No. I watched the entire first season. I watched several episodes twice, to check on details. And I commented on them here.
The first season may have been “about” the breakdown of society and the transformation from normal to ZA. But that’s not what was depicted. The opening episodes saw isolated “infected”, then crowd scenes of mass confusion. A major flying leap in the timeline brought us to the crazy, degenerate tail end of martial law with a huge percentage of the population already dead or at least missing from a city empty of humans outside the “quarantine slash prison zone”. Then to the boat trip into an already totally different world.
So my disappointment remains. The big time-jump, the gap between growing mass hysteria and a military lock-down, is the same part of the timeline that was skipped in the original Walking Dead series. When Rick awakens in the hospital, the world is already changed. I recall early hype for Fear suggesting that the saga of societal breakdown and attempts by civilization to resist collapse would be a feature of the new series. But alas, that was not to be.
Now this doesn’t mean Fear couldn’t be a good program on its own bent. I watch it hoping for just that level of entertainment. Sadly, in my (not so) humble opinion, the show has uninspiring characterization, weak plot lines, and trouble imparting a suspension of disbelief. Anyone who gets more enjoyment than I do is most welcome to their happiness. I don’t wish to harsh anybody’s mellow. And I’ll probably keep watching, and hoping – and perhaps complaining – for myself.
But see, that’s not my complaint. Nor, I think, is it alphaboi867’s. I (we?) don’t care how it began. I (we?) don’t require a fully consistent explanation for an infection / affliction that by all scientific laws we know simply cannot exist. I don’t care if it came from space, or “jest growed”. Doesn’t matter if infection is universal or transmitted one to one. I don’t care if a bite kills you by infection, or triggers some other means. These are merely background elements, furniture outfitting the stage where the action plays out. The exact details of this canon are determined by the producers, directors, and writers, and their specific choices (as opposed to possible alternatives) are of little interest to me. I am though interested in the dynamics of societal collapse.
So I wanted to see personal crises caused by personal encounters with this “thing”. But personal crises happening to large numbers of individuals form a complex mosaic of societal interactions. Sure there are teachers and laborers, shop keepers and soldiers. But there are also captains and generals, dog catchers, governors, and a President. Their personal stories would be interesting perhaps, but there aren’t that many episodes. However, their cumulative stories are the stuff of societal change, and in this case downfall.
Bullets can “kill” zombies, and our military has bigger tools than guns. Did society collapse because recognition came too late? Because shooting citizens in the head wasn’t something politicians or top military commanders easily adopted? Was it stupidity that allowed the downfall to become irreversible, or was it greed, venality, or laziness? All these seem fertile ground for series writers to explore, but they did not. Instead they skipped right over this whole stage of the progression from normality to this new and different world. That is my disappointment.
Correct. They could have survived. But the zombies in that universe were defeated by the authorities in a day or so. That makes internal sense then that a few individuals can hold off a horde temporarily with a rifle and some plywood.
In TWD world, the zombies are shown to be so powerful that they have caused the collapse of civilization. The U.S. military, even by napalming major cities have been unable to stop the plague. Yet Rick and our heroes can destroy an entire horde (an entire quarry of them) just by being pissed off and hacking them to death. A stiff forearm holds one or more of them off. Hiding under a dumpster makes them all go away.
At the same time, if there is a minor character we hate is confronted with one, he is swiftly bitten and overcome.
