It was a fairly severe departure from the comic series.
While alive, the patients brain is filled with bright colors, as neurons fire throughout all the lobes.
The implication is that undeath is not just a supernatural occurrence.
The brain stem doesnt have any need for higher functions.
It doesnt care about art, science, or love.
It just wants to move the body from point A to point B…and to eat.
All in search of some indistinct, primitive notion of survival.
First, let me be clear about my own internal biases or lack thereof.
Try getting off opiates.
*Drug addicts on television shows never wake up.
They only come to.
Fear the Walking Deads insistence upon opening its story with Nick is telling.
Hell, Nicks prominence actually predates the premiere of the show itself.
Nick was the only aesthetic element of the show that was even offered before a lengthier trailer debuted.
I remember even briefly mistaking the early look at Nick to be a walker.
Wait, these things arent supposed to run, right?This isnt Zack SnydersDawn of the Dead.
Heavens, thats a person?
Nick escapes because he needs more drugs.
Nick defends himself and kills the dealer first.
In reality, Nick is actually spending his nights stealing the intravenous opiates from a dying woman.
This is one of the most powerful moments in season one.
As a main character, Nick is ostensibly someone we should care about and root for.
And here he is stealing pain-medication from a dying woman in agony.
Were used to characters in theWalking Deaduniverse doing monstrous things, but this is something else entirely.
This is a character acting selfishly, not to survive, but rather to maintain his debilitating drug addiction.
It treats heroin addiction as anadvantage.
Nick, understandably, has a 101.1 fever due to his ongoing withdrawals.
In captivity, he meets a slick man in a suit named Strand.
Strand comes to trust Nick not in spite of his being a drug addict but because of it.
I look at you and I see someone who knows the meaning of necessity, Strand tells Nick.
Well, Im an addict, he replies.
No, youre a heroin addict.
Thats the gold standard.
Dont sell yourself short.
As it turns out, Strand was right to place his faith on Nick.
He and Strand escape together with an assist from the Clark and Manawa families.
I never knew where I was going.
Ive been living this for a long time and now everyone is catching up with me.
Thats whyFear the Walking Deadis fundamentally a show about drug addiction.
It portrays real-life zombies with metaphorical zombies side by side.
