Narm / The Walking Dead (2010)

They're supposed to be grieving their closest loved one. Instead, it became a meme.

The Walking Dead (2010) may be one of the most popular shows on the air, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have some good old-fashioned Narm.

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In General

• Almost every single Title Drop (with some exceptions) looks like a silly attempt to centralize the viewer's thoughts into the idea of the episode. Sometimes it becomes outright bizarre when it dies not even jive with the character saying it.
• You want to know where the "Dale face" meme came from? Well,◊ look◊.
• Abraham's Bowdlerized lines like "And there is no damned corner on this damned Earth that has not been dicked hard beyond all damned recognition," "Plan just got dicked," and "Mother dick!" However, most fans accept these catchphrases as an integral part of Abe's character, making them into Narm Charm instead.
• Comic fans often have a good chuckle at the Bowdlerization of several profane and iconic comic book lines, like "They're fucking with the wrong people" (see the Season 4 tab), some of Negan's lines, and Joe (the lead Marauder) telling Rick he screwed up repeatedly.
• After several seasons, some fans have become so Conditioned to Accept Horror that they now view a lot of the show's Gorn and deaths as Black Comedy and the perpetual discourses on life, leadership, morality, humanity, and survival as less Serious Business and more take a drink.
  • Even the actors' deliveries of the series' perpetual sermons fall flat, reducing what may seem to the writers on paper as dramatic, moving speeches to nonsensical, hamfisted rambling that no real person would actually say.
• The Talking Dead promos can have this effect, especially when they react very melodramatically to character deaths that just happened mere seconds ago.
• It's started happening more frequently in recent seasons, but the show has a very compressed timeline and only two or so years have passed In-Universe, while Season 8 will begin about seven years after the pilot's premiere. It's very jarring when events are recalled as having happened only the previous day or so, when it's possible that the episode being referenced aired several weeks prior. This is especially bizarre when a season premiere will begin literally moments after the previous season ended, such as Season 6 showing Eugene recalling the town meeting the night before, when the Season 5 finale aired about six months prior. Maggie and Glenn deciding to have a child in Season 6 is odd since they've only been there a week or so, have seen its many problems and still think it's safe enough to conceive and raise a child there.
  • On the same beat, the show's shooting schedule begins in early summer and ends in November, meaning that the final episodes of the season always feature the cast being bundled up and visibly breathing cold air. However, sometimes it's odd since Season 3 started with the gang just coming off of their first winter, only to be bundled up and cold at season's end when only a week or so has passed; or in Season 6's premiere when everyone is dressed lightly for the summer when they'd just been bundled up two nights before.
• The series becomes more and more self-aware and unnatural in its attempts to avoid using the Z word, as Rick's group keeps encountering new people and groups with their own terms for the zombies, such as Gnawer, Biter, Roamer, etc.

Season 1

• Although Narm Charm for some (he has been through a massive shock, after all), Rick's Inelegant Blubbering and collapsing to the floor upon discovering that his family is no longer at the house is so over the top it's hilarious, doubled by the fact that he's still wearing his hospital gown when he does it.
• Daryl's double Big "NO!" upon finding his brother's severed hand on the roof, which got played over again in the "Previously on…" segment for next episode.
• "YOU'RE KILLING US!"
• Glenn randomly shouting the line "We don't burn them!" only to immediately drop back to calm for "We bury them," during the aftermath of the Fishfry Attack.
• Duane's over dramatic celebration of being able to take a shower. While Rick and Morgan just take a quiet shower, Duane acts like he's at a rave.
  Duane: Whooo! Yeah! Hot wateeeeeer!. [does an annoying dance] Umph, Umph, Umph. Yeah, bring it around!
• Don't Dead, Open Inside.
• Near the end of Episode 6 when the group is trying to escape the building. T-Dog tries to break down a window with a chair. The screaming he does while doing this can cause some laughs.

Season 2

• A deleted scene from early in the season features Dale turning a derelict car on and listening to some smug evangelist bragging about the apocalypse being God's punishment and relishing apparently being right about everything. Dale is understandably irritated at the asshole, and makes a funny quip about God ordering him to shove the evangelist's mic up his ass if he ever meets him... but there's nobody else around, Dale is lecturing and telling off a radio. It's of little surprise this was cut.
• While telling Lori he thinks Shane sacrificed Otis back at the school, Dale suddenly shouts, "He knew how to handle walkers?!?" with a bizarre inflection that sounds as if he's asking a question.
• When Shane is preparing to get the group to wipe out the barn walkers, Rick is pathetically screaming at him "BROTHER! THIS IS NOT THE WAY!" It's pretty cringeworthy.
• One of the walkers Shane baits with his own blood while trapped on a bus in "18 Miles Out" sticks its tongue out rather hilariously in an attempt to reach the blood.
  • From the same episode, when Rick has killed two walkers, they drop on top of him. A third one then attempts to attack him and swats Rick's hand away when he tries to shoot him. YourMovieSucks.org Lamp Shaded how ridiculous this is in his review:
  YMS (as the walker):[In irritated voice] Stop it! Cut it out!

