Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Season 4 Episode 8: "No One's Gone" - 6/11/18

Episode Date: June 11, 2018

Jeff Fisher As usual Joining me on the pod is Brad Staggs, Jason Buttrill, and Maximus Fisher Who is on assignment for the next few weeks. Called a job… four letter word for you J O B THAT MAKES THIS 'TALKING FEAR’ We talk about the happenings in the episode and the first half of this season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, here we go. Season four. Episode 8, no one's gone. Mid-season finale. Jeff Fisher, as usual, joined on the pod with Brad Stags, Jason Buttrill, and, well, Maximus Fisher. He's not here again. I make him work for the summer. So he was really bummed and told me to tell you guys,

he really loved the podcast last week without him on it. That was his words. He hadn't listened. And that makes this talking fear. No one's gone. What a fascinating episode. What a fascinating half of season, first half season, of fear, the Walking Dead. The whole half season, we went back and forth from before and after and before the before and after and now and to get to hear.

I have a little paragraph. We needed the whole half season to get to now. I think this sums it up from Entertainment Weekly. Shocked, disappointed, heartbroken. That's how Kim Dickens describes her reaction to finding out her character. Madison Clark was going to be killed off in the season for midseason finale of Fear the Walking Dead. And that's most likely how fans of the show are feeling now that Madison is gone. Not this fan.

Not this fan. Not this fan. Nope. So it's confirmed then. She's dead. Because I saw nobody. No. I was getting nervous.

But they did. I know. I thought the same thing because every time in other in other opportunities during the Walking Dead fear of the Walking Dead programs, unless you actually see the dead, they always pull out. I mean, they always come back. They found a way. Madison, you know, found a way to dig a hole under the fence or something. Yeah. Remember Salazar came back after he burned down the place in Mexico.

And we still don't know if he's dead or not. He died at the... Did he? Damn, right? Did he? Yeah. How? Didn't his daughter shoot him like in the head?

Because he was starting to turn? No. There was that scene. Yeah, the two of them had their reconciliation. He was bit or he was about to die, something like that. And then she was the one to... Yeah. Put the knife through his head or something like that.

She may have missed. I don't necessarily remember that. I don't either. Yeah, I remember. But I'm pretty sure he's dead. And I remember being bummed that he was dead. Yes. Because he was a great character.

Yes, he was. So it appears that, you know, and I know that where did your article? This was Entertainment Weekly. I know that Entertainment Weekly really, you know, wanted to, wanted everyone to get off on Kim Dickens. But it never worked. Who doesn't? It never worked. She is like, I was saying this in our little, you know, text conversation or whatever.

but she's not a lead character. She's just not. She's a good supporting character. Exactly. She's a very good supporting character. And then there was another review that said because the whole show has been centered on the Clark family from the beginning

that now it is on the shoulders of Alicia Dednam to carry to carry the cast that she's now the leader. Why? Well, let's talk about that for a second. She's not. Let's talk about that for a second. Who is in charge? I think it's.

You have Morgan. Yes. At the end of the episode, that was our crew, right? That's our new crowd. So you have Morgan, you have John Dory, who wasn't in that ending episode, but he was in the truck, I guess, healing from his wound, right? No, he was in the ending episode. He was sitting there in the log.

Oh, yeah, that's right? He got some soup, right? I don't know. I don't know if he was there or not. That's a good point. But, yeah, he's alive. And you have June. Right, June Naomi Laura.

You have Alicia. Yeah. You have Strand. Who you can't kill off because he's gay. You have Al. Yep. You have Charlie the kid. Yep.

And you have Luciana. Yep. Right? And that's who's left. Right. Okay. So how does that work out structure-wise in charge? You got Morgan and John and you got Alicia and Strand are going to be the two strong ones, right?

Yep. I would love it for it to be Morgan. He's just not a leader, though. No. He's always a got a question. He's a good number two. He's going to be, but that's what I'm saying. So Morgan and John are going to be the two that are going to be the two that are,

are going to say, hey, we need to talk and get along and bring these people in. And Strand and Alicia are going to be the two that are saying, no, kill them. So those two are going to be, you know, the two tables that are structuring back and forth for what they're going to do, how they're going to move forward. And the others just kind of come along. You make John Dory the leader. Which won't happen. No.

So it'll be Strand. I don't think Strand's a leader either. No, it's going to be Alicia. He admittedly is not a story. Really? You think that it will be. Okay, so what did you notice about Alicia's character in this episode that was so just, maybe the past two episodes, it's not at all. But you kind of mentioned it last night.

