The struggling Walking Dead spinoff is due to get a major shot in the arm
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Managing Editor
The sixth season of AMC’s “Fear The Walking Dead” turned out to be an anomaly.
Seasons 4 and 5, headed up by showrunners Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss, largely plunged the AMC original program into a creative and narrative abyss. Season 5, in particular, was an awful piece of television all the way through, quite possibly the worst season of any television show in recent memory.
Season 6, however, was a sharp turnaround in quality and storytelling. Largely using an anthology format that followed different characters around as the group tackled their problems across the state of Texas, the show thrived and had some all-time great episodes. It seemed like the showrunners, and the show itself, had finally gotten their act together.
While help is on the way, it’s safe to say that the goodwill from Season 6 didn’t last.
Season 7 deals with the nuclear fallout of Season 6’s explosive finale… and it somehow makes an even more dangerous post-apocalyptic landscape excessively boring. It’s not nearly as bad as Season 5 was, but it’s a large step down.
A lot of it has to do with the season’s pacing, as well as the fact that the scorched landscape largely looks terrible (a lot of those scenes are filmed on a soundstage, and it’s noticeable if viewers look hard enough).
Also worth noting is the inexplicable and outright questionable absence of Alicia Clark for the first six episodes as well as most of the seventh. It also has to do, quite frankly, with the way that Alicia is treated in episode 8; she’s bitten, has to amputate her arm and is still “dying” from some sort of infection. Her character is so often pushed to the side when she has earned her lead spot, and the continued shelving is frustrating to most viewers.
But mostly, Season 6’s format largely doesn’t work in Season 7, and once again, despite Lennie James’ talent, Morgan Jones takes up way too much screen time. While Morgan isn’t a bad character, this isn’t his show. It never should have been his show. As good of a character as Morgan Jones is, watching him constantly be the show’s center of gravity instead of original characters (and actors) who have earned that right is like watching Hilary Swank be force-fed eggs through a tube in “Iron-Jawed Angels.”
Some of the exploits of the show’s supporting characters are fun to watch. In particular, the third episode of the season, “Cindy Hawkins,” is a fun watch, but that’s mostly due to the fact that it resolves a dangling plot thread from Season 6. Also, there is a scene set in a pro wrestling ring in “Till Death” that is absolutely absurd, but in a fun way. “Fear” can be a good show when it wants to be, but often it feels like it settles for mediocre writing most of the time.
Even Victor Strand as an outright villain is much more cartoonish than he should be. The idea in concept isn’t a bad one; Strand’s motives have always been cased in whatever fits his own self-interests. But in execution, Strands deep dive into the dark side has resulted in his character becoming a dictator. The shady Strand is a lot of things, but a dictator shouldn’t be one of them.
In perhaps an admission of their vision’s failure, the powers that be that run “Fear” are exercising a nuclear option of their own: the original female lead of the show. Later this summer, actress Kim Dickens will return to the show she was unceremoniously “killed off” from back in 2018 to portray Madison Clark once more.
Madison’s resurrection is narratively ridiculous; not only is there very little chance that she could have escaped an entire locked stadium full of zombies that were on fire, but there is no way that she wouldn’t have found her daughter and her group by now.
Explaining how she not only survived the stadium incident, but a literal nuclear missile hit that she likely did not know about ahead of time, in addition to why she didn’t ever find her family when anyone can find anyone in Texas on this show without much fuss and seemingly endless amounts of walkie talkies, is going to be quite the corner for the show’s writers to wiggle out from.
However, having Kim Dickens on any show is never a bad thing. Not to mention, Madison is one of the more layered and interesting characters in the entire franchise. No matter how her return to the show ultimately shakes out, her return means something, and will have a major impact on the show and whatever stories it wants to tell.
It will mean something to Alicia, who has been without a parental figure for so long and is in an extremely precarious position. It will also mean something to Strand, as Madison was his only real friend… and she may be the only one left that is able to talk him off his villainous ledge.
But whatever way the viewers want to look at it, “Fear” is essentially treading water until Madison Clark returns, and hopefully makes everyone get out of Texas.
