Fear the Walking Dead: Dead in the Water

TWD Webisodes have not always been great. The original ones by Greg Nicotero (Torn Apart, Cold Storage and The Oath) were all very great! But after that, they went downhill. Flight 462, Passage and Red Machete were meh. Dead in the water was a great standalone short that shed light on an intriguing villain and expands the universe. I was seriously expecting to hate this! But wow this was loads of fun. Nick Stahl absolutely killed it! If it's possible to get him an Emmy for this, do it! The ending was brilliant to. Awesome work team.

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.

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.

...because every once in a while, things didn't make logical sense. And over the seasons, it just added up as did my frustration. So I gave up on them.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this 41-minute story.

(Was looking forward to five more episodes, but apparently, this was all 6 mini episodes in one)

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.