Has "Walking Dead" jumped the zombie shark?

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The show had been gut-wrenching — and I don’t mean that as a dramatic critique.

No, in “Walking Dead” you can see people use things like wrenches to remove guts. It’s a weekly disgust.

My wife, a devoted fan, was eager to talk about it. She wanted to pick my brain.

“Are you done with it?” she asked.

I told her, no. I still feel invested in the characters and the prepper in me is still compiling survival tips on what to do in the event zombie apocalypse becomes a reality and I’ll need to be alert for a more literal kind of brain picking.

But last night’s season 7 premier crossed a line with me.

I won’t say the show jumped the shark. “Walking Dead” producers would never let that happen, opting, I’m sure, to work a zombie shark plot line into the series.

The wanton gruesomeness of last night’s de rigeur violence left me feeling diminished. Is this really how I want to spend an hour? Does this qualify as entertainment?

The presidential debates are more uplifting.

At least with those — and they’re every bit as gruesome as “Walking Dead” — I know I’ll get to see Alec Baldwin ridiculing Trump.

Anytime televised violence becomes stomach turning because characters are getting their stomachs turned (or chewed), it’s time to re-think how I’m spending my time. So I’ll, for now, continue watching “Walking Dead,” but all the while my mind will be drifting to what I’d rather be watching. The list includes:

• Porn — I’ve never been a big porn guy, but something raunchy would be a nice palette cleanser after watching Michonne lop the heads off 30 zombies intent on dining on more than finger sandwiches. If you’re looking for Christmas stocking stuffers, I like ones involving things like the saucy divorcee and her cheerleader roommate surprising the pizza delivery boy with the kind of tip he can’t claim on his tax forms.

• “Cheers” — It’s on one of the retro channels and we DVR about 20 of them at a time. I hadn’t seen the show in about 15 years and I wondered if it still held up. Boy, does it. It remains uproarious with each character deftly acted and right on the money. I love to laugh so, ergo, I’ll always love “Cheers.” It sounds heretical, but it’s right up there with “Seinfeld” and “Seinfeld” is right at the top.

• “The Fugitive” — It was about 20 years ago, before kids, and I was seeking a good show to watch with lunch. Val at the time had a full-time job in Pittsburgh. I vaguely remember my father telling me to check out David Janssen and “The Fugitive” reruns. I watched one and was blown away. Each episode was a dramatic gem. I remember Val coming home and me saying, “We’re going to have to start taping these shows to watch with dinner. They’re that good.” She responded with some version of, yeah, right, we’re going to tape shows that first appeared in 1963. Today, it remains one of our all-time favorite shows. We even have an episode guide!

• “Breaking Bad” — The show went off the air three years ago last month and I’ve ever since been itching to start it all over. It’s that good, in my opinion the best show ever. I’d watch “Mad Men” and “Sopranos” from the start again, too.

• The World Series — Now’s the time of year when every pitch becomes so precious because I know baseball’s about to be cruelly ripped from my life. In the summer, baseball is my televised security blanket. Personal calm is elusive when it isn’t near. Barring a zombie apocalypse, I’ll be writing about the World Series tomorrow in advance of Game 1.

• “The Larry Sanders Show” — Brilliant Garry Shandling comedy with equally brilliant cast led by Jeffrey Tambor and Rip Torn. Again, I just love to laugh and this one makes me very happy. HBO ran 89 episodes from 1992-98. I have a compilation disc with about 20 of them on there. Each is golden. You know what else is still really, really funny? “Third Rock from the Sun,” starring the peerless John Lithgow. Sitcom trivia: The career-making Frasier Crane “Cheers” role that went to Kelsey Grammar was offered first to Lithgow. 

• A roaring fire — Hallelujah! The weather has finally turned. I welcome the fall chill. I love fall days cooking soups and warming the house with a nice fire. And if I’m in front of a fire, naturally, I’ll have a good book with me. I’m right now in the middle of Tom Wolfe’s excellent “Bonfire of the Vanities” from 1986. It’s particularly timely with so many egos and ambitions dominating our news.

• “Walking Dead” — It’ll never be one of my all-time favorite shows — I doubt I’ll ever re-watch more than an episodic scene or two — but this show was once great.

I think it’s too infatuated with devastating its audience with increasingly graphic violence. Last night’s brutal killings of two main and beloved characters couldn’t have been more disgusting.