She went Terminator on everybody. She went Terminator. She was like, like, literally like the guy sprinting after the car with their arms turning into swords. Like all of a sudden out of nowhere. She's never been that guy. No, she hasn't. Or girl or whatever. Just all of a sudden.

Well, and she's going to undergo. transformation surgery to become a guy. Just so they can keep up with the time. It's possible, right? Yes, anything is possible. I think that they realize their error that what's her name, Madison was just not a good leading character, and she didn't have it within her range or whatever to be that, like, total, like, bad A. Nobody but you didn't have it in her.

No. I'm sorry. I know, you know, I go through the Twitter feeds and, you know, people, you know, love the whole Madison family and the whole thing. but there was nothing really rare. I mean, it wasn't a lot. It wasn't like the overall majority of fans, I would say, were really, if not, hey, Killer Off, they were like, you know, if she gets sick and dies, we're okay with it. Right.

The entire family was annoying. Like, yeah. The Clark family, there was nothing interesting about them. They were annoying. Nick was annoying. And even, and Nick was starting, they were starting to make him not annoying. And then they went back to making him annoying. Remember the other son?

Was it Chris? Boy, was he annoying? Yes. And the father? Boy, was he annoying? That's because they were both California teachers. Right. Yeah.

They were teachers. If there was any job that you could make a human being be more liberal and more agonizing. It's a teacher in California. Right. And that's who they were. Yeah. Oh, agonizing. Yeah.

It really was. And, well, now they're all gone except for a leash. Right. There's no wonder Nick was, you know, shooting up heroin with his mom and dad, teachers in L.A. Just put the needle in. There were so many opportunities for Nick just to grow and be such a good character. I think it was Frank Delane who wanted out, though. I think he wanted out of the show.

Can you blame him? Nope. No. No, I believe that. But now, okay, so here's the deal. Now, are we finally done with the, before. the before and after the after and before the now. I could not keep it straight.

I think we are. I think we're, I think this, we went through this first half of the season just to set up, which would have, to be honest, I would have been happy with maybe two episodes. Yes.

Oh yeah. I was never confused with the timeline until last night. I wasn't confused last night either. I was when Madison showed up with Al. Right. I was like, oh, holy crap. Like she survived and she got free.

And so was that? I thought they were showing the aftermath after the, Yeah, I wasn't sure either. And then, so Madison tripped, right? Yeah. That's why she shot. So she tripped and fired her gun and accidentally shot the kimchi. And then said, I meant to do that.

Right. I've been trying to be serious. I was laughing. It was like the Pui Herman. Yeah. I meant to do that. Peeway jumps up off his body. I meant to do that.

It was just so weird. Looking over and seeing her laying on the yard. I was like, why is she laying down? At first I thought, okay, that's a lot. that's like a tactical thing, shoot and then drop. So when the person turns around to shoot at you, you're not where they thought you were. You're down there. They miss you.

And listen, and that's the way that some of us were trained in battle. Right. Obviously, right, Jason? Yeah, I totally. Yeah. But you saw her trip, though. I mean, you saw her think she was so smart going underneath the first row, the first wire with the little bottles on it, the warning trip wire.

But then Al had that secondary trip wire. Yeah. Which is good. That was smart. Yeah, it was smart. especially yeah it was smart and the the stadium was weird we get into the stadium we blow up Al's truck it's built like a safe the door falls off that was right to funny yeah I thought was that's supposed to be was that comedy I was

do I laugh here or yeah I don't know it's built like a tank inside of a a tank it's out of a tank inside of a bank inside of a bank vault yeah and the falls off and there's Alicia standing there all badass. I did think that was funny. Okay, so it was funny. I wasn't sure it was supposed to be funny or not. They set it up kind of funny. Okay.

And I thought that whole sequence was kind of cool. Like I said, like if you weren't following this and you were like actually, you know, if you knew what the story was and where they were going with it and where they'd come from, you would be like, okay, this is a zombie, you know, show or a movie. This is what I would expect. Right. Because they were blowing up with like grenade zombies. That was cool.

The hoard. Those were the words. Walker outfits though. Oh, I know. They look like the bones. Yeah, they all looked like they were wearing. Like a bone shirt. Yes.

It was like they were wearing full body suits with bones painted on. It was just, they were horrible. Wow. Look, there's only so much in the budget. That was becoming painfully obvious last night. I agree. Yeah, I noticed that too. So then we were in the stadium and then they're stuck and they're not going to go get them.

But John Dory turns on the speaker, the walkie-talkie. they realize that they're not going to be come and get them. And then we go somewhere else in the timeline, and we go to before, before now. Right. And then when we get back to now, they're out of the stadium. We back to now they're driving and they're all, okay, let's go. What?

