Welcome back to my lonely Walking Dead replay. Technically I think the Michonne miniseries is next but I’m sticking with the Clementine journey for now so I’ll continue with:
The Walking Dead: The New Frontier
Which, as it happens, isn’t really Clementine’s journey even though she is in it. New Frontier brings us a new main character: ex-baseball player, Javier Garcia, and for the most part it’s a story about his family. It starts all the way back at the start of the outbreak, establishes how he ended up with the people he did and then cuts to many years later where we pick up the journey as they scavenge for supplies. And of course this many years into the apocalypse, the chances of any supplies not being claimed by someone are really slim so things go wrong from here. One big difference in this story, and part of the reason for starting at the beginning of the outbreak, is that many of the core characters are people Javier knows well. It’s a whole different dynamic to the meeting strangers thing of other seasons. And there is another big change too, that really comes from the comics.
If you’ve read the comics, you’ll remember that the entire nature of the stories changed forever in one issue. Once a story of survival, out in the wild looking for a home, the group encountered a couple of small communities and tried to start their own but it never worked and off they’d go again. Until in one issue, they found not only a big working community but learned that there were many, many others all communicating and trading with each other. It changed the stories completely. The dead really dropped off in terms of real threat other than being used as a weapon and it became more inter-town fights and politics. New Frontier reflects this change. We quickly end up in one Fallout-like town and learn of others. The result is that, like the comics after that point, the story loses that survival struggle aspect and becomes about getting along with your neighbours. Personally, that’s far less interesting to me because it requires acts of great stupidity to ruin a pretty stable situation.
Another difference is that the season is far less mean-spirited. Sometimes to a fault. There is one character in particular (Tripp) who is baffling. Your presence causes him to lose just about everything he has and you make it worse and worse for him and he’s all smiles and “I’ve got your back, Javi”. Really? Why, Tripp? Even the adversaries are painted as more relatable people. That’s great in one sense - it acknowledges and embraces the grey areas but it does suck some of the drama from the season.
And then there is Clementine. She comes into it in the first episode and helps out Javier and, from there, she dips in and out like she is player 2 in a Lego game. But it’s 100% Javier’s story and, at times, it feels weird that she is there at all. In the final episode, she is present for most of it and yet is silent for large chunks like she’s just an extra. I feel like she either should have been tied more to the story or removed from it more but she exists in a weird mid point where she is just there for this other story at times.
The story does play out in an interesting way and, again, I like that this season does something different. It aims to tell a completely different type of story and doesn’t cover ground we’ve been through in the first two seasons. It feels more like a TV show episode somehow and I’m not completely sure why. A good episode but one I wasn’t completely invested in. Not sure I really connected with Javier or his group. His partner Kate is someone I think we were supposed to like but I just didn’t. So the season doesn’t really have any of the impact the others do for me. I feel some of this might just come from that big change to the world of the Walking Dead because my attachment to the comics dropped off considerably when it got into communities fighting rather than stories of survival. So yeah, I didn’t quite connect with this one. By the end, I was satisfied with the ending but wanted to follow Clementine on her next journey.
And yet it’s still entertaining and an interesting addition to the series as a whole with some strong moments.
The Walking Dead: The New Frontier
Which, as it happens, isn’t really Clementine’s journey even though she is in it. New Frontier brings us a new main character: ex-baseball player, Javier Garcia, and for the most part it’s a story about his family. It starts all the way back at the start of the outbreak, establishes how he ended up with the people he did and then cuts to many years later where we pick up the journey as they scavenge for supplies. And of course this many years into the apocalypse, the chances of any supplies not being claimed by someone are really slim so things go wrong from here. One big difference in this story, and part of the reason for starting at the beginning of the outbreak, is that many of the core characters are people Javier knows well. It’s a whole different dynamic to the meeting strangers thing of other seasons. And there is another big change too, that really comes from the comics.
If you’ve read the comics, you’ll remember that the entire nature of the stories changed forever in one issue. Once a story of survival, out in the wild looking for a home, the group encountered a couple of small communities and tried to start their own but it never worked and off they’d go again. Until in one issue, they found not only a big working community but learned that there were many, many others all communicating and trading with each other. It changed the stories completely. The dead really dropped off in terms of real threat other than being used as a weapon and it became more inter-town fights and politics. New Frontier reflects this change. We quickly end up in one Fallout-like town and learn of others. The result is that, like the comics after that point, the story loses that survival struggle aspect and becomes about getting along with your neighbours. Personally, that’s far less interesting to me because it requires acts of great stupidity to ruin a pretty stable situation.
Another difference is that the season is far less mean-spirited. Sometimes to a fault. There is one character in particular (Tripp) who is baffling. Your presence causes him to lose just about everything he has and you make it worse and worse for him and he’s all smiles and “I’ve got your back, Javi”. Really? Why, Tripp? Even the adversaries are painted as more relatable people. That’s great in one sense - it acknowledges and embraces the grey areas but it does suck some of the drama from the season.
And then there is Clementine. She comes into it in the first episode and helps out Javier and, from there, she dips in and out like she is player 2 in a Lego game. But it’s 100% Javier’s story and, at times, it feels weird that she is there at all. In the final episode, she is present for most of it and yet is silent for large chunks like she’s just an extra. I feel like she either should have been tied more to the story or removed from it more but she exists in a weird mid point where she is just there for this other story at times.
The story does play out in an interesting way and, again, I like that this season does something different. It aims to tell a completely different type of story and doesn’t cover ground we’ve been through in the first two seasons. It feels more like a TV show episode somehow and I’m not completely sure why. A good episode but one I wasn’t completely invested in. Not sure I really connected with Javier or his group. His partner Kate is someone I think we were supposed to like but I just didn’t. So the season doesn’t really have any of the impact the others do for me. I feel some of this might just come from that big change to the world of the Walking Dead because my attachment to the comics dropped off considerably when it got into communities fighting rather than stories of survival. So yeah, I didn’t quite connect with this one. By the end, I was satisfied with the ending but wanted to follow Clementine on her next journey.
And yet it’s still entertaining and an interesting addition to the series as a whole with some strong moments.
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