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albionjake · 7 years

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Why Is Fear The Walking Dead Now Better Than The Walking Dead?

I know that’s a question that none of us ever thought would be asked by anyone sane. But that’s where we are in Walking Dead land. To be fair, the comics are still the best version of The Walking Dead that exists but on TV alone, it’s Fear The Walking Dead that’s consistently (ish) impressive while The Walking Dead limps along like a particularly disfigured walker. So what’s happened? Let’s start with the positives about Fear The Walking Dead: Almost every character has a clear reason for being there. They have personalities. You know what their motivations are. Each one has their own plan for survival and each one wrestles with morals. They can go from being the hero to the bad guy in an episode and that’s so much more interesting than a clear hero/villain divide. It’s realistic. The story moves fairly rapidly. There’s some inevitable stalling but that’s a result of America’s insane 16 episode seasons that are just TOO LONG. In general, Fear does a great job of moving things on, killing off characters and introducing new and complex elements to The Walking Dead world. For instance, killing Jake in the last season was something you can’t imagine The Walking Dead doing. He was handsome, fairly charismatic and a very obvious hero for the future. To kill him before his evil brother is so bold and so against what audiences are used to having shoved down their throats. The fact that Troy died later on was a shame, I thought. I quite liked the idea of having someone so nasty and unhinged sticking with the group for a while. The 5 main characters of Strand, Madison, Nick, Alicia and Daniel are fantastic. Each one is so different and so complex. Not a single one of them can be described as a hero. Alicia is probably the one that’s done the least bad things so far but even she isn’t anywhere near as heroic as half the cast on The Walking Dead. It’s refreshing. The show has it’s drawbacks, particularly in the fun stakes. I’d say the one thing The Walking Dead gets right almost every time is the light relief. Fear is often a much more serious affair and that can become slightly draining, along with making you feel more removed from the characters. But considering where The Walking Dead is with characters at the moment....Fear is doing a far better job. So let’s talk about The Walking Dead: We’re two episodes into season 8 and so far it’s the same old stuff. The first episode was ok. It was full of action and kicked the war off nicely. I didn’t see the need for those flash forwards at all though, they didn’t fit with the episode and told us nothing interesting about the future. The second episode was much worse. I sort of enjoyed everyone doing their separate plans but I’m also completely unsure why it took so long to see. Those scenes could have been done in ten minutes. Another issue with the madness of having 16 episodes. Everything is drawn out. We were expected to care about Eric being shot in the stomach. The show has given us NO reason to care about him. He’s been on the show since season 5. We are now in season 8 and we have no idea who Eric is. He’s been on this show for longer than Shane or The Governor were. There has been time to make us care about Eric. The writers think killing him off is going to be some big emotional moment. It’s just not. He might have been part of the group for a while but he’s just as important as the nameless members of The Kingdom. The Walking Dead does this A LOT. Killing off people we don’t care about and acting as if we should give a shit. Fair enough, The Walking Dead has a MUCH bigger cast and I really do appreciate that it’s tough to juggle character development for such a big cast and keep the action going. But you either have to get it right or cut that cast down. The comics have the luxury of a huge cast because they are comics. I wouldn’t have felt cheated out of anything if the show had decided not to bother with The Kingdom. Yeah there would have been a load of babies crying over the fact that we didn’t get to see a tiger but it would have saved a lot of time and energy if we hadn’t bothered with them. Do we need Tara? Do we need Rosita? Do we need Aaron and Eric? There’s 4 off the top of my head that could easily go. I actually quite like Tara and Rosita as characters but they’re just not important. Tara doesn’t even exist in the comics. The cast is too big. Get rid of these people. This latest episode had so much nonsense in it. There was a woman that essentially just let a walker bite her in the neck. She just stood there as it came towards her. Why did that happen? It’s little things like that which really irritate me. Then we had Jesus be tricked by that man who pretended to wet himself. Jesus isn’t that stupid. The show is so good sometimes and has the most wonderful history. Why ruin it by having characters do things like that? Same as last week when Gabriel found himself trapped with Negan. Gabriel had a gun. Negan had a baseball bat. YOU LITERALLY CAME HERE TO KILL NEGAN AND HIS MEN. But he didn’t just shoot him immediately... I hate that. Obviously, I don’t want Negan to die, it’s just another example of an entirely unbelievable situation. Speaking of Negan. He’s turning out to be the most divisive figure in Walking Dead history. I genuinely thought his arrival would save the show. He’s by far the best thing in the comics so it made sense that he was finally coming to breathe new life into the show. For some reason, it didn’t happen. Maybe because of that whole nonsense when they made us wait months to find out who he killed. People instantly became irritated. Also people thought the scenes were too gory (boo hoo, it’s a zombie show, you idiots) so I think Negan had an immediate negative response. It’s true that he’s pretty cartoonish as a villain and it certainly doesn’t translate as well from the comics as I hoped but I still think Negan is great on the show. I’m aware many people think he’s the worst but I still have a soft spot for the character. Also, if the show does follow the comics, the haters might as well get used to Negan being around... Finally, why on EARTH did Morales have to return? I didn’t have a clue who he was and I didn’t care. The fact that Rick actually had to say “You’re names Morales and you’re from Atlanta” or whatever he said was embarrassing. The most see-through bit of dialogue I’ve ever seen. It only existed to tell everyone watching who the hell that man was because he means nothing. Why bother? Anyway, the show needs to get it’s act together so here is my plan to return The Walking Dead to it’s rightful place and stop that cheeky little Fear The Walking Dead from totally taking over: 1. Half The Main Cast Clearly, Fear’s big plus is the smaller main cast. It might be tough but The Walking Dead needs to lose people. Kill half of them. The war is the perfect opportunity for this and I really hope they do it. 2. Fuck The Comics I am a comic reader. I love the comics. They will always be the best. But that doesn’t mean the show has to keep following them so closely. Some of the best things about the show are the big changes from the comics. Daryl existing, Carol having attitude and not dying, giving Morgan more relevance. So many other great moments. By all means, follow the story of the comics loosely but don’t be afraid to kill someone who’s important later in the comics, that doesn’t mean you can’t use the story with a different character. 3. Balance The Elements Episodes of The Walking Dead these days either have too much talking or too much action. There needs to be a balance. We need the talking for character development and we need the action to keep things exciting. Please balance them. It is a difficult balance but the show got this right in the early days so why can’t it now? 4. Stop Playing With Time The show doesn’t do this too often but I hate it when it does. It’s The Walking Dead not Lost. Playing with time isn’t as effective as you think it is. It’s jarring and gets in the way of the story we care about. 5. Watch Fear The Walking Dead I know the shows are made by a lot of the same people but how about watching the show that’s much better at the moment and learning some stuff? It really has done some impressive things in the past season and a half and I can see it improving even more in season 4 while The Walking Dead slowly ties itself up in too many characters and bad execution of the comic story. To finish this mad rant, I’d like to say I love both shows. I really do. The Walking Dead is one of my very favourite franchises which is why I have such strong opinions about it. There’s nothing I’d love more than for both shows to continue doing amazingly well and for the comics to carry on for many years to come. It’s a brilliant world but I just wish the TV show that first made me fall in love with that world would shape up and do itself justice.

#the walking dead #fear the walking dead

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