I was engaged with some friends on facebook about it, a lot of them hated it and considered no longer watching the show because of the way the episode seemed exploitative and/or torture-porn. There were a few of us who really liked the episode.
After letting my brain spin on it for awhile, I realized that the two deaths (and two minutes of footage they probably entailed) might have been the points they were focusing on, but my enjoyment was based on many other things and in fact I kind of mentally "skipped over" the deaths and the imagery of them because I had already kind of guessed them, one was done pretty much straight out of the panels of the comic (even down to the visual details), and they didn't hold much interest. What I was focusing on (and that I liked):
(1) the impending threat of the hatchet
(2) the interplay of Negan trying to break down Rick, which comprised much of the time of the episode
(3) the ending after Negan's men all leave
(4) the pacing and the consistency of tone / emotional current -- decent acting, directing, and editing in that regard
(5) Performances by Lincoln and Morgan, they were both quite good (esp Morgan)
Long story short, I realized we were discussing different things... the part that was offensive to them wasn't even something I was thinking much about, I was focused on the rest but for some those 2-3 minutes of footage and what it represented dwarfed everything else. And having Nicotero direct it, well, he's a zombie special effects guy who has been in the business for 30-40 years, and he might have just lingered too long on that shot of Glenn because it's his thing.
... as far as the overall show, I wouldn't say it's been on my "great" list for some seasons. The problem is that it is too inconsistent WITHIN seasons. Essentially there will be 1-3 good episodes in a row, and then they bomb 1-2 episodes in some way, and the rest tend to be mixed. Often the worse episodes seemed to be the mid-season cliffhangers or the culmination to major plot points. This wastes any emotional currency that was being built by the good episodes. I kind of don't expect a lot of the show at the moment, or rather I expect to see a good episode every so often and the rest are middling/muddled a bit, and then there's a real dud in there somewhere.