How would you know if it's rational or not if you didn't watch?

Negan wanted to break them. The Saviors' M.O. is that they coerce other groups of survivors into doing shit for them.

Rick had a bunch of opportunities to attack him in the trailer

the Negan kill(s) should have been different from the comics* just so the story could play out differently, e.g., showing how characters react to the new regime who were no longer around in the comics.

They needed a moment where Negan could see he broke Rick. When Rick gets pushed into the corner he always pushes back, even if the odds are stacked against him (like with Terminus) and especially Carl is in danger (like the Jeff Kober biker gang, whatever the fuck they were called). Here we have both those things, and…

I would guess it's the powerlessness Rick feels in the face of Negan and the Saviors. What happened with Andrew and Terminus just made him distrustful of others.

but the thing with killing off everyone is that eventually you got no one left from the original crew

Not much of one, because that really comes down to how much of a stubborn bastard Rick is. At the end of the episode, Negan broke Rick's spirit. Rick doesn't want to fight him anymore; as much was clear from his comments to Maggie (he has an army… something like that).

There was a terrible cliffhanger, and then they made it work. They turned around a bad situation. That's pretty good in my eyes. The entire summer I was afraid they would use the cliffhanger as an excuse to kill off a newer character, someone we didn't really care about. Like Aaron or Rosita (a character that's been…

Nothing he does makes any damn sense.

It's okay, we've all tried to cover up our dumb questions as sarcasm before.

Why it gotta be about brain damage?

The longest cliffhanger is resolved.

I did. And before that, I really thought Negan was going to cut off Rick's hand like the Governor did in the comics.

I think it was all about brain damage.

I loved it. All this episode needed to do was make the cliffhanger pay off and establish Negan as a long-term main antagonist. Subverting our expectations by killing off two characters instead of one (one of whom shows The Walking Dead still has some balls left) and having Jeffrey Dean Morgan and his shit-eating grin…

I know that, but it's still an awful, awkward line.

"No, it was a victory. We all just won the Clone War, and you ended it, Ezra. A galaxy of senators couldn't do that. An army of Jedi, clones, and droids couldn't find the middle ground, but…you did!"

I liked how the opening lines of the episode were basically a meta statement on what's become of The CW in recent years. Before they hit Enzo, the couple are arguing about the different genres they like. He's into superheroes, she's into dystopias; she can't keep up with all the superheroes, he's just grateful the…

It's like they really wanted to make Harley Quinn sexy, but then said, "Nah, we're givin' her a face tattoo instead."