The long-running, long suffering ‘Walking Dead’ spinoff finally makes it into the grave
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Managing Editor
It says a lot that many of the reviews that any reader will see when searching “Fear The Walking Dead” almost always are negative ones. The flagship show, which bowed out a year ago, lost its way for a while but cleaned up its act in tremendous fashion, and ended with some dignity. “World Beyond,” another Walking Dead spinoff, did the same.
That being said, it’s no surprise that “Fear” didn’t stick the landing. It’s highly possible that no one ever really expected it to. It’s a badly written show with a tremendous cast, none of whom should be blamed for the fact that all of this was mostly a drag to watch even when in the series’ later years it sometimes reminded the audience of the show it used to be.
In retrospect, Seasons 1 through 3 of this show are its true high point of both popularity and relevance. Season 3, in particular, is an absolute masterpiece of television, and arguably one of the best seasons of any show in the entire franchise. Season 4, in its early episodes, showed that same promise. But right around the time that Madison Clark supposedly perished in a blaze of glory at a baseball stadium, any trace of that remarkable third season burned up with her.
The show then fell off a cliff and never truly recovered. Morgan Jones (actor Lennie James) from the flagship was brought in, and everything centered around Morgan, which was a mistake. Morgan was a compelling character in his own right, but shifting the focus to him was a slap in the face to every fan and every long time cast member on the show.
Even after Madison came back (after her children were written off the show by both death and what turned out to be an illness that led to a crappy Messiah complex), the show struggled, even if having Madison back made the show feel somewhat fresh again. Madison’s return has been the eighth and final seasons biggest highlight, even if actress Kim Dickens can’t rise above some of the truly awful material she was presented with. Hopefully her paycheck cleared every week; it’s not her fault.
The final six episodes of “Fear” attempted to appeal to long-time fans by delivering some semblance of closure and revisiting a beloved Season 3 story: the antagonistic feud between Madison and Troy Otto (actor Daniel Sharman). Troy Otto should be dead as he was literally bludgeoned with a hammer on-screen and then proceeded to drown on-screen, but whatever. Madison should also be dead, but she’s not. Logic didn’t matter on this show.
Madison and Troy always had an entertaining dynamic, and exploring it further wasn’t one of the show’s worst ideas. Again though, the series’ knack for terrible writing and plotting got in the way, as this could have been so much better than it ended up being.
What does work is just how desperate Madison acts, and those glimpses of her being the absolute psychopath that creator Dave Erickson wished for her to become. Madison, at points during the season’s second half, arguably commits more evil acts than Troy does, and has no problem sacrificing people, even children, to succeed in her goals. Some fans and critics criticized the show in recent weeks for this (it may have more to do with how inconsistently characters in the show are written from one episode to the next), but it’s the most genuine form of Madison that they could have presented, and it’s also completely out of character for the show that they’ve been making for the last 4 years. If nothing else, the showrunners should be commended for taking that risk of having their lead walk that dangerous line of villainy.
Madison Clark is no hero and never has been, no matter what anyone wants viewers to believe. She had been gone so long that some people likely forgot that. Madison always looked out for her kids and only her kids (not even her husband got that same level of concern) and everyone else was expendable. It tracks, no matter what the show chose to do differently every single week.
In the series finale (which is somewhat better than the rest of the season), Madison redeems herself by apparently sacrificing herself in the same kind of way she did in Season 4. Everyone believes she’s dead. Of course, because no one ever truly dies on this show, she actually survived. And in the ultimate act of absurdity, Madison’s long lost daughter Alicia, who she’s been separated from for at least a decade in the show’s timeline, appears out of nowhere (after actress Alycia Debnam-Carey departed the show last year) to Madison in Georgia. After a fairly good reunion scene, the two and another companion make the decision to travel back to where it all started, Los Angeles, to “help” people there. They only clue in Victor Strand (the fantastic Colman Domingo) to their survival as the group all decide to go their separate ways.
To be frank, although all of that is ridiculously convenient, it’s the absolute bare minimum that this finale needed to accomplish. The two Clarks should have never been separated in the first place all those seasons ago, especially because the original premise of the show was centered around that family. When that changed, it morphed into something else and killed what made it special, despite a stellar cast that could have still worked alongside them under better behind-the-scenes leadership.
The legacy of “Fear The Walking Dead” will be one of squandered potential and bad writing. This show started off unique and different in the first half of its lifespan, even if it took a second viewing and hindsight to truly appreciate it. In the show’s second half, it became a weaker, dumber version of its predecessor. There was nothing special about it anymore. With multiple, more engaging and better spinoffs in production, “Fear” won’t be missed.
No one will visit its grave. And perhaps no one should. It’s better off left alone, unless you pretend the show died at the Gonzalez Dam in Season 3, and everything after that was a dream.
Perhaps a “dream” would explain all of the crap that came after.
