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

I'm willing to bet the expansion of Bill and Frank is this season was done with an eye potentially on specific events/plot points/parallels in the second season/game.

Maybe you have something in mind from the game, but how could there be a parallel more relevant than the one between Bill/Frank E3 and Joel/Ellie season 1? The episode is still about Joel and Ellie, giving us a letter that could have been written by Joel at the end of season 1. It is also about the game, a way to make the "finding and reading of a letter" game mechanic work for television.

Could see the writers getting to the finale and thinking "this is all too sudden, but we can't have Joel explaining his transformation in real time" and then coming up with E3 as a solution exactly for telling the story of Joel and Ellie better. (And adding to it. Bill and Frank's story is also interesting and important in itself). So not being salty but seeing it as subtraction from the Joel/Ellie story time seems wrong!

Maybe you have something in mind from the game, but how could there be a parallel more relevant

Relevant spoilers from the second game:

In the second game, Ellie is in a stable, loving relationship, and she is eventually given an explicit choice: live in apparent domestic bliss with her girlfriend, together alone in an isolated house, very much akin to Bill and Frank, or return to her previous ways. When the show (presumably) gets to that inflection point, viewers will have an even better idea of what happiness can look like, or even that it truly is possible, making Ellie's decision that much more distressing. I think having seen Bill and Frank the way we have in the show will make that conflict even more powerful whenever we see it, which does make it an improvement, but mostly imo in the context of what is to come.

That whole bit with Bottom the Weaver and all really subtracts from the main action of "Midsummer Night's Dream," yo. I mean, why not just focus on the main characters the whole time?

xp maybe that possible future parallel is making it harder for you to accept the season 1 parallels as the episode's main function. I get what you are saying with the season 2 stuff, but I don't think it's necessary to explain or feel good about the writing decisions in season 1 alone.

I agree! Just part and parcel in comparing the game and show. Obv. not an issue for anyone that has not played the game (which, of course, is best known for its story, not gameplay).

fwiw I've seen some people complain a little about tiny tweaks to Ellie's character that may have a slight impact on the story going forward, but I don't think I have problem with what the showrunners intentionally shifted.

which, of course, is best known for its story, not gameplay

The gameplay is outstanding!

I think so, but it's a common complaint I've seen from some. I mean, the gameplay in the second game is so good I think that's why they remade the first game!

having only watched the show i found myself now pretty impressed with the game that it had such deep storylines already built in, like that the ending is part of the game blew my mind a bit.

it’s cool to know that gaming can allow for a nuanced, challenging emotional experience like that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oSFFSu57yU

The most-affecting aspect of the game that I felt vaguely-but-not-actually disappointed didn’t make it into the show was maybe interesting:

I remember there was this fairly terrifying sequence where Joel is having to navigate a school environment where airborne spores are a danger. The ambient light in the environment was precise, it had that “being in school after hours” feeling, which was already scary as shit.

Up until that point in the game, you’d confronted clickers and other mobile fungazombies, but it was exactly in this environment, navigating through it, that you started to see an increase in the prevalence of wall-bound fungal tendrils, leading to the discovery of a full-tilt immobile human fungus flower, head opened into mushroom growth, sitting against a wall. It was the closest visual depiction of a Lovecraft description as I’ve ever seen (and imo likely inspired similar imagery within the movie Annihilation)

I think they discovered those immobile human shitheads in the show but it didn’t happen as balletically as it did in the game, it was really something

Re: spores. For the last 3-ish years, lots of tv shows and movies have - understandably - not wanted to film sequences with a lot of masks; it interferes with showing emotions. Plus you don't pay a kabillion dollars for the face of Tom Cruise or whomsoever and only get his eyebrows.

So a future historian looking only at our entertainment from this period would be hard-pressed to find evidence of the times in which many of us walked about with half our faces obscured. Which would be at odds with the news coverage of the time.