Season 3

• When Rick reacts to Lori's death by bending to face Carl and saying, "Ohh no...", the way he does it and his tone of voice can make him seem mocking rather than grief-stricken, which (combined with the fact they were mourning The Scrappy) gave rise to the Rick's Terrible Dad Jokes meme.
• When Daryl finds his brother Merle when he's reanimated after being killed by the Governer he naturally begins to cry. But Norman Reedus scrunches up his face◊ so much that it just becomes comical. This was obviously noticed by the fans and became a meme.

Season 4

• The Governor emerging from (and nearly getting stuck in) a really tiny yellow tent in "Live Bait". This was followed by him running over Woodbury with a truck and then burning the entire town with a silent rage on his face while a melancholic song plays on the background, making it look like a Wangsty music video.
• Rick's Wham Line, "They're screwing with the wrong people", in the Season 4 finale is hard to take seriously when the Season 5 premiere proves they really did need a Deus ex Machina to survive. A number of comic readers also smirked at the line's Bowdlerization.

Season 5

• Bob's semi-delirious screaming "TAAAINTEED MEEEEEAAAAAT!" before being kicked in the face and instantly knocked out.
• Beth's death is so sudden that some viewers found it hard to take seriously at first, eliciting double takes, rewinds, and even confused laughter over its seeming randomness. On the other hand, some found Maggie's sudden excitement over their possible reunion (especially after exhibiting Angst? What Angst? about it all season) made it laughably easy to predict the upcoming swerve.
• When the group are rushing to save Tyreese after amputating his bitten arm in "What Happened and What's Going On" it's supposed to be a very intense and emotional scene, but the sheer number of problems that arise is comical. First they've got to open a chained gate and kill a swarm of zombies that nearly bite him again, then they get him tangled in a wire fence near another ominous zombie, then their car gets stuck in the mud, then they immediately crash into a cargo truck that spills bisected zombies everywhere. It's as if the universe itself didn't want him to live.
• "Them" has Rick finally deliver the long-awaited Title Drop... which is then ruined when Daryl replies by stoically grumbling the episode's title, "We ain't them..." to which Rick agrees only for Daryl to repeat himself in the exact same tone.

Season 6

• In "Here's Not Here", a flashback has Morgan waking up in the cabin of a stranger to which Morgan almost immediately starts to scream "KILL MEEE! KILL MEEE! KILL MEEE!". While nothing is wrong with Lennie James' acting, it can still be hard to take seriously.
• Carol's anguished declaration that "I will kill you to kill him so no one else has to die," in "Start to Finish".
• In "No Way Out", Rick decides after two minutes of uninterrupted walking that his plan isn't working and they need a new one, even though it had been going perfectly.
  • Owen the Alpha Wolf showing what appears to be a conscience completely out of nowhere after a whole season of being an unrepentant murderer just in time for Carol to shoot him. Needless to say, few people bought the change of heart and cheered for Carol.
• In "Knots Untie", after Rick kills Ethan, a member of the Hilltop Colony who tried to kill Gregory, Rick sees that everyone is staring at him in shock, and the camera reveals that Rick's mouth is covered in blood. Considering the amount of gore that there is in the show, as well as the fact that they were adapting a moment from the comics, this instead feels more like an unexpected, laughable moment rather than a dramatic one. Rick's line, though faithful to the comics and appropriately bewildered (as it shows how conditioned Rick is to horror), doesn't help at all.
  Rick: What?
• Carol's sudden romance with Tobin, after they'd had only a short moment of Ship Tease in Season 5.
• Abraham says "Why are dingleberries brown? Just the way shit is" in "Not Tomorrow Yet". While any other time this would be another hilarious Abrahamism, it comes off as exceedingly poor-timed and stupid considering he is cruelly dumping Rosita at the same time.
• Dwight shoots Daryl at the end of "East", and the camera fades to black, but Dwight is quickly heard saying "You'll be fine". It's clearly meant to address the audience that Daryl will survive, but it is bewildering and silly considering that it was clearly meant to drum up suspense, only for Dwight to immediately defuse it.
• Negan's arrival in "Last Day on Earth" is heavily bowdlerized for TV, and it works well for the most part, except when "fucked" is replaced with "pegged", which needless to say doesn't have quite the same effect.
  • There's also the build-up to the scene, where after half a season of being mostly ineffectual and no match for Rick's crew, the Saviors abruptly turn into what one review described as "genius psychic ninjas" who effortlessly pen the group in at every turn.
  • The dripping blood effect used in the POV shot of Negan's victim as he's killing them has been seen as goofy in how cheap-looking it is, comparing it to the one from the famous Bond Gun Barrel scene, or the opening credits to the Goosebumps (1995) TV show.

