Fear the Walking Dead Ouroboros
So, I’ve been sitting here all week trying to think of something to say about Sunday’s Fear the Walking Dead episode “Ouroboros.” I was going to go with how the series is a family drama; a really bad family drama complete with bad family drama dialog. Bad dialog like Madison telling the kids to find jackets because “it’s cold out there on the water.” I’m sure by now everyone knows how cold it gets on the ocean. Or I was going to go with how Travis objected to Chris going ashore with the same tone a father would use to tell his son he wasn’t allowed to go to a party.
I was also going to go with comparing the characters on Fear the Walking Dead to the characters on The Walking Dead. It’s easy to do. Strand is clearly the Shane character of the group. No matter what he has in store down Mexico way Strand is seeing the new zombie world just like Shane. He doesn’t trust anyone and to help others is to put yourself in danger. Strand cuts the lifeboat loose from the Abigail to prove to Madison how far he’s willing to go to keep things safe.
Madison, for now, is the season one and two Rick character. Remember how he was all goody, goody and everyone needed help? That’s where Madison is at right now. She wants to help everyone no matter the consequences to the group.
Chris is the Carl character of Fear the Walking Dead. Up until season three and four, Carl was the typical snot-nosed teenager. Unless you’re a teenager reading this you were a snot-nosed teenager. If you’re a teenager reading this odds are you’re a snot-nosed teenager.
After that I was going to go into some of the better things in “Ouroboros.” The zombie being eaten by the beach crabs was a very cool scene. However, the plane crash should have bared better results. The zombies coming over the dune was a nice shot, but it didn’t have the intended impact. Nick discovering being covered in zombie blood cloaked him from the zombies was…okay. Had I written my intended article I would have said something about how ideas aren’t created in a vacuum. How two people on complete sides of the globe, or even the United States, can come to the same conclusions. But, it was still done better in The Walking Dead.
Personally, all I could think about was how far the boat had been dragged up the beach. It’s pretty far from the water line. Daniel and the kids had enough time to fight off the zombies, reach the motor boat, drag it down to the ocean, start it, and take off. Let’s catch our collective breath after all those commas before we go on. They also had time to tie the plane’s life raft to the motor boat. That’s a lot of time while fighting off flesh-eating zombies. A lot of time that could have been used creating a genuine sense of terror.
Yes, I was going to say all this and more. But I’m not going to say any of that, because when you get down to it Fear the Walking Dead is just plain boring. It’s boring as it is predictable. I’m more than positive when the gang gets to Mexico they’re going to run into a Governor-like character. I’ll go farther out on that ledge and say whatever hacienda the gang finds itself in will be the setting for season three.
During “Ouroboros,” Strand tells Madison “The real danger on the ocean is people.” No, the real danger is watching Fear the Walking Dead and wasting your Sunday nights.
(On a side note- If you didn’t watch Flight 462, originally aired between commercial breaks during The Walking Dead, the two characters floating in the boat won’t mean too much to you. If you haven’t seen Flight 462 you need to watch it now. The mini-series created more fear and tension than two seasons of Fear the Walking Dead combined.)
