“I'm taking a ride with my best friend” - The Last of Us on HBO (2023)

Bryan screaming for his mother and wailing to be spared was gut-wrenching.

Yeah, that was rough — it reminded me of Unforgiven, honestly.

I like the way this show nudges right up to the edge of the expected and then fakes you out, like when they were in the woods and Joel was like, "Don't worry, nobody will find us," and then...nobody finds them. (Which is of course a fakeout leading up to the cliffhanger ending, but it was well done.)

it also is another depiction of his warming up to Ellie. if he was sleeping outside by himself, with no Tess, he probably woulda just slept, but he responded to Ellie's very visible anxiety of being found.

is a shame he spent multiple episodes getting to Bill and Frank's for working battery/vehicle, only to like, have his truck tires shredded days later and in a dangerous area where he can't realistically use it anymore.

similar to that BBC show Survivors (the one from 2008) where it seems like every episode, someone's car is blowing up or getting the tires shot out and they just go "ok we'll just get another one' and pick another off the street. which they can't do in this show because the batteries are all dead and fuel degraded

As far as subtle character beats go, it's of course implied Joel didn't sleep in the woods at all, and stayed awake vigilant, but in the later scene, having grown a little more comfortable with Ellie, he *does* fall asleep, and *that's* when they get caught.

The game, fwiw, is told more or less exclusively from the perspective of Joel and Ellie. I do appreciate how this show, while not opening super-wide, does open up enough to offer some stuff from other perspectives. Kathleen, for example, is not depicted in the game, but it's definitely plausible that she still "exists" in that world of militias and whatnot, even if we (players) didn't see her operating.

they should be looking for bicycles

lol otm

it's too bad in the show the outbreak occurs before E-Bikes were big, could have been hilarious bottle eps of someone trying to figure out how the unlock the damn things

I always thought that back when I even bothered with the Walking Dead. I want to say I've only ever seen one zombie thing where they had bicycles, and it might have been ... World War Z? Like, the dumbest one.

scores and scores of people evading zombies in pedicabs

One thing I liked about the Stand was how much time King spent on them getting the power working again, but there's limits to how interesting you can make that narrative. Not that I wouldn't watch a series that just focused on utilities and infrastructure in a post-apocalyptic world and didn't have zombies or lawless marauders.

Like, where is my Sim City: Fallout Edition

also easier to do successfully in a novel where you just read fragments at a time and stop when you feel like it. actually watching this is often less interesting (and as we've seen from all attempts, adapting The Stand has been a challenge, even though it's my favorite King book).

honestly I prefer post-apoc fiction where there isn't a group of semi-undead monsters chasing you because that gives survivors a common enemy that they can still rally to fight - yeah, there are still 'other humans' that are a problem, but it's easier to build coalitions when you're constantly facing off against thousands of zombies/similar. much more interesting watching society breakdown and all of niceties and social order of before crumbling and trying to navigate that, like how do you rebuild anything when you can't trust anybody's motivation?

(I still do like post-apoc w/ monsters, mind)

and yeah there's plenty of that still present in TLOU, but remove the funguspeople and you'd probably see way more rogue survivalists, splinter factions, etc all competing for control, as well as naive folks who somehow want to reconstruct the neighborhood watch program or something

Agreed. I gotta admit I got more psyched for the episode when Joel said they were too isolated to worry about the infected, it was "people" they had to worry about. Smart to lay off the zombies for a couple of episodes now.

I would like an infrastructure-focused post-apoc video game because I think the widespread assumption that humans will descend in violent chaos is to some degree a myth. What you see in actual disasters is people coming together and helping one another. The whole Mad Max thing is just not what happens.

In Florida after a hurricane people usually rush to Twitter to complain Disney is closed

lol

I think the widespread assumption that humans will descend in violent chaos is to some degree a myth. What you see in actual disasters is people coming together and helping one another. The whole Mad Max thing is just not what happens.

I dunno, if it was something that happened not just to Florida or Texas but to literally the entire planet? We have people in this country living like this right now, stockpiling weapons and food and flags and whatnot, and we don't even have fungus people. Hell, if all cell phone and internet service stopped tomorrow, how long until the looting and panicking starts? Plus, this show takes place 20 years after the disaster, so maybe things have had time to get better *and* worse.

‘Petty warlords’ does not seem an unlikely model in the event of total societal/governmental collapse

Even now, in the event of natural disaster we have 20% of the population with raging hard-ons for shooting looters and they’re the ones with most of the guns.

