You Really Don’t Get How Stupid ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Is, Believe Me

Once upon a time, Fear The Walking Dead was pretty good. For a brief moment, it was actually pretty great. Season 3 was a high point for the zombie drama spinoff. After two seasons of decent—but often frustrating—TV it finally found its stride.

And then original showrunner Dave Erickson left and AMC brought in Ian Goldberg and Andrew Chambliss to ruin everything. And ruin it they did, with gusto, over the next five awful, hilariously embarrassing seasons. Seasons that had no business existing, that have become a laughable, excruciating bruise on AMC’s reputation. AMC makes some great shows—Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Dark Winds—but Fear The Walking Dead is so bad it makes you wonder if the people calling the shots have lost their damn minds.

I could list many examples but I would like to just focus on two things: Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and walkie-talkies. You know what it is.

Since the genius brothers took this show over and stopped writing characters like actual people, one of the major narrative crutches they’ve leaned into—heavily, pathetically—has been an over-reliance on walkie-talkies, which apparently have an endless supply of batteries and range that you would not believe. You want to get hold of someone hundreds of miles away? The FTWD walkie-talkie will do the trick! It’s a magical item, after all, and long after we’re all gone the walkie-talkies will remain.

I’m not kidding, people. In Fear, characters are able to reach one another at any moment over any distance with a walkie-talkie. It’s more functional than a cell phone. Occasionally one won’t work in order for them to come up with some manufactured tension, but 99% of the time it’s a sure thing. You could be in Georgia and Morgan Jones could be in Texas, and you could talk to one another about making up for all the bad things you’ve done by helping people until you puked. Because all that cheesy, cringey crap is so cloying it makes you sick.

But.

But here’s the thing! In Season 4’s midseason finale Madison dies. Or, well, we think she dies. Everybody thinks she dies. And for the next few seasons she stays dead. But at the very end of the execrable Season 7, she reappears, working for PADRE which, um, I guess is located in Georgia. But she reappears in Texas! Right after Alicia dies (or maybe she isn’t dead!?!) Madison returns, just like right after John Dorie dies, his dad shows up.

In any case, my question is this: With these super-powered walkie-talkies still working all these years, and Madison and her kids and Strand and Daniel and everybody else nearby, how did none of them ever, I dunno, hear one another on a friggin’ walkie-talkie? Dwight finds Sherry thousands of miles from home. This season, Troy Otto shows up and finds everybody and apparently also found Alicia. Everybody always finds everybody all of the time super easily, but somehow over several season Madison is just…what? Where? How? Why?

It’s all so utterly contrived and stupid I can’t contain my disgust for it any longer. I’m not angry. I’m not even disappointed. I’m just baffled. Baffled that AMC would continue to let these showrunners ruin their show all these years. Baffled that people still like it despite its enormous stupidity. It’s just awful. I’m not even convinced Fear is written by people. It must be an AI experiment gone horribly, horribly, Ex Machina level wrong.

But hey, as long as it makes AMC money I guess that’s the important thing.