The Walking Dead returns to AMC on Sunday, October 23rd for Season 7, and while the show has certainly had its share of strong moments, it wouldn't quite be The Walking Dead if some characters weren't occasionally making decisions so dumb and dense they made you want to facepalm yourself into oblivion.
Look, The Walking Dead universe is an intense one. The weak don't survive. Hell, sometimes the strong don't either. And when every episode's about survival it's only natural that viewers become super-invested in every choice the survivors make, comparing those choices to what they themselves would do in the same situation - while also knowing full well that most of us wouldn't survive a single afternoon in this zombie-filled hell. So we scrutinize, and hold characters to very high, pragmatic standards. But even knowing this, and our pickiness, these guys have made some really stupid decisions.
Here are seven of the worst choices characters have made on The Walking Dead.
"Stop humming 'Fight Song.' Right now!"
Coming off a really strong first episode, The Walking Dead sort of nose-dived into ridiculousness in Episode 2, "Guts," with the introduction of Merle Dixon. While the episode contained some awesome gore and palpable tension involving Rick and Glenn covering themselves with entrails and strolling out into the midst of a zombie parade, Merle was just too cartoonishly racist and misogynist to believe. Sure, people like him might exist, but he was such a heightened character that it was almost impossible to buy that any of the other survivors would put up with his insulting, reckless ass for more than thirty seconds, much less keep him on as part of their group. Especially when you consider that alpha male Shane was leading the pack at this point.
Merle would eventually return a few seasons later, somewhat domesticated and less hateful/hateable. He was still a son of a bitch, but not a full-blown coke-snorting imbecile.
"That's a pretty goat-bear."
Even though this moment was taken directly from the pages of Robert Kirkman's comic book, it still stings to watch. Young Carl, during a moment when everyone was frantically searching for lost Sophia (and also after everyone survived a herd of highway walkers) stopped to take in a deer. As if he hadn't seen one in a decade. As far as I can remember, it'd only been about a month or two. And I think most of us have gone waaaaay longer than a month without seeing a damn deer. Making things worse, Rick and Shane were on board with this sight-seeing detour, which wound up getting Carl accidentally shot by Otis.
Presumedly right after Otis put a zombified Sophia in the barn, if we're to believe the (very shaky) timeline and the fact that Otis was the only one tasked with wrangling zombies and storing them away for safe-keeping.
Soup's on!
Granted, the nasty, bloated well zombie from Season 2 has become something of an iconic calling card for the show, even getting its own action figure. But what kind of idea was it to drag this walker out of the well? A half-witted one, that's what. One where Glenn risked his life by being lowered down into the zombie stew.
They were all worried about contamination, but - I'm sorry - I'm not drinking walker water either way, zombie in or zombie out. There's no amount of "we got the zombie out of the well" that's going to make me take a sip of undead-flavored H2O. And if the idea was to remove it before it tainted other wells, I'm still not drinking any water ever again. Sticking to whiskey, thank you.
In the end, the endeavor was just a way to get some gore and guts onto an episode that wouldn't have had any otherwise.
"Lori, don't be this way. They'll kill you off."
Early on in The Walking Dead, there were Lori troubles. Instead of making her post-apocalyptic affair with Shane a regretful one-time deal like it was in the comics, they made their relationship more of an ongoing thing that she was a voluntary (though notably distressed) party to and liking her was more of an uphill battle from the get-go. But then - after she herself had urged Rick to kill Shane - she got super weird and distant with Rick when he admitted to killing Shane in self-defense. As in, Shane had tried to kill Rick so he protected himself and unfortunately Shane fell in the process. This caused her to pull away and treat Rick like a monster and, in doing so, caused viewers to pull away from her and demand her death.
"Oh my...he's doing it. He's turning. He's turning into a zombie. It's all happening. It's a thing that's going on!"
Though the show solved its Lori problem in Season 3 (by giving her one of the show's most shocking, noble deaths), there was still an abundance of Andrea issues to sort through. Unfortunately, Andrea wasn't even able to redeem her multitude of mishaps with a good death. Instead, she went out like a dope.
In the Season 3 finale, Andrea spent a good long while foot-fumbling with a pair of pliers before she started to work on her restraints, but she'd constantly look up from her work to watch Milton transform into a growling, gurgling member of the undead. She paused so much, stopping everything to take in the horror, that Milton eventually wound up feasting on her neck. If she'd just kept her head down and kept at it, she could have escaped.
Hipster nonsense.
Season 5 with its Terminus terror, cannibal carnage, and Alexandria drama had some of the show's best material in it. But when it came time for Rick and his crew to face off against a bunch of headstrong Atlanta cops, ol' bonkers Beth basically killed herself after deciding it'd be a great decision to weakly stab Officer Dawn in the shoulder with a tiny pair of surgical scissors. A move that could have very easily kicked off a huge gun fight between the two sides, killing everyone. In the end, it only served to get herself and Dawn dead.
And if the idea here was to free Noah, he'd have been better off with the cops. Hindsight being 20/20 and all - yeah - he'd probably still be alive.
He's Dwight behind me, isn't he?
Right toward the end of The Walking Dead's sixth season, after Rick and his team had been handily handing the Saviors their asses for weeks on end, almost every capable member of our main character crew decided to leave Alexandria while they were on the precipice of open war. Rick and Morgan ran off to find Carol (who left because she was now Sad Carol) and Sad Daryl left because he was upset about Denise, which then caused Glenn, Michonne and Rosita to go out looking for Daryl - in the woods that they already knew were crawling with Saviors.
So what happened? Well, after a steady streak of domination against their mysterious enemy, our heroes got captured by the Saviors' most inept member. Dwight re-emerged (unshaken from having his privates nearly bitten off the week before) and all of a sudden Alexandria was down three skilled warriors.
Ultimately it wouldn't really matter because the rest of the main cast would also leave their walled township in the finale, leaving nearly everyone vulnerable for the "Who Does Negan Kill?" puzzle.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at http://ift.tt/2aJ67FB.
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