Becoming unwatchable. I suppose a prequel is a challenge. Most of the audience already know the basic rules, but these clueless characters still know just about nothing after four episodes and so it's agonizing to watch them. Random precocious adolescents do not make up for it and is just a stupid joke without intending to be. Nobody should be certain of the future either; Uncertainty is more fearful. So we don't need the old barber acting like he has read the entire script of every season already and giving out spoilers to everyone. Try using symbolism instead!. Show instead of tell! But these showrunners completely forgot that "FEAR" is in the title of the show.
Maybe being attacked my multiple walkers by now would have spared us this unnecessary turtle's pace. This is not just because I need more action. Again, where is the fear! There was more palpable fear among many people during the first weeks of mere Covid compared to these lousy actors in a fracking zombie apocalypse. That is ridiculous. So more walkers eating people including loved ones might make sense in a show about a zombie apocalypse within at least the first 4 episodes. Duh!
More walker action would also make sense in Los Angeles with multi-million people, SMH. This was supposed to be an expansion of the TWD universe, but we are basically stuck in one or two boring homes, an utterly cheap production set so they can greedily grab more money from you. But maybe they learned from their stupidity; Rick and Michones is supposed to be set in a crazy NYC. But somehow L. A. is practically empty already? Wasn't tiny Atlanta (compared to L. A.) bombed because of being overrun by walkers early on? But many millions of L. A. folks have fled or are dead (but not walkers) already? This makes no sense until you see they are just being cheap again. Or maybe the show-runners saw how horribly cringy, stupid, and bad the extras were "acting" during the protests/riots in a previous episode and decided they couldn't use extras, so cancelled the zombies in a zombie series.
So what's the deal. The dysfunctional extended family will grow and eventually learn to be a strong fam. Aww!! But it's not really a dysfunctional family. It's a bunch of trope characters mostly with boring first world problems before the walkers came. No, I do not minimize the problem of drug addiction. I think much of that they do decent enough, but they are going to drag it on forever. For example, what could have been a teaching moment for everyone they idiotically pass over. They didn't care to hear their son's experience and really ended up looking like fools because of it. Not only do they not bother to apologize, even worse, the stepdad doubles downs on his criticism of Nick's "worldclass imagination" over a mere simple observation by Nick. First of all, anyone that criticizes the importance of imagination should NEVER be a teacher and NEVER be a writer so please take away the pen from whatever writer is responsible. Also, the mother's acting is horrendous sometimes. You can literally see her tying too hard to be a you-know-what, like in a previous episode, when she expressed relief at finding Nick and then interrogates him but before he can finish half a sentence she blurts out more questions, all in the span of about 15 seconds. The slight intensity of the scene and camera work presents it as like a dysfunctional moment, but the bad acting makes it feel like parody. So stepdad's supposed to be teacher and mom's supposed to be a high-school counselor. Is this a joke?
Edit: So I guess L. A. is not actually lifeless and without walkers as you will see soon. Go figure. My point was it was unbearable listening to any character mention with a straight face that the entire city except for a few enclaves is lifeless after only a couple days. It wasn't like a massive nuclear bomb. Maybe it was another way to show the military as incompetent. Whatever. That's another thing. This is practically an unintended parody of the military and national guard, with tiresome unoriginal tropes of grunt like soldiers. How does the military lose control over everything especially critical infrastructure so quickly? That is a complex question that these amateurs are better off not trying to answer and leaving it to our imagination because you definitely can't explain it with just a handful of scenes of a few cherry-picked fictional examples of incompetent corrupt solders. Why would anyone take anything from this trash they are giving us if they have the National Guard behaving exactly like authoritarian thugs and corrupt selfish fools taking bribes in plain sight within only a few days. That is beyond absurd. It is like they skipped to year two with the soldiers while everyone else is in week one. Even the way the soldiers act and patrol they appear more like a mercenaries from year two or something. Also, soldiers losing moral only after a couple days is even more absurd. Solders potentially going AWOL to be with their families could be a concern. They don't bother to show how it is resolved though. It is left to the imagination and with the way they are already acting like authoritarian thugs it is easy for the viewer to think they are already shooting deserters. Hmm...how about soldiers in charge do what they are trained and lead people. At least Mercer gets to be from West Point, but I guess all other soldiers are just a joke. It is borderline offensive. What would be more interesting, but impossible for these "writers" to pull of is showing the military ultimately fail despite their best and bravest efforts. What we go instead was just like one small joke of a platoon.
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