Why The Walking Dead Is So Brutal  and So Popular
They just keep coming, more and more, as if rising from the very earth. Not zombiesWalking Dead viewers. The season premiere of the, um, staggeringly popular horror drama set a new viewing record, once again 17.3 million viewers, before we even count up DVR recordings and encores which brought its viewership up to 28 million last season. 2.5 million more adults under 50 watched it than Sunday-night football. It may end the week the most-watched series on TV, period. In other words what is arguably TV's most relentlessly disturbing and violent drama is also arguably its most popular. Extreme is the new mainstream. It's not as if we've never seen a popular horror show before. Scary stories are ingrained in our culture. The Walking Dead, though, is not just gory. It's grimunrelentingly, punishingly which is not to say unentertainingly grim. It kills beloved characters it kills children it gives very little reason to hope that, in the long run, any human will end up anything but a walker or meat for walkers. And as the season 5 premiere proved, it's morally and philosophically punishing too. When our band of survivors fought their way out of Terminus, "No Sanctuary" didn't just give you the thrill of seeing them defeat cannibalistic monsters. It showed that those cannibals were themselves survivors, once an idealistic band who were taken captive, brutalized and systemically raped after they trusted the wrong group of refugees. The Walking DeadTV's most popular show by many measureshad you cheer for an escape, then revealed it as the final, if forgivable, act in an unspeakable tragedy. It used to be, in TV, that you had mainstream entertainment and then you had edgy entertainment. Mainstream hits, generally, offered familiarity and security. They might be about terrible thingscrime, or even, like M*A*S*H, warbut they would leave the audience with something to feel good about warmth or hope or laughs. It might be violent, but good would prevail over evil, love over despair, and so on. Deep, dark, disturbing downers were a niche product at best.