Did the graphic violence in the premiere of season 7 of The Walking Dead go beyond the pale? To my mind, the head bashing seemed to go on a tad too long. I don’t know if we needed to see the endless pounding of the victim’s head into a bloody pulp. How many times did the leather-jacketed Jeffrey Dean Morgan have to pummel the guy’s head with a bat wrapped in barbed wire to prove what a heel he is? On the other hand, nobody can deny this episode was one of the most powerful and gripping ever shown on the series.
Even while heads were being pulverized into red paste and eyes were popping out of smashed heads (“Doesn’t that hurt?”), I needed to keep watching, transfixed by the gore. For the most part, it wasn’t violence for the sake of violence. It seemed rooted into the story and revealed the villain’s brutal character. I’m of two minds. I believe the show worked. However, the graphic violence probably went on a little longer than necessary.
