You may remember that, at the end of Fear the Walking Deads first season, one dysfunctional Los Angeles family escaped military occupation and mobs of flesh-eating zombies to join a rich, mysterious cynic named Strand at his fortified oceanfront compound. With the undead shambling toward the beach and the city facing a military airstrike, the survivors faced a choice: scatter back into the wilds of Southern California, or ferry supplies to Strands luxury yacht and take to the seas.
So whos ready for The Swimming Dead?
There a few ways to look at this spinoffs second-season premiere, entitled Monster. Heres the good news: After an erratic, abbreviated six-episode run, the sister show of AMCs biggest cash-cow now appears to have a clear plan for how to distinguish itself from its sibling. The original idea was to tell stories about the early days of the apocalypse, and how a small group of confused humans made sense of what was happening while everything fell apart. But FTWDs writers never seemed to have enough faith in that concept, so they packed in the kind of dull domestic disputes that could be on any show all while hastening the plot to the point where it could become, essentially, The West Coast Walking Dead.
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Now that last seasons remaining cast-members are out on the water, Fears entire narrative structure is changing. The first episode opens in darkness and mayhem, as the Clarks (good-hearted mom Madison, brainiac daughter Alicia, and junkie son Nick), the Manawas (cautious dad Travis and angry son Christopher), and battle-hardened aging refugee Daniel Salazar all make a mad dash to Strands yacht, the Abigail. When a new day dawns, our heroes are on a well-stocked boat, which is in good enough shape to sail at least 3000 miles; no matter how much the desperate people they float past may beg, however, they cant afford to take on any more passengers unless theres some net benefit.
What we could have here is a classic Wagon Train/Star Trek-type format. Each week our ragtag band navigates its way to another location, where they meet new people and face fresh choices. All the while, theyre under the thumb of the charismatic, pragmatic Strand (well-played by the wonderful Colman Domingo), who warns them that, I filled my mercy quota, and tells them that his three rules are, Its my boat its my boat its my goddamn boat.
Now heres the bad news: Monster is a pretty terrible episode.
Maybe thats a bit harsh. This hour has its moments. The opening scramble is eerily beautiful, as is a sequence towards the end where Nick dives down in the ocean and gets attacked by a bobbing corpse when he resurfaces. Plus, any scene involving Strand is a winner, because hes the only one of these characters focused on the fact that, oh, yknow its the end of the freakin world.
Otherwise, this episode repeats a lot of the story devices that made FTWDs first batch such a drag at times. For example, the whole reason why Nicks swimming in the first place is because he jumped in after Chris, who was a moody little shit last season, and who starts out this sophomore go-round on the same course, blaming his dad for killing his zombie-infected mom before she could turn. This is the kind of uninspired mini-crisis that the shows writers seems to think will really grab an audience. Will Travis ever win back the love and trust of his short-sighted asshole of a son? Tune in next week!
Meanwhile, in the other big subplot, Alicia makes radio contact with a David Bowie fan named Jack, and spends hours nurturing what would ordinarily be a bittersweet human connection, if she also werent giving away potentially damaging information about the Abigails location. Alicias stupidity here is actually more plausible and even relatable. The problem with her storyline is that it doesnt have any payoff. This pacesetting episode really needed to lead somewhere, given that its basically the debut of an entirely new version of this show.
Alas, it ends with the yacht driving into the wreckage of another ship, before the sonar picks up a faster boat closing in on them. That wouldnt be such a bad cliffhanger, except that it comes after an hour of nothing else really happening. Once the crew sets sail, they spend all their time bickering, reflecting, and discussing where they might go. The near-total lack of a story or much in the way of action presumes that viewers already have enough invested in these characters to watch them just sort of float around for a while. Thats a huge ask.
Theres still reason to be hopeful about what Fear the Walking Dead might become. The set-up is sound; and while Strands the only consistently intriguing character right now, the cast remains strong overall. But after the controversial way that the other Dead show ended its sixth season last week, it wouldve been great if the franchise couldve come back with a spark of confidence. Instead, we get something needlessly slow-paced, underwritten and all wet.