Season 1, Episode 2: “So Close, Yet So Far”

Society continued its inexorable collapse on Sunday night, as “Fear the Walking Dead,” fresh off a record-breaking debut, returned to zombify a few more folks, find new flaws with over-aggressive policing and stage the saddest birthday party in history.

Milestones included the show’s first hand-to-hand zombie slaying (Principal Artie vs. fire extinguisher). We also got a better look at Travis’s old family and concluded that attitude-wise, he totally traded up, even when you factor in the addict stepson seizing on the floor.

The show escalated the drama by borrowing a key page out of the original’s playbook. “The Walking Dead” has mostly been a bloody travelogue, ever contriving reasons to scatter the survivors, then putting ghoulish obstacles in their way as they try to get back together. Cue the reunion hugs. Splatter, rinse, repeat. (The new season, which begins Oct. 11 with Team Grimes still based in Alexandria, could change that somewhat.)

So it went this week, with members of the main family coming and going while Nick detoxed. Madison went to the school to find Nick drugs. Alicia tried to go get eaten by her transforming boyfriend before Nick cagily lured her back with a seizure. Travis set out in search of his ex-wife and son, who each proved genetically incapable of just shutting up for a second and listening to potentially life-saving information. (Oh how that drove me crazy.)

The episode ended with Travis and Madison separated by distance and rioting, with him barricaded in a barber shop owned by Rubén Blades, here filling the Scott Wilson Memorial Chair of the sage family man. (Although I guess technically in this world, Hershel Greene isn’t dead yet.) Theoretically at some point someone might end up in “the desert” — I assume they have a particular spot in mind — but it’s unclear whether that will happen in Episode 3 or 4, or just serve as a chimerical dream plan for the rest of the season.

We picked up not long after last week’s conclusion, when Madison, Travis and Nick dispatched an undead Calvin with their truck. Suddenly, it became clear, the clock was ticking both on civilization as the family knew it and on Nick’s stability. You know what’s coming, right? He asks his mom. Yes, you’ll be puking and shaking soon, she says (more or less). I’ll go look for drugs at school.

As Madison searched for opiates she ran into Tobias, the magical nerd who projected the path of the evolving apocalypse — communications and the electrical grid will fail without server oversight and everything else “is gonna go to hell,” he said — and also pilfered canned goods. We learned that the principal went down with his ship, getting infected as the high school’s enrollment dwindled to zero.

The creators of the “Walking Dead” universe have said one key difference between the new and original shows is that, unlike with Rick Grimes and friends, these survivors will not have the skill set to adroitly fend off their zombie pursuers. Exhibit A: Tobias tumbling fecklessly down the stairs with Undead Artie. After some lengthy purse fumbling Madison gave up and reached instead for a fire extinguisher, which she applied with vigor to her old boss’s cranium, stumbling in the process on the secret to taking out a charging zombie.

How fascinating was it to see people who didn’t know how, learn to kill zombies? Completely? Not at all? Because that’s pretty much the proposition “Fear the Walking Dead” is offering.

A novelty of this show is that the viewers know more about the situation than the characters. We know the old co-worker now lumbering down the hall is irrevocably lost, no matter what you say to it, and that the only thing you can do to stop it from eating you is to splatter its brain. There’s a certain amount of fun to be had from seeing people slowly figure all of this out. But two weeks in, at least, the prevailing sensation is similar to the annoyance you feel from watching a horror movie full of dumb people blithely walking into the obviously haunted house. It’s not Madison and friends’ fault that they don’t know what’s going on, but that doesn’t stop it from being kind of tedious. Because we know.

In the absence of deep connections to any of the main characters, it was left to doomed little Gladys, only 9, to stand in for the humanity that would be lost to the zombie plague. My heart broke when I saw the balloons for her birthday party. (I’m not made of stone, people.)

It only got worse when we heard, first, her crying, and then the forlorn rendition of “Happy Birthday” that came later. By the time the show sent the neighbor over to attack her mom, it just seemed excessive. But I guess I’m going to have to toughen up alongside our heroes.

Elsewhere Travis tracked down his wife and son, who found some purpose recording aggressive police actions. One interesting, if somewhat cynical thing about “The Walking Dead” has been how the show plumbs the tension between our innate faith in our institutions and the degree to which they fail us. The first season’s survivors clung to hope that answers would be found at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only to see it explode and learn that everyone was a carrier of the zombie virus. More recently a group headed to Washington, D.C., only to learn that the character Eugene had been misleading them about the answers that might be found there.

Last week we saw Madison reject Tobias’s dark (and accurate) interpretation of events, saying the authorities would let people know if something apocalyptic was afoot. Of course we know better.

Having established pillars of society break down is a handy way to signal the dissolution of the old world, of course, but the show clearly had something more pointed in mind with Sunday’s police standoff. A man was shot to death in the street, and protests swelled beyond the barricades. Order disintegrated and rioting ensued, the police firing impetuously at perceived threats and the people rampaging through the streets.

The scene, in its depressing similarity to recent news footage from places like Ferguson and Baltimore, conveyed a nervy sense of authenticity to the fictional fall of Los Angeles and also raised some chilling questions. Could we trust our designated protectors when we most needed protection? Could we trust ourselves to act like rational human beings? Has the relationship between the police and the policed eroded to the point that we’re all more vulnerable to a true existential threat?

Watching people learn to kill zombies feels mostly like a ratings-grab. The good news is that on Sunday, at times, “Fear the Walking Dead” suggested it can also be something more.