Here's a no brainer: The Walking Dead is a fictional TV show. Therefore, when discussing the much-anticipated season 7 premiere, one should keep in mind that it's not real. Repeat. The Walking Dead is not real.
"There is no government. There is no authority. There is no law. There's only chaos. And there's only these walkers and then bad people trying to kill less bad [people]," Co-host Pat Gray said Monday on The Glenn Beck Program.
Co-host Jeffy concurred.
"Groups of people trying to survive with each other," he said.
Pat went on to marvel at people hanging on to their humanity in that type of situation.
"Guys, you realize this isn't a documentary, you realize that?" Co-host Stu Burguiere bravely asked.
Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these battered questions:
• What does Pat consider the greatest TV show before The Walking Dead?
• Is The Walking Dead torture porn?
• How did 24 turn into a commercial for CAIR and global warming?
• Why would Pat become violent with Jeffy?
• Is there a new standard in TV violence?
Listen to this segment, beginning at mark 38:28, from The Glenn Beck Program:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:
The Walking Dead premiered season seven, is it, Jeffy?
JEFFY: Yes, it did.
PAT: Season seven, last night. And we'll start there, right now.
(music)
PAT: I'd have to say The Walking Dead is one of the best television shows of all time. Would you agree with that?
JEFFY: I would. I would agree with you. Yeah.
PAT: I mean, I -- 24 -- up until now, up until recently, 24 was probably the TV show that I thought was maybe the greatest of all time.
JEFFY: For you.
PAT: Every week was like movie-quality programming, during the best years of 24. And then at the end, it was like, "Shut up." It was a commercial for CAIR toward the end and global warming.
STU: And global warming.
PAT: Oh, it was agonizing.
STU: It's funny. Now you're seeing like a pushback against that. What was that movie? It was an English movie -- a bunch of English guys, and they were kind of like in their own little FBI, Secret Service. The -- oh, God. The Kingsman. The Kingsman. Anyone see the Kingsman?
The villain in that movie was a guy -- it was Samuel L. Jackson, who his belief was man was killing the environment so much, he had to wipe out most of humanity. And so he was starting out this like doomsday-level event to call all these people. The new movie with Tom Hanks coming out which is from the Da Vinci Code.
JEFFY: Oh, yeah, yeah.
STU: Seemingly from the previews --
PAT: It's called Inferno.
JEFFY: That's what it is. Right? Yeah.
STU: Inferno. The Inferno virus is something created by a crazy environmentalist who believes he has to wipe out most of the world's population because the earth is destroying it.
PAT: Wow.
STU: I mean, two from Hollywood.
PAT: Good.
STU: Kind of incredible to see that.
PAT: It is.
STU: Yeah, but you go back to the 24 days, that was a big thing. They break to say, by the way, we want -- sure, we shot and tortured a bunch of Muslim terrorists.
PAT: We didn't mean to. And don't ever think that any Muslim is ever responsible for any terrorism because that just can't happen. That can't happen.
JEFFY: Ever.
STU: This is fiction. And you shouldn't go beat up your local Muslim because we know you people. We know what you're like.
PAT: Thanks, Keeper. None of us could figure that out on our own.
STU: Exactly. And then global warming, I don't even know how that one was thrown in there. Look, if you're going to kill a bunch of terrorists, you're going to emit some CO2. And that's why -- that was just a bizarre tie-in. But I think it was one of the costs of liberals participating in a conservative show. It's like Kiefer (phonetic). Come on, do the show. It's a great show. It's about struggling against terrorism. Look, I'm not comfortable about that material. If I can do a message about global warming though, a serious message in the break and just say, "Guys, I know -- this is all fun and games. This whole terrorism thing, it's not real." But you know what is real: Invisible gas, changing your world. That is -- you needed to have that in there to get them to play along.
PAT: They did. And they deny it. I mean, we talked to Joel (inaudible) that one time. Had a get-together. And I asked him if, you know, he was forced. And he didn't think that they were doing anything out of the ordinary.
JEFFY: Right.
PAT: And I don't know if he just -- if that was just the line he had to sell to feel better about it.
STU: Well, I think --
PAT: But it was pretty clear they had caved at the end.
STU: I think too, there's an instance of you're trying to be surprising, right? The thing with 24, there was always unexpected twists and turns. And you could say that, okay. The Muslim -- because there's always a low-level Muslim terrorist involved in every 24 plot. At the very lowest level, there's a Muslim terrorist. There's an Islamic extremist involved.
