Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow...
(Hey, y’all. It’s Fowler. I’m filling in for Roth this week while she’s out covering PaleyFest. And wouldn’t you know it, I get the darkest episode of the midseason.)Geez...Well, that was an exquisite slice of misery, wasn’t it?
"Everything works out that way it's supposed to."
Some really great, morbid stuff tonight in "The Grove" - from a script by showrunner Scott Gimple (who also wrote the stellar episodes “Clear” and “Save the Last One”). And to think, for the first twenty minutes or so, I sort of dreaded this being an all Carol/Tyreese/Girls and Baby episode. Everything was fine. Day to day dealings with life on the untamed, apocalyptic road. Just like we’d seen with the other groups.And like the other groups, I was sure there’d be a walker attack here and there to liven things up. Some close calls. Basically, I predicted a somewhat standard midseason episode with maybe one of the group getting eaten. But I never anticipated it going as full-tilt as it did. And I certainly didn’t expect to feel all the damn feels I felt. Because, man, that was rough. Shockingly hard to watch. In a good way, of course. It had teeth. It was unforgiving.
So I’ll just jump right into the trauma here. That scene where Carol shot Lizzie was excruciating. It was cold enough just on its own, and they could have played Lizzie as being way more toned down emotionally than she was, but instead they had her cry and scream that she was sorry. That she was sorry and “Please don’t be mad at me!” That’s right. She wasn’t pleading for her life. She was bawling because she didn’t want Carol, of all things, to be mad at her. She had no idea what was about to happen.
Again, being that Lizzie was a sociopath and probably had been way before the zomapocalypse, the show could have had her remain more blank and emotionless. In fact, that’s sort of how she was up until the moment in this episode when Carol killed her “friend” in the front yard. But, thankfully, they didn’t make her death easy for us. Or for Carol. Because just, say, as far back as the last time we saw Lizzie, on the episode where she almost smothered Judith, we might have been able to let her die with little remorse. But “The Grove” uniquely changed all that.
Of course, not only was Lizzie’s death a powerful scene, but so was Carol and Tyreese discovering Mika’s dead body. With Lizzie having killed her sister to prove to them that she’d come back as someone they could love. And to then learn that Judith was next was chilling. Yes, we’d just been psyched out. Because not long before that was the scene where Lizzie appeared to turn a huge corner, walker-wise, after watching Mika almost get bit by one.
Oh, and charred, smoldering forest fire zombies? You complete me.
But yeah, some excellent work there by Melissa McBride as Carol had to somehow not act completely freakin' traumatized by the sight of Mika's body so that she could calmly convince Lizzie to put the gun down and go inside.
Many of the separate post-prison groups thus far have come across homes to clear and claim. And some characters have even wondered aloud if they should just stay put and make a house their new home. Then various forms of danger come a’ knocking and they have to flee - with the show driving everyone, by hook and crook, to Terminus. But this lost homestead was the saddest. This was the one that stung. And, of course, the home itself was the most beautiful. There were children. There were flowers. Even the occasional deer. (By the way, Carol seeing that deer, the one Mika couldn’t kill, right after she’d just killed Lizzie was a great callback)
But Carol and Tyreese were looking after two kids who, tragically, just couldn’t make it in the new world. One wouldn’t kill walkers and the other wouldn’t kill humans. Carol could tell the story of Huck Finn and the kids could play “I Spy,” but at the center of it all was a tragedy-in-waiting. And so Carol had to lose two more “daughters.” One who, like Sophia, didn’t have a mean bone in her body and the other one too unstable to coexist with others. “She can’t be around other people,” is what Carol kept telling Tyreese over and over until he understood what needed to happen. Because Lizzie and Judith couldn’t be together, and if they separated into two groups they’d all be done for.
And so Tyreese became a willing accomplice to Lizzie’s murder, and watched Carol do what needed to be done. Without her enjoying it either, mind you. Carol was a wreck. And because of that he was able to then turn a huge corner himself at the end and forgive Carol for killing Karen. He now understanding that sometimes we’re called upon to do monstrous things in the name of survival. Of course, Carol confessing her actions to him was pretty much her committing suicide. Passing the gun to him and telling him “Do what need to be done.” Losing three girls was too much to bear.
If Carol had confessed to killing Karen in the scene she and Tyreese had together ten minutes earlier, when Tyreese was holding the gun and we weren’t sure if he secretly knew it was her or of she’d be guilted into revealing the truth, he probably would have killed her.