"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Monday, August 31, 2015

Fear the Walking Dead 1.2: Tobias Leads the Way

Fear the Walking Dead continued its powerful start tonight, with a second episode which was relentlessly strong, pounding, and frightening.   As in The Walking Dead, humans have as much to fear from other humans as from zombies, except at this stage the humans include police, a situation all too familiar and chilling to anyone who watches the non-fictitious news.   The cops kill a homeless man.  He's laying there, dead.  Will he soon stagger to his feet?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Meanwhile, you just knew Art would be a zombie, because, well, he looked like a zombie already, last week, when he was still human.  And he faked us out nicely then, when it turned out he wasn't yet a zombie, but was just hunched over, engrossed in some audio.   So seeing him attain his destiny tonight was chillingly satisfying.

I didn't mention Tobias in my review of episode 1, but I was impressed with him then.  He's the only person we've met and seen so far who knows something of what is really going on, and he carries that burden well.  Tonight, he's only happy because he got back his knife, and I'm hoping he accepts Madison's offer to come live (and no doubt run) with them.  Yeah, there's no way that won't happen.

Nick (played by Frank Dillane, son of Stephen Dillane of Game of Thrones and other notable fame, by the way), put in another fine outing, capped off by apparently pretending to be worse than he really was in his drug withdrawal, as a way of getting his sister Alicia to stay with him.  (I say "apparently," because, although he tells his mother he got his sister to stay, you can never be 100% sure.)  Good job Alycia Debnam-Carey playing Alicia, by the way.

Just about every character we've met at any length is appealing, which raises of the question of who will be the first to go among the beloved or at least appealing characters?  It would be something of a coup if the answer was none of these, for at least a while, but this is still The Walking Dead universe we're dealing with, so that's not very likely.

And I'll be back here next week - or, actually, two weeks from tonight, because next week's Labor Day - with a review of the next episode.

(I find most holidays, by the way, to be annoyances.  Here I am making this very point on a HuffPost Live panel earlier this week.)

See also Fear the Walking Dead 1.1: Great Beginnings

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