This week’s episode of The Walking Dead, “The Grove,” was written by showrunner Scott M. Gimple and directed by Michael Satrazemis. This is Satrazemis’s first time directing, and it’s one heck of a debut. This was a richly visual episode, which I attribute to Satrazemis’s extensive experience as a cameraman and director of photography for this season of the show. This was a shocking episode in many ways, but I think many of us saw those shocks coming. The episode contained powerful performances from Melissa McBride (Carol), Brighton Sharbino (Lizzie), Kyla Kenedy (Mika), and Chad L. Coleman (Tyreese). Questions were answered, confessions were made.
As the episode opens, Carol is holding Rachel and keeping watch with Lizzie keeping her company. They are sitting above Mika and Tyreese who are sleeping. Lizzie is trying to prove to Carol that she is strong and can take care of herself and the group. She tells Carol that she saved Tyreese, not the other way around. Lizzie asks Carol if she had any children, and Carol says she did. She says that Sophia didn’t have a mean bone in her body. Lizzie, astutely, asks if that’s why she’s not still here, and Carol says yes. Lizzie then asks if Carol misses her. Carol says every day, prompting Lizzie to ask if Carol will miss her. Carol says she won’t have to. Carol has committed herself so deeply to saving these children where she couldn’t save her own, that she is blinded to what Lizzie really is. While Carol often seems angrier at Mika for being too soft, Carol clearly identifies with her as being like Sophia. As they watch, Tyreese wakes from a bad dream and stares straight at Carol.
Tyreese has noticed that Lizzie is tough, but Carol points out that she’s confused about the walkers. She tells him that Lizzie doesn’t know what they are. When Tyreese asks Carol if Mika is the same, she says that she’s worse because Mika doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Lizzie can kill if she has to, but Carol is pretty convinced that Mika is dead unless she toughens up.
When Carol says as much to Mika, Mika responds that she can run. Carol says that’s how Sophia died. Mika then says that she can kill walkers that she’s not messed up like her sister. This is the second time that Mika has said that. She clearly recognizes that her sister is not right. Mika passionately tells Carol that killing people is wrong – she even brings up Karen and David, the very people who Carol killed herself. When Carol asks if Mika isn’t mad at the people who tried to kill them at the prison, Mika responds that she feels sorry for them – that they probably weren’t like that before. This is an eerie foreshadowing of what Tyreese says to Carol when she confesses to him.
As seems to be always the case, any moment of peace seems to have to be balanced by the return of horror. This episode features a number of scenes that mirror each other. Mika, in hopefulness, remarks that her mother always said that “everything works out the way it’s supposed to” when they find the house in the Grove. Carol says this to Lizzie just before pulling the trigger. We see the children’s graves at the beginning of the episode and again at the end, only this second time, they are doubled. We see the scene in which Lizzie ‘plays’ with the walker as a teaser and then later within the episode.
The scene that lies at the heart of the episode, is the one in which Tyreese tells Carol about his dreams of Karen. This scene is beautifully shot so that we can see both McBride’s and Coleman’s faces. This is only one of many scenes in which McBride is outstanding. As Tyreese suggests they stay at the farm because he knows and trusts Carol and then goes on to describe his dreams of Karen and the profound loss he feels from losing her, we get a close up of Carol who is clearly tortured by his words. Tyreese explains to Carol that the people who are living are haunted by the dead. He tells her that we are who we are because they are still there in our heads. There’s no getting out of it until they’re dead too. Carol responds that maybe they’re not haunting them but just teaching them so they can live with what they have to do.
Tyreese tells Carol not to be ashamed of who she is and to be proud of what she’s done – oh the irony! He tells her she’s done right by the girls as she’s done right by everyone. Of course, she hasn’t done right by the girls because she’s taught Lizzie to kill and hasn’t acknowledged that she is mentally unstable even though it’s absolutely obvious. Tyreese hugs Carol to comfort her – again the irony. This scene is also beautifully shot as the scene pans back, dwarfing the two figures in this pastoral wilderness.
Another irony is that they leave the barrier down to entreat deer into their enclosure so that they can kill and eat the deer, but what comes closest to coming into the enclosure is walkers who want to eat them!
This theme of being haunted by the past and of transformation runs throughout. Mika follows Lizzie when Lizzie goes to feed the walker trapped on the train tracks. Mika, who isn’t messed up, tells Lizzie that those things are bad and that they can’t pretend anymore that they aren’t. Lizzie says that she was never pretending. Sharbino is brilliant in this scene – among several. She tells Mika that she understands the walkers. They don’t want to kill her, they just want to make her like them. And she’s ready to let them try. At this point, I have to admit that I was hoping for the safety of the others that Lizzie would get bitten. Sadly, the shockingly more gruesome burnt herd of walkers breaks from the trees and the girls have to flee from them. I also thought there was some hope that Lizzie had turned a corner when Mika is almost bitten when she gets caught in the fence.
Lizzie is clearly traumatized every time a walker is killed. Much more so than when a person is killed. She won’t let Tyreese kill the walker in the tracks. She is traumatized when Mika makes her first kill and saves both Lizzie and Judith. That night she says she is trying to understand. Meanwhile, Mika has shrugged it off and is happy and excited that she’s found a doll – a much more appropriate plaything than the dead animals her sister prefers, and much more like the child she really is. This is also a nice parallel to Carl’s (Chandler Riggs) continuing to make a kind of game of survival.
