Fear The Walking Dead non-episode specific discussion thread

Cafe Society
1

I have a few thoughts on Fear The Walking Dead.

I dislike the title. It just doesn’t do it for me.

I was born ‘in L.A.’ (Actually, it was one of the surrounding suburbs in L.A County, near the Naval base and just above the Orange County line; but close enough for discussion.) I lived in the City of Los Angeles for 17 years. There’s not a whole lot in the show that looks familiar to me. I tended to stay on the West Side, rarely going farther east than Hollywood except when I went downtown. It’s a little disconcerting that I should see lots of places I know, but don’t. (FWIW, I moved away at 12/2003.)

I keep looking at the disintegration of everything and thinking, ‘I would be over to SMO to ‘borrow’ and airplane so fast…’ Seriously. If society collapsed, I’d have no compunction against stealing an aircraft.

I understand that things need to move slowly in the beginning, but it’s a little painful watching people not grasp what’s happening. True, I watch The Walking Dead; but still, I like to think I’d be faster on the uptake.

Guns. I had some of my collection when I lived there. The ones that were required to be registered with the DoJ were properly registered (except for one, because they changed the law and didn’t tell anyone about it). Nearby Martin B. Retting (gun shop) seemed to do pretty brisk business. I suspect though, that the percentage of households with firearms was not especially high. The gangs seemed pretty well stocked though. At one point I decided that the next time someone shot a gun in the alley behind my bedroom, I’d yell ‘Do you mind? People are trying to sleep!’ Anyway, that one break-action shotgun (or were there two?) seems to be under-representing the available firepower.

There was a scene in the last show with the step-dad and the heroin addict, where the step-dad seemed not to know/believe the dead were coming back to life. I wanted the kid to say, ‘Um… yeah! Remember the L.A. River? And that dead guy that attacked us? And I had to run over him with the truck…?’

TWD zombies are highly plot-motivated. They seem more-so in FTWD. Like, they don’t show up until the plot requires them, even though the must have been there all along.

2

I think the reason everyone on this show seems so stupid is because all the smart people have already made a Costco run and are now up in their mountain cabins watching CNN and the internet for any news they can still get.

3

Oh, vehicles…

That pick-up truck doesn’t look reasonable for L.A. – even for a couple of teachers.

And the guy leaves it unlocked. Nobody leaves his vehicle unlocked in L.A.! Especially in a bad neighbourhood where there’s a heroin crib (which you investigate at night).

4

It takes place and is filmed in East LA (El Sereno, Highland Park, Boyle Heights), which is frankly rather refreshing. I live just east of these areas and have seen my daily commute in almost every episode.

The geography can be kind of weird sometimes but that’s only going to be weird for a local (like the heroin church is in Silver Lake but when the junkie escapes the hospital he’s on the west side-why would the ambulance take him over there?). The area of their house doesn’t look right…that part of town is very hilly but its also way more cramped. The neighbors across the street wouldn’t be 100 yards away, they’d be 20. I suspect its filmed north of LA or maybe even Alta Dena?

5

See my rather disgruntled comments about that shotgun in the other thread.

6

After the first episode, filming moved to Vancouver.

7

I think people would be relatively slow to bail on civilization. If you are going to steal a plane, you have to believe that society is about to collapse completely and there will be no consequences for breaking the law. They aren’t to that point in the show, there is enough going on that they are thinking they need to get out of town and stay at a safe distance while everything blows over. They haven’t seen enough to decide that laws and ethics need to be jettisoned in favor of survival because the world is ending. The military showing up is bad news, because to survive a place like LA, you need to get out early. Seeing an effective response will delay their impulse to GTFO until things get bad enough to overwhelm any military response.

I’m thinking the best thing to do at this point in the show in LA is get a bicycle, a hiking/camping back and start pedaling north on surface streets. It’s hard enough to get out of town on a 3-day holiday, so anyone who lives here would know that driving out is going to be impossible, and getting gas is going to be just as difficult. Dropping everything and leaving on a bike is only an option for single people though.

