Parents Television Council Gets Crazy over ‘The Walking Dead, Calls for Ability to Ax AMC

Warning: Spoilers Coming Your Way!

So, Sunday marked the highly anticipated return of The Walking Dead. Without even searching for rating figuresor predictions, it’s safe to say things got off to an exceptionally strong start. Even Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council tuned in.

As was expected, things got bloody… and brainy.

Abraham had his melon smashed into a pile of indiscernible mush. Glenn got cracked over the melon so many times his eyeball popped out of his head. It was excessively gory, just as the entire run of The Walking Dead has often been.

But, of course Winter is whining about how gruesome it all was, and how AMC has kicked quality story in favor of excessive gore. Guess he never read The Walking Dead issue #100. Here’s a hint: what we saw happen to Glenn on TV is pretty much exactly what we saw in print, eyeball and all.

And yet, AMC has just gone too far. So far in fact, that the PTC thinks we should all have the chance to ax these sons of guns from our cable package… yada, yada, yada.

Here’s a bunch of the pointless rant.

“Some people like to advocate, because cable subscribers — regardless of whether they want AMC or watch its programming — are still forced to subsidize violent content. This brutally explicit show is a powerful demonstration of why families should have greater control over the TV networks they purchase from their cable and satellite providers. When you look at definition of MA and what content of the show is, it’s unquestionable they chose what best represented the content. This certainly raises question of if there should be an even more severe rating than TV-MA.

“Programs with violent content are proven to be harmful, especially to children; and most parents agree that having greater control over violent content coming into their homes is vital to protecting their family. When a basic cable network like AMC edges or even surpasses the premium networks in terms of explicit content, consumers must be afforded more control over which networks they purchase and which networks they don’t.”

Apparently this joker doesn’t realize that anything a kid’s parent blocks on TV, is probably going to be seen the next day at school, when his buddy pulls his phone out and shows him the “crazy scene where Abe and Glenn get massacred on The Walking Dead!”

But, hey, if we keep kids away from television, and we keep them away from cellphones, maybe they’ll have a chance to grow up so sheltered the world swallows them whole within a year of graduation. That’s a good idea. Unless they’re clever enough to get their hands on those comics… it’s all over, then… and they might be better equipped to survive the zombie apocalypse.

“I understand violence is inherent to the storytelling here but the manner in which the depictions were made … it crossed the line. With The Walking Dead, the creative team has resorted to the graphic violence as a crutch for what used to be better storytelling. When you can’t figure out what lines to write, you put something in easier, which is a graphic depiction. To me, it’s too much. Everything between the opening credits and the closing credits was graphic and explicit. You don’t need to show it to show it. Back in the day, you’d see violence about to be committed and then see you’d some after-effects of someone recovering or some other aspects rather than skulls crushed in. Now it seems like they can’t tell a story without adding the severity of the graphic violence, and it seems to me like a crutch.”

Hey, Tim. Wake up, dude. It’s 2016, and the world isn’t what it once was. I don’t like my kids having such easy access to horrific material either, but no matter how many channels I cancel or websites I block, my kids are going to find a way to see what they want – or think they want – to see. We don’t get to turn our kids off to reality or entertainment. They’re too smart for such a notion, anyway.

Source: THR