Fear The Walking Meh, more like.

I’ve said several times before that I’m a sucker for a zombie apocalypse.  Part of me was really looking foward to this show.  I assumed from comments that Robert Kirkman made about the comics a long time ago that he would never bother to revisit the beginning of his zombie apocalypse.  For that aspect at least, I was intrigued.

And then they cast Kim Dickens.  Yay.  I adored her in Deadwood and Tremé.

The result?  Yawn.  Yawn The Walking Dead.

Problem #1: Boring zombies.

Problem #2: The main reason that they’re boring is that Kirkman & co. are using them in the pilot to threaten main cast members.  Anyone following the development of the show or being exposed to the myriad previews knows that those characters will survive the pilot.  Yawn.

Problem #3: Are any of these main characters likeable?  As much as I adored Kim Dickens in Deadwood and Tremé … um, no.  Except possibly Travis, depending on what more we see of him in the next five weeks.

Problem #4: Kirkman & co. have a built-in audience who knows exactly what this apocalypse evolves into years down the road.  Do we hit the ground running here in full-on outbreak mode?  Um, no.  Instead we spend the first hour trying to figure out if an unlikeable oh-someone-please-spare-me-by-feeding-him-to-the-zombies-now junkie is hallucinating or insane.  Yawn.

I understand the desire to go with a slow burn style of storytelling, possibly to differentiate it from the original series, but it just didn’t work for me.  From the moment we saw a flash of Cal’s gun, I knew exactly how the rest of the story was going to play out … until the damn show ended and I was left shaking my head and swearing at my television (“What the fuck, was that it?  Was that all?  They’re ending it there?!?”).

So … I’ll still tune in for the next couple of weeks to see how they end up trying to tell the story, but I am less than impressed.  I have seen the occasional bad-to-mediocre pilot end up becoming an awesome series in the past, but that’s usually an exception to the rule.  And how much faith can I possibly put in a showrunner who was a writer and creative consultant on something as insipid as Defying Gravity?  Ew.