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

bring on twitchy brad pitt

I did enjoy the kids at the movie showing looking only semi-enthused. anybody born after 2003 has no frame of reference for movies made about normal lives they never had.

what was the movie they were watching?

It’s a commune… we’re communists honey.

Yeah the reductivist binary explanations of socioeconomic life certainly project present day worldviews more than anything I've seen so far this season

what was the movie they were watching?

Herbert Ross'/Neil Simon's "The Goodbye Girl." Every kid's favorite.

Anyway, another really good episode, with a surprising number of subtle details from the game's sequel sneaking in there. However, seeing what next week's episode seems to be, and knowing there are only three more episodes left, I remain surprised that they didn't try to squeeze a 10 episode season out of this, because I know what the final two episodes have to be after next week's and it feels a bit rushed. Or maybe it's just that the show is really good and I want it to last longer, lol!

Best episode since the first two in my opinion (maybe surprising since I've been a "more fungus" guy but I didn't love what they did with more fungus in ep 5.) I think this show is better when it's low-key and funny and worse when it strives for big emotional beats -- like in this one, the "no you take it from here brother I can't lose my daughter AGAINNNNNNN" business felt set-up and forced but there were so many small good, moments, especially with Ellie, who was kind of unleashed this episode. Like when she sees a dam and quietly says "Dam."

word for word. recreating one of the best most emotional scenes in tlou. pedro and bella are hands down the perfect joel and ellie. DOWN TO THE TONE THEYRE INSANE #TheLastOfUs pic.twitter.com/10JRmUKLrr

— joel miller defender tlou era (@ellievjoel) February 20, 2023

And, and totally missed the visual pun of Joel breaking down as he struggled to repair his cracked ... sole.

This episode was pretty good. The "We're communists" part made me laugh, as did Ellie's excitement when they got to campus. "First time seein' a monkey?" "First time seein' a monkey."

looking forward to the eventual payoff when Joel finally sings

fingers crossed for merle haggard

Spoiler question for people that know the game: assuming next week is Left Behind, does that mean they are going to make people wait two weeks to find out Joel's fate? Or do you think next week will be largely Left Behind, with bits of Ellie helping Joel?

I'm hoping it's all flashback. Very enthusiastic about the idea that they'll show (not tell) some of Ellie's QZ history

Response to Josh's question (spoilers): my guess is that they'd want Joel in every episode, at least a little (e.g. Ep 3). The Wiki page for the TV show has the next episode's title as "Left Behind" - they could even mirror the DLC, bouncing back and forth btwn Ellie/Riley and Ellie/sick Joel in the mall setting. I like the changes the show has made so far, diverging from the game; it seemed implausible in the game for Ellie to steal a horse and escape a fortified compound, so they changed that in Ep 6 and made it just as emotionally effective.

A very nice touch in this episode is that when you first see Tommy he's setting up a scaffold that LOOKS a lot like the nooses we saw set up for public FEDRA executions in the Boston QZ (or was that KCQZ?) but it's just a headfake and when you see it closer up he's just doing some kind of normie construction.

yes otm, i def thought it was a noose at first

part of me was ugh Joel you fucking idiot why are you pushing tommy away this place is DOPE you both could just stay here & like maybe live a life & trade for shoes & board shorts & fucking pizza even who knows

but noooo you have to be the world’s biggest stubborn grump who rejects love in all forms because you love mushrooms & sadness most in life i guess idk

The contractor

What a great episode. I really liked all the emotional to and fro, and also Rutina Wesley! What the fuck was that ending though, I said “what the fuck, how is this the end,” and my better half said, “HE’S NOT DEAD.”

They tied together a lot of obvious but so far implicit stuff - Ellie as Sarah replacement or not, Tommy and Joel and their whole relationship and differences, and also we got some classic upskilling. The horse must be well trained to not try bolting at the sound of gunfire.