Lizzie completely loses her mind when Carol kills the walker she’s playing with. Sharbino is also amazing in this scene as she berates Carol for killing her new friend. When she says “What if I kill you?” I was sure Carol wasn’t making it out of the episode. After they all join in killing the herd, Carol once more tries to make Lizzie understand as they sit around that night. This time, in another mirrored scene, Lizzie says she knows what she has to do now. Carol touches on the transformation theme when she says that it’s scary and ugly and it changes you. Mika says she doesn’t want to be mean and that she doesn’t want to hurt anyone.
Mika has drawn a clear line. She can kill walkers because she has to and they are already dead. Mika is unable to kill the deer, however. She is completely untroubled by not being able to do it even though Carol is clearly disappointed. Where Lizzie is distraught when she thinks she has disappointed Carol, Mika cheerfully suggests that they have peaches instead.
Mika clearly is the smart one. The fact that she is smart and compassionate do nothing to save her, however. When they see the fire burning in the distance, Mika tells Carol that the fire is still burning because it is black smoke. If it turned white, it would mean the fire is out. Lizzie praises Carol’s knowledge when she shares this information with Lizzie at the end of the episode when the smoke is finally white. This looming danger in the distance is a nice symbol of the looming danger Lizzie has posed to the entire group. The association I made to the black and white smoke was the smoke that the Vatican uses when choosing a new Pope. It is supposed to be a decision endorsed by God. Black smoke means no new Pope while white indicates that a choice has been made. Tyreese and Carol decide Lizzie’s fate.
Mika knows how to diffuse Lizzie and during her first meltdown after Mika shoots the walker, she tells Lizzie to look at the flowers. Carol recognizes that Mika is smart and can control Lizzie. Carol tells Mika that she has to look out for Lizzie.
The scene in which Carol and Tyreese find Lizzie bathed in blood and Mika dead is horrific. It is shocking but not unexpected. They are barely in time to save Judith. Clearly, the lesson that Lizzie learned was that she had to show them that Mika would come back. Unfortunately, we’ve seen this many times before – this was what the Governor was hoping for last season, in fact. Sharbino, McBride, and Coleman are all wonderful in this scene.
Carol is willing to sacrifice herself, by taking Lizzie away from everyone. Tyreese is convinced that Lizzie is the one who killed Karen and David because she did confess to feeding rats to the walkers at the prison and leaving the rat eviscerated on the board. However, Carol won’t let her take the blame for that, pointing out she would never have killed them, she would have let them turn. Unlike the others who have been transformed by the horror, Lizzie was always like this, it’s just the way she is. Carol is willing to give up her own life to atone for the damage Lizzie has done as well as her own sins. Lizzie’s misguided murder has shone a light on Carol’s.
Carol takes Lizzie out under the pretense of picking flowers for Mika. Lizzie tries to apologize for pulling the gun on Carol. She is increasingly upset but for all the wrong reasons. Finally, Carol tells Lizzie that she loves her and to look at the flowers before pulling the trigger. It’s possible to see this as Carol killing that part of herself too. As she heads back to the house, she is comes across the deer. Now, like Mika, she has no stomach for killing it.
Very symbolically, Carol and Tyreese have a puzzle on the table between them as they talk. In a less literal way they are trying to put the pieces together of what has happened and who they are now. McBride is simply magnificent in these two final scenes. Here she looks simply spent. She pushes the gun on the table toward Tyreese and confesses. Coleman is also wonderful as the camera picks up the range of emotions playing across his face. He asks two questions – Did she know what was happening and was it quick. Carol answers no and yes. Then she tells him to do what he needs to do – absolving him of any guilt.
Tyreese grabs the table and then the gun as the anger surges through him. He visibly gets control of himself and releases the gun as he releases his anger. He tells Carol that he forgives her but that he’ll never forget, and he knows she won’t either. He tells her it’s a part of them both. The pastoral oasis is tainted, however, and Tyreese tells Carol that they can’t stay. She accepts it and they shoulder their burdens – both physical and spiritual – and leave the grove, heading back down the tracks.
The final scene has a voice over of the important lessons the characters have learned. “I’m not afraid to kill. I’m just afraid. You have to fight it and don’t give up. And then one day, you’re just changed. We all change.” But the point is, you can’t let the fear change you in ways that take away your very humanity. Carol taught Lizzie not to be afraid to kill – remember that Lizzie wouldn’t deal the killing blow to her father after he’d died. By teaching her not to be afraid to kill, she removed the barrier and allowed Lizzie to be able to kill Mika, just as she removed her own barrier to be able to kill Karen and David.
This was yet another wonderful episode in a season that just keeps getting better and better. What did you think of the episode? Were you shocked that Lizzie was the one feeding the rats to the walkers? Were you shocked that she killed her own sister? Were you shocked that Carol confessed to Tyreese or that Tyreese forgave her? Did anybody else also notice Sharbino on True Detective? She's definitely going to be an actor to watch! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
