Fear the Walking Dead: Season One – Special Edition
Creators: Dave Erickson, Robert Kirkman
Cast: Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis, Frank Dillane
Anchor Bay Entertainment
March 22, 2016
Reviewed by Brian M. Sammons
Fear the Walking Dead, the inevitable spinoff of AMC’s runaway mega hit, The Walking Dead. Was anyone surprised when this new TV show was announced? I mean, if you have a certified cash cow, you’re crazy not to milk it for all it’s worth, right? And just because something appears at first to be more of the same, that doesn’t automatically make it bad. But also if it’s based off of something that everyone likes, that doesn’t make it automatically good, either. So would this show do something new with The Walking Dead world? Would it differentiate itself from its older, more popular brother, or would it be a cheap, coattail riding also ran? Well this show had its debut season last year, one Blu-ray release already, and now is back with a Special Edition Season One release. That means chances are you already know if you’re a fan of this show or not. But just in case you missed out on FTWD the first time around, and just around the time for its Season Two kickoff, let’s see if this is worth getting or should it be shot in the head and put out of its misery.
The initial reason behind this show was that it was going to be a prequel of sorts. It was going to show us what happened to the world when the dead first started walking: how it all went down, how society fell apart, you know, all the stuff we didn’t see in The Walking Dead because Rick slept through it all in a coma. That sounded like a good idea, and that’s exactly where this show started. Unfortunately that only lasted for about three episodes or so. Then the army came in, quarantined a neighborhood off, time passed, and it soon became apparent that Fear the Walking Dead should have been called The Walking Dead: Yep More of the Same. Due to what I can only guess were budgetary reasons, what could have been unique, atmospheric, and interesting became TWD: Westcoast. And pretty much that’s it. All that potential was gone as the show quickly became another small group of people vs bad folks and sometimes zombies in largely deserted settings. Some people argue that you can’t do much more with the zombie subgenre than that, but I disagree. This show said it was going to do exactly that, and I think that it could of done it, but it just decide that it didn’t want to. So now you get the same TWD zombie action but with a cast of characters that are less known, and far less likable, than Rick and crew.
Now if you are a diehard zombie fan, then this show will give that to you…sometimes. Again, for what I have heard are budgetary reasons, the zombie action seems to be a bit light this season. Like season two of the original TWD light, and we all know how well that worked out. Sure at the end of this short 6 episode series debut we get to see more of the dead walking, but there is a tangible feeling that AMC wants to get those nice big TWD viewer numbers while at the same time pinching every penny that it can. Also, there’s just not enough different here to warrant this being its own show. It feels like that season in Lost where they introduced the passengers that were in the tail section of the plane, and then quickly ran away from all that as fast as possible because they learned that no one gave a damn about them. Yeah, that’s FTWD so far, and that’s a shame as there is potential here. The way this season ends hints that it might be taking things in a different direction, or at least focusing on different surroundings, and that could turn out to be really fun. Ultimately this show will survive or fail dependent on how different it can be from that other zombie show, while still delivering that TWD feeling so many people respond to. This season they didn’t do that so well, but I do have some hope that future seasons might.
On to the extras on this new re-release of season one. At least this Blu-ray/digital 2-disc package from Anchor Bay doesn’t disappoint: you can watch the pilot episode in a new widescreen format; there are audio commentaries for each episode; there is a collection of deleted scenes and then a bunch of featurettes. Each episode has its own short “Inside the Walking Dead” segment, there is a ten minute long special called “Fear: The Beginning” and another two minute short called “Five Things you need to Survive.” There are short spotlights on the locations in LA and Vancouver, the stunts, and the zombies. Another six minute featurette is called “Quarantined” and it’s about what happened when the army moves in to “help,” and a five minute long extra called “The Faces of Fear” about the human stars of the show. So yeah, this special edition feels pretty darn special.
So should you get this Special Edition of season one of Fear the Walking Dead? Well if you love zombies and just want more of that, this will do that for you. If you were looking for a show that would do things a little different, you might be a bit disappointed here. That said, there does seem to be some promise in what FTWD has coming up, and many great TV shows didn’t have the best first seasons, either. So consider this a conditional recommendation based on the hope of things to come.