PAT: Yeah, but it's usually the president or vice president of the United States that's really behind it.
STU: Right. Who is really behind it, it's always like a Croatian. Okay.
PAT: A Croatian, but with help from the US government. You got to get that help from the US government.
STU: Always. It's always an inside job.
PAT: Always. There was a French guy one year. There was a Croatian. There was a French guy. I don't know which. And then there was some Frenchy guy in there.
STU: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
PAT: It was always --
STU: Nazis. There's the one Nazi who --
PAT: South African. South Africans are popular.
STU: Yeah.
PAT: You can make fun of them all day because of apartheid.
STU: So The Walking Dead doesn't do this. All the walkers are not Republicans or anything like that.
PAT: Actually, we don't to have deal pretty much with any politics like that.
STU: You're just beating the crap out of zombies?
PAT: Yeah. And live people.
JEFFY: Yeah, this year --
PAT: Really, it's kind of morphed into -- the zombies are sort of secondary now.
STU: Yeah.
PAT: It's really the live people you have to worry about.
JEFFY: And, first of all, we don't call them zombies.
STU: They're walkers. I know. But if you don't watch the show, you might not understand them.
PAT: Hardly anybody doesn't watch the show, it's the number one show on TV.
JEFFY: Yeah, I'll be fascinated to see the ratings from last night.
PAT: Yeah, it will be interesting.
JEFFY: What they were. Because I was just reading, season six, last season, they were 48 percent higher than the top show on broadcast TV, season six, their ratings. 18-49.
PAT: Wow. Wow.
JEFFY: That's pretty impressive.
PAT: It's on AMC. Think of that.
JEFFY: I know.
PAT: I mean, there was a time five years ago we didn't think that was possible. There will never be a cable show that would beat network television. That just won't happen.
STU: It's not even close.
PAT: It's not even close. And now, because of The Walking Dead and other shows -- Breaking Bad broke a lot of ground and created a lot of buzz. And then that kind of built up for The Walking Dead. And now, look at where that is. The by far the number one show on TV. By far. So it will be interesting to see how well --
JEFFY: I want to talk about it really bad. And you're going to not want me to talk about the episode --
PAT: Well, they were saying there was a lot of violence, right?
JEFFY: There was quite a bit of violence.
PAT: A lot of violence.
JEFFY: With -- and there was quite a bit of violence done by Lucille, the bat.
PAT: If you divulge one thing -- because I haven't seen it yet -- if you divulge -- if you wreck this for me, the violence on that show will be nothing compared to the violence I'm going to reign down on you today. Don't even do it. Don't even do it.
STU: Well, I think it was Dana Loesch who is on TheBlaze as well, tweeted something to the effect of that it's essentially -- we -- it's torture porn. Like, we're to the point where now, we're getting to torture porn in this show.
JEFFY: Well --
PAT: That was one of the knocks on it. We read an article last week, about the decline or something of The Walking Dead. And their deal was, it started out as kind of charming violence or gore. And now it's become something -- it's morphed into something more than that.
JEFFY: Yeah. And they were -- in that article, he was talking about how he wanted the survivors to evolve. And he was saying the survivors haven't evolved enough. In the article, he mentioned Carol. But really, when you -- I think all the characters have evolved, quite a lot.
PAT: Oh, yeah. They have.
JEFFY: They've done the best they can to hold on to their humanity. I mean, that's what makes the show so good. Right?
PAT: Right.
JEFFY: And we're at a point now where --
PAT: And you see that struggle all along, to hang on to some remnant of humanity.
JEFFY: Right. Right. I mean, that's what makes them different than the people they run into.
PAT: Because if you know about what the show is about, we're at seven years now into this apocalypse, where every -- society has completely broken down.
JEFFY: Yeah.
PAT: There is no government. There is no authority. There is no law. There's only chaos. And there's only these walkers and then bad people trying to kill less bad --
JEFFY: Groups of people trying to survive with each other.
PAT: Yes. And they're trying to set up some form of hierarchy so that there can be some order among the chaos. And for anybody to hang onto humanity in that situation, it's pretty amazing. Pretty amazing.
JEFFY: Yeah. And this show shows you obviously how difficult it is with all the obvious around them.
STU: Guys, you realize this isn't a documentary, you realize that?
JEFFY: For instance, what happened last night, Stu.
PAT: So you're not going to tell us what happened last night?
STU: The Economist did an article about guns and how they get into films. And it's largely about how basically, you know, gun manufacturers -- like how specific guns get into films, they become popular and their sales go up. You know, just like product placement for anything.
