Instead, season nine began, picking up 18 months later, and gave no indication that anything all that dramatic had happened, or even that it was weird to suddenly jump so far forward in time for a show that had never done anything of the sort. It felt like an acknowledgment of \u201CYeah, here we go again,\u201D to an audience that had just been put through the wringer, emotionally. It didn\u2019t give them time to process what had transpired, or devote sufficient airtime to exploring the fallout. Instead, it barreled ahead to new adventures, giving the clear impression that your past experiences weren\u2019t very important, because we have new characters to introduce and old ones to forget, damn it. It was the definition of a series acting like it didn\u2019t respect its audience, because it took them for granted. And then, five episodes in, it pretend-killed Rick Grimes, and jumped six years forward, as though to arrogantly say, \u201CWhat\u2019re you gonna do, stop watching? Please.\u201D