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Talking Through Still Standing
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On this episode 58 of Fear the Walking Dead Talk Through, Brian, Kyle and Mark talk through Fear the Walking Dead Season 5 Episode 7, which is titled, Still Standing. This was written by co-producer Richard Naing, and directed by Marta Cunningham. Marta Cunningham is notable because we think she is the first director to also direct Star Trek: Discovery, which is the other show Brian podcasts about.
We have more feedback for last week’s episode… S5E7 coverage starts at 30:37…
Before we get into this week’s episode, we have to share more feedback we received for last week’s episode, S5E7 The Little Prince, and Kyle tells us what he thought of the episode. Discussion on this week’s episode starts at 30 minutes and 37 seconds into the podcast.
Not as many people disliked this episode, but it’s still not a favorite!
Most people think this episode was better than last week, but it’s no masterpiece. The character moments are really good, but there are some points in this episode that are handwaved over. How did Strand and Charlie move the balloon? How did it become arranged in such a way to make a wall? How did they move the propellers? How are they continuing to put the plane together when it seems there’s no one actually working on it? How did they suddenly become airplane mechanics? How we don’t see June and Al repel up the mountain? It has some flaws, but if you don’t nitpick too much, it’s still an enjoyable story.
Ratings went to an all-time low for the show this week…
For the second week in a row, FTWD ratings sunk to a new low in the 18-49 demographic and ratings. S5E6 The Little Prince got a 0.34 in the 18-49 demographic with 1.393 million viewers, down from the last week’s 0.42 and 1.488 million viewers. Unfortunately, this is an all-time low in ratings and viewers for the show. Again, there was no Talking Dead this week so no ratings for it, but it returns next week.
That’s it for Still Standing!
Still Standing wasn’t a spectacular episode, but we liked it well enough. Please leave your feedback for the mid-season finale for Fear the Walking Dead, Season 5 Episode 8, which is titled, “Is Anybody Out There?”, by 6 PM Eastern/5 PM Central on Tuesday, July 23, 2019. Check the Facebook group for any deadline changes. The best way to submit your feedback is on the Facebook group, and stay tuned for some important news in the future!
Other Fun Stuff Completely Unrelated to Still Standing!
Sign up to our Facebook group to make it easier to contribute feedback and interact with us and other listeners! If you want to help pay for the editing of this and other podcasts, you can donate credits to Kyle’s Auphonic account, which he uses to make these episodes sound so good! That link is https://auphonic.com/donate_credits?user=kt1ao. Please remember to subscribe to us in Apple Podcasts. Subscribing to us helps us move up in the rankings, so it’ll help us out tremendously! You’ll also get new episodes when they’re released. And while you’re in there, leave us a rating or review! It only takes a few minutes and it helps others to find us! Have you checked out Amazon lately? That’s one way you can support this network and help keep the lights on!
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Still love Jenna’s intro every time!
“I was blowing things up!” – Kyle with the priorities. 🙂 I do agree with him that rating counting is going to have to change because otherwise you’ll see good shows go down before they should because people do binge if you drop the entire season at once and they do TIVO to watch later because there’s so much we want to see and there are apps and are all the apps being counted or just the network’s the show airs on…how much does Twitter buzz count for a series given that’s more likely audience numbers than a magazine who may talk about it that gets you critical attention. Critics and audiences don’t always agree on projects so are you going for awards, views, or both I think determines kind of who you gear things towards. Not everyone has Nielsen boxes either for their TVs so you need ways to count every fan to maximize your numbers. The way to view TV has definitely changed thus I think the holy grail of live viewings has to take a step down to be part of the larger picture now instead of the defining numbers; if it’s about ads for networks you can do ads anywhere, we all deal with them on apps now so live viewing isn’t the go to determination as Kyle said for how a show is arguably doing.
“They probably know how to drive the Good Year blimp!” – next season on FEAR. Ha.
I’m still giving you this for the last name pronunciation Brian ?. 🙂
The storyline is always slower.
I put nothing past this group of writers post Madison thus if they kill Alicia they might as well wrap that night on Fear and just ship everyone over to TWD and finish their stories there because I don’t know many FEAR fans who are going to still watch post that given Fear was about the Clark family and their group dealing with this outbreak so if you kill the last Clark there’s no more Fear; no offense to Strand who’s an honorary Clark but the concept really is dead at that point and they’re just another group of survivors who the last FEAR OG ran into. I don’t know how many viewers are still here just because they’re Alycia fans who followed from “100” but I know she’s got a decent amount so if you take out Alicia you’re asking for your show to die. It was bad enough viewer numbers wise when Nick went and then when they offed Madison…they can’t afford to lose Alicia which you’d think they’d know but I also thought they wouldn’t kill Madison off either so again anything is possible, still story wise if Alicia dies that really is the end of FEAR to me based on the concept it started with and again they should just merge because it’s just TWD: Southwest edition at that point. I hope she doesn’t die but again I also didn’t think they’d kill Madison or make Alicia Morgan’s puppy essentially either so I’m not holding my breath.