JEFFY: Sure.
STU: But there's one little nugget in there that I thought was pretty interesting. Researchers have found that gun violence in PG-13 films -- and this doesn't necessarily go to all violence, but this is just specifically gun violence. In recent years has -- has tripled since 1985 and has even exceeded the violence in R-rated films.
PAT: Wow.
STU: And we're seeing this -- Walking Dead is an example of this, where it's become so violent. There's some scenes in Breaking Bad is another one. Is so incredibly violent and disturbing. And it's going further and further and further on that. And it's a weird line. Because for some reason, that's much more okay than -- than the oversexualized stuff and even the language.
PAT: And that's explainable.
STU: I think it is. I think it is.
PAT: You're much less likely to go out and murder somebody after you've seen violence than you are to go out and have sex with somebody once you've been stimulated in that way, right?
STU: Yeah, I think -- well, I look at it a little bit differently than that.
JEFFY: I don't know.
PAT: Oh, come on. It's a no-brainer.
STU: The difference between it is -- morally speaking, for a second, morally -- because I don't think that stuff -- I don't necessarily think that, you know -- it can. Obviously, like, you know, certain -- opening yourself to certain things that you watch can influence your behavior. It's certainly been shown in studies.
But I think like, more than that is, morally speaking, I have no desire to go out and, you know, torture a zombie or a walker for the next 45 hours. I have no -- maybe I would if I was in that situation. But there's no, like, inherent desire for me to commit violence against another person. Obviously there is inside of most of us, there is a sexual desire that you like.
PAT: Right.
STU: So, you want to see women naked. You don't necessarily want to see -- I have no -- I'm rooting for the person to avoid the violence in most of these movies. You want the person to get away. To escape. That's different motivation, I guess, when it comes to the nudity and such.
But, again, even -- even language -- I mean, Jeffy, ever since I've known Jeffy --
JEFFY: Language.
STU: -- one of the first things he said out of his mouth when we were doing radio is, "I'm not the word police," when someone was swearing on the air. "I'm not the word police."
Jeffy, you're supposed to press the dump button --
JEFFY: I'm not the word police.
STU: I'm not the word police. That was the big Jeffy thing. Ever since I've known him, he's said that.
But you think about it, we really do monitor language much more than we monitor violence.
JEFFY: Yes, we do.
STU: It's a shocking thing. I mean, if someone comes on the air and swears here, we're going to dump your words. But, I mean, there would be huge consequences if we didn't. You know, the FCC would be all over that. We could go on and on and on about extreme violence. And in some cases, to make points about war and terrorism and things like that, we have. We've talked to you about people being beheaded on the border and all of that. The crime that goes on there. You know, you could do that all day. But if you say a word that is a little bit salty, you know, the whole world collapses. It is a weird standard.
JEFFY: Oh, my gosh. I know.
STU: I do think that is a strange standard. And we all kind of accept the violence thing. And sometimes it is, it can be really disturbing. I mean, stuff that was in Saw, you can now see --
JEFFY: It was there for the violence. That was the whole point of those movies, right? Was to just see how bad you could torture people.
STU: I think it was the problem-solving Jeffy.
JEFFY: Oh.
STU: How do -- it was more of an IQ test.
JEFFY: You're right. You're right. How to get out of it. I apologize. You're right. You're right.
STU: But, I mean, a lot of that stuff -- certainly on HBO, for sure. But even on AMC -- you know, a scene in Breaking Bad comes to mind, where they needed to get rid of a body, and they put it in a bathtub with acid and stuff like that. It was really disturbing.
PAT: And there's some disturbing scenes in in The Walking Dead. I mean, seriously disturbing. Things you thought you could never see on TV are right there for you.
STU: And it's the number one show on television --
JEFFY: I know.
STU: Remember how they used to say, well, like family hour. When you have shows that are aimed at a large audience, you don't put those things in there. I mean, this is -- while it's not aimed at family hour, by any means, it's still a show that's the number one show on television. And, I mean, it's probably the top three or four most violent shows on television.
PAT: Oh, yeah. By far.
STU: The stuff, they talk -- I listen to it. I cannot even discuss it on the air. I just went on this whole thing about how we can't say certain things on the air. I cannot even discuss on this show what was discussed on a recent episode of Law & Order SVU that I watched. I cannot believe that show airs.
JEFFY: I'll tell you, Criminal Minds does the same thing. Criminal Minds from time to time goes really deep into stuff we can't talk about.