Having said all that, I could do without the wispy John Lewis ad covers. Just do an instrumental!

people loved contractors

I know! Loved that whole interlude

that was great, a+ comedy no notes

oh shit also

ELAINE MILES aka the goat aka Marilyn from Nothern Exposure + Graham Greene the other goat!!! so awesome
— also Ellie’s behaviour in their presence would qualify her as being, to paraphrase Rez Dogs, a shitass

Omg the menstrual cup and her reaction 🤭

YES I KNOW

I didn’t recognize either of them on first viewing but I said “I know those two… like they’re a comedy duo or a real-life couple or something” and then saw their names in the credits. (It’s been a long time since I watched Northern Exposure!)

xp to VG :)

I recognized Graham Greene right away but I've seen him in a million things. The woman I had only ever seen in one or two episodes of Northern Exposure so I knew I recognized her face (and especially her voice) but not from where. They were hilarious. "Did you tell them the truth?...Are you telling me the truth?"

can’t believe I didn’t connect her

Northern Exposure was one of many reasons I almost didn’t pass Calculus 2 in college, because I’d do the homework an hour before class at 3pm and Northern Exposure was in syndicated reruns at 2pm

Great job maintaining a sense of dread waiting for the town's big evil secret to be revealed ("kids don't talk like that here" - oh are they psycho fundies?!?! - oh no they just have normal kids) but no, just a pretty sweet setup.

lol me too. the moment Ellie walked into Tommy's wife's house I was expecting her to discover something (and she did, yes, that Joel's daughter's name was Sarah, but that isnt' what I was thinking she might find out).

i wouldn't mind living in a town like that right now tbh

I found myself mulling over lots of tedious questions about their power supply and apparently functional sewerage system and its maintenance and whatnot. The wrong way to watch it obv.

I guess it’s easier to keep the sewers from overflowing when 99% of people are dead

I admitted I was doing it wrong! But lots of sewer networks rely on pumps and constant maintenance and fatberg removal or maybe blocked by thousands of corpses. I know a lot of hydro-generators can run for decades unmaintained after the collapse of human civilisation, but the electrical grids they feed need a lot of maintenance and repair work. Yes I am doing this wrong!

Lol

I just handwave all that, if they don’t mention it I don’t care

i didn't realize the random girl in the camp that joel sees when he has another panic attack was supposed to remind him of sarah until they showed a sarah flashback later on. it's been a while!

I'm really glad they have been sparing with the flashbacks of her, cos it helps illustrate just how far Joel has had to shove her into the recesses of his brain to just wake up every day.

if this was a Paramount Plus Original she'd have been popping up every episode with Charlie Puth "See You Again" playing each time she comes on screen

they should’ve played the smashing pumpkins cover of “never let me down” instead of the weepy piano cover at the end. otherwise another excellent episode

otm! i love the pumpkins cover

Stayed up way toooo late last night watching e4 + e5.. I'm hooked.

Loved Kathleen as a performance - like a sadistic primary school teacher. We didn't see her die, and her onscreen fate was unsatisfying, so I hope that's not the last of her

In pretty much everything she's been in, she was one of the best things about it.

I didn’t think that scene left any ambiguity about Kathleen’s survival!

If it's possible without major spoilage - do we know where this season ends narratively? Will this season for sure take us up to the end of the first game?

Yes.

Game 2 will apparently be split into two seasons, iirc.

Interesting. I imagine they'll be tempted to milk it for more than 3 seasons. Kind of surprised they didn't split the first game into two seasons, feels a bit rushed already. That said, I do like that it isn't open-ended and they're working toward a conclusion of sorts unlike The Walking Dead sprawl. (I gave up on WD after two seasons or so, so what do I know... just seems to have gone on way too long).

I didn’t think that scene left any ambiguity about Kathleen’s survival!

― better than whoever you are (gyac), Tuesday, February 21, 2023 1:11 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hehe, well to me it looked like one of those screen "deaths" that point towards "aha, gotcha, she survived!"

On reflection I think "People loved contractors" might be the best line in the show's entire run so far.

Not just because it's funny -- but because it speaks to the way that when everything's broken you have to / get to create a new world, and part of making up a new future is making up a new past

And this has something to do with parenting, too -- lots of people in the show insist in dialogue that Joel doesn't get to revise or forget his years as a murderer/thief/raider but .... maybe he actually does? Maybe Ellie gets to grow up in a world where Joel was a good guy doing what he had to do and people loved contractors.

xp i mean it would undermine the premise of the whole show (ellie must be protected because she is the only one immune to the cordyceps) if kathleen survived as anything other than a fungus monster

I am not sure we watched the same scene, Kathleen got fairly obviously mauled and the only reason there’s a cut there is cos it’s clearly a fairly gruesome death.

It was pretty late at night when I saw it, so I may have just been being dozy. I was actually hoping for a slower more serendipitous demise considering what a terror she was - too good a character to just knock-off in just one episode, but if that's the way it is that's the way it is