Watching The Last of Us, HBO’s mega-expensive adaptation of the acclaimed hit video game, you get a close-up view of one thing consuming and piloting the consciousness of another. In a literal sense, there’s the gore of the Cordyceps fungus turning humans into unthinking drones (“They’re not zombies,” I hear you sniff, but they’re basically zombies). But there’s also an aesthetic consumption going on. The show’s creators, Neil Druckmann (of the game) and Craig Mazin (of the cheery Chernobyl), are metabolizing a story built for one medium, gameplay, into another, prestige television. The result is tony, well-acted, carefully shot, and even well reviewed, but the experience of watching it is empty. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the show’s third episode, a standalone extrapolation from an implied arc in the game that tries so hard to imitate what we think of as prestige television that it forgets to say anything at all. Call it zombified TV.

The episode, “Long Long Time,” follows Nick Offerman’s Bill, a gruff but meticulous survivalist who’s managed to make it through the Cordyceps plague by booby-trapping his home in the wilds somewhere outside of Boston. One day, he accidentally captures Frank (Murray Bartlett), a sweet, hunky guy trying to make it on his own. Depending on your tolerance for sentiment, their resulting romance is either sweet or incredibly obvious: They have a lovely dinner, Frank draws Bill out of his shell by complimenting his choice of rabbit paired with Beaujolais, they flirt over a piano, they have sex and grow old together in a sort of cottagecore postapocalyptic bear fantasy. By the end of the episode, Bartlett and Offerman are in old-age makeup, and an ill Frank has decided to die, having lived the best possible life in a world now run by fungus. Bill prepares a meal for him with poison served in the wine (pairs well with Beaujolais!), and the scene closes with Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight,” a piece of music deployed to signal big emotional catharsis in everything from Arrival (where it cost the movie Oscar consideration) to Castle Rock and The Handmaid’s Tale. Later, after the main characters Joel and Ellie discover Bill’s goodbye note, there’s a needle drop of the song they bonded over at the piano, Linda Ronstadt’s “Long Long Time,” that’s — surprise — cued for dramatic, emotional weight.

Like that use of Max Richter, nothing in “Long Long Time” is innovative. Television, especially if it’s genre, is fond of pairing off characters to grow old in some story line, often shunting them off to a cabin in the woods or a timeline separate from the main action. I’m fond of The Magicians’s “A Life in a Day,” where two male characters fall in love while stuck in a magical puzzle, and of Other Space (a Yahoo! Original that no one watched but I loved) sending up the “growing old on another planet” trope by having two characters bicker relentlessly as they age.

In the current TV environment, writing a standalone love story has also become a shortcut to seriousness, as in the case of Mythic Quest. “Dark Quiet Death” split from the workplace comedy’s typical structure to spend time with Jake Johnson and Cristin Milioti’s previous generation of video-game designers falling in and out of love. With its divergence from the series’ lighter comedy stock and trade, “Dark Quiet Death” fell dangerously close to a naked plea for critical attention, but it was elevated by Johnson and Militoti’s easy chemistry and a roundabout way of getting at some of the show’s larger questions — notably, how to make authentic art in video games (hey, wait, that’s this show too!). The Last of Us feels more clearly influenced by the work of Damon Lindelof, like Juliet and Sawyer thrown back in time in season five of Lost and finding a life in the Dharma Initiative, or Kevin and Nora sitting together at the end of The Leftovers in similarly awkward old-age makeup and garb from the L.L. Bean postapocalypse collection. These are genre concepts frequently deployed to examine the oddities of human connection in the most extreme of circumstances; these examples also have a notably surreal wit and wonder to them, which helps the sadder aspects of the story land.

