The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is?

Erik Kain zeroes in on what he sees as five problems plaguing Fear the Walking Dead including a lack of compelling characters:

“There’s no way to quickly or easily scrub the cast, however. So the writers need to do something they’ve never done before: write the stories around the characters and not the other way around. Give these people real motivations, flaws, and conflicts and quit making them say and do stupid things unless you really want them to be stupid.”

One easy fix would be to portray these people as if they were actually trying to cope with a crisis and not just being inconvenienced by the occasional brownout. They’ve witnessed the collapse of a major metropolitan city followed by the institution of martial law, but no one seems overly concerned about the supply of food and other basic necessities nor the fate of family and friends outside of the area. It becomes difficult to care about characters that have no depth—or that lack any self-awareness of their situation.

(Image: Elizabeth Rodriguez as Liza Ortiz, Lorenzo James Henrie as Christopher Manawa, and Cliff Curtis as Travis Manawa; AMC)