Take back your Sunday nights.

I quit watching “The Walking Dead” somewhere in the middle of the second season. I’ve never once regretted it.

Judging by some of the reaction from Sunday’s season seven premiere, it sounds like a few more people are ready to join me on the other side.

If you love “The Walking Dead,” great. By all means, keep watching. As much as I appreciated the storytelling in the first few episodes, it struck me as something that might circle the same thematic ideas over and over again through a prism of nihilistic violence. I keep up with the show’s headlines, and I don’t think they’ve proven me wrong.

Yes, sure, “The Walking Dead” explores the concept of humanity and whether such a thing can still exist in an apocalyptic hellscape. While that can be interesting and creatively challenging TV, it’s also a huge bummer to watch. Further, I’ve seen enough depraved gore in zombie movies to know I don’t really care about seeing it on a week-to-week basis.

Let’s talk about Sunday’s premiere for a minute. Given the meteoric ratings for “The Walking Dead” in general, it was almost impossible to ignore the build-up and reaction to the episode’s events. Knowing what happens, it’s clear to me how little the showrunners on “The Walking Dead” care about their audience.

Throughout the entire previous season, showrunners teased the arrival of Negan (a notorious villain from “The Walking Dead” comics, here played by last year’s “Good Wife” sweetheart, Jeffrey Dean Morgan). I see the general arts and entertainment headlines every day, and not a week would pass without another article about Negan and his famous baseball bat, Lucille, appearing in the season finale. When the episode finally aired, it ended on a cliffhanger — Negan swung, but the show withheld his target.

Fans waited six months for the outcome. People from all levels of the production, from the actors all the way up to the network execs, teased and teased and teased. Just wait, they said. It will be worth it, they said. Bluster, bluster, bluster. Marketing, marketing, marketing.

All for an outcome that, MINOR SPOILER ALERT, barely deviates from its source material. Even the main aspect of the deviation stems from an earlier event in the comics.

Predictable or not, “The Walking Dead” shouldn’t have forced the cliffhanger in the first place. When you promise something in a finale, you should deliver on it. If you don’t, there better be a compelling reason beyond someone saying, “Oooh, we’re guaranteed huge premiere ratings if we make them wait longer.”

Audiences are generally less patient with the cheap storytelling tactics routinely on display in “The Walking Dead” (the show pulled some other nonsense last season by temporarily removing an actor’s name from the opening credits). Viewers abandoned “Lost” (and pretty much every clone it spawned) when it kept spinning in place, needlessly complicating the narrative for the purpose of stretching the series run.

For the time commitment involved, a television show should play fair with its own expectations. It shouldn’t actively make an effort to test your patience.

I don’t regularly watch Shonda Rhimes twist-a-thons like “Scandal,” but at least her shows understand the value of revealing information to its audience. There are so many ridiculous twists, the shows can afford to spill answers at a more acceptable pace.

Again, if you don’t think “The Walking Dead” has narrative issues, then stick around. But why continue with something if it leaves you so dissatisfied? There are too many other television shows anyway… and pretty much all of them contain less gore.

It can be hard to abandon a television series after investing so much into it. We all wish we stopped watching “The Office” after Steve Carrell left the show. We will never get back the time we spent with season two of “Heroes.” Sometimes we are blind to the warning signs.

“The Walking Dead” is already renewed through its eighth season, and AMC has no reason to end it anytime soon. Right now, the showrunners are trying to figure out how they’re going to top the events of Sunday’s season premiere. This only gets worse for you.

Here’s how to quit. Skip the show and read a recap article instead (for “Walking Dead,” go for the AV Club, a site that frequently holds the show’s glaring shortcomings accountable). Eventually, you’ll lose interest in reading all the details of a singular episode, and you’ll only check in when something major happens. Apparently very little happens in the middle episodes of a “Walking Dead” season anyway, so you’ll be saving time almost immediately.

Give it a few weeks and I promise you won’t care. I didn’t have to sit through the anticlimactic resolution to a half-baked “Who Shot J.R.?” scenario in order to be a part of the social conversation afterward. I read the recap and watched “Westworld” instead. Come on over. “Westworld” is too early in its run to disappoint you.

Home video — you still have local options

In last week’s column about the closing of Hastings, a couple of readers reminded me that Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls still have the terrific locally owned and operated rental outlet, Video Theater. They’ve got a massive selection of DVDs, Blu-rays and VHS movies — including new releases and hard-to-find titles. Locations are 1910 N. Government Way in Coeur d’Alene, and 109 E. Seltice Way in Post Falls. Skip the red boxes and check them out.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at [email protected].