Evaluation: Storytelling and Magical Tour Guide

Evaluation Essay: The Walking Dead Even with, or maybe because of a new show runner, season four of “The Walking dead” starts off as strong as ever and promises to build more character development throughout the cast. And yes, the thrills and gore remain. It may be that in some scenarios, the image of show runner as the tall powerful magical tour guide to your favorite show is just a tad overblown. The Walking Dead enters its fourth season with its third show runner. In truth, all of them have been good. The show has continued to get better. People flock to it like they ought to for a buzzed-about, watch in real time television event. And if the first two episodes are any indication, not only is the series not missing a beat, its actually growing into itself to allow new story telling possibilities.
Scott Gimple, who has been with the show since the second season and has made a great number of episodes, is able to take the series that’s been around long enough that people have a familiarity with its world and tinker with it. That’s got to be exciting. In Gimple’s case, he’s apparently putting an emphasis on broadening the characters. That’s much needed and very welcome to an already very good series. A good storyteller will take every opportunity to bring the audience closer to the characters, to explore the backstory of those characters and perhaps to change the audience’s opinions of them. In the first two episodes, Gimple and his writers have managed to make more backstory from a number of characters, even if it’s done with minimal screen time. What has made The Walking Dead so compelling as a series is that it transcends the genre. It’s not really a show about zombies so much as it’s a show about the living, Being able to breath, to allow characters to do more than just creatively eviscerate the skulls of zombies, is what makes it unique. What fells most promising is that by establishing more of the myriad characters, you