netflix right here.
Along with these great series, a couple not-so-great AMC offerings have also been added. The mediocre Walking Dead spinoff Daryl Dixon was added just about a month before Season 2 comes out. And all eight seasons of Fear The Walking Dead have been added to Netflix as well.
This is, without a doubt, the worst of The Walking Dead and genuinely one of the most painfully bad shows I’ve ever seen. That’s a shame, because the first three seasons were pretty good and Season 3 was genuinely one of the best out of all The Walking Dead seasons. But when new showrunners took over in Season 4, things went downhill rapidly.
I’m still bummed out about this. Just when the show found its stride, it changed so drastically. It was barely recognizable as the same show. Morgan (Lennie James) came over from the main show and basically became the lead on Fear, which completely changed the tone and direction of the series. I’m still not sure why they didn’t just start a new spinoff with Morgan instead.
The focus on the Clark family—Madison (Kim Dickens), Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and Nick (Frank Dillane)—shifted completely, with two of the characters written off the show entirely. Everyone that stuck around became what I referred to as Morganites, joining his weird cult where the motto was “We have to help people to make up for the bad things we’ve done.” A parade of new villains showed up each season, each increasingly ridiculous and unbelievable.
It’s a shame also because Fear The Walking Dead had so many incredible actors. Even in the later bad seasons we go actors like Garret Dillahunt (as the friendly gunslinger, John Dorie), Keith Carradine, John Glover and Matt Frewer. There’s actually kind of insane crossover between the cast of this show and Deadwood, with Dillahunt, Dickens, Carradine, Ray McKinnon and Dayton Callie all Deadwood alumni.
Alas, a strong cast couldn’t make up for the ridiculous writing which somehow managed to get worse each season. By Season 7, the survivors were fighting over an office building in a radioactive wasteland. Season 8 featured an organization that gave everyone bird nicknames. I can’t even remember how many ludicrous Mexican standoffs the final season had, but it was pretty absurd. The last season also brought back Kim Dickens’ Madison despite her dying in Season 4 (she was only mostly dead) and Troy Otto (Daniel Sharman) in a desperate bid to boost ratings.
I still recommend the first three seasons, but only watch beyond that if you’re up for a good laugh. This is a show so bad it’s almost fun to watch.
