Well boys and girls the time has almost come to celebrate one of the most important times of the year. The return of "The Walking Dead."

My name is Bradan Smith and I am proud to say that my first article is going to be covering such an important subject. It was a mere five months and thirteen days ago that "The Walking Dead" season six ended. This is your official warning, if you have not seen "The Walking Dead" season 1-6, SPOILERS LIE AHEAD. Now that that's out of the way we can get down to the important stuff. Season six of this fantastic show had its ups and downs. We got to witness Rick and Co. slaughter a herd of what seemed like an endless supply of walkers (seriously the apocalypse has been in session for like two years. Where do they keep coming from?) We also got to witness our heroes take down an entire base of over-confident jerks who think the best way to start a new working relationship is to execute one of their new business partners (spoiler: it's not) and we also got to see an annoying little brat finally get his head chomped on similar to the manner in which Suicide faced his untimely demise in "Return of the Living Dead" (way to kill one of the coolest characters right off the bat Dan O'Bannon.)

But the season also had its lows, most notably the fake out Glenn's death as well as the notorious cliff-hanger at the end of the season, leaving us all in six months of agony as we argue amongst ourselves as to the answer of the most nagging question in the show's history... WHO DID NEGAN KILL? Everyone's got their theories and the only answers we have are that it's all but guaranteed that Negan didn't execute Rick or Carl due to his "scoop the boy's eye out and feed it to his father" line. Now those of us who are die hard fans of the show are probably going to continue watching it and look past these annoying sequences. However in the case of the fair-weather fans, these moments in the show could be the final straw and cause them to give up on the show altogether.

Character deaths are a delicate thing in the game of writing television shows. Good writing and plot direction on these pivotal moments in the show can be the difference between a show's success and failure. In the case of a show such as "Game of Thrones," the guts to kill off a major character, especially in the most brutal of ways, can carry a show towards success simply because the audience is left in complete shock and once they recover they desire more. "The Mountain and the Viper" S4E8 is regarded as one of the best episodes in Game of Thrones history in large part because of the thrilling and shocking ending where they killed fan favorite, Oberyn Martell.

In contrast the recent hit show "The 100" has faced ruthless backlash for one of their more recent character deaths in which they SPOILER ALERT killed off fan favorite, Lincoln. The difference between these two shows is that in the case of "Game of Thrones," most if not all of their character deaths progress the story. Imagine if Eddard Stark were still alive in season 6. Most of our favorite battles and scenes probably wouldn't even exist. However in the case of Lincoln's death, the show's plot had zero progression from it and the only thing it succeeded in was breaking up one of TV's favorite young couples (and rumor has it the only reason he was killed off was because he was bullied on-set, so there's that).

"The Walking Dead" has usually had a pretty solid history of handling character deaths. One cannot forget the emotion most fans felt watching Lori be cut open to save "Lil Ass Kicker" or crying as the Governor cut Herschel's head off before spaghetti Tuesdays on Wednesdays could be made official. Unfortunately in Season six, the show has all but butchered two of its most pivotal character deaths. I cried when I thought Glenn kicked the bucket, but now when he dies for real one day, I and many other people will agree that the emotion towards it is going to be pretty minimal. We already had to suffer through the pain of his death once it's going to be difficult for the show writers to rekindle that emotion.

Same goes for Negan's execution.

We have had SIX MONTHS to get over the fact that one of our beloved survivors got their heads bashed in. We don't know for sure who it was yet, but quite frankly all we're probably going to do is say "oh no," shrug a little and look ahead to the rest of the season when we find out who it was.

"The Walking Dead" has had one of the greatest cult followings in TV show history with solid support from fair-weather fans, but after the slop fest that was Season six, they better learn to handle their character deaths with more care, or we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of "The Walking Dead."