Fear the Walking Dead: Season 2 (Blu-ray) – Series Review
A year ago we saw the spinoff series based on the widely popular series The Walking Dead, which revolves around Rick Grimes, what’s left of his family, and the rest of the stragglers that have either joined him, or lost their lives in their fight for survival. Even though The Walking Dead proves to be a great series, many were left wondering how the apocalypse came about, or at least, how things started, as when Rick woke up in the hospital, several weeks had already passed. Fear the Walking Dead starts off right at the beginning, where the general populace doesn’t know what is going on, while they see all of their loved ones turn into the walking dead. Travis, Madison, their children and a few other survivors made it out of the city in one piece and are now sailing to, hopefully, safer locations.
Travis (Cliff Curtis), Madison (Kim Dickens), Nick (Frank Dillane), Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), Ofelia (Mercedes Mason), Daniel (Rubén Blades) and Victor (Colman Domingo) have safely reached the latter’s boat, and are heading towards a safer location. While things seem to be fairly okay for the group, supplies will eventually become an issue, and it’s clear that Victor doesn’t want to attract extra survivors or even trust everyone who is currently on board. Victor intends to sail to Mexico, for his own safety, but doesn’t include the rest of the survivors, but of course, he is soon found out by a few of the other passengers.
Without spoiling too much, this season will pretty much revolve around a story arc in Mexico, but also around the group falling apart, where everyone will have to look for their own way of ‘survival’, albeit with those that have the same views as them. This makes things a bit more interesting, as the beginning episodes are sometimes a bit bland or slow.
Sometimes it feels as if this series is still searching for the proper pacing which is clearly noticeable in the first few episodes of season two, which feel a bit like ‘fillers’, to get the series going again. Luckily, the flow ends up on its feet, and after a handful of episodes you’ll have a proper balance between action, drama and a healthy dose of suspense. One thing the creators pulled off perfectly is the character development during this season. It is becoming more and more clear that the world is slowly being overrun by the living dead, and that life isn’t what it used to be. The current characters either need to adapt, find a place they can survive, or devolve and give in to primal urges, rather than help other stragglers. In this case, Travis tries to hold on to his original moral compass, while his son, Chris, is slowly being affected by all of the killing and violence that goes on around him.
Cast wise not that much has changed, and while the characters remain the same, their behavior starts to shift towards a specific direction for every single one of them. This is what makes the acting performances quite interesting, as the cast needs to adapt their characters to make their performances convincing, which isn’t the easiest task. A few new actors and actresses join the team, with the most notable ones Danay Garcia and Paul Calderon, whose characters are as thick as thieves. Both ‘Mexican’ characters are part of a rather big settlement, and will do everything to protect it from strangers, and they do so with determination and conviction.
The extras on this Blu-ray version of the second season of the series are quite interesting, albeit rather short. You’ll get a short making of for nearly every episode of season 2, in which a certain scene or topic is highlighted. Sadly, all of these short featurettes only last about two minutes, thus your Fear the Walking Dead will not be prolonged that much. There’s one extra addition to be found on the last disc, namely a short episode called ‘Flight 462’, which shows the experience of one of the characters that Travis and the rest cross their paths with. Nonetheless, this special shows the beginning of the outbreak through her eyes, while on an airplane.
Conclusion
Fear the Walking Dead: Season 2 might start off rather slowly, it does manage to captivate you after a few episodes, when the family gets torn apart. From here on out the series has the same vibe as the original series, albeit without weathered survivors, which makes it very interesting to see how characters evolve, or in certain cases devolve. Even though the first season only had six episodes, and we received an upgrade to fifteen, this season could have been wrapped up in about ten to twelve episodes, which could have helped with the pacing. That being said, if you like the original series, zombies and random people trying to cope with the world that’s gone to hell, this series is certainly worth the watch.
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