The show has arrived! finally in all it’s glory we feasted on the excitement and the drama that can only be associated with Robert Kirkman and the whole crew’s brilliant genius! If you haven’t seen the show, please stop reading now. MASSIVE spoilers ahead. O.k you have been warned.
The first show starts with Nick (played by Frank Dillane) waking up from a heroin induced sleep looking for Gloria (played by Lexi Johnson). It’s not specifically clear if it is his girlfriend but lets stop a moment and appreciate how Frank really embodies the character and gets into the role. He stumbles, he is uncoordinated and trying to get his bearings. He calls her name and hears a distant slam. Nick is in his world, in a drug den so he feels totally safe to go looking. Bad things happen in drug dens, but they don’t affect him. He heads downstairs and sees blood. Now here we should stop and think, “Blood? Why is there blood on the piano?” But anyway he keeps going. There is blood smeared on the walls leading you down the hallway. Nick is still calling for Gloria. He rounds a corner and sees a guy with his neck freshly dined on. Personally, right here I would have lost anything I had eaten in the last week. But that’s just me. Nick, he shakes it off and keeps going! Gotta find Gloria, is all Nick is thinking. Picking up an iron candle holder, he moves on. Probably kind of like bringing someone to the dance, you probably should at least see them to the door? Nick next finds a huge pool of blood, skin and viscera. He hears someone and moves to see someone kneeling over a body. “Glor..” She turns and what do you know, she is having breakfast on the dead guys face! She gets up looking to dine on Nick’s handsome face and that is when he sees a knife or wooden stake protruding from her chest. She is dead, but not dead! Nick panics and runs like a scared rabbit out of that run down ratty old church. He jumps out a window, squeezes out the fence and runs into the roadway just in time to get hit by a car.
The next shot is Madison Clark (played by Kim Dixon) trying to get her daughter Alicia (played by Alycia Debnam-Carey) who is running late. Madison walks into the kitchen to find her new live-in boyfriend Travis Manawa (played by Cliff Curtis) fixing the sink. Which he does brilliantly and saves them $300. bucks. The house phone rings which just ratchets up the tension in the house as Travis goes to answer the phone. Yeah, Nick is in the hospital but he is alive.
Madison, Travis and Alicia all head to the hospital where she takes charge like a drill sergeant. Thanks to the blessed Hippa laws since Nick is of age and the Doctor’s can’t tell her what was all in his system. No need doc, she already knows heroin is his drug of choice. A little family bonding time ensues as well as an old man being wheeled in next to our young druggie who is strapped to the bed. Evidently running into traffic makes you a danger to yourself.
So mom goes all take charge and wants to get him a bed in rehab. Problem is, finding a place he hasn’t been black listed at. Travis steps up and tells her to go to work he will handle it. While in the hospital he gets a call from his ex Liza, (played by Elizabeth Rodriguez) asking if he is going to take his son, Chris, (Played by Lorenzo James Henrie) Chris, angry at his father wants nothing to do with him. Arguing he doesn’t want to spend the weekend in the hospital with Nick the druggie, Travis caves and lets him stay with his mom. Madison is trying to be a tough mom and keep it all together but she has a job to do and students counting on her. She goes off to school where we meet the principal Art Costa (Played by Scott Lawrence) who is surprised to see her at school, figures she is out sick like so many others. Madison has gotten her flu shot, she is good. uh huh. In walks our student Tobias (played by Lincoln A. Castellanos) who sets off the metal detector. Madison saves his behind and pulls change out of his pocket. She sends Tobias to her office and tells Art it’s alright she has it in hand and Nick is going to be o.k.
Tobias has brought a knife to school. Personally, I didn’t think it was an impressive enough knife, but that is just me. I like Michonne’s Katana. Yeah, I suppose the principal and everyone would have seen it. He knows what’s going on and tells Madison trying to let her know that the government isn’t telling us everything. This virus is spread to 5 other states and people are dying! Madison blows it off and tells him to stay off the internet.
Alicia, who is supposed to be the good girl bails on spanish class, to go find her boyfriend Matt who is painting a mural for the school. Hates doing it because it feels like a paint by numbers project. Matt (played by Maestro Harrell) would rather tag it than do the stupid mural.
O.k. up until now, the stage is pretty much set. The characters have been introduced and you get a glimpse of what they are like on a daily basis. We have seen one walker so far for sure. There was the one in the cemetery where you just saw the silhouette, but we can’t be sure. I love how they are setting things up now instead of doing background in the middle of like season 4 or something. We get to see who they are before the flesh hits the fan, literally. The whole thing is set in L.A. where there are always police and ambulances with their sirens blaring everywhere you turn.
The next day when the bus shows up with the kids, only five of them get off. Stuff is getting serious now. Things start to unravel rather quickly from here on out. Nick bails on the hospital due to a nurse stupid enough to believe he wants to be clean to use a bedpan. Yeah, he sleeps in a drug house and probably urinates on himself regularly. Now he wants to be dainty? Old guy dies and he leaves with the old guys clothes. Madison and Travis go back to the hospital where everything is falling apart, hospital is going crazy, code blue is being called out everywhere. Nurse blows off Nicks disappearance as not her problem.
