(Not that actors Michael Rooker and Iron-E didn’t sell it well or anything like that.)
There are two clear takeaways from that, and we’ll take what’s arguably the more uncomfortable one first: the racism.
Whenever the Dixon brothers were first introduced, Merle was clearly the bigger personality, and part of that was because he was loose-lipped and not exactly morally uptight.
It caused some clashing with T-Dogg at the time, and looking back, those scenes felt a few degrees more uncomfortable than the creative team probably wanted.