The Walking Dead - "Guts"

[Darth Wedgius]

As Chuck pointed out, Merle is a bigot, but he is also a former soldier. He is absolutely a guy you want on your side especially when the rest of the group are mostly hapless civilians. Before Rick turned up, the only other people who knew anything at all about living a 19th century lifestyle with danger on all sides was Shane and Daryl - and this was before Daryl became a badass BTW.

Frankly the idea that bigots won't survive the apocalypse is odd to say the least.

Survive until one of their fellow survivors smothers them in their sleep, because no matter how military badass they might be, they are still a liability to the wellbeing of any group they are part of that is not 100% other bigots with the same type of bigotry. Bigots create division, and disharmony, and damage morale and unit cohesion. And all of those are bigger killers in a crisis than whatever the situation or opponent will be. Bigots get people killed, including themselves. Bigots only survive until the downsides of their bigotry outweighs their usefulness, and that always comes a lot quicker than bigots think it will.

I think having your party include someone who smothers people in their sleep might also cause friction. Maybe if they pinkie swear that it was a one-time thing that might work.

[clearspira]

In Merle's case, the issue isn't so much that he's a bigot, as it is we never see him doing anything that isn't actively detrimental to group survival or morale. If he always acts this way, it does make you wonder how he lasted this long. By contrast, his brother Daryl is also a bigot, but one who seems capable of functioning in society.

Its worth noting that he seems to do just fine as the Governor's main henchman. And that is not a man who is going to put up with bullshit any more than Rick is. In fact, I don't recall him being all that bigoted in season 3, and even he ended up looking at the Guv and thinking ''nah, mate. You are too evil for me. I'm off.''

[TheStarWarsTrek]

Guys, it's not that hard to think of reasons they might put up with Merle.

First, as Chuck pointed out, when we meet Merle he's high and under a lot of stress. And given T Dog's reaction to Merle dropping the N word, I'm guessing he probably hadn't done it before. So it's probable that before he was able to keep his bigotry and/or asshole levels to the point where the group was willing to overlook it. Or maybe Daryl kept him under control.

Second, Daryl. IIRC in the episode after this when Daryl finds out they left his brother behind, he attacks Rick. So either it's a nepotism thing where the group likes Daryl enough they're willing to tolerate Merle, or they're afraid of what might happen if they confront either of the brothers. You can either keep two people who know how to fight/survive on your team, or you can try to kill/exile them and risk them fighting back.

Third, while later on the characters will be very much "I'll do whatever dark deeds I have to in order to survive", this is still only a few months into the apocalypse. There's still hope of safe zones or that the government might make a comeback. If they decide the cons of having Merle around far outweigh the pros, they've got only two options: exile him or kill him. And as Chuck has pointed out in discussions of Klingon honor, for most of history exile from the group was a death sentence. The same applies here. In order for a group who sees themselves as moral, everyday people to cross the line and kill one of their own, it's gotta be something worse than "damaging morale and unit cohesision". (Which frankly sounds like an HR report). At what point does someone go from "argumentative, racist jackass" to "immediate threat to the group who needs to die"?

Hell we could argue that Merele *did* cross the line with his behavior in this episode. And even then not everyone could agree on what to do with him.