It's fun reading speculation, and also knowing the comic story, and also knowing that they haven't and don't always follow the comic. Makes the show interesting still!
I actually like character development. There were multiple comics in a row where it was just character development, not much in the way of zombies or threats... it gets people attached, it gets people invested, and then when things inevitably go south, it hits harder.
But I can see for the average viewer, for television, that they can't do that as much, since it'd turn a lot of viewers off. Which is why they are speeding (to me) through this community storyline at a pretty fair clip. In the comics we see a lot more about the various relationships that are growing out of this merging of groups.
When I say the comics take time with the Alexandria community, I mean it... there's two years of comics covering what happens with Alexandria before moving on to the next events involving other people/places/things. The show seems to want to cover those two years possibly in 6 episodes.