Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 14 Review

Walking Dead S04E14 – The Grove

“The Grove” was the most moving episode of The Walking Dead that has aired in a long time. The decisions and realness that these characters have to deal with has finally come to a point where things have to be handled. And in a world where it’s you’re either fighting to live or the living dead, those who aren’t fit for this world are exposed. This worldview created one of the most emotional episodes this show has ever delivered.

The episode opens with a panning shot inside of a house with this old-timey music playing in the background and the image of a child playing with a walker outside of a window. It shows us this world where things seem “just fine” but at it’s core is deeply disturbing and just trying to remain “normal” in a world where there isn’t any normalcy. It echoes the opening of an episode early this season when  it shows us Rick farming with headphones on listening to music and slowly pans out to show he’s doing it right in front of a thin metal gate that holds back the living dead from killing him and all of his friends.

Then we go into this episode finding that we are now traveling with Tyreese and Carol and the girls, Mica, Lizzie and baby Judith.

Ignorance is death

Oh Lizzie and Mica…

These two girls, Mica and Lizzie, have been the focal of a lot of confusion for me. On one hand they represent Carol’s second chance at raising a daughter, raising one right. But on the other hand they are the complete product of their environment and nature so they have their own complicated lives and ways of understanding things. These conflicting ideas are presented thoughtfully in this episode, in several key scenes.

Lizzie and Carol while on the way to their safe house have a small conversation about Sophia, about how she didn’t have a mean bone in her body and thus wasn’t suited for this world. It’s clear Carol has found some sort of peace in this and laid it to rest inside of her a long time ago. Lizzie then begins to brag about how she saved Tyreese and accidentally killed the person that was about to shoot him at the prison. In this moment it becomes a bit clear that Carol dotes on Lizzie and Mica, that she does see them somewhat as her girls. Albeit it’s evident when Rick kicks her out of town and she asks if she can take them with her.

A moment later we see Tyreese spots a walker trapped in the train tracks and he goes to kill it when Lizzie basically begs him not to kill it. Saying that sometimes they have to kill them but not always.

Carol and Mica then have a moment where Mica admits that she “doesn’t have a mean bone in her body” and refuses to kill a living human, despite the need to do so to survive. Carol is admittedly disappointed, but she does her best effort to convince her. Mica is largely unmoved.

It’s interesting how closely those two moments happen, where we see that Lizzie is afraid to kill the dead and Mica the living. And this theme of polar views is continually represented as Lizzie and Mica then have a moment together.

Turns out Ol’ Lizzie has this box full of rats and is found feeding them down by the Train-Track Walker. Mica yells at her and tells her that she’ll end up dead doing that. But that doesn’t stop her. And only seems to encourage her to explore even further. This discovery was strange since it means she was feeding the walkers at the gate, which if you look back at my review I predicted it was The Governor and would be “Too intense” to be Lizzie. Turns out I was wrong!

Lizzie’s unsettling desire to love the walkers devolves into her playing with them outside and almost ends up getting them all killed when they chase her back to the safe house that Tyreese and Carol stumbled upon. In a scene that seems as though everything clicked and Lizzie kills a couple walkers, a scene later our hopes as viewers is dashed when we are given the most disturbing set-up for an ending that we’ve received.

Mica has been gutted by Lizzie in an attempt to prove that the walkers are not dangerous, that when Mica rose again she wouldn’t be harmful. Carol and Tyreese finally are poised with a position that they either abandon Lizzie or kill her and they choose the latter.

Hardest scene to ever watch on TWD

The decision to kill Lizzie is an interesting one, the motif of her being ignorant is played with heavily as Mica when she kills a walker in front of Lizzie tells her to “look at the flowers” and before Carol ends her, also repeats the same thing. “Ignorance is bliss” is not something that can be gotten away with in this world. In a way, Mica also dealt with her own weight of ignorance as she assumes every human can be trusted and that they are never driven to kill one another.

Ironically this is brought up once more when the episode reaches it’s close and Carol pushes a gun over to Tyreese and tells him that she killed Karen. Early in the episode Tyreese reminisced on how he dreamed about her and how much he loved her. And Carol remained fearfully quiet. But by the end she presented the option to him that he can kill her in coldblood like she did to Karen and David.

Tyreese presents the true neutral of Mica and Lizzie’s ignorance, he tells Carol that he forgives her but will not forget what she did. He will basically not remain ignorant to the decision that she made to murder Karen for the group but won’t pretend as if he doesn’t know. He’ll kill a walker knowing it’s dead and kill a human that tries to end his life, because he knows what’s real.

This episode was an emotional roller-coaster, as the death of two children living in ignorance is delivered by the world’s justice and Tyreese and Carol have to handle the elephant in the room head-on. This was one of the best written episodes this season as it balanced the tension and trepidation that existed through this chilling episode scene-to-scene so well it kept me on constant edge. Now all that’s left is to look forward to the next two episodes.

A+

My Messy Musings:

• Can’t wait for Melissa McBride to accept her Emmy! Carol’s had the best season EVER.
• I hope that with Daryl’s seperation from Beth that he’ll realize how much he loves a real woman: Carol.
• Canonically: Is it MICA or MIKA? My captions used BOTH forms!
• Favorite scene: The scene with Carol and Tyreese discussing the options of what to do with Lizzie. Also, huge kudos to the final shot of the episode where it shows us select scenes of the house that reminds us of the children being there and how they are no longer with us. BEAUTIFUL.
• Least Favorite scene: If I had to choose one, It’d probably be Tyreese’s furious shaking of the table at the end when Carol tells him she kills Karen. Seemed odd, but I still liked it. I just had to pick a least favorite.
• I’m so ready for Rick to see Carol and Tyreese and for him to awkwardly ask if he knows about Karen and David
• Loved the Of Mice and Men feeling from the script #OfMiceAndLizzie
• Can you truly trust a woman who kept a secret like that for so long? Tyreese should question that.
• The written repetition in the script, I felt like wasn’t heavy-handed. I expected to feel that way, but surprisingly was ok with it. It was spaced out really well over the course of the hour.
• Feel free to take a walk down memory lane of my season 4 reviews. Remember when we first saw the gate feeding of the walkers? Remember when Lizzie got sick and was thrown behind bars by Carol? Touching. There were a lot more!
• Don’t forget to comment and like and follow @KeenHenderson if you want my instant thoughts! Only two episodes left ya’ll!