Is ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Really Great Again? Fans Are Weighing In With Their Verdicts

Let me just preface this by saying that I have been very hard on Fear the Walking Dead over the years. The series started slow and didn’t start to gain any sort of foothold until Season 3, after which point the show’s original showrunner, Dave Erickson, parted ways, and AMC brought in Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss. They managed to deliver the best 8 episodes of the series’ run before making the biggest mistake of the entire series by killing off Madison Clark.

It’s been mostly downhill since, as the showrunners brought in new characters (some successful, some not); experimented with the storytelling devices (sometimes successfully, usually not, especially in the case of those documentary episodes); and rotated through a series of terrible protagonists. The back half of Season 4 and, especially, Season 5 were so immensely frustrating, in part, because Fear has such a terrific and talented cast, including Alycia Debnam-Carey (horribly utilized in Season 5); Colman Domingo (who forgot who he was in Season 5, which is a little bit shifty); Rubén Blades (always great); and the phenomenal Garrett Dillahunt, who was mostly frittered away last season. That’s not even to mention two fan favorites from The Walking Dead, Morgan Jones — who became one of the biggest sources of frustration last season — and Dwight, who came over from TWD and immediately got sucked into the vortex of awful. The series even managed to waste the talents of Karen David and Jenna Elfman, and I won’t even talk about what a black hole the character of Luciana has become.

But then everything changed. I’m still not sure how because the creative team behind Fear the Walking Dead has not changed. However, they did decide to take a different approach to the series, separating the characters into different communities, all under the thumb of the series’ best villain by a mile, Virginia. Now, each episode centers on two or three characters at a time and tells smaller, more focused stories, all of which have been very, very good. The first three episodes of the season have been three of the best the series has ever delivered. I’ve seen tonight’s episode, too, centering on Dillahunt’s John Dorie, and it may be the best of the bunch.

I have tried to tell friends who bailed on Fear that the series is good again … or great for the first time. They are reluctant to believe me. I don’t blame them, honestly. The turnaround is really something you have to see because it’s otherwise hard to believe. But it really is better, and if you can’t take my word for it, take the word of social media and the fan community, which is every show’s harshest critic.

The fourth episode of the sixth season airs tonight on AMC. It’s a great, heartbreaking episode, as Fear continues in its peak form.