Tag: hate watch

Fear the Walking Loose Ends

As usual, spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead (Season eight, episode four specifically but also a couple of episodes of the original show, The Walking Dead, including the pilot).

I started jogging (pronounced “yogging”) this morning while watching season five of Star Wars The Clone Wars. Season four was weaker than I expected. Much of season five was weak too, but I’m down to the last five episodes and a big story line is just ramping up so it’s better.

As I was trot trot trotting to Boston, trot trot trotting to Lynn (get it?) a notification popped up on my screen. The Talking Dead podcast released its recap of Sunday night’s Fear the Walking Dead. I was doing a good job pretending the episode didn’t exist but seeing that notification just made me have to watch it. Shit.

There was potential for this episode to be something really special. I still have 15 minutes to go but it’s turned into its usual dumb failure. Congratulations, Fear. You suck again.

The premise is that Morgan went back to the setting of the original show’s pilot to tie up a loose end that has been hanging since that very first episode of The Walking Dead. Well… technically it’s been hanging since season three when Rick and Carl and Michonne went back to Rick’s home town looking for guns and found Morgan out of his brain insane, but it still sort of ties back to the pilot so we’re going with that.

The current show takes place in Louisiana, I think. It might be Mississippi. Someplace in the South, East of Texas, that’s all we know for sure. The genius writing staff hasn’t seen fit to tell us specifically, but we know that much. In this episode, Morgan goes on a secret mission back to Georgia. He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going. He doesn’t tell anyone that he actually is going, he just goes. Magically, five of the season eight regulars and two expendable baddies find him. I say magically, because the reason they find him is the walkie talkies. Oh, and at one point the expendable baddies use the walkie talkie to call from Georgia to wherever the bad guy headquarters are in Louisiana or Mississippi or wherever. I’m guessing that particular piece of utter stupidity is the real reason the writers haven’t told us exactly where the baddies live.

This show blows. What a waste.

Hate Watch Underway

I just got through the cold open of tonight’s Fear the Walking Dead. It was all exposition but the signs are already pointing to this being the worst episode yet. Wow.

I said a prayer to Dionysus (the Greek god of theater) that it’s not as bad as it seems, but just as I was typing that last sentence my AMC live stream failed.

That sounds like an omen to me.

Weekly Bad Writing Post

I just popped on last night’s Fear the Walking Dead and the avalanche of ridiculous writing started in the episode summary blurb on the website.

I’m less than nine minutes in and here is what we have so far…

  • Grace (who??) has amnesia. Remember, in the first half of this season Daniel pretended he had amnesia. Ugh.
  • Grace (who??) along with amnesia suddenly wakes up in the future. Ugh
  • We know it’s the future because Morgan has white hair and a white beard. I’m not going to say it’s the worst make-an-actor-look-old make up job in history, but it’s probably top 10. That’s not writing though. The bad writing? One of the first things Morgan says is something like my memory isn’t what it used to be. Ummm… so we’re now up to three characters with the bad memory trope, and two in this very episode. What the ever loving fuck? Ugh.

I don’t feel like I’m nitpicking. If I were nitpicking I’d say so, proudly. This doesn’t feel like nitpicking, this feels like plain old awful.

I could make all this dumb go away by just not watching. It’s that simple. I just need to stop watching. Why am I still watching? I have a theory. I think I’m watching so that I can keep listening to a couple of podcasts that are hate watching. I think that’s the reason and not some unconscious desire to force suffering upon myself.

Bad television is bad.

ADDENDUM: In the grand scheme of things, this episode wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, but when compared to everything that’s happened since the show runner swap after season three it was okay. The premise was idiotic. The writing was garbage. The acting was good, as it almost always is on this show. I just don’t understand how the actors take it. They are all better than this. Even the child actors. The writing is miles beneath them and yet they all keep coming back. Well… not all of them. We know for sure that two of the main characters have asked to be written off since the start of the fourth season. I think the miracle is that they all haven’t asked to be written off. Oh well. We’ll see how bad it gets next week.