Borderlands.
Warning: Full spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead's Season 3 follow...
Fear the Walking Dead garnered some new buzz toward the end of its third season when it was announced it would somehow crossover with The Walking Dead. Fans then paid extra attention to Fear's double-sized season finale for clues as to how this might happen (since we were told that a single character would connect the two shows) and came to a mostlyunanimous decision about what the connector could be.
What the buzz for Fear should have been though, given that Season 3 was a notably strong outing for the series, was that it became, over this past summer, a better series overall that The Walking Dead. I mentioned this a few times in my reviews back when the season began, but Fear, with its full embracing of the desert landscape and Madison as the central character (after Cliff Curtis' Travis was killed off right out of the gate), managed to find itself within the nooks and crannies of the Broke Jaw Ranch arc and the recurring Gonzalez Dam storyline.
The show worked really hard (too hard at some points) to reunite scattered characters but the biggest coincidence of all, the Broke Jaw arc colliding with the Dam arc in the back half of the season, actually worked. The ranch's drought leading Madison to Daniel's massive supply of water was a really cool way of not only uniting everyone (before seemingly scattering them all again right at the close) but also of paying off the Dam storyline as a whole. Things came full circle in a really satisfying way and while Daniel's solo trek, in the awesome episode "100," was good enough to stand on its own, the fact that his journey, in particular, became so vital to the season was a great thing.
"100" still stands as the best episode Fear's ever done. In fact, the show's strength, after three years, seems to be the solo-character episodes. Nick's adventure back in Season 2's "Grotesque" also stood out from the pack. An honorable mention goes to "This Land Is Your Land" from a few weeks back which wasn't an all-Alicia episode but still had an amazing, harrowing Alicia-centric story inside of it - one that really helped shape her character. Because while Madison became more fully formed this year (complete with a backstory that helped explain why she was pre-built for the tough choices of a zompocalypse), Alicia and Nick tended to blow back and forth like windsocks. As has been the case since the start of the show.
With Travis gone, the Clarks were all that remained from the original blended family and while Madison stayed steadfast in her unapologetic quest to find shelter and safety for her kids, her kids...occasionally had other ideas, as kids will do. Sometimes they'd side with their mom, sometimes they'd stand diametrically opposed. Sometimes how Nick and Alicia landed felt arbitrary, as the worst part of the show (or any show, really) is when plot drives the story instead of character, but at least Madison's resolve remained strong and defining. On top of this, departing showrunner Dave Erickson sharing the fact that his idea, if he'd stayed on, would have been to eventually turn Madison into a villain worked to reinforced what fascinating character she is.
Fear's use of the American Southwest and Mexico gave us a very unique look at a zombie outbreak. Because the area was so sparsely populated to begin with, the walker threat isn't as all-consuming as it might be over on The Walking Dead. No, here on Fear, humans were actually the worse option of the two. The more dangerous "monster" if you will (as that tagline's been used many years over now). Think of how many people have died because of...other people. Travis, Otto, Ofelia, Chris, the poisoning of the ranchers - it's actually rare for someone to get shredded by a zombie on this series.
Also, because the actual zombie numbers are smaller (though there are most certainly pockets of them), there's a bigger human-led scramble for both power and resources - from the Otto's long-standing land feud with Qaletaqa Walker and the Hopi tribe to the shifting ownership of the Tijuana Dam to Proctor John's large scale ideas for a trade route from Texas to California. This violent struggle is also creating industry out there in No Man's Land. The end of the world isn't even that far in the rear view and there are already markets and bazaars set up.
Strengths aside, Fear the Walking Dead still suffered from some sloppy contrivances, namely the show's strain to make things happen, force things into place, that didn't quite fit. Things they needed to have occur that just felt over-managed. The secret of Nick killing Otto (or, basically, Otto being murdered in general) lasted all of half an episode and its reveal felt extremely unnatural. Likewise, fact that Daniel was magically able to ascertain that Troy was behind the herd that, inadvertently, killed Ofelia also felt like the show needing the unknowable to come out and not knowing a way to do it convincingly. Then, after Madison killed Troy, Nick got fed up with her murderous ways even though he's the one who pulled the trigger for her on Otto. Also, why wasn't he fed up with Troy's murderous ways?
Anyhow, I could list off a lot of the smaller interpersonal moments throughout the season that either didn't work, or contradicted a character's earlier beliefs or actions, but the main take away overall should be that Season 3 worked as a whole. The good outweighed the clumsy for the most part and one of the most interesting things about Fear, as a spinoff, is just how the Clarks don't really ever seem to add more people to their ranks. It's all a subtraction game. This show's band of survivors (Clarks, Salazars, Manawas, Stand) has been such a dysfunctional crew since the outset that it's been interesting to see who truly lasts. Even those we met this year (Troy, Jake, Jeremiah, Walker) either didn't make it to the end, or just wandered off on their own adventure.
The Verdict
Fear the Walking Dead more solidly found its tone and voice this season by embracing the arid landscape, ramping up the human-on-human conflict, and rallying around Kim Dickens' anti-hero mom, Madison, as the driving character. Season 3 contained some dips here and there, but overall there was a uniqueness to the savagery and the portrayal of a zombie outbreak - which is hard to do this late in the zombie game.
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