What happened to the world while Rick Grimes as in a coma? This prequel spin-off takes us away from the familiar woods of Georgia, and relocates to a Los Angeles that has no idea it's on the brink of an apocalypse.
The stage is quickly set as teenager Nick Clark wakes up out of his heroin stupor and stumbles around for his girlfriend Gloria. He makes his way through the church seeing several dead bodies along the way, and it seems that it was a zombified Gloria who has been killing and eating them. He runs away as fast as he can straight into traffic, hospitalizing him. Similar to Rick's first scene with the zombified little girl in the main series, this scene hits you on the head with the idea that this is not the world we're familiar with. However, at this point, civilization is still intact, but it's a foregone conclusion that it's about to fall apart
We then meet the rest of Nick's family: his sister Alicia, their mother Madison, and her boyfriend Travis Manawa. Travis is himself a divorcé with an estranged son of his own. The family quickly goes to the hospital when they receive the call, and Nick is hesitant to tell anybody anything, until he's alone with Travis, surprisingly enough. He knows nobody would believe him about what he saw, chalking it up to the drugs he was on. He's certain that it's impossible, but also that it didn't feel like a hallucination, which gets him worried about his own sanity.
Madison is a school guidance counselor, and keeps a student Tobias from getting in trouble for bringing a knife to school. Maddie earned my respect with that scene. She knew he wasn't going to hurt anybody, but nonetheless had to find out what was troubling him. Apparently he's been paying attention to the news across the country where people are getting attacked and continue to attack no matter how many times they get shot. It could be a virus, and it's definitely spreading, and he wants to be ready. Other students are seen watching internet videos of this, and it seems almost impossible to them. At the same time, more and more students are staying home, seemingly sick with the flu. Meanwhile, Travis goes back to the church and looks into Nick's story. Aside from a junky who runs out in a panic, all the bodies are gone, leaving only a huge pool of blood on the floor.
When Nick's elderly roommate codes, he siezes the opportunity to check himself out of the hospital and limps around town trying to call his dealer. Madison and Travis immediately start looking for him, asking friends and strangers if anybody has seen him. Travis takes Madison to the church. Whether or not she saw the pile of blood is unclear, but she does find Nick's book and needle.
Nick's dealer turns out to be his friend Calvin, who until this point seemed like a normal, affable young man. The two have an incognito meeting in a diner, and Nick is freaking out wanting to know if anything was wrong with the drugs.
Calvin drives Nick to the river, ready to shoot him in order to cover his tracks, but Nick sees gun, fights back, and turns Calvin's gun on him, shooting him dead. As luck would have it, Madison and Travis weren't far behind, and he takes them back to where it happened. Calvin's car and gun are still there, but there's no body. They put him in the car and drive back into the tunnel, only to see Calvin in their headlights. They get out and try to talk to him, but being a zombie, Calvin snarls and tries to eat them. The family manages to fight him off and run into him. The body is broken, and no longer mobile, but the head is still moving and snarling, as the camera zooms out away from the trio to the rest of the city.
This pilot certainly succeeds in selling the series. Right away, it's established what The Walking Dead waited until the second season finale to reveal: the dead reanimate no matter how they died. It's clear that Calvin had never been bitten, but I still have to wonder what happened to Gloria. The promos for the series all showed her trying to attack Nick and his subsequent accident, but how did she become a zombie? She had a wooden board stabbed through her, so that could be either cause of death, or one of her victims attempting to fight back. She was a junky like Nick, so it's equally possible that she overdosed. Similarly, Nick was upstairs when he woke up and immediately started looking for her when she wasn't there. She could have fallen off the balcony when high and died that way. Calvin's reveal was a surprise, which didn't make sense to me, nor did his attempt to try and kill Nick. His family would find out eventually, I'm sure. Travis investigating Nick's story was good, as was bringing Madeline with him to corroborate their experiences, but it seems odd that they didn't go to the police. Were they trying to avoid implicating Nick for his drug use? Even if there weren't dead bodies all over the place, that pool of blood isn't going anywhere, and it would make sense to call in.
Family unity has always been an important aspect of The Walking Dead. Rick's drive to find his wife and son and keep them safe motivated him from the beginning, and we see some of that with Glenn and Maggie as well (as well as Maggie's own grief having lost all of her relatives). Here we see a family already broken, that will nonetheless have to band back together if they have any hope of surviving.as the world around them dies, and I look forward to seeing how that plays out. While these new characters have an interesting dynamic, I haven't quite grown attached to them yet; although I do have some sympathy for Travis and Nick, and Madeline exudes a sort of emotional strength that it is cool to see in a female character. She's already seen her life fall apart, so she can probably handle what's about to happen and fight to keep what she has left. I'm optimistic about what the series has to offer, though I can't say the same for the people in it.
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