Fear the Walking Dead: Dead in the Water

This six episode mini-series or webisodes, call them what you like, was actually a fun way to pass the time while waiting for the "Fear the Walking Dead" series to start again. The people behind these series have been good as dishing out these small mini-series to stoke the fire and keep the fans anticipated and baited while waiting.

And it works. Oh yeah, it definitely works.

"Fear the Walking Dead: Dead in the Water" follows the crew and the fate of the submarine USS Pensylvania in the early days of the zombie outbreak. It was actually a nicely enough written storyline from writer Jacob Pinion and director Kenneth Requa.

Running at about 41 minutes, these six episodes actually do make for adequate entertainment, especially when binging through all six episodes in one rapid succession.

It was nice to see cast members return to reprise characters from the days before the time we saw them in the ongoing "Fear the Walking Dead" series, and especially good to see Nick Stahl (playing Riley) and John Glover (playing Teddy Maddox) back on the screen.

The special effects are good in "Fear the Walking Dead: Dead in the Water", as they have been in all the various series in this franchise. However, I just never comprehended why the face would be so sullen and sunken mere moments after someone has died and turned into a zombie. Sure, I get it that it visually makes for a more menacing zombie and lets the audience have no doubt about whether or not someone has turned, but come on, the human body just doesn't decompose and deteriorate that fast.

All in all, then "Fear the Walking Dead: Dead in the Water" is a good way to stoke the interest of the "Fear the Walking Dead" franchise. And it certainly is a mini-series that you should sit down to watch if you enjoy the ongoing series.

My rating of "Fear the Walking Dead: Dead in the Water" lands on a six out of ten stars.

I get it, TWD and FTWD writers all assume their audiences have very short attention spans.

"Dead in the water" is a great example of this. Simply put, why was everyone turning so quickly?

I don't know when it changed, but somewhere around season 7-8 of TWD, and around season 5 in FTWD, walkers started turning more quickly. Instead of a change that took 1-2 days after death, or after a bite, suddenly shortened drastically to hours, or minutes in some cases

My assumption for continuity sake was that as the virus evolved over time, it turned the dead faster.

This "short" or whatever you want to call it throws all that convention out the window. Why were these initial outbreak zombies turning in minutes?

For the sake of the story and direction itself, I also found it hard to believe over 100 navy soldiers would so easily succumb to zombie attack. "Noooo...zombie slowly approaching...should I move? Do anything to avoid the attack? Fight back even? Nah!" TWD / FTWD always paints every soldier as incredibly incompetent in every series, completely incapable of defending themselves from slow-moving attackers.

Bottom line, these directors are just so sloppy, all the time, and this episode broke no new ground, it goes exactly like you expected it would.

However, as a plus, I will say I'm a big fan of Nick Stahl's acting, including in this. I wish he was in more things.

Fear the Walking Dead: Dead in the Water is a good example what's wrong with the whole TWD franchise since season 5 or 6 of the mothership TWD - the writing is lazy and not only occasionally plain stupid. I never was on board of a submarine but can't imagine that a zombie outbreak would overtake the crew in such a way (the show makes a convenient time jump, so the writers don't have to explain how the infected take over the sub), I just mention all those bulkheads, close them and you are save and/or you can confine the infected, on top, secure and control the Combat Information Center - easy work for a military crew, one might think. Anyway, the little show is not a total fail and not worse than the regular Fear the Walking Dead show (I must admit, that I do not watch that one anymore and missed the last two or three seasons) but you get just served the same lukewarm characters like in all the other shows, nothing really makes sense or provides real suspense, it's like eating a cheeseburger while you still do some stuff on your machine.

Sure there are flaws in this series, but if you just sit back and relax, it's an enjoyable back story that we should've had before we met Riley.

It's a shame he was wasted on FearTWD, 8/10.

I've been on a TWD Universe binge for the last several months. I'm almost caught up for the new mini series! With that said... I've watched every single web series and let me say... most of them have been terrible. But this one? It's high quality. It was written well. I loved it. It was great seeing Nick Stahl again and he once again proves he is an amazing actor. Right now? This web series killed FTWD Season 7. Which is really terrible. I wish they would put the same effort into FTWD they did into this mini series. I do really enjoy seeing everyone's origin stories. The show doesn't concentrate enough on that.