Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Ratings: Upsetting and Shocking “Walking Dead” Zombie* Sex Scene Lifted Show by 9 Percent Over Fall Finale

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Viewers of “The Walking Dead” — and they are fewer and fewer all the time — have been losing interest in the show. But on Sunday, the word must have gone out that something very upsetting and shocking was going to happen. Negan, who I guess is considered human, had sex with a zombie  crazy women named Alpha who wears the masks of dead people. (She’s a Zombie* wannabe.) They got as naked as you can on AMC. Urrgghhh!

The result of this unpleasant coupling was a 9 percent rise in ratings. The fall finale scored 3.21 million viewers. The new episode brought 3.5 million pairs of eyes. The number rose by double digits in the demos, too: adults 25-54 (2 million, up 15 percent) and adults 18-49 (1.6 million, up 17 percent).

Will this new supercouple (yuck yuck yuck) bring the show back its glory days? I doubt it. But freak shows never get old.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009 and previously edited Fame magazine and wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. is articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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