The Last of Us (new HBO series)

I've been meaning to start watching this, finished binging a day or two ago. Never played the games because I don't have one of those fancy Nintendos needed to play it (although, it looks like Part 1 is being released on PC in a week.)

Overall, definitely enjoyed it. As others have pointed out, there are tropes-a-plenty, but it was well executed.

I liked that they went with mushroom zombies, especially since the zombie fungus it's based on is a real fucking thing that actually exists! Although, luckily, body heat isn't the only thing holding it back. Human brains are more complex than ant brains, and, if said fungus did manage to mutate and spread to humans, probably worst case scenario it would be similar to rabies.

The Bill and Frank episode was awesome. Those two make an adorable couple and I did not expect a zombie show to make me cry.

The best part is how they handled the good guy/bad guy thing; there aren't really either. FEDRA is trying to preserve humanity, but are overzealous to the point of fascism. The Fireflies seem to be operating on the logic "FEDRA is clearly the bad guy, and we oppose them, so that makes us the good guys!" and then are overzealous to the point of impatience. The city that overthrew FEDRA, also seems to think opposing the bad guy makes them good, and also went full fascist. Joel, at first seemed like he was going to be a "technically a criminal but otherwise acts like a good guy" type, but ended up being a dick head with a sense of loyalty.

I would say that getting Ellie out of there would have been the right thing to do. Killing everyone on his way out was just extra steps that may or may not have been necessary.

Prepping Ellie for certain death surgery hours after she arrived is dumb, and they're impatient. The mushroom zombies have been around for 20 years, humanity can wait a few years for a cure while they do things properly. The thing is, if you start with non-invasive stuff, and it doesn't work, Ellie is still alive and they can try something else. Kill her on the first attempt and it doesn't work, nothing left to try. Either the doctor is completely incompetent, or he's secretly working for FEDRA, and FEDRA decided that a cure would be bad for their interests and decided to put a stop to it. Getting Ellie out was definitely the right call, both for Ellie, and a potential cure.

It looked like Joel and Ellie were headed back to Joel's brother's commune? If he simply got her out and left, the Fireflies would know he has her and would stop at nothing to hunt them down, putting his brother and the whole village at risk. Taking them all out? The show has established that Firefly outposts get entirely slaughtered on a regular basis. If anyone comes looking for her, they'll probably think she died in a raider attack, was kidnapped by raiders, or FEDRA did it. No one will suspect the commie camp.

As for the lie... It's been established that Joel is starting to think of Ellie as a daughter, and every fucking parent who had ever parented has lied to their children in an effort to protect them. From Joel's perspective, she's been through enough, and living in the commune without being expected to sacrifice herself for the good of humanity is what's best for her. I'm not saying it's right, but it is what any parent figure would do. I think. I'm not a parent so I don't know and I only lie to protect myself.

That's interesting.

When the game dropped in 2013, I noticed something interesting about how people felt about Joel's decision. If the person didn't have a child of their own, it would be about 50/50 if they felt Joel did the right thing. If they had a kid, they were 100% on the side of Joel. Without fail. Could it be that the subtle differences in how the show portrayed Joel has made that big of a difference?

Part of the game dynamics were you exploring the environment to find things like ammo, food and survival tools. As you got to places like Eastern Colorado University & St. Mary's Hospital in Salt Lake, you'd find imaging, tape recordings and doctor's notes that were parts of their research for a cure. These showed that they were close to a cure in theory, but the missing link was a living specimen of something they predicted could exist. I took it at face value that Ellie was the key to a cure. And not for nothing, the show cut a LOT of the encounters with infected people out for time and storytelling purposes. Someone could play the game and miss a lot of that detail if they are not a "curious gamer" though. It's totally possible that some of the things they cut changes how people see this as a whole. This is a fucked up world and I'm not sure the show did enough to show it. The Fireflies intentions were undeniably unethical. Downright evil, IMHO, but Ellie is a key to a cure that would save millions of lives and actually be a catalyst for billions more to live better lives.

... and one more thing.

It's worth mentioning that after 20 years of living with this pandemic, Joel & Ellie had been shown that the world was beginning to adapt and stabilize. At Tommy's community in Jackson. They had electricity and the Fireflies themselves had doctors and were conducting research. Bill & Frank. All of the kids who were born around or after outbreak day didn't have as big of a sense of loss that older people had. Joel was shown that Ellie could have a good life in this world as opposed to cracking her head open and killing the only person to ever show any immunity to this disease.

In the game, you find series of researcher audio recordings that (If I remember right) make it a bit more ambiguous as to whether that general line of experimentation was even likely to yield useful results. That might make Joel's choice a bit less damning.

I've been avoiding this thread because I've only now started binging the show... but I'm briefly popping in after finishing episode 3, "Long, Long Time".

I mean, the first two episodes were stellar but holy fucking shit, I was not expecting that. That episode alone should give The Last of Us the Emmy for best series. Talk about transcending a genre (and a video game, to boot).

And fuck them for using Max Richter's "On The Nature Of Daylight". That piece always puts a massive lump in my throat.

There is something to the charisma of Pedro as Joel and the chemistry of Joel/Ellie in the show. But I think it is mainly the framing of the dilemma as no real dilemma at all.

If the show had left it ambiguous that Ellie's sacrifice might or might not be in vain, or established that Ellie gave informed consent to potentially lethal experiments on her, then I'd probably be more on the fence about the morality of Joel's actions or see them as selfish. But when the Fireflies are straight-up lying about stuff, when it's clear that they have no clue if killing Ellie will give any insight into how to pass along her immunity, when they go from zero to sixty with the experiments...they're pretty evil and Joel is fairly justified in killing them all.