Season 7

• In the Comic-Con trailer, Negan has an odd drawl when he says "this is the oooooonly way". His usual smug grin also makes him look and sound kinda high. Less so in the actual scene, though.
• In one of the trailers leading up to the season premiere, we get treated to huge, bold text insisting vehemently that "YOU. WILL. KNOW." It's good for a dark chuckle that the show runners clearly feel they may have indeed lost some credibility after the cliffhanger and have to so strongly insist that the plot will actually be resolved in the season premiere.
• In the middle of an intense scene where Rick is fighting off walkers, we're treated to a series of rapid black-and-white montages of each person who was back in the lineup. If one looks closely they'll notice that one of Aaron's flashbacks is the Season 5 scene where Rick force-feeds him applesauce to test whether or not it's been poisoned.
• Rick's hilariously goofy dream of the entire group sitting at a long banquet table outdoors in Alexandria. No wonder Negan said it was a silly daydream.
• Negan arriving in Alexandria is accompanied by him shouting "Hot diggity dog!" followed by a zoom out that wouldn't look out of place on The Office. Arguably Narm Charm considering the moment is supposed to be somewhat comedic.
• After so long of the show's world being portrayed as the last dregs of humanity barely hanging on to civilization, it gets pretty goofy when this season suddenly reveals there's at least four large, stable communities within driving distance of Alexandria.
• Carl and Rosita's attempts to kill Negan, which are both so hilariously incompetent (Rosita perfectly nails Lucille, for crying out loud!) that it honestly comes off like they know they're in a TV show and the main bad guy can't die yet. Even Eugene warned Rosita that it probably would end badly and just get more people hurt.
• The end of "Hearts Still Beating" is a pretty heartwarming reunion and resolve to fight back against Negan, but we get some fairly lengthy shots of each member of the group smiling. It gets a little awkward.
• The group reunites with Morgan in "Rock in the Road" at the Kingdom. The only thing is, it comes off as really... odd to see Tara and Sasha going to hug him, as they'd never really interacted before this scene.
• Richard's incredibly convoluted Xanatos Roulette plan to use Carol's death to get Ezekiel to go to war with the Saviors.
• The Scavengers/Heapsters/Trash People. Especially their habit of being a bit... creative with their grammar when they speak.
• The CGI deer from "Say Yes".
• At the end of "The Other Side", Sasha runs off into the Sanctuary guns blazing, crying and smiling, dramatically telling Rosita that it's not her time and that the group still needs her. Um... last we checked, the group still needs you too, Sasha. The fact that this was later revealed to not be a moment needed to ensure Sasha's quick exit from the show because the actress had been cast on Star Trek: Discovery, but rather intended to be taken completely seriously arguably makes it worse because it instead sacrifices a main character's common sense for the sake of an Idiot Ball moment needed to push the plot forward.
• The sudden appearance of Shiva and reinforcements from the Kingdom and Hilltop in the finale (while admittedly a CMOA) was this for some people. Just the sheer fact that apparently none of the huge group of Saviors, Scavengers or Alexandrian captives saw a freaking tiger about to pounce on them... And then there's the fact that somehow Shiva knows exactly who the bad guys are...
• The speech at the very end of the finale somewhat borders on this. Yes, it's a nice tribute to Glenn but it very quickly becomes long-winded and repetitive and a little preachy. Especially after Negan's to-the-point "We're going to war!".

