Last night, along with millions of other “Walking Dead” fans, I watched the series spin-off, “Fear of the Walking Dead” on AMC.
Here’s what I learned:
- The spin-off of a massively popular zombie franchise can impose a laughable number of commercial breaks into its inaugural episode, and we the audience will silently sit through them, immobile as the dead, and take it.
- Heroin addicts in Los Angeles are phenomenally attractive people who look, move and sound eerily like a young Johnny Depp.
- According to AMC, a blended family in L.A. isn’t Hispanic/White, Hispanic/Black, Hispanic/Korean or even Mexican/Guatemalan. No, “blended” refers to a white woman and a New Zealand guy of Maori descent. In fact, there aren’t any major Hispanic characters in episode 1. Have the producers ever been to L.A.?
- In the zombie Apocalypse, the guy you want on your team is a New Zealander of Maori descent who teaches English Lit. He’ll bravely search the abandoned church that serves as the neighborhood heroin shooting gallery/zombie rec room. At night. By himself. Armed only with a small flashlight. That’s one badass teacher!
The top thing I learned from “Fear of the Walking Dead”? It doesn’t matter whether you’re an exceptionally attractive black teenager dating a pouty white girl or an exceptionally attractive, gentle and polite young black male (who in reality is a ruthless heroin dealer). You’re doomed, brother. Before the excruciatingly slow first episode ends, you’re destined to be a flesh-chomping zombie.