Shane Ryan and Josh Jackson review The Walking Dead each week in a series of letters.
Dear Shane,
First off, it’s good to be back. SXSW is nothing more than just a gathering of music, film and technology fans checking out some of the coolest new music, film and technology where lowly Paste editors somehow end up on stage giving Jemaine Clement a backrub and talking movies and music with Juliette Lewis—it’s got nothing on watching a show about zombies and writing you emails.
Oh wait, that zombie show is going to let us be charmed by a sweet, adorable little girl who names her dolly Brazelda Gunderson only to be murdered by her deranged older zombie-loving sister? I miss Austin.
“The Grove” may be the most emotionally brutal episode since Carl had to put a bullet in his mother’s brain to keep her from turning. Or maybe since Carol watched her zombie daughter walk out of that barn. The show isn’t precious with even its youngest characters—come to think of it, even Game of Thrones is kinder to its kids. I’m starting to worry about Judith.
But it certainly made for compelling television. The comic books introduced a pair of young brothers early on, and one of them ends up gutting the other out of, I don’t know, curiosity? The TV show takes that source material and digs deeper into it—the psychosis of a young girl who believes that she understands the walkers in a way no one else can. She kills her sister, knowing that she’ll come back and the adults will see what she sees.
What made the moment so powerful, though, was getting to know the gentle spirit of Mika Samuels, impressively portrayed by the young Kyla Kenedy. She’s morally precocious, confidently standing up to Carol, saying that she won’t kill the living, even balking at killing a deer. “I can’t,” she says, lowering the rifle and shrugging. “We have peaches.”
She was quickly becoming my new favorite Walking Dead character. And despite the creepiness of Lizzie and the precedent set by the graphic novels, I really didn’t see that moment coming: Lizzie standing in front of her fallen sister, saying, “Don’t worry. She’ll come back.”
All of the sudden, the lie of Tyreese and Carol living a peaceful life on a pecan farm with three kids and dinners of venison in a cozy living room with a roaring fire is exposed. Carol killed Tyreese’s love. Lizzie killed Mika and was going to do Judith next. Unlike Mika, who refused to hurt the living even to protect the innocent, Carol was forced to kill a confused little girl—and to finally go to Tyreese with her confession.
That final moment of forgiveness was sad and beautiful and felt fully earned. It was a tough episode, but a good one. So what did you think? I know you’ve been as spooked by Lizzie as I was, but were you as shocked? And was that shock a low blow by the show’s writers? Would you have been able to do what Carol did? Was there a better solution? And how’d you enjoy your first SXSW?
—Josh
Josh,
First off, terrific episode. I want to get that out of the way, and then, just for a moment, I want to talk about Carol and play “If I Were A Writer on The Walking Dead.”
If I were a writer on The Walking Dead, I would’ve been extremely happy with this episode, but I would have changed one thing. We see Carol learning from Mika, subtly, over the course of this episode. Even though Carol is an extreme personality even by the standards of the zombie apocalypse, she actually finds herself in the middle of the two sisters, philosophically. Both girls, in their own ways, are unchangeable. Mika is kind, and moral in a way that is extremely uncommon in their world. She can’t kill a living thing. Lizzie, obviously, is delusional, and incapable of seeing the difference between the living and the (un)dead. The problem with Carol is that even though she has all her mental faculties, she starts off this episode a bit more like Lizzie. Everything is about being tough, and rigid, and unemotional, but she doesn’t realize that the only chance to recover some richness in that life is to sustain a compassionate side—a compromised one, for sure, but one nevertheless.
That’s the lesson Mika taught her. And while it may be true that neither a Lizzie nor a Mika are fit to survive, I saw it as Carol’s journey to heed the lessons (paraphrasing a line to Tyreese: “Maybe [the dead aren’t] haunting us … maybe they’re teaching us what we have to do to survive.”) and to reconcile them within herself. This, I thought, was going to be the softening of Carol, and I have to say that even though I soured on her character earlier this season because it felt one-tone, I thought Melissa McBride did a wonderful job here.
