AMC’s “Walking Dead” second season premiere on Sunday was the most watched basic cable series in the 18-49 demographic in history, with an incredible 11 million viewers of the premiere and encore that followed. (It even bested the major network shows.) This is good news for fans of the show and suggests that it will be renewed for a third season.

Wow: AMC’s The Walking Dead came back stronger than ever. Sunday’s season 2 premiere rolled up 7.3 million viewers. If you count the show’s repeat, that number climbs to 11 million.

The 90-minute Walking Dead return is up 38 percent compared to its Halloween-night debut last year, and is bigger than its finale too — so this is a series high. Last year, if you’ll recall, the numbers started big and actually managed to improve throughout the six-episode run (the finale delivered 6 million viewers). Walking Dead also delivered a 3.8 rating among adults 18-49, which is the real trick (a few cable dramaa like The Closer have really big audiences, but their average age is mostly above the demo — and this is bigger than most broadcast shows last week). This is more adults in the demo than any basic cable series in history.

[From EW.TV]

Spoilers for opening episode
I found this season’s first episode entertaining for about the first hour but then it dragged. It didn’t need to be an hour and a half long. I wasn’t as impressed with the story telling and pace as I was in the first season. That may be because the show was newer and fresher when it started. There were too many plot holes this opening episode, though. Like I didn’t understand why Lori let her son, Carl, go with his dad and Shane instead of staying with the larger group. Maybe she assumed he would be safer with the men, but they were venturing further out and it just seemed like she didn’t put much thought into her son’s safety at all. Sure, no problem, just go with the men out into the woods even though you’re like eight and could end up as a snack for some undead creature.

The part where the zombie herd just passed by T-Dog and Daryl after T-Dog cut himself seemed ridiculous. Like can’t the zombies smell blood and would they all head in that direction? (They addressed this in the “Talking Dead” talk show afterwards, with creator Robert Kirkland explaining that zombies aren’t like bloodhounds.) Why did Andrea leave the RV door open and why didn’t more zombies head in there when she was screaming and stabbing that one zombie with a screwdriver?

No matter my complaints about it, I’ll watch this show every week, and millions of other people will too. It just feels like they lost something from the first season. The fact that they’ve had so many problems with production and have fired the series’ showrunner might explain it.

Highlight the text below for mild spoilers from comics
I’m also a fan of the comics. In the comics, it’s revealed that everyone turns into a zombie when they’re killed, even people who aren’t bitten. The fact that there are real corpses in this episode suggests that they’re not going to follow that zombie-creation rule. Also, I’m hoping they’ll introduce a kickass character called Michonne soon, and that’s about all I’ll say about that.