The Last of Us, in contrast, asks those same questions cheaply. “Long Long Time” positions Bill and Frank’s story as an alternate, happier vision of life among the mushrooms than the general misery of Joel and Ellie’s journey, but the plot is rote and the writing obvious. The show makes a lot of metaphorical hay of the notion that Frank is going to get Bill to open up by way of getting him to grow strawberries; as soon as the episode depicted them bickering over Frank trading for seeds, I let out a groan anticipating the moment where said strawberries would be dramatically shared as a symbol of emotional and actual growth. (That’s Pixar-style manipulation, a dark hybrid of Up and Wall-E.) The episode has the opportunity to subvert expectations somewhere along its hour and fifteen minute runtime but seems uninterested in providing anything unexpected, and Bartlett and Offerman seem at sea as actors, repeatedly hitting the same character beats, whether gruff and paranoid or angsty and flighty. They’re stuck in wooden roles acting out maudlin dynamics.

The larger issue for The Last of Us, however, is that it’s bringing this kind of obvious and sentimental storytelling to a genre that’s been thoroughly worked over. We’ve seen plenty of postapocalyptic films and movies and games make the same points, from Children of Men (released in 2006, so The Last of Us characters, with their 2003 collapse, never have to acknowledge that they’re doing the same thing) through The Walking Dead, I Am Legend, The Road, et cetera. Station Eleven, just last year on HBOMax, took the premise of a pandemic and used it to unspool a series of existential meditations about how art survives and why. The Last of Us doesn’t feel as if it’s adding to the conversation as much as regurgitating what has already been chewed through.

“Long Long Time” is the season’s single primary deviation from the story line of the video game itself, as Druckmann and Mazin noted in an extensive New Yorker piece that frets about the challenge of making a game story line into prestige TV. Their solution to fears of alienating diehard gamers, it seems, was take one big episodic swing that mimics “serious prestige television” and stick to 1:1 re-creations of the events of the game everywhere else.

It’s missed opportunity on both counts. On the standalone side, why so saccharine? Why not have more fun with this kind of deviation from the plot? As far as re-creating the beats of the game, why not follow a more interesting path? One of the most engaging aspects in the storytelling of The Last of Us is that, because Joel dictates how you move forward in the game, you’re implicated in his increasingly gray decision-making. On TV, the viewer is primed to be sympathetic toward a main character, so there’s not the same level of friction as experienced by the gamer. Story lines that feel alive as an active participant in the game instead feel hackneyed on television. Watching The Last of Us, I wanted to pick it up and shake it free from its preconceptions about what it has to do in order to be faithful to its source material and what it wants to do in order to be taken seriously as television. As a series, it says nothing new in either case.

Well, that's their take of it. My wife who doesn't play games outside of games like tetris or candy crush. Loved the episode and had to get a couple of tissues. My son and I who have plated the game are loving it as well.

Yes it's their take. That's why their name is on the article. I'm sharing a different opinion on the episode that I happen to agree with

Well it's finally happened and I'm not sure how I feel about it: I agree with an article in Vulture.

It's a great show, but nothing groundbreaking like the media and reddit make it out to be. Episode 3 itself is nothing amazing; it's just a good episode.

I think people are a little too emotional. Again, it's a great show and I would be 100% if the teen died. She's boring as hell and I think the worst part of the show.

I don't believe you.

Why spread the shit if it's so smelly to you?

This article is absolute garbage and shouldn't be rewarded with clicks.

I feel like it's brought a lot of people to television who typically don't watch. I've seen most of the prestige shows of the past few decades and I didn't find anything in the episode particularly surprising or interesting. Given the budget and actors and writers involved, this episode was always going to be solid but I don't think its anything groundbreaking.

why is it garbage? Because it had a different point of view? Are we just supposed to all agree on something and nobody is allowed to have a different opinion? At least he wrote a lengthy, detailed criticism of the episode to back up his point. If you don't agree with it that's fine but saying its "absolute garbage" comes off as defensive and doesn't even really make sense

Ah here comes the contrarian take from Vulture. Truly the /r/television of media journalism.

Dull, pretentious take.

