TBH the season premiere of “The Walking Dead” might have been *too* violent
If you’ve watched the Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead, you know what happens and you know HOW it happens — and this should come without saying, but spoilers ahead.
With Negan swinging Lucille around like…well, a baseball bat, we always knew that whoever wound up on her receiving end would not come out of it okay. In fact, we knew right from the get go that someone was going to die (and it actually ended up being two people, and no, brb crying forever). And still, all along we’ve know The Walking Dead is violent, and we’ve certainly seen violence on the show before — because, come on, it’s all about zombies!! — “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be” might have simply just been too much for the average television viewer.
“[Sunday's] season premiere of The Walking Dead was one of the most graphically violent shows we’ve ever seen on television, comparable to the most violent of programs found on premium cable networks," The Parent Television Council president Tim Winter explained in a press release.
His whole statement is in regards to protecting families from subjecting young children to hyper-violent content, especially shows on cable channel (rather than a pay-cable network like HBO). But TBH, we’re kinda freaked out by what we saw during the episode, too. Twitter, wrought with enough emotions as it is, had lots of things to say about the violence:
My son, so upset by what just happened, has left the room and won't watch a minute more. #TheWalkingDead
— Jeff Jensen (@EWDocJensen) October 24, 2016
Good bye forever @WalkingDead_AMC. That was disgusting. #TheWalkingDead didn't just jump the shark it pulped it.
— John Hocevar (@JohnHocevar) October 24, 2016
false false
The most violent, gruesome and sickening episode of Walking Dead ever. #fb
— Simon Palmer (@SimonJohnPalmer) October 24, 2016
Bye bye bye, Walking Dead last night. After the first death, I literally walked out and went to bed. Too violent @jasonmatheson
— Anna (@Bader1Anna) October 24, 2016
https://twitter.com/udfredirect/status/790422877996658688
You may have lost me @WalkingDead_AMC that was too violent and graphic
— Alana Andrews (@alana_andrews) October 24, 2016
https://twitter.com/udfredirect/status/790408644919721984
Didn't really enjoy @WalkingDead_AMC tonight at all. Extremely graphic and unnecessarily too violent. Never thought I would ever say that…
— Omar Shaikh (@OmarMKE1) October 24, 2016
Done with #walkingdead Too violent. I was physically ill and had to leave the room 10 minutes in. Need more shows with a little damned hope.
— Amber Ford (@VeganAmberLF) October 24, 2016
Going on the offense, the episode’s director Greg Nicotero, defended the extreme violence, citing that this is just where Walking Dead needed to go to tell the story:
"In this instance, we felt it was important to launch us into this season to show the extent of what Negan is capable of doing because that drives so much of where the series is going from here on," he explained in a conference call Monday. "It’s graphic and horrible. And while designing, testing and shooting the makeups, we wanted to push it a little bit."
Oh yes. Now we’re WELL AWARE of what Negan can do, and just HOW he’s going to do it. But, going forward, do we really need to see it? There’s a way to show violence on television without actually showing it to us. Seeing Glenn’s eyeballs pop out was certainly a lot to stomach, but it wasn’t necessarily needed to demonstrate just how violent his death was. In some instances, situations are best left up to our imagine, and this might have been a good time for “less is more” on the Walking Dead. Because ~more~ was seeing Abaraham’s bloody brain splattered everywhere and ?.
We might as well go ahead and start mentally and emotionally prepare our hearts for this intense, and extra violent season. Might want to go into each episode knowing you’re going to watch it between your fingers.
