Walking dead – The Grove

Finally a good episode. I've stopped watching TWD somewhere mid previous season, bored, basically, and tired of all the whining faces and really weird subplots. The pilot to this show – I still think that was the best pilot to any show, even better than Breaking Bad, The Bridge or any of my other favorite shows. The rest… Not so much. But there was lotsta noise about the Grove and now I can see why. It was really good episode. Awfully haunting, terribly depressing and almost no zombies in it, just how a good horror is supposed to be. (World War Z anyone?) I know that the original graphic novels are ridiculously gruesome and tragic. Carol never makes it this far, but in the show, she is a favorite. Her inner turmoil is almost as good as those of Shane, just in the opposite direction. (He went from a righteous, good man to a selfish alpha to a crazy person and carol went from an abused wife to a child-less stump of a cut down tree to a really scary decision maker. And executioner of those decisions – something Rick needed whole seasons to achieve at times.)

Few years ago I saw a good Mel Gibson movie, the Edge of Darkness, and in it his character is asked if he came out of the war a changed man. He replied, and this is something I firmly agree with to this day, that you come out pretty much the same you went in. The fact that some come out nuts and broken is because they were gonna be weak without the blunt face-on violence fairly equally, just in a pampered environment. Lots of boys cry for their mommies when shit hits the fan. With or without wars.

This is the subject matter of the Grove (what a pretty word indeed). Lizzy was always going to be a psychopath, the end of the world just brought it out of her illustriously. Sooner or later her parents would have to face the fact she’s offing all the puppies and drowning her sister and pulling plugs on old people, and they’d either put her in a nuthouse or prison. In the good old world nobody would consider euthanizing her. Kudos on Carol to pull that one off. Doubtfully anyone else ever could, despite the speeches. I guess the remaining few people of this show noticed what happens when you stubbornly insist on the happy ending when they started running out of family members.

The damndest thing, the toll Carol now has to carry. In the end all people die from either goodness or sin. Goodness cause they can’t be cruel to be kind and sin, because they made the ugly decisions to spare the good. No disease or machine ever killed as many people as people killed people.  

.... Is it just me or it never rains in this show?