Entertaining alternate universe.

I don't see how Chris can lead an evil group when there seems to be no population of gullible, unstable, English-speaking teenagers for him to bond with. He is more likely to be an Evil Uno.

 

I've been pretty vocal about my disappointment with many aspects of the show and after watching the finale, I came to the conclusion that I would have liked it better if the show instead began with our group being split up and showed their struggle to navigate the collapse of society and the undead to become reunited or something. I think this would have allowed the characters to develop as individuals rather than as one stereotypical part of a group. We should be rooting for these people, not wishing that half or all of them would just get killed off and be replaced with new characters.What we have now is a lot of family drama that does not need the backdrop of a ZA to play out.

The primary disappointment with the show last season was the failure to deliver what the show promoted - the collapse of society. I think I would have enjoyed seeing various characters trying to survive the collapse ( and actually see the collapse) while trying to escape, get home, or wherever, and the people and scenarios they would encounter along the way. I think this is why so many fans like the secondary characters - Tobias, Alex, Strand ( although they successfully morphed Strand into more of a main character). They are individuals with their own story and so we are curious. Madison is "mom", Chris is "stepbrother"...we don't know much about these people other than their roles in this blended family and it makes them seem one dimensional. And right now we're only being shown the disintegration of this loosely blended family in some pretty spectacular circumstances - luxury yachts, secluded Mexican villas, strange cult like characters. The premise is fun but what are the chances that ordinary people will meet someone like Strand who has a yacht and an escape plan that entails boating to Mexico to a compound run by a priestess of some weird death cult? Would have preferred to see characters face a more realistic version of an apocalypse, where they have to survive in a bombed out inner city or the desert, scavenge for food,look for loved ones, learn how to battle zombies, make allies or enemies, etc...

That being said, the show is entertaining. It has suspense, drama, the music is great, and I think the cinematography is often breathtaking. Maybe the 2nd half of this season will showcase the characters more as individuals now that they've split up and it will facilitate a more intimate connection to them. I was unsure if I would continue watching before the finale, but probably will to see where they take it since they have broken up into separate groups. If I still feel the same after the end of the season, I may or may not stop watching it, but won't come here only to discuss all my problems with it. A lot of people really like it and I don't want to be "that guy" who only pipes up to criticize it.

 

Camilleyun,
Very nicely said.

I thought that FEAR was going to be a prequel to TWD. I thought that we would live through the early stages of the progression of the disease. Instead, we are following the same timeline as TWD. Yeah, they may be a year apart, but after the first two weeks, nothing is different. Good guys... bad guys... walkers/swimmers. They are just at a different location.

After 13 hours of cinematography you'd think we would be more emotionally involved with the characters.

I am sure that I'll watch the next couple of episodes, but doubt that I'll go out of my way to see it, but rather will "On demand" it when there is nothing else to watch, if I am not working on a good book at the time. And like you, I doubt that I would bother coming back to complain.

 

I'm not going to try to write the scenarios, there are people with far greater skills than I, but like you I was disappointed in the rapid decline of society, and little demonstration of what the authorities did to try to stop the progression of the disease, and to contain order.

I thought that this show would show the slow progression of the disease, what they did to try to contain it, and how it got out of control. Think of the show "containment". Then... when the population gets infected... they don't become biting walkers until they die. Certainly there will be many "infected living" walking around. BUT they won't all be biters! After all Rick and his gang are all infected.

So we can see that infected people aren't necessarily insane people. They are disease carriers. Certainly in more remote areas of the country, there will be infected people, but maybe no biters. YET. But the people out there will have seen news reports, and will have heard about biters, and there would have been instructions to kill the brain.

Maybe because of overpopulated cities, biters may create herds relatively quickly. Then the herds may get napalmed. But many burned biters still walk.

The military can show the lack of ability to obtain shipments of goods, the difficulty of getting food in sufficient supplies to the cities. The challenges that go into making the decision of mass destruction of cities of populace.

There is so much that could have been written, that wasn't.

 

That sounds like a more logical flow of events to me. I agree that this show is moving much too quickly. The original appeal of this show is that it was going to show us the earliest days of the outbreak, and that's what I was looking forward to seeing. Season 1 was all of 6 episodes, and by the end of it, the early days that I pictured being the focus of this show for the first couple seasons were over.

The time jump between the military rolling into the neighborhood and then life returning to some semblance of normal was a mistake. I'd have liked to see that period get fleshed out a whole lot longer. There are so many directions that they could have taken that setting, and they just wasted it.

Now for all practical purposes, the 'early days' of the outbreak are basically over. Now it's just a group on the road trying to find a safe place, which is basically the main premise of The Walking Dead. I really wanted this to be a different show, rather than just being The Walking Dead: West Coast Edition. I'm still enjoying it, but I feel like this show missed a ton of opportunities.