The problem: They stopped short. What I really wanted, and what would have redeemed Carol in my eyes, was if, in the moment of confession, she had admitted to Tyreese and herself that she didn’t need to kill Karen and David at the prison. If she had conceded that there was a middle ground, that a cure was coming and hope remained and the murders were rash, it would have been a master stroke of transformational character work—the spirits of the sisters flourishing within her, making her a more complete spiritual being, and a sort of model for how to balance your harshness and tenderness in a nightmarish world.
Instead, she still believed her own line of BS, even as she confessed. And I thought that by halting just before that final catharsis, the writers missed a big opportunity.
So, that being said … beautiful episode, and I totally agree that Kyla Kennedy played it well. But let’s give a shout-out to Brighton Sharbino, who plays Lizzie and has a great name. It can’t be easy for an 11-year-old to step into that role and fill it with the necessary amount of unease and psychosis, but she’s been nailing it the whole time. And this was her strongest episode yet; when she screamed “what if I killed YOU!” at Carol, I found it really unsettling, and the way she played her own death scene, saying “please don’t be mad” when she really meant “please don’t kill me,” was achingly sad. I think Lizzie is a deceptively difficult role to play, and I couldn’t be more impressed with Sharbino. The fact that she can channel all that stuff at age 11 and not seem melodramatic or unconvincing is sort of staggering, right? I mean, compare that to Carl, who is asked to do far less and still barely keeps it together. I think she could end up being a real star, and I’m sad to see her go.
But in terms of the character? Oh yeah, she really, really had to go. I think I would’ve been able to take the extreme Carol took, to answer your question, because there’s really no other option. If you don’t kill her, there are two possible results: She kills herself by dancing with a walker, or she kills other living people first. In the first case, same result, and in the second case, you’re causing more deaths by an act of omission. Morally, you have to kill Lizzie at that point. But what a realization to have! When Carol broke down crying after Tyreese took Lizzie back into the house, I thought it was more than just for Mika’s death; it was also the knowledge of what had to come next.
Some broader stuff: I liked the fire metaphor that ran throughout the episode, and how it became white when Lizzie’s fire was about to stop burning. And in general, I like when The Walking Dead explores the really complicated journey to being a moral and physical savior. The survivors can’t be Christ-like, like Mika, because there is no swaying an enemy who’s unthinking and can’t be overcome, or exposed, without violence. But how to live that way without descending into evil? Rick is the touchstone by which everyone is measured because he’s the one trying the hardest to do things the right way. But I think after stepping into the deep end when she killed Karen and David, Carol is beginning to see that light. As I said, I wish we could have seen her move just a bit further, but the episode was so well-executed that it’s a small complaint.
Okay, I’ll kick it back to you because I’ve gone long … I can’t remember the last Walking Dead episode that made me think like this, and if “Live Bait,” the Governor’s episode earlier this season, was diminished by how it was ignored and discarded immediately after (and I believe it was), “The Grove” might be the best episode of Season Four. These implications will actually last.
Too crazy? Let me know what you think about all this rambling. As for SXSW, it was an incredible time with incredible people, and even though this doesn’t nearly rival giving Jemaine Clement a back rub, I got to introduce Matisyahu at the Paste party. And he seemed like a nice guy.
—Shane
Shane,
That’s a terrific point about Carol stopping a little short on her path to redemption, but for a character who’s been as intractable as her, it’s a big step. The undercurrent of this whole thread with Carol and Tyreese has been the guilt that Carol has carried, and if she wasn’t able to admit how unnecessary the death was, she was able to put someone else’s emotional need above the thing she’s held most sacred—survival. Mika was her conduit back to some shred of humanity, and if it wasn’t as dramatic a step as that taken by the Governor, it hopefully will be a more lasting one.
And isn’t it often like that with forgiveness? Carol wants Tyreese to understand the why behind her actions. I know I’m like that every time I apologize to anyone. Repentance is often wrapped up in rationalization, and it’s difficult to untangle the two. But I’ll choose to believe that Carol understands the wrongness of her actions. And even the act of coming clean can point you onto the path of redemption. Carol has been faking her return to the group up until this point, but now she’s truly back.
