I feel your pain, brother. This season's premiere episode stretched out Carl's death for 80% of the entire episode. It's one thing to respectfully bode farewell to a major character...but it's quite another to squeeze every last drop of cheap sentiment out of it until most of the audience is screaming at the TV, "just DIE already, goddamnit!"
I'm going to suffer through the rest of the Negan arc until it's over, then I'm done with TWD universe.
This is the thing what they do. They stretch things out. Why do they tease? It's so annoying. I couldn't care how Carl died. We knew he died last year so why didn't they show his actual death then? That's what is meant by these long drawn out storylines.