I wouldn’t know what to do with family and kids. Driving east might be possible if you can make it as far as San Bernadino through neighborhoods before going near a freeway. Considering that you can get stop and go traffic the entire route from Vegas to LA on Thanksgiving weekend, there may never be a point where highways open up enough to make any progress, and there is still the desert to deal with. Going north would be impossible because of mountain passes, which is why a bicycle would be the only option.

The very wealthy would have the best chance, by maybe paying enough to charter a boat for a long trip up the coast to Oregon.

8

I gotta say I hear ya on the overall slow to get it. Really a little more stupid than is necessary.

9

Some people think the show is going too fast. Others, too slow. The response time of the military seems a little quick. I’m not sure about the power blinking on/off so soon, but I don’t know about the particulars of the power grid or power plants. Kinda funny how in so many zombie stories random fires start popping up all over the place. They must spontaneously combust.

My main gripe is I don’t find the character reactions believable. Some crazy shit happens and people just ignore it or act like they’re too cool for school. They don’t talk about the craziness going down with each other, either.

10

The eternal problem with most horror movies. If the people were smart and the movie realistic, it wouldn’t last long or be scary.

11

I think the zombie apoc aspect is moving too fast, the characters are too damn slow. But then in other ways they are almost non-sensical, in the last episode the mom was ready to bash her neighbors head in with a hammer! How would she explain that?

Why would you bury the infected neighbor you had to shoot? Then he puts trash at the curb, so no one will come to collect a dead body but the trash trucks are running?

In some ways these characters act like society has totally crumbled, but in others like this will blow over. Which is it?

12

Since we are right at the start of this, shouldn’t the vast, vast majority of the zombies be what the majority of dead people are: old? of the people who are dying every day, a ridiculously enormous percentage of them are over 65 (thank so many things…). The the first waves of zombies ought to be overwhelmingly old.

That really bugged me in the late AMAZINGLY great series, In The Flesh… Britain was evidently experiencing a tragic wave of 20-something deaths, judging from the sufferers of Partially Deceased Syndrome… (If you have never seen it, make it a point to track it down. BRILLIANT…)

13

You’re right it would start with those that incidentally die, there was a not on screen element of the show that was a CDC document saying the dead must be restrained which we saw in the pilot. Hospitals would be the most dangerous place to be.

14

I try to remind myself that while the ZA is happening world wide, we are only getting a glimpse of the occurrences of one city. So if it seems t0o quick or too slow, keep in mind that in other parts of the world, it may have happened in a completely different way.

15

On trash day, you put the trash out. It’s what you do. The trucks are probably not running, but you don’t know that. It’s trash day, so the bins go to the curb.

16

Yeah, I thought that was one of the only moments that the writers accurately conveyed the total mind f#*k that beginning of the end would be for people. No matter how much the evidence starts to stack up, it would be very difficult to convince yourself that things weren’t going to get back to normal sometime. That feeling, plus knowing just how strong sheer force of habit is made that scene very believable to me.

17

I agree, but then why bury an infected guy you killed in self defense in your yard instead of rolling him out to the curb for the government to collect?

If society is so far gone you’re burying dead bodies in the yard and are going to euthanize your infected neighbor to put her out of her “misery”, why would you assume trash collection is still running?

18

I hope that they take their time with the dissolution of society. It will be more interesting to see what people do as they confront the recently-dead, not quite realizing how to react.
Plus, I am really hoping to see the hordes of elderly, “just-recently-passed-their-expiration-date” shambling corpses. That would be an interesting visual!

19

I’m still trying to figure out why, if we don’t really understand the zombie apocalypse, we’re killing folks – in self defense – and not calling the cops.

Sure, I’d be unhappy if I had to bludgeon my boss to death or shotgun the face off a neighbor, but in both instances, there were witnesses who would testify that it was life or death and self defense. Why aren’t we calling the cops?

20

Someone connected to the show in response to criticism said the mom has a dark past or something, not clear what they meant. Is she perhaps a fugitive living under another name or something?

Or maybe afraid for the junkie son, who knows.