Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 12, 2016

Asking Fear the Walking Dead to the match the dramatic intensity, purpose of story, scope, and overall excellence of The Walking Dead is perhaps asking too much. Few shows that spin-off from classic originals don't often live up to expectations. AMC's own Better Call Saul is one of the precious few exceptions. But Fear's abbreviated six episode first season was a disappointment in most every way, a show packed with potential that crawled out of the gate rather than capitalized on the low hanging fruit at its fingertips. Granted, six episodes seemed hardly room to accomplish much in such a gritty, complex world beyond setting the proverbial ball in motion, which in hindsight it did well enough, particularly with a fuller fifteen episode season two under the belt to better understand its start. While many missed opportunities remain, and season one's shortcomings can never be fully repaired, season two settles the show into a drawn-out transition state from the immediacy of the zombie outbreak to a more settled, and more traditionally Walking Dead, sort of expanding narrative where nobody is safe, no plot turn is off the table, and characters begin to settle into a new world that, in some cases, fundamentally alters who they are. It's hardly absorbing stuff, at least not in the way the main show remains endlessly gripping, but Fear's potential is slowly realized as it wades through the waters of its open and settles into a growing expanse of death and despair that will leave viewers eager to see what season three has in store.

Everything's different now.

Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) has escaped the exploding apocalypse on his yacht with a few more people in tow than he originally expected. Among them are Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis) and his girlfriend Madison Clark (Kim Dickens), Travis' son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), Madison's children Nick (Frank Dillane) and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), and Daniel Salzar (Rubén Blades) and his daughter Ofelia (Mercedes Mason). As they sail towards San Diego, they come to learn that the city is not the safe haven they hoped it would be. Sailing increasingly troubled (and sometimes infected) waters, they come to face a threat greater than the dead: the living. As the season progresses, they become separated, scattered around Mexico and hoping for a way -- any way -- to survive the crumbling world around them and reunite in one piece.

Fear the Walking Dead is a series overflowing with potential for a grand, sweeping epic look at an unfolding apocalypse with the room to breathe of a good novel and a built-in audience at its side. Season one fumbled its good will, but season two sees it picking up the pieces and walking that fine line between looking at the beginnings of the end of the world from a fresh perspective while slowly morphing into The Walking Dead, just with new faces and separated by a few thousand miles. Season two picks up the pace, and even at more than twice as many episodes seems to play out at double the speed. It depicts a world in which, not unlike the one seen in the other show, the smallest decision can mean life and death both individually and on a large scale, where the consequences of every action are so magnified that characters often lose sight of the larger world picture around them. Season two finds a greater sense of purpose, rawness, and even some freshness. It's not quite the gripping spectacle and nuanced story that's made its big brother one of TV's great shows, but it's certainly inching in that direction.

But that could be a blessing and a curse. The show has found its footing, but it's also slowly losing its structural draw and identity. Less about the immediate impact of the going-to-hell world and now more a crude reflection of the original series, season two, for all it does well, just seems like a show living in the shadows of something bigger, imitative but never quite able to find that same dynamic intensity, heartbreak, and character depth. The season's end comes close, and its penultimate episode is its best. A main character transforms in an instant -- whether only for the moment or more permanently is left to season three -- that embodies the way the darkened, dead-infested world can reshape a man. It also reinforces the overreaching Walking Dead theme about man being the greater enemy than the dead, whether to himself or to others. It's one of the most intense, powerful, and grimly absorbing jolts in the Walking Dead world. Season two serves up more than its share of twists and turns, expected in that the audience knows nothing ever goes as planned in the world of The Walking Dead but the show, like its companion, shows no hesitation in exploring the unthinkable in the physical realm and exploring the consequences in the emotional realm. It's good TV, far and away better than season one, and with the promise of an interesting season three that will hopefully maintain this intensity level while managing to evolve into something more than a clone of The Walking Dead.

Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season was digitally photographed, a radical change from the base series' 16mm film shoot. That said, the digital photography, here, is attractive and more reflective of a film-quality texturing than it is the typical flat and glossy digital look. The series plays with a fairly regular warm-ish golden/bronze filtering about it. Bolder colors still impress, particularly large splotches of blood, rich natural greens, blue waters and skies, and assorted clothing accents. Black levels are attractively deep and honest, well detailed in the shadows and never pushing too debilitatingly dark. Flesh tones are fairly even, though usually influenced by the series' lighting and inherent contrast. Detail is very good. As noted, it's rather filmic in texture, enjoying a natural, effortless sharpness countered by only a few scattered fuzzy shots. Clarity is steady and detailing is precise, particularly facial scruff and pores (Travis in later season episodes is a great example), while smoother human hair is tangibly flowing and individually visible. Wood, rusty metal, grimy surfaces, tattered clothes, zombie makeup and gore, all sorts of textural goodness abounds. The show looks great on Blu-ray.

Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with season one, Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season features a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. It's plenty active but very naturally balanced. Ambient effects are commonplace, including sloshing water off to the sides and into the rears during the season's early aquatic episodes. The stage opens up to other little supportive details at the various locations throughout the season, whether shuffling about at camps or a hotel or more generalized on-land insects, birds, and winds. Musical clarity is impressive. Detailed notes spread nicely along the front, and the surrounds often carry enough information to help draw the listener into the world. Positive depth of bass is evident when the track demands. Moaning and screeching zombies frequently litter the stage in spine-tingling cues, particularly when large crowds gather (though diversity of the sounds isn't all that great). Gunshots pop with fair presence and authority, and placement around the stage is appreciably wide and deep and matching of the on-scren action. Dialogue is clear and front-center focused and prioritized; a bit of naturally occurring reverberation spreads the position partway through episode seven.

Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season contains commentaries on most episodes on discs one and two, and they vanish thereafter. Disc five houses several additional extras. A UV digital copy voucher is included with purchase.

Disc One:

• Audio Commentaries: For "Monster:" Co-Creator/Executive Producer Dave Ericsson and Actor Kim Dickens. For "We All Fall Down:" Co-Creator/Executive Producer Dave Ericsson and Actor Kim Dickens. For "Ouroboros:" Writer/Producer Alan Page and Actor Cliff Curtis. For "Blood in the Streets:" Writer Kate Ericsson and Actor Colman Domingo.

Disc Two:

• Audio Commentaries: For "Captive:" Executive Producer David Alpert and Writer Carla Ching. For "Sicut Cervus:" Executive Producer David Alpert. For "Shiva:" Co-Creator/Executive Producer Dave Ericsson and Actor Rubén Blades.

Disc Five:

• Deleted Scenes (1080p, 8:13 total runtime): A collection of scenes identified by episode.
• Flight 462 Webisodes (1080p, 14:34 total runtime): A collection of shorts that make up a single narrative about the zombie outbreak on an airplane.
• Q&A with Cast and Creative Team from Paleyfest LA 2016 (1080i, 54:29): Participants include Actors Colman Domingo, Lorenzo James Henrie, Mercedes Mason, Rubén Blades, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Frank Dillane, Cliff Curtis, and Kim Dickens, Executive Producer Gale Anne Hurd, and Creator Dave Erickson. From March 19, 2016, a few weeks prior to the season's debut.
• Inside Fear the Walking Dead (1080p, assorted runtimes): Brief behind-the-story supplements for each of the 15 episodes in season two.
• The Making of Fear the Walking Dead (1080p, assorted runtimes): Brief technically oriented making-ofs for each of the 15 episodes in season two.

Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fear the Walking Dead's second season is a more mature, interesting, deep, and dark world than is its six-episode first season. It puts the show at a pivotal turning point, more so than even following up on its lackluster first go-round as it seems now at a crossroads where it could simply become a regurgitation of the superior main program or take the best elements of that world and the world it has created and do something seriously exciting and novel in season three. Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season features excellent video and solid audio. Supplements are fine, through the sudden disappearance of commentary tracks beyond disc two is disappointing. Recommended.