Heather Cappiello directed this week's episode of Fear TWD. The direction and visual storytelling is mostly fine, the camera work and cinematography are too quite good. The sound editing and musical score is fantastic. The flaws from season 7A are still present, and the writing is extremely flawed. Some of the dialogue and motivations are stupid and very forced, I just don't get why almost all the characters has to be so mysterious and not upfront with things. Andrew Chambliss and Ian B. Goldberg and the staff writers are unfortunately unable to write good dialogue. They come out sounding wooden and unrealistic, then again, dialogue is hard to write. But these guys are poor at it, Fear deserves better writing overall, like the quality it had in S1-3.
Alicia takes refuge in the home of a mysterious stranger. With her fevers growing worse and Arnold pursuing her at every turn, Alicia is forced to confront the failings of her past and how she will face her future. That's the premise of the episode and well it didn't really hold strong as a mid-season premiere, I was disappointed with a lot of things, mostly the dreams and lack of story. It's very much a bottle episode which is unfortunate. Mostly the writing but the performance Alycia Debnam-Carey brings as Alicia Clark makes the terrible into something okay. It's also worth commenting about the new character called Paul, played by Warren Snipe, though a lackluster introduction. The character grows on you and it's nice to see the deaf culture getting more awareness, but honestly, the cast is already full with characters and why not lean more into Wendell's character who has a disability and let The Walking Dead focus on its deaf characters which they're doing a phenomenal job with.
"Follow Me" was okay, but having an episode centered on Alicia Clark drags the story down but I'm happy the actor and character are getting the attention they deserve. This is very much centered entirely on her and shows her psyche which is fine, but an episode focused solely on her shows that the showrunners/writers haven't learned. The audience's and critic's criticism about the writing and the scope of things, how they're relying on the anthology format in what was a serialized TV show is something that the showrunners haven't fixed. Season 7B is supposed to be this civil war between Alicia and Morgan against Victor Strand, but there's almost no tension and suspension in the episode, and it doesn't really help with the showrunners bringing in new characters to the fold... When there's a bunch of characters that are doing nothing and have been doing nothing. 7A was terrible and I thought Andrew Chambliss and Ian B. Goldberg would turn things around when they finally got the civil war started, but they never did. A mid-season premiere is supposed to be an episode that draws people in to tune in for a new episode, I didn't get that feeling with episode 7.09.
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