Review ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ S2 E8 – Grotesque

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Well, Fear the Walking Dead is back from its not so short mid-season break. It has been gone for so long it almost felt like we were starting a new season of the show. For AMC’s sake, this show probably should’ve stayed wherever it is that shows go when they are on break from television. I wonder if the quality of the show determines where they go. Like, Game of Thrones gets a romantic trip to Paris, while Fear the Walking Dead gets to go to Disney World with, like, eight kids. In July.

I really wanted to like this show, and I still have hope, but the premiere let me down once again. I even tried to lower my standards and just take the show for what it is, and even that didn’t help. I’m so used to The Walking Dead having fantastic premieres, whether it be a new season, or coming back from a mid-season break, that maybe I’m just spoiled. If so, I will continue to be an entitled brat when it comes to television and nothing is going to change that.

It is really easy to sum up the events of this episode of Fear the Walking Dead. Nick left the group to go off on his own and this episode was essentially just an hour of him walking through the desert. That’s barely an exaggeration, either. Nothing of importance happens for the duration of the episode.

Let me describe for you, directly from my notes, one of the most exciting Fear the Walking Dead scenes that takes place:

Nick is walking.

Nick gets thirsty.

Nick finds a cactus.

Nick eats the cactus.

Nick throws the cactus up.

Nick drinks his own pee.

Great television, folks.

There was one scene in this episode of Fear the Walking Dead that I really liked, though, where Nick gets semi-attacked by some mean looking feral dogs. I liked it because it is something that The Walking Dead has never covered. What happened to all of the dogs in their post-apocalyptic world? I know the walkers probably ate a lot of them, but it seems like they would run into some feral dogs every now and again. What about zombie-dogs? They are definitely missing out on a fantastic episode based around killer zombie dogs.

Fear the Walking Dead also breaks the cardinal rule of storytelling which is “don’t kill the dog.” Then they shatter the rule when Nick begins to eat the dead dog. Gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.

Aside from scenes of Nick walking, we get Fear the Walking Dead flashbacks of his time in rehab. This could probably be interesting, but they don’t advance the story in any meaningful ways. The only thing we learn is that his father died in a head-on collision, which still doesn’t advance the plot at all.

At the end of the episode he ends up in a new community after the town doctor patches up his dog bite. Again, this is something that should have been exciting for Fear the Walking Dead, but after this boring-ass episode it was just whatever. We know that communities in this world never last so it’s just a matter of time before it’s attacked in one form or another.

Hopefully when we get to see the rest of the group in the coming episodes of Fear the Walking Dead it makes for some more exciting television, or I’ll be genuinely frightened for the future of the show.