On Sunday night, the zombie drama had 8.1 million viewers and 5.4 million viewers among adults 18-49. That’s TV’s biggest drama series telecast in the adult demo in basic cable history. That’s up 12 percent in the demo compared to the show’s previous record, October’s season 2 premiere. Combined with its encore, Walking Dead had 10.1 million viewers for the night.

Which is awesome and all, but … you realize it’s only going to encourage the writers to do more chatty-chat farm-based episodes, right? Lot of fans feel like the show is in danger of turning into, uh, Little House on the Zombie Prairie (sorry, best I could do). Here’s our interview with writer Robert Kirkman about last night’s episode where he promises, “Things just keep getting worse from here” (meaning in a fun way, of course).