IMHO, this episode shows they do better when they avoid big action sequences and inexplicable interpersonal conflicts. They hit the despair/melancholy angle better than pretty much any episode thus far. The couple of scenes with them sitting around indoors were funny and sad without being overwrought. And not a single ‘contrived moral dilemma with shouting’ moment.
Carol’s refusal to offer a defense or mitigation with her confession was confusing at first. If it was me I’d have gone with “They were dying horribly and didnt want to turn. They asked me to do it.” However, in light of the murder/euthanasia, it makes sense: she just felt too bad to care what happened to her, and he saw why she thought she was right, even if he still thinks she was wrong.
I’m not sold on the depiction of mental illness. The actor did a good job with what she was given, particularly the freak out in the front yard, but the behaviors were just a typical Hollywood kitchen sink of crazy.
I picked up on very different motivations between Hershel’s actions and The Gov’s.
Hershel: His objection to me seemed more spiritual and based in a belief in doing no harm. The zombies were people at one time, created by God and imbued with a soul, and it was not his place to take their life (or current level of existence).
The Gov: It is easy to say he was just plain old nuts, which he in fact was. But he also had his pseudo-scientist trying to establish if there still remained traces of the person that could be reached. So add a whole lot of crazy which doesn’t particularly allow for rational judgements, the emotional loss of a child and the natural desire to un-do that loss, and a pseudo-sciency guy who is holding out some false hope… and I can kinda see it.
Which isn’t entirely unrealistic, this isn’t just a war it’s an extinction level event. Anyone not capable of dealing with it is not going to be around long enough to have to deal with any mental issues. BTW was the fire supposed to be the fire Daryl and Beth set to that shack?
Yeah, Lizzie wasn’t nuts because of the zombie apocalypse, she was seriously mentally ill before, and without medication and qualified mental health care it just got worse. We can’t always just talk someone back from some medical issues.
Herschel was a man of god, but he was also a doctor (a vet) and made it clear that if they waited long enough eventually there would be a (medical) cure. He was also clear that the original people were still in there somewhere. This is where I’m saying that he and the Governor and Lizzie and maybe the CDC guy all kinda worked along the same mindset. Maybe not exactly the same, I’m just working on the theory that the show always (well, mostly always) keeps one person or group of people around that doesn’t want to kill the walkers. Most recently it was Lizzie throwing a wrench into the “KILL’EM, KILL’EM ALL” motto. Surely, when they get to Terminus, someone in the new group won’t want to kill them either.
Any drawbacks are certainly more than balanced by Melissa McBride and Chad Coleman in this episode. Such lovely performances. And of course the writing for them was excellent as well. When Tyreese absorbed Carol’s confession, and his first response was, “Did she know what was happening? Did she suffer?” it was so heartbreakingly real. A lesser writer would have gone with rage - this was a much better insight into real human psychology, IMHO.
As to the drawbacks, I didn’t dislike the Lizzie storyline, but it was hampered by some unfocused writing (all along this season) and the limitations of child actors, I think. I would have preferred a more likeable Lizzie with a coherent mental illness that could have escalated to this point (I liked the flirtation with her hearing the walkers’ voices - wish they’d developed it more, and earlier). I could see that Carol loved her, but it would have been more effective if I empathized with that love a little more (i.e., at all).
As to the child actor thing, let me repost a comment I made in an off-board conversation:
I have two daughters aged 10 and 6. And especially around touchy topics or when in conflict with an adult, they just don’t talk like the kids in the show. The writers are writing straight-forward prose like adults might use.
Real-life kids are evasive, come out with non-sequiturs, and often convey more with what they omit than what they say. They’re emotional in confusing ways - anger comes out as tears, fear is expressed with rage, and so on.
Of course, this style of communication is hugely challenging for an actor. Look at how amazing Melissa McBride was with her silence, and making it clear that the confession was bubbling to her lips, but she decided to suppress it at the last moment. We are rightly impressed with such a performance, and it’s too much to ask of most kids!
So the writers write more simple expository dialog for the kids, and the director tells them to act mad, or scared, and it all comes out feeling very forced and fake. Not sure what the answer is, other than hoping to find that rare prodigy that can pull off more realistic material.
I think it was a more realistic depiction than most.
Mental illness in Hollywood is a temporary condition, always caused by a specific event (like seeing the milkman screw your mommy) and always sadly terminal in the short run or curable in the slightly-less-short run. We almost never see a character who is substantially afflicted by organic causes. We rarely see a “mentally ill” bad-doer who doesn’t get killed. We close to never see a “mentally ill” good-guy who doesn’t get fully cured with amazing speed.
So no, Lizzie didn’t match any of those cases; she was a broken personality who would have ended up under lifetime care in the real world; someone who could only be the most dangerous liability in WD’s world.
I was able to fanwank that by saying that the writers kept it low-key, because they wanted us to realize the others weren’t seeing it, either. They would normally have been able to notice Lizzie’s descent, but with everything that’s been happening, her mental health went unnoticed.
When Lizzie was playing tag, and Carol ran toward her, there was a moment when the walker teeth were inches from Lizzie’s neck, and Carol started yelling, “No, no, nononono!” My husband simultaneously started cheering, “Yes, yes, yes yesyesyes!”
Agreed that it was a more realistic depiction of mental illness than usually seen, but IMHO it still lacked an intangible truthiness. De gustibus est non disputandum.
I think Lizzie “hearing” the walkers was to indicate incipient or full-blown schizophrenia. That is a kind of interesting idea - in her mind, her reality was that they were talking to her.