Subversion doesn't automatically make things good. The episode works perfectly fine without some "clever" twist. It's a story about love being essential to survival, something like that doesn't require a reinvention of the wheel.

That being said though, there was one moment that I liked and I'm disappointed they didn't follow through on. Frank on the piano, being just sort of OK at it. I thought that was a lovely little moment of human tenderness, where the beauty comes not from him playing well, but by simply trying his best to do something nice for another person. Having Bill step in and do the usual "Oh my god he's so good at singing" thing kind of cheapened it. It was nice to see someone kinda sucking at something for a change, you don't see that on TV.

I’m sure the vulture authors would have preferred the fetch quests from that level with climbing ladder bridges across buildings and getting parts for a battery scattered across town

I definitely did a LeoPoint when Bill brought the ladder for Frank.

>On the standalone side, why so saccharine? Why not have more fun with this kind of deviation from the plot? As far as re-creating the beats of the game, why not follow a more interesting path?

...fundamentally this article's take is just "been done before, I wanted something different." It comes across as contrarian for its own sake.

Why not saccharine? A sweet love story that shows what motivates someone isolated and closed off to open up to caring is very relevant to the overall plot and Joel's arc. Yeah, it could have been goofier or more fun and less sad. That isn't automatically better, nor does citing a very different episode of "The Magicians" prove "it's been done before" just because it also involves gay men.

Hell with that logic, why make the show at all? It's a sad zombie apocalypse show, why not make something more fun that hasn't been done before?

Interesting to complain that this episode was basically UP when the entire storyline is basically UP.

This storyline is a clear catalyst for Joel to care more about Ellie. I understand that it wasn't thrilling, but in the games they just all of a sudden have more chemistry, this to me was a great way to deliver on that.

I agree with some of this. It did feel a bit overly familiar and that Max Richter music is a bit of a cliché at this point. I still think it was a good episode though.

God, this take sucks so fucking hard. “Look, I know people THINK they had a profoundly emotional reaction to a piece of media, but what if I told you you could be a pedantic cynic instead?”

Because its badly written, that shit is like a C- college essay.

We should stop telling stories because we already told all the stories.

>Having Bill step in and do the usual "Oh my god he's so good at singing" thing kind of cheapened it.

Bill wasn't very good at singing. He just didn't miss the notes. He's just as awkward as Frank was, the point is that he's obviously practiced it over and over and even with the voice not being very good at all you can tell he means it.

The point isn't "oh god, he's good at singing" it's "oh god, something finally unlocked in this man."

Jackson McHenry fucked up hard on this one.

This is a profoundly bad take, Jackson. You wrote a bad song.

Wow that's harsh. I was up for reading something that challenged the glowing reviews elsewhere because although I loved the episode it's always interesting to see dissenting takes.

But this seems to be contrarian for the sake of it and finds fault with every single aspect of the episode including the writing and the acting which I think even some of the more negative takes on the episode have conceded was a highlight.

I mean even this is stupid:

> One of the most engaging aspects in the storytelling of The Last of Us is that, because Joel dictates how you move forward in the game, you’re implicated in his increasingly gray decision-making. On TV, the viewer is primed to be sympathetic toward a main character, so there’s not the same level of friction as experienced by the gamer.

The series isn't finished yet. The nature of Joel's decision-making is yet to be explored, that's this got to do with this episode?

Serial killer manifestos aren't normally praised for their good punctuation and word length either yet here we are.

Lmao bruh imagine thinking this shows good reception is because people who don’t watch a lot of television decided to watch it? 😂

If only us plebs had the television watching experience that you do, then we’d see the truth!

As someone who hasn't played the game, the second half of E1 and all of E2 just felt like fetch quests and cutscenes to me.

Not that they were bad or anything but I was in the "this is a good show that is way overhyped as of now."

E3 was the first one that really hooked me.

The reviewers got all of the episodes to watch earlier this year, so the person writing this may well have a fuller scope of the show than those of us watching it week to week.

