It may perhaps pain one a little to admit it, but FTWD has regularly proved (even) more watchable than TWD, the series from which it spun out. The (arising) dystopia was handled differently from the outset. The LA startoff was good as we actually got to see how the thing did start, as opposed to being thrust into a zombie world in fully-fledged existence. Then we had California and Tijuana, and life on a still-gorgeous Pacific Ocean, and an equally-scenic Mexico (the latter with its special thinking vis-a-vis the (un)dead); and interesting fish-out-of-water characters like Madison, Nick, Alicia and Colman Domingo's superb Victor Strand, growing into their new roles. Remember Victor conversing with the International Space Station? I will for many a long year, and somehow Rick Grimes (love him as we do) would never have done that. Or - more to the point - he never got to do that...
I suspect that those of us who watch both "Walking Dead" series to confront ourselves with the dystopia as much as the gore have always found a little more, a little deeper, on offer from FTWD, though it's hard to pin down the secret of its success. For sure the out-West setting has always differed from the out-East one. Away from LA, the population density in the West is far lower, so maybe people had slightly more chance of making a go of things? Maybe those folk were slightly better equipped to deal with the crisis from the outset?
Anyway, in "Laura" we have no Victor, Madison and family or even (much of) the newly-arrived (and mostly-welcome) Morgan (Lennie James), who has now bridged the two shows, and the two worlds, with some success. But we do have new-on-the-scene John Dorie, and Garret Dillahunt (first a hit with me way back when in the context of "The 4400") has de-prettified and aged sufficiently to carry off the cowboy/cop character of John Dorie with aplomb. He's a SUPERB character, man of few words but deeper feelings, good guy - yes really - and he knows how to manage out in the Texas scrub. He's got a cabin by a river and - on his own or with the newly-arrived Naomi/"Laura" (Jenna Elfmann) - he shows us what we always suspected: that for a lucky few present in some remote, reasonably defensive, places, life after the dying might have its beauty, its satisfactions, its sufficiency, its own special pace, rhythm and style. It's not self-imprisonment in a Georgia prison, or even keeping one's head down on Hershel's farm, it's just a cowboy going on being a cowboy - in outstanding cowboy country - and as if not that very much has changed.
I think we needed this, and TWD never quite gave it to us in all those seasons.
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