The Walking Dead will be going into its 11th season soon and its multiple spinoffs, video games, and other world-building canon has proven that it’s among pop culture’s most beloved properties. However, not everyone seems to feel this way, and some viewers have made that abundantly clear by filing complaints with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) over the past few years.
Reports requested and obtained by Observer from January 1, 2017 to February 1, 2020 are filled to the brim with complaints regarding the show’s brutality and gore. These filings became more prevalent following the season 7 premiere, which saw The Walking Dead‘s most notorious villain, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), mercilessly bash in the heads of fan-favorite characters Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz).
In reference to the season 7 premiere’s overtly gruesome deaths, one viewer from Florida complained:
Watching human beings bashed over the head with a [sic] barbwired basball bat over and over is just plain gore. Here I am days later and still freaked out [f]rom what I saw and can’t erase the image from my memory. It was that horrific.
Someone from Texas was even more extreme, saying:
How is such violent (and sexual) content allowed on tv? AMC seems to be a satanic tv network…
Meanwhile, a complaint from a Georgia resident indicates they’d like to get legal about the violence:
If I knew the process to file a lawsuit and had the funds I would do so. This kind of violence has no place in this country.
One thing is for certain: Some of these people apparently don’t know how to change a channel if they don’t like what’s on it. If anyone needs help with learning where the buttons for channel surfing are, you can always ask for help. No one will judge you.
The FCC’s disclaimer states that “a complaint or comment does not necessarily indicate any wrongdoing,” confirming that television networks are not directly at fault simply because someone does not like the content played there. This is good news for AMC, who’s highly unlikely to take any of these complaints into consideration as they continue to build their shared universe of zombie shows.
Due to the ongoing pandemic creating issues with post-production, The Walking Dead was forced to wrap up its 10th season with episode 15 “The Tower,” with its true finale postponed until sometime later this year. Stay tuned here for more on when you’ll get to see how the season closes out and what to expect from season 11, which may be delayed for quite a while, too.