What is this WOW you speak of; did you mean she’s a Paladin? 🙂
Ugh hearing Kyle talk about Alicia just makes me miss her so much and sad to see her locked down as she is; WHY IS SHE NOT THE LEADER?!!! Oh yeah Morgan. *eye roll* I’ll be that person because this annoys me to no end: what is the point of Morgan; really? You need a leader for the group? Got it – hi Alicia! Alicia needs backup there you think because that’s a stressful position? This Dorie guy seems to do good motivational speeches and he’s good at shooting. You want humor to break up the doom and gloom you say, we got Strand! Note: Strand also comes with the handy feature of being able to sometimes talk you out of a situation when you’ve run out of bullets. A medic because those are important, support saves the tanks you guys, June! A scout who can gather resources ahead of time and help map out safe routes to your next stop? Introducing the return of Luciana! What about someone to do the dirty work and get information from those you hold hostage in the name of camp security? Oh look it’s a reporter named Althea! Low voiced broody male with a tragic past? Hey Daniel. ? “The kid” – Charlie. Again why do we need Morgan? And to be fair why do we need Dwight; FEAR succeeded for 3 years on its own why the push for TWD characters to come in and stay now? How come no FEAR person has popped up on TWD yet to have fans ask “Does this mean they’re the sole survivor? Where are the others if not?” if you’re really into crossovers not takeovers? Oh he does zen comments you say, John does that too thanks and if he’s not feeling up to it that day I’m sure any other character could do that or maybe tell a story from their past because such thing as character exploration beyond one person exists. What’s that, he does neat stick tricks? Have you seen Alicia with a butterfly knife?! OH and this isn’t even factoring in Sarah or Wendell who I forget even are in this series half the time due to the Morgan focus; they can do zen moments too if John is busy. It may just be me but Morgan rivals Chris for worse thing to ever be on the show. Even in her most “focus on Madison” moments it still felt like the other characters mattered and got progress to things but now again Alicia is kind of Morgan’s puppy doing everything he says even though they don’t know him or have a reason to fully trust him. Everyone just accepts his first plan as gospel instead of posing their own; characters don’t mingle anymore for some reason…I MISS FEAR! ☹️
Bad bet Kyle, season finale they’re fighting a zombie radioactive round tail horned lizard. ?
I’m with Brian, if they kill Alicia this thing is done. I love Al and I’d want to see her still because I think she’s interesting but I wouldn’t talk about this show and I would just watch her stuff and flip off the rest. I’d want to support Colman and Danya because they’re OGs depending on how you define OG but I don’t know if I could do that by watching this show anymore because it would just have hurt me too much by that point; if ever there was a pass I’d give them to use it’s saving Alicia because without her FEAR is done, also you get a free pass to bring back Madison of course without explaining how she’s back but they don’t want to use that card sadly.
I’ll take Al surviving because it fits her character and again she’s interesting because of all her skills and approach to things over John and June honestly. I feel at some point June will go out because she’s a medic and they love to strip survivors of fear to see what they do in response; I could be wrong and we see what the medic does when there’s no supplies left but if you want to hurt a group taking their medic would do it.
Woah tap those brakes Brian season 4 did not start off well, starting off well would have been doing the dam but we didn’t get that; that said it did go down hill fast because it was all over the place in time and the reunions felt like they took too long and then it turns out they killed two major characters and they did the whole Morgan takeover and 4B was just white hot garbage beyond one or two good elements, mainly John Dorie for a lot of people and I’d say Al for me. S5 has been better than S4 but it still isn’t the Fear we knew and loved.
Here’s the issues to me with this season…
1. Always Morgan because he’s pointless and has brought nothing interesting to the series, in fact they kill interesting (Madison) to get him his spot so it’s a double dislike on him.
2. The group doesn’t mix up; for example again June is usually with John even though there are consistently at least 3 other people around she could interact with.
3. Alicia is still following Morgan’s words like they’re the only ones out there – SHE DIDN’T EVEN LISTEN TO HER OWN MOTHER THIS MUCH! True Madison was obsessed with saving Nick but it just shows Alicia knows how to handle things too so why is she always following him.
4. They act like Morgan is the only one who can do speeches. Last I checked everyone could still speak so why aren’t other characters giving motivational bits to others?
5. There’s no backstory progression for characters like Al really (she’s had one episode compared to John Dorie who we probably know the most on and others) and there’s no future profession for everyone, it’s like this season they’re just going from one action set moment to the next with a little dialogue here and there.
To be fair there are interesting plot elements to this season such as having to consider radiation because you went into a zone that had meltdown due to no one watching it, but there’s no drama over that really until the mid season point once it’s melt down. If they had characters asking June how much radiation can they take before they’re screwed it would be something; as a medical person she should be able to guess a number at least or bottom line say you may only want to be at X location for 5 minutes. If they showed how Matt’s character got EVERYONE to leave the base so he could walk in and take it that would be something or show what he’s doing with it during episodes to keep that plot in people’s mind. If some of the kids had stayed to make that plot not feel like filler in the end it would have been something but we didn’t get that; it’s good set up with just meh payoff for the most part this season and that’s an issue. Yes they have good character stuff compared to action moments but the problem is they don’t have a lot of them for how many characters there are compared to how many walking scenes we have…I don’t know how much dead space has been spent this season on looking shots or walking shots or just staring into silence but I’m pretty sure you could have cut half the time from each moment and thus been enough to give Sarah and or Wendell a few lines so I remember they exist more than just at the very end of a recap as it were! Decent story pitches, poor payoff I feel is the theme of the season; still it’s a 100 times better than the dumpster fire that was 4B, I honestly felt dumber for having watched the final it was so bad.
If I had to speak on each season so far I would say season one – slow but interesting, season two – just die already Chris…interesting family stuff…yay Chris is dead…ok overall – you can tell they’re getting in a groove, season 3 – good bad guys and conflict and the dam…such a good finale that will hype you so easily for the next season, season 4 – the season of furious fan rage, and now season 5 – meh…it’s not season 4 but it’s also not the show we can’t wait to see each week either past a few certain characters (character importances varies by fan).
I honestly don’t need a believable way to save Alicia, I just need her not dead to watch this; you’d think how could they screw up so bad again but then again they killed Madison so their decision making isn’t great unless the goal is to kill the show because again killing Alicia will finish your series off if the ratings drop doesn’t do it first.