Few TV shows on television had a higher body count for named characters than , which relentlessly tore through a whole small town’s worth of briefly featured folk across its 11 seasons on the air. (And that’s before we factor in the show’s six-and-counting spin-offs, each with their own heavy additions to the zombie fodder ranks.) Even so, series star Andrew Lincoln does reckon he knows the one spot where the show went a bit far in its depiction of the death of a beloved character—or, in his words, when “we over-egged the omelet.
” (A very evocative turn of phrase, given how hard this particular egg got cracked.) Lincoln was speaking, of course, of the death of Steven Yeun’s Glenn, which is arguably one of the single most sadistic moments in the entire run of that very sadism-friendly show. In case you forgot, Glenn’s death was executed as part of a weirdly convoluted game of chicken with the audience: Teased in the show’s sixth season finale, then feinted away from, and then delivered with a level of absolute brutality by incoming co-star Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
If you wanted (fairly, a lot of people would argue) to boil down to a very extended exercise in nihilism and masochism, Glenn’s death would be Exhibit A. (You probably wouldn’t say they “over-egged the omelet,” because you aren’t a 1920s fancy man, but the vibe would be the same.) Lincoln was revisiting the moment in , reflecting on his new series , a title that definitely does describe poor, .