Season 8

• Season 8 became infamous for using strange close-up shots of the cast that crossfade into each other in several episodes. This meant you had to watch Eugene stare blankly into the camera, or watch Ezekiel look off into the distance for a while. It reached an even more ridiculous level in "The Key", which features lengthy close-ups of Negan, Simon, and Dwight looking off-camera, but without the cross-fade, making it even more boring and silly. It’s clear these latter examples were intended to be more cross fade shots, but perhaps due to backlash against it, the transitions were cut, but without any other footage to use, we just got stuck with this attempt at a compromise.
• Aaron's face when he sees the reanimated Eric disappearing into a herd, meaning that Aaron cannot put him down peacefully. He is supposed to be emulating grief, but instead, it appears to show him oddly smiling and about to laugh.
• Shiva's sort of pointless and anticlimactic death scene. She appears out of nowhere to help rescue Ezekiel from a small group of walkers, easily dispatches a couple of them, then just kind of lies down and lets the other ten or so eat her with minimal resistance despite clearly being strong and fast enough to fight them off.
• "I DID NOT EAT THOSE PANCAKES!" At least we know Gregory is supposed to be hamming it up to be let back in.
• The rather hamfisted Red Shirt treatment of Neil. He suddenly speaks up in a corny voice, "damn straight", and then says "oh shit". And then he's quickly killed off. As if he wasn't a painfully obvious Red Shirt from the start, his corny accent and swearing makes him sound like he's trying to be a discount Abraham.
• Carl’s death often haphazardly cuts to Morgan and Carol rescuing Ezekiel from the Saviors, ruining the drama and tension of the moment.
• Gavin tells his men to "stop picking dingles". Much like Neil before him, he comes off as a poor man’s Abraham.
• The producer statement that the season's back half would feature their first fully nude zombie. Even more than the above-mentioned "You will know," it comes off as an especially desperate piece of marketing after the show got its lowest ratings since Season 2 in the season's first half.
• Jadis suddenly starts speaking normally in her shock at losing all of her people, giving the impression that all along the Scavengers were just a bunch of theater hipsters who all talked like cavemen just because they thought it made them seem cooler than the squares. Her monologue about how she saw the world and her philosophy also fell on plenty of deaf ears, since her entire community was a bunch of Scrappies.
• Enid’s reaction to hearing of Carl’s death also unfortunately sees Katelyn Nacon take a leaf from Ross Marquand’s acting earlier in “Monsters”, looking like she’s about to laugh and smile rather than like she’s breaking down crying.
• Midge and Hilda, much like the Scavengers, come off as silly hipsters even though they're clearly intended to be comic relief. They just seem like they're trying way too hard to be memorable and quirky, and join Neil and Gavin as discount Abraham's.
• The zombie attack in "Do Not Send Us Astray," where the dramatic tension is based entirely on every single person at Hilltop sleeping like, well, the dead, not hearing the likes of a zombie falling through a staircase or a nurse screaming as she's devoured. Plus, they apparently didn't feel any need to lock the door despite having just fended off an attack by the Saviors (or at least put up some kind of barrier since the door was open to allow better air circulation with about a hundred people sleeping inside).
• Gavin’s posthumous conversations with Morgan. The Madness Mantra of “you know what it is” sounds less like drama and more like Wiz Khalifa.
• Jadis bringing out her bizarre walker contraption is so random and out of nowhere and yet the show believes we should take her 100% seriously since Negan’s life is in danger. It’s like the writers had a weird idea for a walker and decided to shoehorn it in.
• In “Wrath”, Gregory is quickly ushered out to Simon’s meeting with his co-conspirators as if he’s a loyal member of their scheme. It comes off more like they needed to have Xander Berkeley on scene to fill some of his contract or something.
• Duke, the Savior with electric blue hair, came off as particularly ridiculous to many viewers. Thankfully, he only appears for a short few moments before he’s fed to Rick as a sacrifice.

Season 9

• The death of Ken really doesn’t resonate as much as the show seems to think it does, because the character was literally a Red Shirt who was introduced a few minutes before his death. Sure, his death sets off a big chain of events, but are we really supposed to buy that the death of this Red Shirt is a major loss that earned a dramatic reaction from the characters and a rousing, emotional score?
• The Saviors are shown to practically worship Rick as a war hero. It’s certainly an interesting development, but the way they over-enthusiastically nod at the littlest things he says are just too heavy-handed to be taken seriously.
  Rifftrax: Could you be anymore subtle with your nodding? People in Cuba can see you doing it!
• Anne pulls out one last weird walker contraption to kill Gabriel with and it’s just plain odd. Her last note to Gabriel sounds like more of her weird hipster dialogue despite apparently being an emotional scene.
• The utterly random appearance of Sasha, who was never that close to Rick, among the dead characters he converses with in his final episode. While the point of the scene is to show someone who made a Heroic Sacrifice to protect their friends, it’s still very jarring to see Sasha of all people return after Shane and Hershel, two characters he was actually close to.
• In “Evolution”, Earl is seen awkwardly standing in the background listening to Tara and Michonne’s conversation. Like Gregory in “Wrath”, it comes off as shoehorning the character in just to fill John Finn’s quota or something.
• Some of Tammy Rose’s lines make her into more of a mouthpiece for the writers than an actual character; she spells out most of Maggie’s arc in the first half of the season and later does the same for Tara in the mid season premiere.

Season 10

• Before the last commercial break of “Morning Star”, Jerry pops his neck preparing for battle. When we cut back... Jerry does it again, and it’s the exact same footage, just from a different angle. Oops.
• A few of Daryl’s lines in the opening of “Walk With Us” are clearly added in ADR (additional dialogue recording) just to benefit the audience and tell them what the Hilltop defenders are doing.
• Starting with “Look at the Flowers”, the show seems to insist that Jerry and Magna have this strong friendship between them, even though they have barely interacted before this episode. Their reunion where Jerry has a big, emotional reaction to Magna’s return is pretty awkward and feels forced. While it’s implied Jerry felt guilty for Magna and Connie getting trapped in the cave, it was literally never brought up before now if that was the case. Later the two pair up for the herd mission in “A Certain Doom”, which again, feels off as no effort has been made to establish the two as having a strong friendship.
  • In “Look at the Flowers”, “Alexandria resident #9” runs to Magna to give her a big hug upon their reunion. Given the character is merely an extra and Magna herself has shown little capacity for any strong friendships outside her original group, it’s once again odd to see.
• The first shot we see of Eugene’s group in "A Certain Doom" is of them hurrying in their bikes, and the next scene of them... is Eugene after crashing into the side of a bus. It’s very abrupt considering they were just fine a scene ago.
• Beatrice’s death also doesn’t really resonate as much as the show seems to think it does since the character hasn’t appeared in almost two seasons and was still a minor Mauve Shirt at best. Some viewers found it amusing that she was the only heroic casualty of the finale.
• Also from "A Certain Doom": Minor Hilltop resident Bertie returns to give Carol side-eye for releasing Negan so he could later partake in the attack on Hilltop, and then later greeting Nabila. For a character who most viewers probably wouldn’t recognize unless she was specifically pointed out, the two brief scenes are just odd in how they focus on such an irrelevant character.
• Due to real-life circumstances from the COVID-19 pandemic, only a certain amount of characters could be in a given episode, and sometimes it shows. In “Find Me”, Carol has a monologue basically spelling out how the community feels after the loss of Hilltop and the damage inflicted at Alexandria, as well as claiming that Jerry is stepping up more as a leader despite no real evidence on-screen at the time.

Season 11

• Despite the Commonwealth being described as having the largest population of a settlement to date (50,000 people), it only ever looks slightly more populated than Alexandria, which is housing three communities of a couple hundred survivors. This is likely due to COVID-19 protocols limiting the number of actors that can be allowed to film at one time. This changes in the second and third parts of the season, presumably due to said protocols loosening up and allowing more people to be present on set, but there are still big scenes such as Founder's Day in "A New Deal", an event that's supposed to be celebrated by the entire community that cost tens of thousands of dollars to fund, where we only see a hundred people tops; or the climactic scene at the gates of the estates in "Rest in Peace" where only a hundred people tops showed up to seek refuge out of tens of thousands.
• During the big reunion at the end of "No Other Way", Maggie can be seen embracing Magna in the background of one of the shots, despite them having had almost no on-screen interaction prior to this scene other than quietly working together to infiltrate the military base at the start of the season. It doesn't help that the reunion taking place in the foreground is between Daryl and Connie, a heartwarming and emotionally satisfying moment many fans had been anticipating, making the Maggie/Magna interaction look even more jarring and out-of-place by comparison.
• The Commonwealth soldiers can look like goofy knockoff Stormtroopers in their clunky plastic white uniforms, and the fact that none of the resident Deadpan Snarker characters comment on it (other than a brief comment by Princess, who compares them to a "bunch of scary action figures that came to life") makes it seem like they're meant to be taken completely seriously.
• Pamela is very clearly not at the beach in “The Lucky Ones”, and is on a green screen stage with her feet in a fake beach. What’s more, Rachel is treated as the sole leader of Oceanside with no mention of Cyndie whatsoever, and she also declares Oceanside won’t join an alliance with the Commonwealth out of loyalty to Maggie… who was absent for several years and never really displayed any significant loyalty to their community.
• Moto (already a silly name likely only to remind viewers of a certain hunky hippo) the poppy farm manager calling Lance a "mother puss bucket!"
• Luke and Jules return and finally give an update on what happened to Oceanside, but apparently a few hours later they decide to stop and tell a few more details they neglected to give earlier. It’s a hamfisted way of giving exposition for something that is never really expanded upon again.
• Rick and Michonne’s cameos to close the series, while awesome in their own right, soon begin to wear thin due to the confusing timeline and the long, rambling monologues courtesy of Scott Gimple, who is still infamous for his preachy monologues.

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