Plus, I don’t foresee a “Walking Dead” happy ending and that turns me off.

See, I love happy endings.

Like the kind awaiting that lucky pizza delivery boy!

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1993, Hollywood's best year

I hate to sound so cantankerous on a Monday but, consarnit, movies have been going down hill ever since 1993.

This occurred to me during a recent visit to the magnificent Kinzua Dam in northwestern Pennsylvania. 

A monumental dam like the Kinzua is one of man’s most impressive structures.

As a boy I used to build dams in creeks everywhere. For juvenile engineering purposes, certainly, but also because it let me shout a forbidden-sounding word whenever Ma asked how I’d spent my summer afternoon.

Dam!

That has me wondering if profanity-averse parents insist on referring to one of the seven wonders of the world as the Hoover Darn.

But as my wife and I gazed upon the waters of the Allegheny River gushing through in a raging spray from the Kinzua spillway, we each thought the same thing:

Dr. Richard Kimball: “I did not shoot my wife!”

Lt. Philip Gerard: “I don’t care!”

Yes, we each thought of the riveting scene from “The Fugitive” where the wrongly accused Dr. Kimball, played by the dashing Harrison Ford, leaps off the face of a massive dam to either annihilation or uncertain redemption. At the time we had just discovered re-runs of the original David Janssen series that ran from 1963-67. The shows are still among TV’s most compelling ever.

So, fired with the recollection, we raced home, rented the film and popped it in to show the scene to Josie.

She was mesmerized. True adult entertainment done well is riveting to all ages.

Plus, at the end of it, foul-mouthed Joe Pantoliano steps up behind Gerard to utter an incredulous barnyard profanity that, of course, delighted the surprised 10 year old.

Thus, we take another step in our long march away from endless viewings of “Finding Nemo,” “Madagascar” and the three saccharine versions of “High School Musical” to entertainment emancipation of adult films awash in profanity and violence.

I can’t wait.

When we deem her ready for such viewing, I’m taking her straight back to 1993.

I don’t know what kind of recreational drugs that were consuming in Hollywood some 17 years ago, but I wish they’d become fashionable again.

Here are the top 10 grossing movies from 1993:

1. Jurrassic Park
2. Mrs. Doubtfire
3. The Fugitive
4. Schindler’s List
5. The Firm
6. Indecent Proposal
7. Cliffhanger
8. Sleepless in Seattle
9. Philadelphia
10. The Pelican Brief

I’m not going to play critic on the merits of each of these movies when the market already has. It’s given 1993 a huge thumb’s up. Each of these movies has demonstrated remarkable staying power. 

And that’s not all. Here are some other 1993 classics.

There was highbrow: Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence,” and the highly acclaimed Holly Hunter movie, “The Piano.”

There were two comedies that I consider classics of heartwarming mirth: No one would dispute “Groundhog Day” as a classic, but have you seen “Dave,” the Kevin Kline/Sigourney Weaver movie about a presidential look-alike who is pressed into actual duty? It’s outstanding.

Again, I’m not going to comment on the merits of “Free Willy,” “Grumpy Old Men,” “The Joy Luck Club,” “Wayne’s World II,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” or the Schwarzenegger film “The Last Action Hero,” but each of these movies attracted rave reviews and massive audiences.

Two of our favorites from 1994 both starred Clint Eastwood, one you remember, one you probably do not.

“In the Line of Fire” is Eastwood as a decrepit Secret Service agent in pursuit of a homicidal John Malcovich. It’s one of Eastwood’s best.

Lesser known is “A Perfect World,” a wonderfully offbeat film that co-stars Kevin Costner as a down-on-his luck hoodlum who runs away with a young boy. Great film.

The year year also saw the release of the greatest chess movie ever made, “Searching for Bobby Fisher.” There was even a great cowboy movie, “Tombstone.”

Had 1993 been extended by two months one of the greatest movies of all-time would top this list: “The Shawshank Redemption.”

It was the year Bill Clinton took office, the year “The X-Files” and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” debuted, the year Lorena Bobbitt severed her husband; a gallon of gas cost just $1.05.

But I’ll remember it as maybe the best year Hollywood’s ever had. And I can’t wait to sit my daughters down and show them all these great adult movies.

Am I the kind of father who’d risk a little salty language in the ears of impressionables just for the sake of a really good flick?

Er, dam straight!