When The Walking Dead first premiered on AMC in 2010, the show quickly established its reputation for being a serious horror series. The first few seasons were packed with emotionally visceral moments and characters that felt genuinely human. As time went on, though, the quality for which so many originally loved this show started to dwindle.
By season 6, many original elements of The Walking Dead had been all but erased. The characters no longer interacted with each other organically, and, instead of making believable decisions and talking like actual human beings, the survivors did ludicrous things and only spoke in purple prose.
With Angela Kang taking over as showrunner midway through season 8, the quality of The Walking Dead has slowly started to improve. Hopefully, it will continue to get better, but the show undeniably still has a very long way to go. Let’s take a look at 10 Walking Dead moments so cringeworthy we almost couldn’t watch them.
The CGI Deer
The Walking Dead’s CGI abilities are questionable at best. Though the show can create some terrifying and memorable zombies, their weaknesses come to surface whenever they resort to other special effects. There have been a number of moments in The Walking Dead has shown audiences just how bad they are at using green screens, and their use of CGI is just as bad.
Somehow they managed to make Shiva the tiger somewhat realistic-looking, but, in an infamous scene that took place in the season 7 episode, “Say Yes,” Rick and Michonne are scouting out an abandoned amusement park and stopped to marvel at a “deer.” Unfortunately, the deer looks hilariously fake, and this scene has become one of the most infamous in TWD history.
Rick Falling For Jessie
Of all the unrealistic storylines that have happened on this show, some of the most ludicrous arcs come from the characters and their relationship. Developing dynamics is not exactly The Walking Dead’s strong suit, and that is definitely emphasized with Rick and Jessie’s “romance” in season 6.
The two meet in season 5 when Rick and the others arrive at Alexandria. Within about five minutes of meeting Jessie—who is married at the time—Rick decides he’s in love with her, and, because of this, makes some of the most ludicrous decisions he’s ever made. This storyline made everyone look bad, and was absolutely cringeworthy.
Ezekiel’s Proposal To Carol
Another example of The Walking Dead attempting to develop a completely contrived romance and sell it to fans who don’t want it, Carol and Ezekiel’s relationship is regarded as one of the worst, least believable in TWD history. Whether it was intentional to make the dynamic between these two feel so wrong, we’ll never really know, but most fans are glad that at least the “love story” between these two is finally over.
The only thing worse than Carol and Ezekiel’s relationship itself was the proposal scene in which Carol’s response to him pulling out a ring was, “put that thing away.”
Rick’s Speeches
When Gimple took over as showrunner in season 4, the quality of the series significantly changed for the worse. Storylines started to make no sense, loose ends were never tied up, and, worst of all, the characters stopped talking and acting like actual people.
Angela Kang has somewhat remedied this since she took over the show midway through season 8, but fans will not soon forget the countless speeches Rick made about surviving and war and the end of the world and how ludicrous and pretentious the dialogue was.
Jadis’ “Quirky” Manner of Speech
Another gift from the era of Gimple, the junkyard gang—sometimes referred to as the Heapsters—was introduced in the tenth episode of season 7. The leader of this group was Jadis, a woman with an unfortunate haircut and an absolutely ridiculous speech pattern.
Jadis spoke in fragmented sentences in what was apparently an attempt to resourcefully only use the most necessary words. This little quirk definitely did not land the way Gimple had probably hoped, and Jadis wound up hilariously sounding like Kevin from The Office when he decided he was too lazy to talk in full sentences.
We Are All Negan
The introduction of Negan and the Saviors was highly anticipated and ceaselessly hyped for quite some time. The villains were introduced in the sixth season, and it was obvious that The Walking Dead crew were really trying their hardest to make the new antagonists as menacing and intimidating as possible.
Unfortunately, this attempt didn’t exactly land, and the more attention that Negan and the Saviors were given, the more ridiculous they looked. The idea that Negan has an entire cult of people who are so infatuated and/or intimated by him that they constantly say things like “we are all Negan” is just very ridiculous.
The Quadrangle
Angela Kang has done a decent job of trying to sift through the mess that was given to her when she took over as showrunner. Of course, a lot of damage was done by the time Kang was promoted, so she definitely had her work cut out for her.
She’s made several improvements, but one storyline she created that has been particularly criticized was that of the quadrangle between Rosita, Father Gabriel, Siddiq, and Eugene. Rosita is dating Father Gabriel, which in itself makes no sense and was revealed completely out of the blue, but had an affair with Siddiq and got pregnant. Father Gabriel, Siddiq, and Rosita make a deal, of sorts, and decide to raise the baby together. At the sidelines, Eugene is also in love with Rosita.
I’m Judith… Judith Grimes
Judith got little screentime when she was a baby/toddler, which makes perfect sense. But, after the six-year time jump that occurred in The Walking Dead’s ninth season, Judith’s character is put in the spotlight, replacing both her brother and father as the main Grimes character.
An older version of Judith was pretty cool at first, but, the more screentime she was given, and the more cringey her dialogue got, the precocious kid and her wacky adventures got old fast.
Henry And Lydia’s Romance
Another unwanted romance that came out of season 9 was that of Henry and Lydia’s. This storyline was absolutely riddled with holes from the very beginning. First of all, it was established several times that Henry had a huge crush on Enid. When he finds out that she’s in a relationship with Alden, Henry rebels and gets himself in so much trouble that he’s sent to the Hilltop’s jail for punishment.
A little while later, Lydia is captured by Daryl and Michonne, and they put her into Hilltop jail as well. Just like that, upon only having met Lydia five seconds ago and after just having a crush on Enid the day before, Henry falls head over heels for Lydia and this, predictably, results in utter disaster.
Still
“Still” was the twelfth episode of season 4, and is definitely still regarded today as being one of the most insane episodes in The Walking Dead history, and not in a good way. The episode featured only Daryl and Beth, who escaped the falling Prison together.
The two characters had not interacted much prior to this, and Daryl acts as Beth’s very immature babysitter for the majority of the episode. “Still” does absolutely nothing to progress that plot and pointlessly features Daryl and Beth getting drunk and setting a cabin on fire. A plot of this quality definitely should not have made it into an actual episode.
