It’s Back
After a couple of weeks hiatus, Fear The Walking Dead returns for its second half of season 5, a season that’s very much felt as methodically paced and pointless as the zombie threat itself chasing our protagonists. With the nuclear threat all but over, and any idea of that following them out the window, Fear returns for a subjectively different sort of episode, one that adopts a documentary format in a bid to inject some originality into proceedings, subsequently pushing the show further away from what made its early seasons so endearing, and it’s third season so exciting. With a surprising amount of saturation on-screen, Fear opens with a camera flicking on, and our group talking via face to face interviews about how amazing their faction is and how their plane helped raised awareness for their cause. From here, the documentary format continues as the group discuss how they’ve survived since the plane crash, including outsmarting Logan and trying to keep the convoy safe on the road. After explaining what they’re all doing to contribute, Morgan talks to a woman named Tess on the radio who refuses to come out of her house. She doesn’t know where “they” are but as it happens “they” refer to landmines that surround the house, buried beneath the ravaged front lawn. Unable to pass up a bystander in distress, the group decide to stick around and help the lady. In order to do so, their mission finds them looking for an inhaler for her child in a bid to persuade her to come outside. Eventually they do find the inhaler but this leads to a stalemate as they’re not sure how many mines there still are or where they’re located. Unfortunately Morgan happens to be standing on one which makes things quite a bit more complicated. However Tess saves the day, stepping outside and giving him a pin to help pressurize the plate and give them enough time to get away before it blows. From here, Tess joins the group and we see a passive view of everyone joining together round a campfire and laughing and sharing stories. Morgan and Alicia both tell the camera in separate interviews that they need help finding their purpose while the rest of the group make a plea to whomever is watching to help everyone else. Fourth wall breaks follow here before the camera crackles and fizzes, and we zoom out to reveal the entire episode was being watched by a man with dreadlocks. He takes some petrol and fills up his bike, only to be ambushed by Logan’s men soon after. They shoot up his bike and steal his gas, leaving Logan to smugly suggest he walkie through to the group and tell them they’re making more enemies that friends. As the victim picks up the radio, he contemplates doing just that as Logan’s outlaws ride off together where we leave the episode. With a profound lack of tension and a bizarre use of saturation this week, Fear The Walking Dead continues to become a shadow of the show it once was. Bizarrely, this week’s episode even sees Fear inject some comedy into proceedings, playing off as a parody of itself, with the group calling themselves smart. While the setting and characters are largely unchanged from before, the entire episode has a distinct lack of tension throughout. Most of the drama comes from Morgan getting stuck on the mine though but given we know he survives this ordeal (thanks to the documentary format), the entire segment feels pointless and devoid of tension. While the ending does go some way to make up for the episode quality, Fear The Walking Dead continues to pale in comparison to other shows out ther,e with its second half of season 5 doing little to qualm any complaints people had about the first half.