I liked the episode and definitely wiped away tears but I sooort of get the point he’s making. While the relationship elements themselves were great, the worldbuilding was limited and was a bit too sweet for the Last of Us world.

I would have liked to see (a) about 10% more tie to Joel and Ellie’s story, the segue from the dead woman to Bill’s entire story was a bit abrupt and Joel could have had more than one appearance in Bill’s backstory.

And (b) been a bit more realistic about the whole peaceful white picket fence life. Found it hard to buy that they could live so out in the open like that once raiders knew where they lived. They could be easily be picked off while outside by a sniper - they’d have to be careful. Showing them continue to love each other as they grew older under these trying circumstances would have been a plus.

It felt very Station Eleven and this isn’t a Station Eleven post apocalypse world. Yes, there is light, but you have to look for it in the darkness.

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Bills singing honestly wasn’t that good either

They even both have a major character named Ellie

I actually fully agree with that excerpt, and I'm really curious to see how people react to the ending considering they don't have to actually DO what Joel ends up doing.

But on the whole the article on the whole is too acerbic and sarcastic for me to even understand the point.

> In a literal sense, there’s the gore of the Cordyceps fungus turning humans into unthinking drones (“They’re not zombies,” I hear you sniff, but they’re basically zombies).

He "hears me sniff"? I wasn't even thinking that. I can enjoy a piece that's hostile to the reader but this reads like he's trying to be contrarian

And, without going into too many spoilers, both feature a talking dog who proves crucial to the plot.

It’s also stupid because as a viewer you still experience the gray area. My wife who never played the game (I have) says she doesn’t like Joel. She feels bad he lost his daughter and understands how that made him cynical, but she thinks he’s a selfish dick who hasn’t learned to make peace with his past. Which is accurate so far and belies any attempt to say they have glossed over Joel’s bad choices and outlook.

The article was trash, but "Cottage-core Post-apocalyptic Bear Fantasy" was hilarious.

What a garbage take, “their expectations weren’t subverted.”

Go back to 2017 when subverted expectations were all the rage and we’re dumb as rocks then.

I do not like the cone of shame.

It wasn’t about bill not being good, but how he played it slower and with meaning.

My only complaint was the raiders scene. Why is very smart and ultra prepared Bill's plan to stand on the open street and shoot. Like seriously? He didn't have a snipers nest ready? Couldn't have shot out a window? Didn't have a bush he could crouch in? The fuck was that. He could have suffered the same injury in any of those scenarios without looking like an idiot. Hell, maybe he leaves cover because Frank steps outside and that is how he gets injured, thus showing that his love for Frank overwhelmed his survivalist instincts. No, he's just an idiot for one scene.

They needed to establish why Joel protects Ellie. In the game you aren’t given a choice. She’s a forced escort prop. In the TV show characters have choices. Joel’s motivation was a truck battery. Cool, he got that left from Bill. Now why? This ep. Establishes why.

always funny to see the inevitable "actually, that thing that was incredibly well made and beloved by virtually everybody sucks" article, and I'm a cynical motherfucker. for three weeks in a row Craig Mazin has looked a horde of nerds directly in the eyes and said "fuck your source material" and it's so good that everybody is happily rolling with it lol not a peep from the insincere Lore Respecters who always pop up, and this episode had lifelong Republicans weeping in the family chat over a gay love story. (Jared Harris in Chernobyl voice) madness

What a gatekeeper take, holy hell.

This could have easily just been "I'm a child who doesn't get people and relationships"

Good lord. This reads like an 8th grader who just bought their first thesaurus

Tess asked him to. That's why. It was her dying wish.

It was a good episode but it was definitely pandering/oscar bait

Also that’s not really even a criticism, just sort of acknowledging that games and tv are different mediums with different implications lol

That’s one piece, and a piece that this episode expanded upon by showing how long they had been working together/friends (over a decade).

