Fear the Lack of Progress

"Good people are the first ones to die." — Daniel, "Fear The Walking Dead"

When you're a spin-off of a wildly popular show — in fact the most popular show on TV — a lot is expected of you. When you only have six episodes in your first season, that puts on even more pressure. From the outset, you could say, "Fear The Walking Dead" faced an uphill battle.

We've now seen four of those six episodes, and it's reasonable to wonder about this show. I was intrigued by the idea of seeing the crumbling of the world — something that was missed due to the storytelling process in "The Walking Dead." I liked the L.A. setting and the set up for the cast.

The pilot was a bit slow — partially as a function of the audience knowing more about what was happening than the characters and partially because of all the set up required. But the second and third episodes seemed to up the stakes and pick up the pace.

Then came last night's fourth episode, which slowed it down and seemed to make a sort of left turn. Instead of fearing the dead, the problem seemed to be the living — particularly the fear-driven government calling the shots.

Now a major theme of "The Walking Dead" has always been that the living are the real danger. So it makes sense that would translate to this spin-off. But I think we hardly expected a government conspiracy show, which is where the episode seemed to be headed.

"Fear the Walking Dead" has two episodes left this season, then it's off until next Summer, when it returns with a full run. In order to keep the audience that's loyal to the brand, there needs to be some kind of forward momentum. That didn't happen last night, and that kind of episode can't happen again in this abbreviated first season.