Ron Underwood directed this week's episode of Fear TWD. The direction and visual storytelling is quite good, the camera work and cinematography were good but have certainly been better. I think the way they shot the interrogation and dialogue scenes were boring and nothing special, in terms of camera work and editing, too simplistic. The sound editing and musical score is fantastic. The flaws from season 7A are still present, and the writing is extremely flawed. Some of the dialogue and motivations are stupid and very forced, I just don't get why almost all the characters has to be so mysterious and not upfront with things, it continues in every episode and it feels like the showrunners like that kind of writing, well I don't. Andrew Chambliss and Ian B. Goldberg and the staff writers are unfortunately unable to write good dialogue. They come out sounding wooden and unrealistic, then again, dialogue can be hard to write. But these guys are poor at it, Fear deserves better writing overall, like the quality it had in S1-3. The overall writing were bad and the showrunners once again strove for the opposite of logic.
When baby Mo goes missing inside the Tower, Dorie Sr. Finds himself in a unique position to prove his worth to an increasingly paranoid Strand. That's the premise of the episode and it's clear how it's focused on Victor's community. In S7A I thought the only time Victor threw people off the roof, it was for a good reason, with people being scarce in the world, but nope it seems a regular thing in this episode. How could the showrunners character assassinate Victor Strand when they wrote him in a good way in Season 6, this isn't con man Strand, this is a different character entirely. His motivations and actions isn't the Strand we knew or the one Dave Erickson (the one who created him) would have written. I expected a great performance from Keith Carradine but the material he got was disappointing and lackluster, thus his performance was only good.
"Sonny Boy" was a step back in terms of quality regarding the previous episode, I strongly believe the individual stories/episodes don't work like they did in S6 when everyone was apart. As Fear used to be a serialized show and did it perfectly, I can't say the same with Andrew Chambliss and Ian B. Goldberg run. This episode doesn't contribute anything to the civil war, just what's been happening in The Tower. But it felt poorly executed as we haven't really spent any time with these characters, especially Strand and Howard in this second half. I think this episode would have worked better in a serialized format, with more intrigues and tension. Season 3 is a good example of a storyline being full of depth and serialized drama, and the civil war in this season had the potential, sadly it never hit its potential and probably never will. What is the goal with this season? I hope we get new showrunners next season, it's either that or a cancellation.
To the spoiler part of my review. The reason why my rating went down so high. When John Dorie Sr went out without the iconic zombie camouflage which he had time with by the way, I was thinking how stupid he was and then he died because of it. I'm pretty sure the actor wanted out of the show, too bad it was before Madison's reappearance so they would get a reunion from the Deadwood days. That whole sequence left a sour taste in my mouth not because of how he died, but how Grace and June and Wendell didn't leave The Tower when there were no zombies close to them. Honestly, the showrunners should get fired. John Dorie Sr's death was the final nail in the coffin, the writers went for a death and thought it would make the show full of suspension and tension again. But nope, it had the opposite feeling for me, it was poorly executed in every way possible. John Dorie Sr knew he was going to die by radiation, but dying that stupidly was not the way I ever expecting him to die. If the writers have made the decision to make Strand into this villain, why didn't John Sr kill him instead of knocking him unconscious. The more I think of this episode, the more I despise it.
9 out of 10 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
