I still watch this show, just not with any where near the fervor I used to. It's definitely gone down hill in the quality of the storytelling, even if the acting is still quite good.
And I totally knew they weren't going to actually kill off Rick, but I don't have a problem with that. I do wish they would have been a little less predictable, though, in how they wrote him off the show. I am interested to see what the new direction of the show is going to be with Rick and Carl both gone now. We'll see if TWD can do what most other shows have failed miserably at, and that's successfully reboot the show once the main character leaves.