In more positive news:

Over the end credits, we hear Lotte Kestner’s cover of New Order’s “True Faith.” Interestingly, this cover was the basis for a version of the song that (REDACTED) sang in a commercial for The Last of Us Part II, which prompted Kestner to tweet about the unauthorized use of her cover. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann soon tweeted an apology for the “oversight” and said they were working to rectify it and that Kestner deserved recognition for her work. Hearing it featured here is a nice coda to the story, and hopefully gets Kestner’s lovely cover more recognition still.

in even more positive news, next episode comes out early! Out Friday, to avoid Superbowl on Sun.

But doesn't that mean a longer wait for the episode after that?

I watched this week's episode over lunch today, on a Monday! Imagine the possibilities.

HBO's adapting another iconic game pic.twitter.com/YtsIswwSBb

— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) February 5, 2023

Very interesting video; Pascal guest hosted Inside The Actors Studio and interviewed Willem Dafoe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wrCxo_42eg

I am utterly certain that there was a decent Cracked piece including a good digression on bicycles.

Although I can't find the piece that first called this to my attention, there is now a rich literature of "why don't they use bicycles" that is beginning to rival "why didn't the Hobbits just use eagles" for rectonny fanwankery.

Still. Bicycles. It's become a tvtrope.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoBikesInTheApocalypse

More proof, if needed, of how good The Expanse is

I mean ultimately you're going to have the same petroleum-based problem with bikes, no replacement rubber tires available.

f. hazel, I read an extremely dreary science fiction series 30ish years ago where a time traveler went to medieval Europe and developed most of the technology required to make a bicycle, but still needed rubber, and embarked on a perilous expedition to Africa and etc. etc.

I mean ultimately you're going to have the same petroleum-based problem with bikes, no replacement rubber tires available.

Clearly you don't know your bike history.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/01/8f/50/018f50376cfa03268374657ee4773219.jpg

like i said, society breaks down, i'm walking into the ocean

i ain't riding around town on a unicycle with no tire and just the rim

I would merely make a run for the upper midwest and live on bison meat, they seem to be doing pretty well based on the last episode.

right!?

Yeah, so boring fanwankery about bicycles aside, good episode, yes?

I liked the dad jokes recurring through the episode. Really warmed to both main characters a lot.

the jokebook stuff was great - i was similarly obsessed w a jokebook at ellie’s age & drove my family crazy w dumb jokes on car trips

him cracking up at the end was cute as hell

The jokebook, fwiw, is in the game, too.

Like I was saying earlier, Joel and Ellie are key to this, so it was so nice to get some time with the two alone.

agree

Yeah, solid episode for sure - felt a tiny bit straight-ahead after the last couple, but I don't see how that could be avoided. Nice character development for Joel and Ellie, and I want to know more about this whole Kansas City post-FEDRA situation. Kinda hoping we'll get a flashback to what exactly went down. Seems like they've freshly liberated the city and are settling scores, maybe becoming the oppressors they just defeated a bit? Interesting dynamic. Is the Melanie Lynskey character in the game, or a show-only thing?

Show only, and I wouldn't get your hopes up for much of a backstory of this location. In the game there are lots of locations like this one, run by militias or people otherwise independent of whatever government exists.

I love Melanie Lynskey! I hope there is more to her character than this “i have seen the face of the devil and his name is Henry” thing

Also if there is a place in Georgia that is capable of making smuggleable drugs up to Boston as was indicated in the first episode, I would hope that humanity had the wherewithal to also make contraband canned ravioli while they’re at it

found what I was looking for

https://www.cracked.com/article_19325_6-technologies-conspicuously-absent-from-sci-fi-movies.html

A couple of those things can be sort of hand-waved away, but definitely not the absence of bikes.

Someone should make a thread about that so people interested in boring on about it can go there.

Something that had been underwhelming about the series was Joel and Ellie, as in the game, the way they interact in the game is electric from the start. With the show, Joel is so much more muted that I found him dull to watch (maybe he just needs more sleep), and Ellie just didn't have anyone tip bother off of. Thankfully he's letting loose more, and the back and forth with the puns is charming. Lovely episode, with loads of nice little touches, like how when they go top sleep in the woods their backs are to each other, but in the office building she's facing him and he ends up facing her.

I also really appreciate when the show goes off script, since then I'm watching something for the first time. That said I was looking forward to the magazine gag.

sigh

xpost That was the only issue I was having, especially knowing there are so few episodes left (relatively speaking). And going counter trends, it looks like the final episode is ... a shockingly short 40 minutes. But this episode showed how quickly TV can catch up, Joel and Ellie relationship-wise.

looks like there's some twitter bullshit going on about Melanie Lynskey's character/type as being insufficiently post-apocalyptic: https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/melanie-lynskey-last-of-us-criticism.html