Did they put the door back on? The tank? I never noticed. I didn't either. It's a good question. They never gave a faraway shot. And how did John Dory go from being on death's door to being okay? It's because of June.

She fixed them. What'd she do? Duh. What'd she do? Antibiotics or something. That's why I assumed he had some kind of like internal infection. It just, but that would take longer. Yeah.

Uh-huh, right. But I just didn't know what it was she did. I mean, the guy's bleeding to death and then all of a sudden he's not. She held her hand on his stomach. Okay. I've forgotten about that. technique. They did tea. They tossed that one in the military too. Just remember hold your hand on their stomach. Just give it a few minutes. They'll be back. Thank you. Okay. I just wanted to make sure.

Some of this stuff I forgot. Go for a long drive. Right. Bounce around for a while on this tank. Right. You know, fight walkers, blow up and just keep your hand. If you keep your hand right there on the stomach, you're good. You know, we guys, we're being incredibly hard on this show, rightfully so. but let's look at it let's try to be attempt to be positive Matt is that you? Wow No seriously

I'm not I'm not giving them credit But let's let's let's get Well actually let's give them credit for one thing This was a very clumsy attempt What was it? Eight episodes or whatever Yeah Oh man yeah eight episodes of the first half of the season

Half a season a clumsy effect To set to for them to acknowledge That they're casting sucked Balls Right But or balls And sure that they knew that they had to take it in a completely different direction so they signed on a whole bunch

new characters and they fired the ones that sucked and so that so the people reset right so this is when you when you you know you hit the ball into the street into the busy street and everyone yells do over yes this is them hitting the ball into the busy street since we've already had a group you know there were obviously fans of the original show and so we had to you know if we're going to walk Jason's give them credit line. Yeah. Since there were the fans of the show and they enjoyed the people that were part of it, then we had to spend this time not just getting rid of them, but realizing how great they were.

And then, oh, sorry, they're gone. Yes. And look at all the comments from last season, everyone, all the people were like, is the fear finally overtaken the Walking Dead? And what an amazing show. Right. All these, like, journalists that appear to have been paid to write certain things. Right.

That how great the show was. Everyone knew it was horrible. They were writing Cowboys versus Indians' plot lines for crying out loud. This show sucked. Yeah. Now, let's acknowledge, they acknowledge the fact that, look, they had to kill off their main characters because they were awful. They had to bring in a star from the main show, The Walking Dead, just to save this. Just to hold it.

Yes. I mean, just to keep it above water. This is a Hail Mary to try and save this show. That's what this half season was. There's probably a pretty big backstory to the scripts for the first half. after this season. Probably what happened, I wouldn't be surprised if it did. If they had like the scripts 90% written when the new producers came in and they said,

oh, no. No. And they had to tweak them and insert the befores and the nows and all. And it was their best attempt at doing that. Yeah. I just can't imagine they started off from day one going, all right, we're going to do a before now, then an after now, and then a before then, a before then, now, then before. I kind of enjoyed the timeline switches.

I just didn't. It was. It's so confusing. They should have tried something different. They should have color code in them. It was so hard. When my meds don't kick in at night and then I have to decide if I'm living in the past

or if the show's living in the past and then I can't remember what they see. I know. Listen, the next half of the season they probably won't have it, but if they do get your ice cream and your meds, put your little pill in your ice cream before you watch the show, okay? I'm not sure I can do it.

This show was set up to fail from the beginning. I think so too. We had even talked about it where they had, they didn't want to do it. They didn't want to do it. They were forced to do it contractually, so they made it bad. And yet it still was successful enough. Because it was riding on the coattails of a very successful franchise. And now, see, now, take this for a second, now, walking dead is coming to an end.

Uh-huh. Right? I mean, you're going to, you're maybe going to have another two seasons out of that. Yes. And we'll talk to that. We're going to, I'm going to give you a quick, once this, uh, podcast is over. We're going to do a quick podcast on

Walking Dead chat, just to talk about Rick and Maggie and some of the other changes that are going on with Walking Dead. But they need this show to be ultra successful now because Walking Dead is, you maybe, maybe have two

seasons left. Worthwhile. You know, they might milk it for three or four. But worthwhile, you maybe get two more seasons out of Walking Dead. Once Rick is gone, I just don't see how they do it. And he's gone after next season. And we'll talk about that on the next book. Yes, we'll.

Which, by the way, will only be $5 per download. So it's a heck of a deal. And we'll share some insider information you'll hear nowhere else. The first 10 downloads get a free t-shirt. Yeah. It's very hard to do good zombie content. It's like it's impossible. Like really, like how many good zombie movies are there out now?

