Why Fear of the Walking Dead has not done as well as Walking Dead


This is my post on why I believe Fear of the Walking Dead is not as successful as the original Walking Dead series. Feel free to disagree with me, call me an idiot or somebody who know nothing, that's fine. Just my opinion, really, but I believe what I'm writing is essentially correct.


1. The characters are not interesting enough.  From the very start, Walking Dead grabbed our interest. It was about a police officer involved in a high speed chase who ends up in a hospital, surrounded by the walking dead.  Gripping, scary, fun stuff.
But how does Fear the Walking Dead start out?  A group of people see the outbreak from a distance, slowly, achingly slowly. The main character is a schoolteacher. Who wants to see a schoolteacher in the zombie apocalypse? Apparently, nobody.


2. No diversity of characters. All the characters are of the same family and ethnic group. As such, they are boring. None them are interesting. How did Walking Dead start out? Rick meets a diverse group of characters, all different, each with their own agenda, some even dangerous.


3. We've seen it all before. FOTWD didn't cover any new ground. We knew exactly what was going to happen. And if that is the case, you have to ramp things up, not down. Make things even scarier, make them more graphic, make them more amazing, or we're going to all get bored very quickly.


4. The dialogue is not nearly as good as WD. There are some scenes where the dialogue could have been phoned in, it has no bite, no memorable lines. I can't count how many times WD has had a line that still sticks in my mind, like Merle saying, "I'm a mystery to me," or Dale's great speech to Shane about living in their world. But I can't remember one such line from FOTWD.


5. The situations are tedious and predictable. The group is enclosed in their neighborhood like a compound. They make a run for it. They go to a hospital and sure enough, it's overrun. They end up on a boat and float around for a while.  They end up in Mexico, where guess what, all the same ethnic group do boring things like fight over the village.


These are just a few reasons to me why FOTWD is not nearly as good as WD. I have over time dreamt up great scenes for both series, and have even envisioned a new series that would be awesome. My only hope is that someday I get to present my ideas to the producers of WD and AMC, and see if we can make some real TV magic together.


Thanks for reading this, and comment below if you like. I hope you found it entertaining.