GODDAMMIT, THE FIRST EPISODE IS FUCKING SMOKING CRAP!
It's damned awful, all of it.
First of all, I'm fucking tired to see all this fucking human drama. Romero already explored it at best with his movies : the fall of society, humans as the worst monsters and so on. And he did it (rest in peace, Master) more than 40 years ago ALREADY. Put some fucking zombies in these shitty serials! Also because the best thing in this awful first episode are zombies.
Wait, no, they doesn't call them zombies. It's out of date, now is more cool to call them with any other names, so now are Empties. For fuck sake!
The acting is awful, can only be matched but the worst Z-movie you can find. And please, I don't want to start thinking again at how horrible the writing is. 90% of it you've already heard elsewhere, with the exact same wording (but probably with way better acting). Of that 90%, at least 70% is so painstakingly cliche for those situation that your mind physically hurt.
I will give it a second chance, but I guess I already know where this show could go, if it was for me :face_vomiting:
Review by Paladin5150BlockedParent2020-10-04T08:18:44Z— updated 2020-10-26T09:42:54Z
Well, I guess Scott Gimple, and the bean counters at AMC, after FINALLY realizing that their Walking Dead cash bovine has been sucked pretty much bone dry, thought that by giving the folks that were "twi-hards" back when this franchise started something they could relate to, they could possibly pay off the huge mortgages they all took on when they thought things would go on forever. So, boy's and girls and teens of all ages...., I give you, The Walking Dead: Twivergent Edition.
The thing is Scotty..., putting a long dead horse in a rear naked choke, while TWD's apparently Sominex'd writing staff strenuously flagellate the carcass with aluminum Louisville Sluggers, seemingly at one time might have held the attention of the less literate for more than a few minutes, it's fracking 2020, and even Robert Kirkman realized it was time to pull the damn plug on the source material. As for the live action version and ensuing spin-off's, hell, all the characters we actually cared about, you either killed off, or they jumped off what I'm sure they saw as a sinking ship. I guess it's hard to give an inspired performance each week when you don't know if you're still going to be employed in the next one. Yes, indeed, "no one is safe", not even loyal viewers.
But I digress....
Screenwriting school 101 tells you that, you should write characters that the audience can care about, cheer for, or, absent those options, put them in harrowing situations that we can celebrate when they get out of them. Here however, aside from being almost unbelievably miscast, to the point that none of these actors come even close to pulling off the characters they are supposed to be playing. Or, maybe, that IS the problem, that they don't inhabit the characters, but, come off as high school theater LARPER's play acting at being 10 year survivors of TWD's zombie apocalypse. But, apparently, in the YA/ZA, there is no lack of designer couture, dermatologists, dentists, or astonishingly, Black hair care products. (although Iris's weave / wig could use some help)
And, while Nico Tortorella's "Felix" character is somewhat believable as the appointed "guardian" of the sisters, just what WAS that accent Huck was trying to pull off? Speaking of teenage angst, Hope comes off as the rebel without a clue, then her people pleasing Sis is suddenly all fired up to leave the comfort and safety of Stepford, er, Portlandia, to rescue the brainiac Father who left them behind, knowing that younger child Hope had watched her mother murdered, and then put the personal coup de grace on her killer. Twisted Sister much? So in the midst of all this tension, we meet Elton, who literally has a bone he needs to pick (up), Silas, serial killer in the making, and the almost unrecognizable Julia Ormond as Elizabeth Kublek, who's from the Guvment', and here to help, until, plot twist, she ISN'T.
And so, (yawn) the adventure begins, Escape TO New York, only, there's no Snake Plissken along to keep us amused. And now that there is literally no place like home to return to, and some cliched intrigue from the unknown powers that have apparently seen at least the FIRST "Matrix" movie, I guess AMC is counting on us to feign interest..., at least until those mortgages are paid down....