Yeah, it's kind of fascinating. I think on one of the covid threads I noted some TV or movie person's conflicted reasoning. Show people with masks, like the real world, and you break the illusion of escapism. Show people without masks and you introduce a kind of cognitive dissonance scraping against the way the world is. Anyway, given the popularity of "The Mandalorian," or the success of "For All Mankind," this show prolly could have easily tossed in a mask or two. Seeing Pedro put on a mask for a scene probably wouldn't have been that confusing. If anything, it might have made for a pretty claustrophobic sequence!

It was odder to bring up the interlocked infected thing only to never mention it again, but maybe they will in the future.

As I mentioned up thread, can't imagine Pedro wanted to do another show with his face covered up

"No brown M&Ms, clean towels/socks, bottle of Maker's Mark, no covering my face."

A game based on Ron Swanson macguyvering death traps, procuring meds and homesteading with a bickering partner with a dwindling health meter, might be fun though -- some kind of cross between tower defense, animal crossing, and sims.

seeing this as some mid noughties Flash game on the HBO website as part of this series 2005 marketing push.

Flew through the 9 episodes in the last three days - an incredible show. Part of me wishes I had gotten to play more than 30 minutes of the game at my friend's house before watching to see the differences between the show and game, but I guess it made my show-watching experience much tenser not knowing what would happen. I was convinced Joel would be dead by the end of the season

Finally listened to the last official podcast episode, and while I stand by my (modest) reservations about the show, the podcast provided excellent closure.

“While everything at this moment is pencils down, I’m hopeful that we can come to terms sooner than later. Otherwise we will have to assess what is the end of the 24 schedule, what are the shows that are going to be delivered for 2025,” Orsi said. “At this point, those shows that I’m looking to air wouldn’t necessarily be ready if this strike last six to nine months. So yes, that’s a big question for us, but I think we’ll cross that road once we come to it.”

It’s “too early to tell” how the scheduling plans for specific shows will being impacted by the writers work stoppage, Orsi said. “We were looking at The Last Of Us for some time in 2025. And The White Lotus was ideally looking to go in 2024 but there’s some question about timing of the strike.”

Watching this again with my teen, who had never seen it, and while it holds up I maintain my criticism that there is not enough time spent traveling across the country with Ellie and Joel, and the two biggest comments I keep hearing from my kid are "everyone keeps talking about raiders but we never see any raiders" and "how are we supposed to care about any of these characters if they just immediately die?" Fair enough, the show does constantly introduce new characters/villains just to immediately kill them off (typically in the same episode), which gets a little distracting. If they had another episode of just Ellie and Joel traveling/solving problems/fighting it might have offered a bit more narrative breathing room.

I really enjoyed The Last of Us as it aired, but it has not remained in my mind whatsoever since finishing it. I'll definitely watch the next season but if you told me it was still two years away I wouldn't really be bothered.

It's two years away.

OK theory tested and confirmed.

Pascal getting a SAG award for his role in an upset over the Succession candidates and coming to accept it looking like this and saying “I’m a little drunk. I thought I could get drunk" is now all-time great award ceremony material.

https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/GettyImages-2036530546.jpg?w=850&h=638&crop=1

Long game campaign paid off
https://absurdink.com/cdn/shop/products/voteforpedro_2048x.jpg?v=1663771136

dammit
https://www.cantonrep.com/gcdn/-mm-/0dd9230c6c4a30f8962f38e8bb74b16d3186694c/c=184-0-2515-1317/local/-/media/2019/03/11/USATODAY/USATODAY/636879209675940780-e0-napoleon-2shot-phenom-wkcov-12.JPG?width=1320&height=746&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp

Wait, wut? Dead link de-deaded itself?

A group of researchers in India have discovered a mushroom sprouting from the side of a golden-backed frog. https://t.co/GEUU19gmCg pic.twitter.com/V8PEGONJHa

— ABC News (@ABC) March 2, 2024

D: