‘The Walking Dead’ Season 4 ‘The Grove’ Recap: Look at the Flowers

Carol and Tyreese have to make very hard decisions this week after discovering some dark secrets that finally come to light….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

The back half of The Walking Dead season 4 has been an exposition in character development that some have loved and other have hated. Personally, I’ve been somewhere in the middle with certain episodes resonating on a human level, which is something that tends to get missed when the entire existence of this show is predicated on surviving the undead apocalypse. Other episodes have felt unnecessary and nearly forgettable when the hour was over.

This week on The Walking Dead the episode was titled ‘The Grove’ and for a part of it, I was once again lost in the feeling of ‘what are we doing here?’ but by the end the dark places that this show can travel to still managed to shock and amaze me to the point where it took me over an hour to gather my thoughts, sit down at the computer and write this recap.

So let’s start with the actual episode recap before I get to my reaction.

Home Is Where the Safe Is

This episode followed the formula set forth ever since The Walking Dead returned mid-season with the focus on one group of survivors instead of the whole. It was Tyreese, Carol, Lizzie, Mika and Judith’s turn on the cycle as the five of them were on the road to Terminus before taking a slight detour to a peach and walnut farm somewhere deep in the heart of Georgia.

I figured out a long time ago that something was not quite right with Lizzie (played wonderfully by Brighton Sharbino at 11-years of age no less). She was naming zombies while locked behind the prison walls and the loss of her father didn’t help matters much. She’s been hesitant to accept that the dead were really a threat and couldn’t be saved, but in this hour long look into her psyche we realized this little girl was so far gone it was certainly sad and tragic.

Lizzie can’t seem to connect that the zombies aren’t people anymore. They are flesh seeking death machines that want nothing more than to dine on your bones, and they aren’t looking for a friend in the world. For a big part of her life since the prison started, Lizzie has had others looking out for her. Mika, her little sister, seemed to recognize that something wasn’t quite right with Lizzie, but at her young age there’s only so much she was going to comprehend. Carol and Tyreese see there’s something wrong, but chalk it up to a child being caught in a horrific situation — who can expect them to adapt and be okay with it?

The newest farm they discovered was supposed to be relief from the road. It had running water, gas, and plenty of food and it was to the point where Tyreese was ready to abandon the hunt for Terminus in favor of a warm bed and a safe haven. Sure, he’s haunted nightly by visions of his dead girlfriend Karen, but Tyreese just wants to rest easy for once and he can’t think of a better way to do that than to sit here, start a new life with Carol and the girls and forget about the rest of the world. But like everything in this zombie apocalypse, things don’t happen the way they are supposed to. They just are the way they are.

The Malicious Child

It would be easy to point a finger at Lizzie during this episode of The Walking Dead and just say ‘she’s a psycho’ and move on. The reality is while this is a TV show full of fictitious scenarios, the only way to truly understand is to think about this world the characters are forced to live in and adapt to survive. Lizzie isn’t there yet. She doesn’t understand or comprehend the danger that the walkers present, and this little synapse in her head either doesn’t connect or it snapped in two, because not only can she not get that the dead are coming to eat her, but she also believes that the zombies are really just an extension of the living. She tries time after time to show this to Mika, Carol and Tyreese but finally she has to take the ultimate step to prove her point.

So as Tyreese and Carol approach after a day gathering supplies, they happen upon Lizzie standing over her fallen sister with a knife in hand, bloody from wrist to fingers. Lizzie killed Mika to prove that when she comes back to life, she’ll be the same person as she was before. Not only that but Lizzie was about to do the same to baby Judith, but Carol convinces her that a child unable to walk can’t be turned at this early of an age. Carol promises to let Mika turn, and then she can see how her sister is still her sister. Of course she’s lying to get Lizzie away from the baby, and Carol has to finish Mika off before she comes back as the undead.

Long Road, Hard Road

Tyreese and Carol have to do something about Lizzie, right now. She’s clearly disturbed beyond the point of no return. It’s finally revealed that Lizzie was the one who cut open the rabbit that Tyreese and the others found in the bowels of the prison, and she was the one who fed mice and rats to the walkers that drew them to the prison gates. Tyreese wants to help her, but there’s not more help to be given. Lizzie murdered her little sister in cold blood.  The fact that she can’t understand why that’s wrong is all the more reason to believe that there’s no coming back for her.

So Carol goes for a walk with Lizzie, and the little girl apologizes and wants nothing more than for Carol to not be mad at her. We learn early in the episode that the only way to calm Lizzie down is to have her stare at some flowers and count to three.  She was first seen doing this at the urging of her sister all the way back towards the beginning of the season when her father died, and again earlier this episode. Carol asks the same of little Lizzie — look at the flowers and calm down.  Carol knows Lizzie is too far gone to bring back from the edge, and her choice is tough, but there is no other outcome.

One bullet later, Lizzie is dead and it’s for her own good and the good of everyone that was around her. Carol is beset with grief over the decision she made, and even Tyreese can only watch from a window back inside the house.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Back in the house, late that night, Carol finally comes clean to Tyreese about what she did to Karen and David. She was the one that killed them and he needed to know. Tyreese grips a gun for a moment, but ultimately lets go before telling Carol that he forgives her for what she had to do — especially considering what he witnessed just hours earlier when she had to do that as well. He explains that she’s forgiven, but not forgotten. She has to live with what she’s done and that is a harder sentence than him pulling the gun and putting her down right there. Both Tyreese and Carol are resolved to move onto Terminus and leave behind this farm full of terror and tragedy.

In the midst of this, Tyreese and Carol are working on a puzzle at a table by candlelight — it was revealed during The Talking Dead after the show ended that the puzzle was actually a picture of Carol’s daughter Sophia holding balloons. The symbolism seems to suggest that this was Carol’s way of accepting her own daughter’s death, making the choice to put down another troubled child who was still alive but just as dangerous, and putting the pieces back together again.

Tyreese and Carol take Judith and they are back on the road to Terminus.

Reaction and Review

This was a powerfully emotional episode of The Walking Dead and definitely one of the best of the season. For all the mistakes that the show has made in my opinion in these character building episodes, this was one that worked. Carol has been a deeply conflicted person ever since we discovered that she was abused by her husband, followed by the hard choices she’s made in killing Karen, David and now Lizzie. She might be the one on her way to disturbed next if things keep traveling down this path. Now we’re back on the road to Terminus minus two as our survivors continue to work to find each other by season’s end.

Next week on The Walking Dead, it’s the penultimate episode in the season as we start to see more from all of the groups, building towards what we can only assume will be a reunion in the final hour of the year. Daryl is stuck with the gun happy, kill crazy group led by Joe and we also catch a glimpse of Rick, Carl, Michonne, Abraham and Glenn.