I have never written a review so far but now I felt an urge to do so. "The Grove" is simply the best episode of The Walking Dead by far. It caught me and left me thinking about it for days. It is extremely dense, dark and it contains important moral and ethical questionings.
I've been a TWD fan all along but sometimes the series doesn't fulfill my expectations and deviates from the right path. This episode summarizes TWD at its best: great directing, great acting and character development and a great script that focus on moral dilemmas on a post- apocalyptic world. "The Grove" shows how different people react to extreme situations and how a certain code is formed when there are no longer rules to support human relations.
Lizzie represents those people who would escape from reality rather than accepting it. She truly believes walkers are no danger at all (they are just different) and tries to make a point by killing her sister at the most disturbing moment of TWD (in my opinion). She completely lost contact with reality and had no moral boundaries since she grew up in this world.
Her sister Mika, on the other hand, refuses to give up her humankind and adapt to the new rules. She has a strong sense of right and wrong (unlike her sister) and doesn't change even though circumstances have changed. She represents those who believe there is a right and wrong (no matter the environment) and that this should be carried out to the end. Perhaps this is a kind of ingenuity and the reason for her death.
Carol is a very strong character and shows the mutation of a person in a world such as depicted in TWD. Once a weak woman submitted to her husband and haunted by the death of her daughter, she now has full control of her actions and believes she must take action and enforce the rules (in her view) in order to survive. It is interesting to see how her values change over the course of the series and how this was influenced by her experiences. Lizzie's "judgement" is illustrative: she was a loving mother once but now she has to do dark things (such as killing a child, Lizzie) because she believes it with cause and thinks it is for the best of all. She takes justice on her own hands since there is no one else to do it and therefore she must be the one to act (she's lost all sense of moral and has no restrictions at this point). She has adapted in order to survive.
The final scene, when Carol finally reveals to Tyreese that she was the one who killed Karen and David, was perfect. She is willing to be punished and die at that moment, since there has been much suffer and she believes her guilty somehow. Tyreese then shows the most sublime of human's qualities: the power of forgiveness (that he has not lost in the way).
There is no way this isn't a 10/10.
I've been a TWD fan all along but sometimes the series doesn't fulfill my expectations and deviates from the right path. This episode summarizes TWD at its best: great directing, great acting and character development and a great script that focus on moral dilemmas on a post- apocalyptic world. "The Grove" shows how different people react to extreme situations and how a certain code is formed when there are no longer rules to support human relations.
Lizzie represents those people who would escape from reality rather than accepting it. She truly believes walkers are no danger at all (they are just different) and tries to make a point by killing her sister at the most disturbing moment of TWD (in my opinion). She completely lost contact with reality and had no moral boundaries since she grew up in this world.
Her sister Mika, on the other hand, refuses to give up her humankind and adapt to the new rules. She has a strong sense of right and wrong (unlike her sister) and doesn't change even though circumstances have changed. She represents those who believe there is a right and wrong (no matter the environment) and that this should be carried out to the end. Perhaps this is a kind of ingenuity and the reason for her death.
Carol is a very strong character and shows the mutation of a person in a world such as depicted in TWD. Once a weak woman submitted to her husband and haunted by the death of her daughter, she now has full control of her actions and believes she must take action and enforce the rules (in her view) in order to survive. It is interesting to see how her values change over the course of the series and how this was influenced by her experiences. Lizzie's "judgement" is illustrative: she was a loving mother once but now she has to do dark things (such as killing a child, Lizzie) because she believes it with cause and thinks it is for the best of all. She takes justice on her own hands since there is no one else to do it and therefore she must be the one to act (she's lost all sense of moral and has no restrictions at this point). She has adapted in order to survive.
The final scene, when Carol finally reveals to Tyreese that she was the one who killed Karen and David, was perfect. She is willing to be punished and die at that moment, since there has been much suffer and she believes her guilty somehow. Tyreese then shows the most sublime of human's qualities: the power of forgiveness (that he has not lost in the way).
There is no way this isn't a 10/10.
