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

‘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

twitter is full of reactionaries now

i wish petty fans like that could somehow be banned from watching the show

"you could have, you know, not posted it" good advice for about 95% of the world including me

When a show gets popular it becomes grist for everyone and their bullshit. Like the organized downvoting of the episode with the gay couple.

It's maybe not a coincidence that the few things that have attracted objection in this show so far are the things/characters new/different from the game. Just wait until you see their reaction to season/part 2, lol. They'll be complaining that the show is too faithful to the game.

I do feel a bit like "single out a dumb tweet" is basically part of every PR strategy now... but Lynskey's comeback was pretty good, and I think does offer some insight into what's interesting about the show in how it imagines who and what would thrive after things fall apart.

Did people complain about Aunty Entity? I never questioned her qualifications.
https://media.gq.com/photos/55a0142fdab0df6312e267b3/3:4/w_1256,h_1675,c_limit/mad-max-thunderdome-01.JPG

that dress seems very practical for the desert, unlike Lynskey's grim late fall yard work style

Well, that was fun.

They give Lynskey's character that much setup and backstory for...that? And was that King Kong Fungus-y dude in the game? Cause he felt more Resident Evil to me.

Groot went evil

This was def more an action EP but the pursuit at the end was epic.

I liked Lynskey's death because it illustrated that the monster she became rotted her and her resistance out from the inside. It was no longer about giving people freedom, it was about settling vendettas, and by needlessly pursuing Henry above all else, almost her entire army got overrun and killed.

I was very not ready for the downer ending

Big Fungus is in the game, but in a different context (one of the changes from the Bill story). Lynskey ... that's one of the challenges of this TV show. All the extra color not in the game is just that, extra. And all the setup and backstory not spent on Joel and Ellie is exactly that, too. Scenes from next week imply a few more tweaks as well.

I thought the actors playing Henry and Sam were great, very compelling.

lol boss fight

i know what they're trying to do here, but it's starting to feel a bit black mirror-ish when trying to fit so much backstory and emotional beats into 1-2 episodes (and i say this as a fan of ep. 3)... unavoidable defect of the medium i suppose

I don't think it's a defect of the medium, I think it's a problem (relatively speaking) with how they are telling this story. That is, the emotional beats are very important, but the backstory/stories ... not so much. Bill and Frank, Lynskey, Indonesia, none of them are important to the story. They're nice or lovely or important or sad or all sorts of things, but they are secondary to the story of Joel and Ellie, who have gotten shockingly little one on one time for a show at the 50% (!) mark. I totally get that they are telling the story a different way, but that way seems a little rushed. I really liked this episode, but mostly for letting us watch Ellie have fun and be happy and be a kid (and also because the encounter with Henry and Sam *is* important, at least in the game). I know Ellie will be foregrounded soon enough, but a lot of the times in the show so far she and Joel almost seem like secondary characters.

I think i like this version of the story more than the one you’re describing from the game

It may very well end up better! It all depends on how it, well, ends up.

Really it's because in the game you are, of course, playing as the central characters, so everything is more or less exclusively from their perspective. On the one hand, that generally doesn't allow for much development of other characters, as they pop up. But it does allow for a deeper development of the central pair, possibly in a way that this show can't achieve, which may explain the deviations. Little asides, conversations, interactions, discoveries. The biggest complaint I've heard about the changes to the Bill storyline is that in the game, Ellie and Bill have a really funny, character-building rapport. Likewise iirc Joel and Henry.

As far as gameplay goes, it's a weird brain thing, where you're playing *as* these characters while simultaneously recognizing them as something outside of you. So they don't win, the story doesn't move forward, there is no success, as such, without your input. And yet, the plot is preordained and totally external to you. A scripted show is obviously totally passive, so the experience becomes pretty different.