There's just not any. They all suck because the genre has been beaten to death. There's only so many plot lines. can do but along came Kirkman and completely just like rejuvenated it with like some really like bad a story well technically it was problem is is that fear doesn't have that they don't have a Kirkman that's like revolutionizing that you know the the genre they don't have that it was actually Frank Deribon who saw the comic books who then developed it for television you've got to give him credit yeah but he's got to give all the Frank but he's using all the plot lines from

hold on Frank's calling me right now yeah yeah yeah we just gave you He mentioned you, Frank. So what fear is, when we shouldn't be surprised, what fear is, is all these bad Romero knockoff B movies. That's all it is. That's all fear is. Without Kirkman writing these plot lines, that's all we're getting. And we brought some of the Walking Dead showrunners and stuff over. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. So, I mean, you know, you can see. It don't matter. We could see the difference. But the content that drives the, like the showrunners are great for bringing. in all the like the yeah you're seeing that is you're seeing and they're bringing in they're doing better decisions than casting cinematography has been better some of the zombie stuff has been better that's i think where you're seeing the walking dead showrunners coming in but

the problem is that the canon the actual plot lines they don't have that that that background of the kirkman you know all the stuff that he wrote they don't have that and they're not going to get that right i'm going to start i'm going to just dedicate a brand new series to fear and that's the only thing that will save it and change it. So where do they go now? Let's forget about what they could have done and what we had hoped for in the beginning of fear. Now we have this group. What's the plot line? Where do we go? I think that you, because what did Kurtman say that he's got enough stories in the comics to last 10 years, whatever, didn't he? I think he said something to that effect. Something that effect, they go on for years with the stories that he's already written.

So you, for the next two years, Walking Dead does its thing. It doesn't nearly count. up to the stories in the comic, excuse me, the graphic novels. And then you take all those storylines and you plop them on to fear, they're going to be different characters, but the same plot line. You just hope you build up fear to merge with Walking Dead when it goes away in two years. And that's just overloading the, you're just going to get it. It could work. You're just going to be oversaturated.

Star Trek. Star Trek did that. Do you consider it, I guess it's considered successful. Oh, good grief, yes. Oh, yeah. Bizzolians of dollars, yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. So they'll work, they'll take some model like that,

or even the Star Wars franchise. Where they've gone back and done backstories and everything. But you could argue that that's oversaturated now as well. It's still making billions of dollars. You could make that argument, but yes, and even the failure is still a success. Yeah. Where they go from here, I think that the. premise is still they want this to be a matriarchy so badly yes they don't want another male

rick character so there's that like you can tell that is in their guidelines yeah have to have a strong female lead she has to be a bad a the the madison chick couldn't pulled off so let's try her daughter like she is going to be the leader there's nowhere the reason why the past two three episodes they completely changed her character into the terminator such a mistake no freaking reason why it should have Having her just be pissed because her brother died and her mother died and now she's in charge. Yeah. Yeah, you got to have the fine matriarchal leader. You got to have the gay best friend and what's his name.

It's a very special edition of Punky Brewster. They want this to be a social justice zombie flick. I think is what they want. And again, just to caveat this, I have no problem with strong female awesome characters. I have no problem with that. I have a problem when they're obviously trying to. shove it down your throat. That's when I have a problem an issue with. I wouldn't know, I don't think that'd be a strong

female character that was trying to do that too. Just saying. Well, see right there. I see what you did. Is that the problem? I see what you did there. I'll just be over here sniffing, Sharpie. All right, so we're back in August. Yeah. We're back in August and then we will ride fear into October and season nine of Walking Dead. Will it actually? Will it go straight into? I think so. I think the last report, and there was been

some reports that they weren't they didn't have a date set but remember originally I think there was an ad that talked about the original post was going to be like the end of fear and then the next week walking right and then we saw an ad that said the same night it was going to be the end of fear and then into walking so there's no way that isn't that what they did this best like didn't they do fear into fear right yeah so they're walking into fear remember that time we went to the theater that's right boy that's that's that boy that's It seems like that seems like a hundred years ago. It does seem like 100 years ago.

Wow. It does. And it was only what, eight weeks ago. Yeah. Wow. Dang. It does seem like it. As a matter of fact, this podcast was like a hundred years old.

So thanks for listening. And we'll see you on this podcast in August. We'll do a pre-show of fear. But we also stick around. Keep the alerts on. Subscribe because we're going to do a little special walking. dead chat here that you're going to download sometime in the next few days.

Yeah. Thanks for listening.