STU: It's insanity. I mean, the fact there is a show that runs every week that is highly rated that every week, as a requirement of the episode, is a detailed description of a brutal rape --
JEFFY: Yeah.
STU: That's the premise of the show, is that they're going to describe how a woman was brutally raped and left on some sidewalk somewhere. And, of course, it's a -- it's one of those shows where you're looking for sort of forensic information and everything. So they always, as a requirement of the show, go into extreme detail about how the crime was committed. What fluid was left where. What -- what it -- I mean, what the medical reports say. And it's insanity. I want -- I was a -- I was in a hospital for -- I had a relative who was in the hospital. And they, you know, of course -- as I think every day they run a non-stop marathon on like TBS or something. And that was the channel was on. So I was in the waiting room for hours and hours and hours. And it was episode after episode after episode of freaking Law & Order SVU. And, you know, I had watched the show a couple times, but never really put it together. These people have put together hundreds of rape story lines.
JEFFY: Oh, yeah.
STU: And it's on normal TV every single week.
JEFFY: And they put together fake rape story lines. And real rape story lines.
STU: Yeah.
JEFFY: And story lines that much -- the top story of the news.
STU: Oh, yeah. They like that.
JEFFY: And old rape story lines. I mean, it's amazing.
STU: It's incredible. The stuff that is discussed on just mainstream television. They always like to say, "Oh, conservatives, they're always trying to control the culture." If we are, we suck at it. I mean, we are terrible at that. I mean, the lines that get blown by every single day on television now, it's incredible.
PAT: It's unbelievable. Yeah, we're past Leave It To Beaver land.
JEFFY: Oh, my gosh, yes. There was a scene last night in Walking Dead --
PAT: Gee, Wally, it wouldn't be real neat-o if you told me what happened last night. I'll crush your skull.
JEFFY: There was a scene last night.
PAT: It wouldn't be real neat-o to tell me.
STU: Come on. Let's just get a quick update from Jeffy of exactly what happened.
PAT: Just overall, was it a great episode?
JEFFY: I enjoyed it, yes.
PAT: Yeah. Okay. 877-727-BECK. More of the Glenn Beck Program. Coming up.
(OUT AT 9:23AM)
PAT: What do you think about this mega merger with AT&T, BellSouth, TimeWarner, Turner TBS, CNN, Warner Brothers, DirecTV, all under the same umbrella? All the same company. Wow.
STU: Yeah.
PAT: I mean, you want the free market to be free, but then you also think, well, isn't that like a monopoly? Don't we have --
STU: Yeah. That standard should be super high for that.
PAT: But, I mean --
STU: If you're going to get the --
PAT: You're getting pretty out of control with a company like that.
STU: Why? To do what? The worry is, they might restrict -- I mean, it's the same net neutrality arguments that get made over and over again. They might restrict people from watching Game of Thrones, because if you're not AT&T or DirecTV.
PAT: Uh-huh.
STU: Well, first of all, they're not going to do that in their own interests. Second of all, should the government get involved because -- if they did this, should the government get involved because Game of Thrones can't be watched by anyone else? Let's just say they want to a ridiculous level they never would. You can't purchase it. You can't watch it. We won't stream it to you if you're on a competitor.
If you have Comcast, you cannot see the show from HBO.
And? Like is that where the government is supposed to step in and get involved.
PAT: Just worry about competition. I worry about -- I mean, this is almost everybody. I mean, this is --
STU: But, again, we've been hearing these warnings for how long. And it's like, have our entertainment options, have they increased or decreased? We've got the number one show on television that's on AMC.
PAT: Yeah. I know.
STU: I mean, we have -- this -- this world -- again, we're at a point where the shows that everybody is talking about are on a network that's not even a network. Netflix -- we talked about this last week on Pat & Stu, which by the way, airs on TheBlaze every single day. And this was a situation where it's Netflix that's spending more than anyone else on original programming. Netflix.
This is -- you know -- I mean, we have more options now than we've ever had before. More high quality television than we've ever had before. These are -- these are the golden years of television right now. I mean, you can go to channels you didn't even know existed five years ago and watch shows that are better than anything that was on television.
PAT: It's nerve-racking because just 15 months ago, AT&T acquired DirecTV. Now if they acquire TimeWarner, that gives it HBO, CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and Warner Brothers. That's a -- that's a pretty massive company.
STU: Yeah.
PAT: Yeah.
Featured Image: Photos from Twitter/The Walking Dead (@WalkingDead_AMC)