Fear The Walking Dead: Season 3 discussion...

[Moon Knight]

You're about Nick and Alicia. They really need to make Alicia more interesting instead of constantly giving her love interest. Lazy writing. However, it's a shame what they did to Nick; was once my favorite character. This season will actually last 6 weeks per half. Two episode premier and finale. It ends next weekend. Smart move this time.

[MinionZombie]

You're about Nick and Alicia. They really need to make Alicia more interesting instead of constantly giving her love interest. Lazy writing. However, it's a shame what they did to Nick; was once my favorite character. This season will actually last 6 weeks per half. Two episode premier and finale. It ends next weekend. Smart move this time. Ah! Good idea. Though even better would be six episodes per half over four weeks. I see the ratings are continuing to slip - 3x01 had 3.11m but 3x02 immediately slipped down to 2.70m (on the same night) - 3x04 was the lowest so far with 2.4m, while 3x03 and 3x05 have both had 2.5m. Sure, there's the other time shift ratings to take into account, but there has been a consistent slide in the ratings throughout it's entire run. Season One started on 10.13m and ending on 6.86m, while Season Two started on 6.67m and ended on 3.05m (live showing figures) ... I wonder if the ratings will drop even further down from 2.5m throughout Season Three? There's a new showrunner coming in for Season 4, so they're going to have to make some drastic changes if they want to pull up these figures.

[MinionZombie]

heh, it says a lot when the last two episodes of the half-season have aired and nobody's had anything to say about it even a week later. The last three episodes pulled in 2.2, 2.6, and 2.4 million respectively. Season One ended on basically triple that figure. There's been some character decisions along the way in these last several episodes that don't make an awful lot of sense at times, or that show the characters up as making mistakes they should be too smart to have made etc. All-in-all, generally underwhelmed.

[Buzzbomb]

EP 12: Finally zombies... a good un.

[Neil]

Is that the biggest horde we've ever seen? Bigger that TWD's one? Still wondered why they didn't simply fence of as well as they could and then hide, rather than firing off guns and the like and just drawing more and more of the horde to them?

[MinionZombie]

The FTWD thread crawls from it's half-covered-over grave. The past episode was a bit iffy in some ways - Nick acting so high and mighty, yet HE was the one who tackled the good brother, thus tumbling him down into the zombie ditch where he got bitten. Also - you've got a frickin' grenade launcher - how about blasting a few rounds in the opposite direction to try and draw the herd away?! Generally the show feels full o'filler. It was the same last season, too. All these added episodes and not enough plot to fill them, so relatively small story tasks take entire episodes of wandering about. It lacks drive, and it certainly lacks any new kind of viewpoint on the zombie apocalypse - it feels like it's just plots that TWD did years ago, only done less well, and set in a different location. It's not a total disaster, but it's far below what it could - and should - have been. The main live numbers continue to slip (down just over another million since Season 3 began). The new showrunner for Season 4 is going to have to do something spectacular to pull this back from the brink. That all said about the ratings, it's still doing well enough to justify itself (I assume from various time shift numbers being included), and apparently it's AMC's second-most-popular drama series logging live numbers above the likes of Better Call Saul (and infinitely superior show by comparison, and one of my current faves), Into The Badlands, and Preacher. Halt & Catch Fire's live ratings have always (bar the first episode) been under a million for live views - and are currently as low as 0.3m - and that's still going (I believe it's the last season now, though). Anyway - other things - I think TWD still has had a bigger walker horde, definitely on-screen. We saw a sizeable herd in this episode, but TWD has definitely had larger numbers in previous seasons (e.g. the road full of walkers that blocked the car, the attack on Alexandria), and of course we get far more real walkers on-screen within the frame. FTWD has to be a bit more suggestive (wobbling RVs - which I enjoyed) and use clever camera angles etc. Generally, though, despite the production values and cast's efforts, I find the show a bit lacklustre. My excitement to see an episode during Season 1 has evaporated. I continue to watch in the hope that it'll improve, but it just feels kind of pointless as a show. They really should have explored a different world and group of characters entirely - we basically never get to see the government side of things during these zombie apocalypses, and if they had done that (and focused on the initial outbreak for far longer) we would have had something far more interesting that would have absolutely set itself apart from TWD and stood on its own two feet.

