Template:Episode updated V.2"To The Woods" is the fifth episode of the fifth season of the animated television series Lovely World and the 194th overall episode. The episode first aired in the United States on the children's programming network Children's Avast Television on November 29, 2014. It was directed by Blake Thomson, who wrote the story, and written by Caitlin Grimes. The series centers on the main character, Edward, and his friends Michael, Leo and Kamila, who embark on new adventures in search of sources to extend their "worlds", discover new species, and strive to achieve their own objectives.
In the episode, the group heads to a forest to chill out and explore, while Kamila travels with Edward's Sheep and ends up becoming lost. Kamila then discovers a destroyed village and meets a wounded peasant, who says that a group of "evil villagers" attacked them and plans to target more communities. Recognizing that the hamlet is in danger, she approaches the village and attempts to rescue the day.
Blake Thomson proposed the episode to Caitlin Grimes while they were both working on their own episodes. They agreed to collaborate to produce a single episode centered on a town and a bunch of wicked locals, with Kamila subsequently included into the plot. A sequence toward the conclusion of the episode that included one of the bad villager's murder by shooting him sparked disagreement between Avast Television executives and Blake Thomson and Caitlin Grimes, which originally lead to the episode getting a rare rating of TV-PG, but was toned down to TV-Y7. The episode received positive reviews from critics, with praise for the screenplay and action scenes. It was watched by a total of 1,527,823 million households and over 2,454,246 million viewers.
Plot
Kamila took the courageous choice to travel alone, as the rest of the gang packed up and walked into the woods. However, when she planted candy expecting them to return and the sheep devoured them, she and one of the sheep she had previously borrowed from Edward wound themselves lost. After some hours, Kamila and the sheep locate a nearly ruined settlement and initially believe it is uninhabited. However, they subsequently learn via a letter that the community has a rich history.
After a while, an injured villager (who survived the brutal attack) walks up to her and appears tearfully to inform her that a group of "bad villagers", as he had called them, have attacked the village and are now on their way to attack another hamlet (as the person overheard the "bad villagers") that he knows very well and confirms that his family lives there. During that moment, Edward and the gang were arrested by the "bad villagers," leaving Kamila and the sheep to cope with both challenges at the same time. Kamila grew terrified but ultimately collected herself and requested that the community utilize a highly specialized equipment to fly to the hamlet. When the two arrive in the village, located near the end of the forest, everyone is stunned and freaking out, hiding in their houses. When Kamila gets her swords that she had gotten from a adult villager, the "bad villagers" show there just in time, with Kamila screaming at them to stop and end "this all". However, a fierce battle between her and the "bad villagers" breaks out.
Kamila and the sheep are having a terrible time during the fight, so she came up with a plan and invited all of the villagers to attack with anything they had. Eventually, the "bad villagers" are attacked by the locals, and even though the village sustains some damage, the inhabitants prevail. It is discovered that one of the "bad villagers" who started the fight was actually a 20-year-old who had been abducted. He was made to fight and ultimately decided to let the rest of the group leave before being shot to death right there on the spot, by one of the bad villagers, in front of the group. Scared by the death of the villager, the gang chose to embark on their quest after they decided to attempt to forget about the villager who had saved them, but the villager are still in their mind. The episode ends with Kamila tearfully saying "thank you" to the sky.
Production
Conception and writing
Caitlin Grimes wrote the episode, after joining the production team in early 2014. This episode, one of just a few, marked his writing debut in the series' production, and he worked as a temporary writer for the fifth season before departing due to a new crew replacing the old team. It was also directed by Blake Thomson, who wrote the first several seasons before taking over as director. The development of "To The Woods" began in early 2014, during the filming of the fourth season, when Blake Thomson submitted a concept for an episode centered on a group of villagers invading a community. Blake was working on directing a fourth-season episode at the time, and once that episode was over, he focused on writing the first draft of his solo episode. After struggling with the story, he recruited Caitlin Grimes to write the screenplay for the episode, who was also working on his own episode. After Grimes finished his episode, the two of them began working on the episode, which would become "To The Woods".
Originally, the narrative would have focused on a group of villagers who had to contend with another group known as the "evil villagers," but owing to the screenplay having over "30 to 40 characters," the number of characters was reduced to only 10, and then to just 1. As the screenplay underwent multiple revisions, including a proposed one-minute song about the village's entrance, it was agreed that Kamila should have a role in the plot, and the third draft was written with Kamila. Around that time, production began on another Kamila-themed episode titled "Kamila's Attempt at Flying."
Joshua Cox, Edward Roberts, Bradley Reid, Felix Moon, Dennis Mccall, Graysen Boone, and Mathias Albert created the storyboards during a one-month period. A subplot that was eliminated from development was planned to center on the "evil villagers," who kidnapped the villagers from a nearby villager and locked them up without food or water, eventually killing them. The subplot was discarded because it was too gory for young people; various attempts were made to make the subplot "less terrifying," but it was agreed that the subplot should be scrapped.
Conflict between Avast
The episode was faced about one of the biggest controversies during its development and production. One of the sequences proposed early in the episode's production was one in which one of the "evil villagers" betrays the group and is dragged to a home and shot to death. A very early draft would have the villager being set on fire. During early test screenings, the executives, as well as Caitlin Grimes and Blake Thomson, disagreed on how to handle a person being shot to death on-screen because it was "too violent." Originally, the conclusion would have included five to seven "bad villagers" repeatedly shooting "the bad villager", revealing blood and showing his dead body. One of the animators who witnessed the episode's initial test screening remarked that "everyone was shocked to death," and one of the team members left the screening with "a countenance of dread."
Following the test screening, numerous crew members questioned Blake Thomson about why the sequence was ever storyboarded in the first place, to which he simply replied, "I want to". However, once the executives were dissatisfied, the scene was toned down to instead highlight the group's reaction, with blood from the weapons visible and flying; the villager's cry could be heard, voiced by one of the crew members from the production team. Despite this, the sequence was still classified as "graphic," with the same amount of violence as the prior version. When questioned why they created the scenario, both indicated that they intended to show people the theme of execution. After revising the finale multiple times and refusing to tone down the sequence any further, the executives decided to offer them three options;
- (1); Scrapped the scene completely and produced a new ending
- (2); Give the episode a rare rating of TV-PG
- (3); Warns viewers about the graphic scene at the end of the episode
To highlight the brutality, the duo went with the third opinion, but urged Avast Television to grant an episode a TV-PG rating, much to the production crew's dismay and displeasure. As the episode progressed, the animators became concerned that they were depicting graphic scenes of death and refused to do the scene, repeatedly asking Caitlin Grimes, the writer, to tone down the scene by lot, but he refused, causing the animators to become upset and work on other episodes. After numerous controversies about the episode, such After numerous controversies about the episode, such as the executives deciding not to show the episode during test screenings for children for fear of scaring them, Blake Thomson and Caitlin Grimes decided to work together on rewriting the scene one more time and decided to tone it down heavily by removing the "bad villagers" and instead having one of them shoot a single bullet toward the villager. Dennis Mccall created the storyboards for the final version of the scenario, which he believed worked far better than the earlier versions. Following a test screening for executives, they officially agreed to lower the rating to TV-Y7.
Broadcast and reception
Ratings
"To The Woods" originally first premiered in the United States on the children's programming network Children's Avast Television on November 29, 2014. On its first day of airing, the episode was watched by a total of 1,527,823 million households and over 2,454,246 million viewers, a major increase from the previous episode "The Old Caves", that had 1.9 million viewers.
Reviews
The episode received positive reviews from critics, with praise for the screenplay and action scenes.