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

And then there's a power cut and he has to go back to Bill and Frank's again

https://www.boston.com/culture/entertainment/2023/01/30/the-last-of-us-10-miles-west-of-boston/

i liked the third episode a lot, and i haven't seen anyone really mention this, but i am curious to see how the show continues to dialog with video game storytelling tropes. for example, plotwise, this week's episode amounted to an arsenal upgrade lol, the part of the game where the player goes from struggling to survive to wielding a bit more firepower. i haven't played either game, but it seems to arrive at a similar point in the plot as where you get the gravity gun in half-life 2.

but obviously they made a beautiful, character-driven story out of it. seems like a pretty ideal way to make a video game adaptation.

my biggest inability to suspend disbelief so far relates to gasoline, which goes bad after a year or two. the fact that everybody's driving around surely means that one of the QZ's is drilling for and refining gas, yeah?

― 龜, Tuesday, January 31, 2023 2:57 PM bookmarkflaglink

loling that they address this in the first five mins of this week's ep. unexpected coincidence

They are clearly reading this thread and tweaking as necessary.

Anyway, another good one, and another quality example of sticking closely to the game (sometimes extremely faithfully) while simultaneously adding and changing little things. One of the biggest changes of course is the way violence is being handled. In the game it does the very game-y thing of throwing a bunch of NPCs at you, which makes you come off like Rambo as you fend them off. Here they scale things down, which allows it to play out more realistically, and makes the impact of the violence (which you get kinda numb to in the game, at least in the first one) more jarring.

I very much am interested that, Offerman aside, no major characters are played by Americans in this very American show. Or was the Firefly leader an American actor? I can’t remember.

Pedro Pascal was born in Chile and lived there briefly but grew up in Texas and California and went to NYU. If Wikipedia can be trusted he's a US citizen. Dude is an American actor!

Have to admit my interest is flagging a bit and the suggestion that this is going into a "bare-bones society built by survivors is Actually Bad" direction is somehow none too thrilling -- I think what I'm learning is that the character in this show I find really interesting is the fungus, and the fungus hasn't been very present in the last two episodes. More fungus!

enjoyed this ep - i like how a lot of the tension is in not seeing so much of the fungi whatevers and yeah just having one or two sparse survivor encounters adds to that, vs randos around every corner which would def get boring xxposts re Josh’s observations

plus i just like how ellie has her shit together but am also intrigued & concerned by that

Appreciate them giving Pedro Pascal more personality, 12% more warming up to Ellie. A little more fungus would be fine but battling through a horde of fungo-zombies every episode would get dull real fast.

I haven't played the Last of Us game but the Telltale Walking Dead game with basically this same story was the second-most affecting video game plot ever IMO (most - the love between a man and his horse in Red Dead 2).

played by Americans in this very American show.

Don't forget that America itself is being played by Canada.

This felt closest to the "Walking Dead" the show has gotten so far, but maybe that's a bit unavoidable. I like the casting of Melanie Lynskey. The character reminds me a little bit of her traumatized soccer mom/potential cult leader character in "Yellowjackets" but hey. The bit with her questioning the doctor with a list of names - suggesting an endless cycle of revenge killings - was intriguing. Looking forward to learning more of the Kansas City backstory.

Bryan screaming for his mother and wailing to be spared was gut-wrenching. this particular civilian army (which they took pains to explain weren't Fireflies) seems to be forcing or at the very least highly encouraging very unwilling young people to participate, as Bryan seemed in over his head. most of the Fireflies or even FEDRA that are killed sort of just seem to accept it in their dying moments as part of the territory.

the hesitancy to kill the doctor shows this is probably more of a fledgling operation, unlike the Fireflies.

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!?