@Gus Gorman said:

... and this board is deader than Alpha!

Your statement actually says exactly why that is. The fact that it survived years of being, IMO, a completely garbage show, is why no one cares anymore about it. I was one of the first people to jump on this show's bandwagon being a zombie enthusiast since the early 80s. I also have read about 120 issues of the comic book. But the show really took a nosedive after the cannibals. It especially got bad with how bad they stretched out the Negan arch. I gave up at season 7 and this shows needs to be put out of its misery like a sick dog.

Yeah, the tension is so contrived it's laughable. After all these years, why have they somehow not figured out that, when a herd of walkers is coming their way, and there are dead walker bodies strewn about, they could just pile the bodies to impede the herd's progress, slow them down, and make it easier to pick them off without having to be overrun?

There's a scene in one of the last episodes of season 10 where Daryl sees a walker in a ditch. He could shoot it with his crossbow and collect the arrow without a problem. But, nah. What does he do? He puts his crossbow down, jumps down in the ditch to stab the walker up close, trips (of course), falls; the walker, who had been trapped under a fallen log, magically extricates itself and lands on top of Daryl who now must struggle in close, hand-to-hand combat, risking getting bit or worse. WHY?

Yeah, sure, the acting is good; the characters are complex and believable, the relationships are compelling, the emotions and storylines are all splendid - but the central mechanism and cycles that drives the larger story has been stagnant for far too long. What was once a search for "what's going on?" has devolved into an endless one-upsmanship of

• meet a bad group
• suffer loss from bad group
• vanquish bad group
• regroup
• meet a new badder group
• suffer loss from badder group
• vanquish badder group
• regroup
• meet a new, even badder group
• suffer loss from new, even badder group
• vanquish new, badder group
• regroup

Even reading the above was painful, let alone sitting through season after season of this. And yet, we are no closer to any sort of understanding of "what's going on?"

You'd think that, by this stage, most humans would welcome human contact, stop fighting each other, and focus on trying to survive while finding answers to the bigger questions.

You'd think each settlement would have figured out how to moat/trench/bunker around their settlement sufficiently to remove walkers from the danger equation; to clear the land surrounding the settlement to extend sightlines and reduce the opportunity for any new bad groups to approach undetected, while putting all that wood to good use.

I'm watching season 11 just to see how it finally ends. I was emotionally invested in the characters, and want to see them be ok. I'm also (still) interested in if/how well Rick movie(s) will add meaningfully to the bigger story...if it gets done at all.

But, yeah, it was so bad for so long after being so good, it's hard to push through.

@DRDMovieMusings

You would think by now they would think of a storyline that not only explains the zombie apocalypse but also a way to permanently resolve it. Even to be able to cure people who have recently turned. I mean anything would be more interesting that the rinse and repeat you have described. I saw an advertisement this weekend about "The Final Season" and tried to see if I saw a hint of perhaps something new but nope. Looks like they are sticking to the same tried and tired formula. I'm sure they will bring Rick back for the final season.