And yes, that was a stunning performance by the young Brighton Sharbino, from her counting by the flowers to her final desperate moments. By the way, Sharbino played Marty Hart’s daughter in True Detective, so she may have learned about great acting on that set. The show has dallied in melodrama, but that was completely absent here thanks to the interplay of all four actors. (Okay, Judith was fine, too.)
It’s reassuring to know that the show hasn’t stopped exploring the morally squishy areas of being human in the apocalypse—and that there are plenty more to explore. It’s certainly where the writing has been at its best. Credit is due the series’ third showrunner, Scott M. Gimple, who wrote his first episode since the season opener. It’s worth noting that the handful of episodes written by Gimple include some of the series’ most memorable moments—Shane shooting Otis in the leg, Sophia walking out of the barn, Morgan keeping Rick’s hometown “clear” and Daryl repeatedly stabbing his zombified older brother. I can see how he got his current job.
So back when we wrote about “After,” you listed “Tyreese and the kids” way down at #10 on your Death Preference Chart. Half that group is now gone. Of the remaining survivors, Daryl and Beth seem to be in the worst shape. Everyone else seems to be headed for a reunion at Terminus, which I know to you sounds worse than being kidnapped by a still-practicing undertaker. But we’ve only got two episodes left this season, “Us” and “A.” What are you most hoping to see before we return in the fall?
—Josh
Josh,
“Repentance is often wrapped up in rationalization.” I like that. Not only true, but sounds nice. Might get it tattooed on my back beneath a picture of Rust Cohle. Don’t ask me why on Cohle; it just feels right.
So, since you asked, let’s revisit that death preference chart, with no. 1 being the character I’d most like to see die.
1. Maggie – Josh, what happened with her accent? It’s egregious!
2. Beth – You can’t accuse me of being inconsistent here.
3. Daryl – Sacrilege? I don’t care. It’s the zombie apocalypse, and there’s no time for memory or emotion. He’s lost his mojo over the last few episodes, and if I’m a Roman emperor, my thumb is slowly pointing down.
4. Terminus – Don’t like the place in my gut. Hope it gets taken out by a nuclear bomb before anyone arrives. Except Beth.
5. Glenn – He should get smoked by Tara to prove that you shouldn’t be nice to anyone.
6. Tara – Feeling real neutral about her right now. But I’m super ready to hate her if the situation calls for it.
7. Carol – This is the lowest (highest?) she’s been on this list in a while. She better be thanking Scott M. Gimple profusely. I bet Maggie is currently begging him to write her an episode.
8. Sasha/Tyreese – I want the brother/sister reunion.
9. Bob Stookey – My favorite from the prison camp.
10. King of the Roses Man – I think his name is Joe? The dude with the tennis ball and the leather jacket with roses on it who almost got killed by Rick and now has Daryl in his band of outlaws. I like his style. We need more bad guys.
11. Abraham Ford and his Weird Scientist – Let’s turn this show into a buddy dramedy as they bicker and clash all the way to Terminus, pursued by King of the Roses Man.
So, where did I go wrong? I’ll kick it back to you to close us down, and decide whether we need to amend our traditional closing line, or if I’m being too harsh on Daryl and forgetting the seasons of awesomeness he gave us before.
—Shane
Shane,
I assume you’re leaving out Rick because even though Andrew Lincoln is English, the show isn’t, and only the Brits kill off their main characters? And while I’m with you on Maggie’s accent this season, I still want to see her reunion with Glenn. Those two have given us a lot, and I think they can be worth saving, yet. But Daryl? I felt like he only really had one bad episode. I liked where he and Beth went in “Alone.” I’m shocked you’ve got him so high on your list.
I’m with you on Bob Stookey, though. Lawrence Gilliard Jr. really shined when given the space in that last episode. So I’ll say, “Don’t die, Bob Stookey.” But the last line still belongs to the man with the crossbow.
Please don’t die, Daryl Dixon.
—Josh
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