Ratings are down. Like, significantly down. Like, down enough not to get the series axed or anything so extreme, but enough that studio execs are for sure going to be taking notice. Has the hit TV series jumped the shark? Is it now beginning the decline, the tailspin impossible to come out of, that will culminate in its eventual end? Once a television show truly starts going downhill, it never changes course. Sure there are peaks and valleys, but the long-term trending is downward. It may limp along for years afterward, ratings slowly trickling away rather than disappearing en masse. It may fade away as opposed to burning out; in fact that’s usually how it happens. But once the ending has begun, there’s no altering the fact. The end is unavoidable.
They sure pissed off a lot of viewers with that season premiere. There’s been a whole lotta grousing about it, and a whole lotta folks, to judge by my social media feed, who have declared “Enough, already!” and quit the show. Did the showrunners go too far with Negan and his baseball-batting of TWO prominent characters in the most explicitly violent manner possible? THE WALKING DEAD won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, but is the withered blossom now off the zombified rose?