Fear The Walking Dead is crap!

[Bongo]

Have at it, but no spoilers eh? I'm still catching up
Also brown sauce? Really? I could never get into that at all, like whole grain mustard is the way for bacon sandwiches...hmm I smell a thread...

Nothing to spoil to be fair

[Bongo]

Oh crap, This god awful show is a double episode tonight seeing its the season finale.
Advertising a 2 hour show which means 80 minutes really once add time is taken off.

The ratings for the show have fell dramatically since season 2 started and i am not surprised.

I hope there is a sneak peak of TWD which starts in under 3 weeks time!

[Bongo]

Five Reasons Why 'Fear the Walking Dead' Is In A Ratings Spiral.



Fear the Walking Dead returned to the air after a mid-season break two weeks ago, but it’s looking like some people haven’t noticed, or simply don’t care. The show continues its ratings nosedive, a stark contrast from the sky-high numbers of its originator, The Walking Dead.

While surely no one expected the spin-off to retain the 10 million it drew for its season one premiere last year, ratings have dropped precipitously over the next fifteen episodes. At the end of its shortened season one, Fear the Walking Dead was still drawing at least 6.5 million viewers. In the first half of season two, that dropped to about 4.3-4.8 million. But now? Since the show has returned, its first two episodes after being back have only drawn 3.8 and 3.6 million viewers each, continuing the downward trend.

While this isn’t necessarily a “disaster” by AMC standards, as those numbers are still beating the likes of Better Call Saul, Turn, Halt and Catch Fire and Enter the Badlands, and all those shows keep getting renewed, it’s certainly not the kind of trendline they want to see. So what exactly is going on with this show to explain why it just isn’t working with audiences, while the main show is still doing exceptionally well?

I want to go a little deeper than just “it’s bad,” so here are five things I think are contributing to the show’s slow failure.



1. It Has No Real Ties To The Original Show

Here’s the thing with a spin-off. Almost always, you take a character people like from an original show, and give them their own platform. When AMC first announced a possible Walking Dead spin-off, there were fears that characters like Daryl or Michonne might leave to lead their own series. And while that would have been a bummer for the original show, they would have been able to build a base around fans who were invested in those characters.

Fear the Walking Dead shares a world with The Walking Dead, but nothing else. On the other side of the country (and now not even in the same country) the show features an entirely new group that has to establish themselves from scratch. While there’s a guarantee that audiences would probably still like Daryl or Michonne or Glenn in their own show, that isn’t the case here, so there’s no real safety net. Either the cast works, or it doesn’t, and that leads to another problem:



2. It’s Extremely Unclear Who The Lead Is

I’m not going to say that Fear the Walking Dead is full of terrible characters, as I do like many of them. There are a few bad apples, yes (*cough* Chris), but I think the show suffers from the complete lack of a lead. Yes, The Walking Dead has a big ensemble cast, but it also has Rick Grimes, the glue that bonds everyone together. He may be killed off in the show or comic eventually, if they decide to be that bold, but that day has not come yet, and it will probably not come for a good long while.

But in Fear the Walking Dead? I have no idea who its “Rick Grimes” is. I’m not talking about someone who’s as much of a stone cold badass as him, but I mean someone who is actively leading the group and the show. Early on, you could have made the case for Travis as the lead, but his character disintegrated into sort of a whiny sidekick. Madison is the next most logical choice, but I don’t think she’s a clear choice either. These days, it almost seems like Nick is the show’s lead, given how much screentime he gets, but honestly if I had to pick anyone who should be the lead, it would be Alicia, who is my favorite character. It’s kind of a mess.

3. There Are No Memorable Villains

If Fear the Walking Dead has hero problems, it also has a villain problem. The Walking Dead has memorable foes in the form of the Governor, the Wolves, the Terminus cannibals and now Negan. Who does Fear the Walking Dead have, exactly?

Every time it seems like the show might be getting something approaching a good villain, they’re killed off within an episode or two. I was getting pretty excited to see the main group confront the evil pirate fleet in the first half of season one, but that plotline was over in about two episodes, with almost all the bad guys dead. The same goes for the “death cult” at the Mexican ranch, where the place went from spooky to on fire within again, two or three episodes. Now, the Cartel may be a villain, Chris the moronic teenager might be a villain, but who knows? The show has not created any truly memorable foes for its cast to face yet, killing off any potential suitors nearly as soon as they show up.

4. There’s No Source Material To Indicate It Will Get Better

While there are some advantages to not relying on already-written source material for a show like this, the ability to completely surprise the audience, for one, there’s a big disadvantage too. While early viewers of The Walking Dead may have been bored during Herschel’s farm, there was a hope among fans that it would get better in time, because they knew what was coming. They looked forward to Woodbury and Alexandria, and more recently, the arrival of Negan was treated like the second coming among fans.

But with Fear the Walking Dead, we have no idea what’s coming. If the show was constantly surprising us in fun ways, that would be kind of nice, but it doesn’t do that, so all we’re left with is the nagging suspicion that there isn’t anything better over the horizon. There’s no “just keep watching until the Governor shows up” kind of motivation, so viewers just leave, and don’t come back.

5. It’s Too Many Zombies In One Year

There’s also the obvious issue that perhaps AMC is just relying way too much on one concept throughout the year. Now that Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead are both getting full, 16-ish episode seasons, that’s 32 weeks a year where there’s some sort of zombie show on AMC. For many people, even fans, that might be too much, so if they’re only going to bother to stick with one, guess which it’s going to be? The original, given all the other issues with the spin-off I’ve already mentioned.

Eventually, you reach a saturation point, and you’re giving people too much of what you think they want. Game of Thrones is only ten episodes a year, and fans can’t get enough, but if the show and a related spin-off or two were taking up 30-35 weeks of the year, would the numbers still be as strong? Probably not.

I still don’t think Fear the Walking Dead is in tons of trouble. I don’t know what production costs are on the show, but so long as it’s outperforming every other program on AMC but The Walking Dead, I have to think it’s safe. But if the ratings keep dropping, I may have to revisit my prediction. This is a ship that needs to turn itself around rather quickly, if it can.

Link to forbes article here
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertco.../#224964b26c71