Last night I finally got around to watching the first two episodes of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead.  I did it primarily because Andy Greenwald over at Grantland recommended it.  I enjoyed the first season of the parent show, but (like so many others, I thought) I lost interest when the show got stuck on the farm in season two.  And while I’ve heard that the series has gotten better under its latest show runner, I just don’t have much interest in the characters. Or, more specifically, I don’t have much interest in their relationships.

Truth be told, I don’t know the names of the characters in FTWD yet.  Part of that might be a reticence to invest.  The other part is that, at least in things like zombie stories, it’s as much about the relationships as anything else (wait: the guidance counselor can only save the student by bludgeoning the principal?!).  And for all of the permutations that have happened over just two episodes, those basic relationships are the core that TWD never quite had.  Those relationships were too disparate, too strained from the beginning.  These are clearer and a little more grounded in love (with a healthy dose of teenage angst).  At this point I feel for these characters as much as I felt for Rick Grimes at first (but that’s about it).

This is the way the world ends, of course.  And as one character said in the second episode: when it happens, it happens quickly.  Which is both true and not.  That student, Tobias, mentioned all the things that will fail because people aren’t there to maintain them.  True enough.  But as I watch and think and feel your way through the falling apart, I can’ help but feel that it’s because society as represented in the show has lost its center.  It’s moved too far to the edges and now unable to recover.  That could just be the armchair sociologist in me talking, though.

As I watched the second episode, the movie Tomorrowland came to mind.  One of the twists in the movie is the revelation that forces have been at work for some time trying to “normalize” the end of the world by apocalypse.  All the movies, the tv shows, the novels we read desensitize us to the world that is ending right before our eyes.  As preachy as that moment was in the movie, something about it rings true.  Fear the Walking Dead, at least as it begins, may be more of the same.  But for those with ears to hear and eyes to see, it’s a warning nonetheless.