March Makeovers: What does ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ season 2 need to do differently?
Is there the same sort of enthusiasm out there for the second season of “Fear the Walking Dead” that there was with the first? If there is, we certainly have not seen a lot of it. The show is solid, but we feel like as of late, much of the talk has been about Alycia Debnam-Carey’s exit from “The 100” just so that she could continue to be a part of this show.
The truth of the matter is that our excitement for the series waned throughout season 1, as there were a few problems that kept us from really getting as invested in some of these people as we would have liked. Is there a way to turn that around? We certainly think so, and that is the subject now of the latest chapter in our March Makeovers article series.
What went wrong – We cannot blame the actors for their performances, just as we also cannot blame any of the special-effects artists who created such an interesting, immersive world. In the end, the real people we do end up blaming more so than anyone else are those responsible for creating the characters in the first place. While Travis and Madison are capable leads, and the same goes for their children, where are the buzzworthy people? This show lacked that comic-book feel of the flagship show, and was missing the charm of someone like a Daryl Dixon or even the charisma of a Rick Grimes. There are so many zombie products out there, and as a result you need to give people a distinctive reason to watch. This show didn’t really have that, and then the pacing was so slow over the first six episodes that it didn’t really build towards anything substantial beyond just our main characters heading out to sea.
How to change it – First things first, either explain Cobalt or never mention it again. If you do the latter, we’ll pretend it never happened.
From there, find a way to get some wittier characters into the mix who have some of that zeal and fire that are in “The Walking Dead” proper. you need a few fan favorites, and you need to create stronger relationships between strangers. That is part of what makes the original great; here, you have a lot of people who already knew each other before the pilot, and as a result of that, you’re not really there for the journey. We want to be front and center for the character development.
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