I’ll probably keep watching if they decide to keep streaming the episodes on their site (TWD is not something my wife wants to watch and I’ll continue to respect that). Failing that, I’ll watch the DVDs sometime. No, I don’t own a DVR and don’t see that changing. Though I’ll note that I watch with breath held, because I’m not sure that they’re working towards an end in mind and while the hanging soap opera threads can work magnificently, they often don’t. Stories gotta end and the way people rhapsodize about the comic being an endless zombie movie (whereas I lost patience with it a long time ago) fills me with suspicion.

Also, it seems like there’s a logical flaw in saying “Darabont’s a lousy writer because he made a character a sexist pig just to make him look shitty and the main character look better” and then also hold Darabont to account for that sexism. The point of the sexism was to say “this character is a dick,” right.

I’m not saying it was a good scene–it wasn’t–or that it was a great idea to lead with–it wasn’t–or even that all the negative things you can show your characters doing are equal–I think it’s easier to understand that when The Sopranos showed Tony running a guy over with his car and then kicking his broken leg in the first epsiode, that’s not an endorsement of running people over on David Chase’s part, where as the dividing line between attitudes expressed by characters and filmmakers can be a much trickier thing to parse. It’s just that I’m not comfortable citing it as characteristic of the show or as a turn-off for the whole thing. I understand that other people have had a much different reaction.

That Wang Chung business was AWFUL. I was embarrassed for Darabont at that point.