Madison and Travis go looking for Nick trying to find him and wind up at Calvin’s house. Calvin (played by Keith Powers) reminds me an awful lot of Eddie Haskell of Leave it to Beaver show. If you don’t know who that is, google it and watch an episode. All squeaky clean in front of Mrs. C and Travis, but a drug dealer behind their backs to Nick.
Calvin doesn’t like having Nick’s mom showing up at his house. He can’t have that. So he meets up with Nick and has him groveling at his feet. Nick swears he hasn’t told anyone anything. No one knows what he does. He swears. Calvin doesn’t really trust him so he says, “hey buddy, I got your back. How about I fix you up good. You gotta be jonesing by now for a score, right? Let’s go for a ride.” Just like what you would tell your kids as you put your old dog in the car you know will be crossing the rainbow bridge before the trip is over. Yeah, Calvin takes him to a deserted location and tells him to sit tight while he gets something. Next thing you know, he opens Nick’s door and Nick spots the gun. Oh heck no! Nick ain’t gonna go down easy and he fights. The gun goes off and Calvin falls down with a hole in his gut. Nick flips out and runs away and calls Travis to meet him but not not bring his mom. Madison shows up with Travis and Nick has to tell them what happened. He killed Calvin. He mumbles about getting drugs from him and that the drugs had to have been bad, that’s why he saw the crazy stuff at the church with Gloria’s feeding frenzy. They go back to where good ole Calvin is and bam, the body is gone. Nick loses it and mom comforts him.
They get back into Travis’s truck and back up through the tunnel. Guess who, yep you guessed it, Walker Calvin has come back to life! Madison and Travis get out to see if they can help him. Calvin has the munchies and is looking for a snack. Hey Mrs. C wanna share that arm of yours? Nick sees what’s happening and slams the truck in reverse to run over Calvin. Travis and Madison stare in horror at what just happened. The fun aint over yet kids! Calvin is getting up again! What the heck? Nick throws the truck in gear and rams into him again. slamming on the brakes and throwing the body down into the ravine. Travis and Madison run over to stand by the truck looking down with Nick at the broken, mangled body of Calvin that is still trying to chew on anything in mouth range. What the heck is going on?
The show just up and ends on that. I wasn’t expecting it and sure as heck didn’t feel like only 90 minutes had just passed. This show had me hooked from the beginning right up until the very hand where I was searching for more! Maybe it’s my reward for loving to write stories that have cliffhangers at the end. Paybacks can be hell! Are there people slamming the show? yes. but you know what? They are not true aficionados of the Walking Dead franchise. They have set up a great show that can only get better. I think this one will focus more on the kids and their adaptation to a zombie world and less on the grown ups. Thus appealing to a younger audience. I can’t wait to see next week to see what Robert Kirkman and crew have in store for us to keep us glued to our sets and hitting the record button so we can watch it again and again to see what little nuggets we missed the first time around.
So what did you think of the show? Good, bad or indifferent?
The Cast:
Madison Clark — Kim Dickens
Travis Manawa — Cliff Curtis
Nick Clark — Frank Dillane
Alicia Clark — Alycia Debnam-Carey
Liza Ortiz — Elizabeth Rodriguez
Chris Manawa — Lorenzo James Henrie
Daniel Salazar– Ruben Blades
Griselda Salazar — Patricia Reyes Spindola
Ofelia Salazar — Mercedes Mason
Recurring Cast:
Dr. Bethany Exner — Sandrine Holt
Matt — Maestro Harrell
Strand — Colman Domingo
Reynolds — Shawn Hatosy
Tobias — Lincoln A. Castellanos
Jazz — Megan Danso
Art Costa — Scott Lawrence
Fear the Walking Dead airs on AMC in the US at 8 p.m. CDT
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yeah, I know about the breaking bad sky blue, but maybe it was a way to slip it in? he is a drug dealer and his eyes were a sky blue in the end. They weren’t blue when he was alive. A stretch I know, but possibly?
You gotta love Nick running Calvin over twice. Those junkies have great survival instincts. 🙂
oh yeah! and dang that Calvin still wont die! I figured flying through the air and landing partially on his head would have killed the brain for sure, but nope! oh, and he did have pretty blue eyes! maybe that was your reference to the blue?? lol
Sky Blue is the meth that was made in the show “Breaking Bad”. In Season 2, when the group was looking for Sophia and T-Dog was down with that infection, Daryl brought out his brother’s drug stash, and the bottom of the bag was filled with Sky Blue meth, something confirmed by TWD staff. It’s also a fan theory that when Daryl was telling Beth about the “tweeker” he visited, and who later punched him in the stomach (tweeker is slang for a meth addict), the person he was referring to was Jessie Pinkman, a character from “Breaking Bad.” So there’s the crossover.
There was a bit of a crossover back when the makeup staff from TWD did the prosthetics and special effects for a Breaking Bad character who was maimed in a bomb blast. Because who better to do that?