Tuesday, March 18, 2014

The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 14 "The Grove" Review









WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THIS EPISODE

        Another episode of The Walking Dead aired two nights ago and it is a slightly big episode for the second half of the season. Carol and Tyreese are talking. The little girls are talking. Stuff happens. One of the little girls kills the other. Carol kills the little girl that killed the other. It was a very sudden dark turn. People liked it. It brought many people back into the show. It is my job to review it. I will do so.

            Because this episode was one that most people liked, I will start with the things that I did not like about it… First off, there was a section near the middle of the episode before everything starts happening where I was taken out of the episode. It was when we see the older girl feeding one walker and then there is that small action scene. I felt that then, the older girl’s emotional and mental problem they were addressing went too far and it stopped feeling real. We already had enough. We did not need more. Also, I did not really buy into the fact that although the girls were sheltered for a while, the zombie walker apocalypse is still among them, and I do not think the older one could have gone this long, still not knowing how walkers work.

            Another flaw I had was the girls’ acting abilities. Although they are very young, they, especially the younger one, cannot act at all. In many of the “talking scenes” in this episode, they were awful. Though, I did not count that against my rating of the episode, because I do not see it as something that the makers of it really had control over.

            Well, those are the only real flaws I had with the episode. Some of them were slightly large flaws, but there are not many. I did not love this episode. It was not a riveting thrill-ride from start to finish, but I did really enjoy it. Here are the things that I liked about the episode… First off, I actually really liked the first half of this episode (before the section near the middle of the episode). I thought the overall writing of the show was much better than the writing of the past few episodes. It was interesting to get some insight on the little girls, and the overall dialogue was very good. I also really liked the fact that Carol bounces off the little girls when talking to them.

            Now, I will bring out the big guns. The ultimate thing that everyone liked in this episode was the huge, sudden, surprising, dark turn. I did not see it coming at all and did not think The Walking Dead would pull this. Though, they did, and they got it right. It worked extremely well for this episode and I loved it. I thought it was a great turn and it was a great way to get rid of the little girls. The ending was great. It did not go into this silly fantasy land that The Walking Dead has been going into lately. The characters did what had to get done. And another great thing this episode did was that it put characters (Tyreese and Carol) in a situation where they, and us, have no idea what the right thing is to do, and what they need to do. It has been a while since that has worked on this show, but when it happens, it is great. Another thing about the second half of this episode was the way Carol tells Tyreese the secret. She did not tell him then run away. She was ready to die. She put a gun beside him and told him to do what he needed to do.


            Overall, I thought that this was a very good episode and the best of the past four episodes (including this one). Hopefully the next two will be even better, but that might not happen. Still, we had this episode.

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