[JDP]

They had a debate on yesterday's episode of Talking Dead regarding whether the word "zombie" was said in yesterday's episode. There are no "ifs" or "buts", though. When Troy asked the waitress what is the "sesos" (brains) in his quesadilla, she very clearly tells him in Spanish "antojitos zombi", which means "zombie snacks/appetizers". The whole thing could easily have been clarified by Ruben Blades and Mercedes Mason, both of whom know Spanish, but strangely enough they did not. This marks the first time in a Walking Dead TV show where the word "zombie" has been used. It can no longer be said that this word is supposedly "unknown" to the characters in this universe. The word does exist in this universe as well, so it seems that it is just that most people in it don't choose to use it.

[MinionZombie]

They had a debate on yesterday's episode of Talking Dead regarding whether the word "zombie" was said in yesterday's episode. There are no "ifs" or "buts", though. When Troy asked the waitress what is the "sesos" (brains) in his quesadilla, she very clearly tells him in Spanish "antojitos zombi", which means "zombie snacks/appetizers". The whole thing could easily have been clarified by Ruben Blades and Mercedes Mason, both of whom know Spanish, but strangely enough they did not. This marks the first time in a Walking Dead TV show where the word "zombie" has been used. It can no longer be said that this word is supposedly "unknown" to the characters in this universe. The word does exist in this universe as well, so it seems that it is just that most people in it don't choose to use it. Or whoever wrote this episode/the writing team on the underling show weren't paying attention to the lore of The Walking Dead (possibly flinging it in to be clever), as clearly laid out by Robert Kirkman, who has said on numerous occasions that the whole concept of a "zombie" doesn't exist in the popular culture of the world in which TWD takes place. Much like the inclusion of blue meth in occasional scenes (e.g. Season 1 of TWD, Season 3 of FTWD) doesn't mean that Breaking Bad is a precursor to TWD. It's a non-serious wink at the audience. The blue meth you can get away with as a gag, but dropping the word "zombie" in the TWD universe goes against Kirkman canon.

[Moon Knight]

The word zombie has always been around and wasn’t always associated with flesh eaters until after Night of the Living Dead.

[DayoftheZ]

According to reports on the internet we may be having a cross over between FTWD and TWD. It could just be Robert Kirkman trying to keep interest in Fear but I guess we shall see. If it happens it kind of confirms that FTWD was basically a pointless project. I've still not watched the back half of series two, or any of series three so don't know if the show has improved.

[MinionZombie]

According to reports on the internet we may be having a cross over between FTWD and TWD. It could just be Robert Kirkman trying to keep interest in Fear but I guess we shall see. If it happens it kind of confirms that FTWD was basically a pointless project. I've still not watched the back half of series two, or any of series three so don't know if the show has improved. It was interesting when he was saying about FTWD having it's "own identity" and wanting to keep the two shows separate - and then immediately announces there'll be a crossover. It does smell of trying to keep interest from waning from FTWD. FTWD does have it's own identity, but it's little more than on the surface - the location - and the fact that it's inferior to it's big brother. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a TWD character appearing in FTWD as an earlier version of themselves, possibly even a character who died on TWD, to try and increase Fear's ratings. I'd rather see a good character from Fear, such as Madison, rock up in TWD on their own as a ravaged wanderer of the apocalypse and for Fear to go quietly into the night. As soon as it abandoned the "early days of the outbreak" concept it lost all purpose, which is really frustrating.

[DayoftheZ]

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a TWD character appearing in FTWD as an earlier version of themselves, possibly even a character who died on TWD, to try and increase Fear's ratings. I'd rather see a good character from Fear, such as Madison, rock up in TWD on their own as a ravaged wanderer of the apocalypse and for Fear to go quietly into the night. As soon as it abandoned the "early days of the outbreak" concept it lost all purpose, which is really frustrating. As I haven’t been watching for a while I wondered if the timelines were close to when TWD started. If they are maybe Morales and his family could have ended up crossing paths having been to Birmingham and finding that their family has all gone. I think I would prefer a small character from TWD turning up in Fear than a bigger character from FTW turning up on the main show. That said from the series and a half I saw I would have like Daniel to turned up as a bad guy on TWD.

[Moon Knight]

If Fear heads towards Texas next season then it’s safe to assume we’ll be seeing Abraham.

[MinionZombie]

If Fear heads towards Texas next season then it’s safe to assume we’ll be seeing Abraham. Interesting theory! It'd have to be something good, though. I wouldn't like to see a great character squandered on a pointless plot gimmick, especially when we've already seen a bit of the character's backstory in TWD done quite efficiently.