Then there’s Bill’s note, which made the loss of Tess even heavier, but reenforced the idea that he shouldn’t be helping Ellie just because of a potential cure, but because people like them (Bill and Joel) are their to protect others, something he will feel even more compelled to do given his “failure” protecting Tess.

All of that from one beautifully crafted episode. I haven’t played the game(s), and I think they’re doing a great job of building Joel’s character and allowing the viewer to not just see him change, but also why he’s changing.

Why is this being downvoted, it’s just a simple fact!

> Why is very smart and ultra prepared Bill's plan to stand on the open street and shoot. Like seriously?

Because he's shit with guns.

I noticed the whole time he had terrible trigger discipline, had impractical weapons and gear for responding to the government agents, kept running into the open and swinging his guns around wildly, and kept fumbling and dropping the gun at dinner when he was trying to look intimidating.

He's a prepper. He stockpiled stuff and developed skills to be the king of his own hill and drive off "moochers". The fact that he'd have a million guns and be a decent shot but have terrible tactics and discipline is exactly what I'd expect from a prepper. Unlike Tommy he's not a vet with combat experience, nor is he used to actually using guns against people like Joel.

> No, he's just an idiot for one scene.

If you go back, he's an idiot with his guns in most scenes. This was just the one time people fired back.

Anytime a reviewer says,

> subvert expectations

I can't help but think of the final season of GoT, laugh, then go about my day.

So far my only real complaint is how F'ing annoying Ellie is. In the game she had her moments, but she wasn't the constant downer TV Ellie is turning out to be. If I were Joel I would have ditched her ass by now. Plus it's just bad storytelling, as Ellie being pretty upbeat despite circumstances is what eventually starts to wear down Joel's defenses and gives the later scenes where she has to face reality and come to grips with just how shitty everything that's happened up till that point really was such weight as she overcomes and pushes through to save Joel. Druckman is already draining the impact of that role reversal and character growth moment.

Welcome to online critical review of any piece of media these days. Gone are the days when people would tune in and just enjoy something for an hour. Now there's a whole subset of viewers who only tune into shows and movies with the goal of ripping it to shreds online for clout.

The people who enjoy something may write one or two comments of praise, whereas you know reviewers like this one hang out in comment sections just waiting for a chance to tell other viewers why their opinion is wrong.

Sorry but cynicism is out in 2023. We’re being earnest. We’re having authentic emotional reactions to art. Take me to Pandora, make me cry over a gay love story in an apocalypse. My heart is open and I’m done with ironic detachment 💁‍♂️.

Ha I was gonna say the exact same thing. My wife keeps saying "god damn Joel is cold" and every time I think that's the show succeeding.

I give credit for making a clickbait title with an actual well written article to back it up. However, this reads like episode 3 being well done is a weakness rather than a strength. I had no idea where the story would go. I didn’t know they would end up lovers until the piano scene. I didn’t know if there’d be betrayal, heartbreak, or if the raiders would get them. I didn’t know if they’d both make it. Yet you’re rooting for 2 people in an apocalypse regardless of the morbid possibilities.

If someone tells you, “that’s been done before”, you tell them, “Well, I haven’t done it before”. No ones gonna deliver the same idea in the exact same way, especially in a collaborative work. I’m glad we got the episode that we got.

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I never played the game because I hate "escort missions."

TLOU seemed like Escort Mission the game. I haven't watched the show because I never played the game and generally hate zombie movies/shows.

But the way you described Ellie makes perfect sense to me, since most escort missions (in games) are annoying af.

Well its a post apocalyptic world, they literally have to find a working car battery.

Also, most of the best shows ever are above characters who either exist in a morally gray area or who are outright bad people. Walter White started out somewhat morally gray and became an egomaniacal sociopath. Vic Mackey was a bad person who had some good qualities.

Tony Soprano, Omar Little (and most of the other characters from The Wire), Admiral Adama, Jaime Lannister…there’s a long list of TV characters who are or become protagonists that do morally questionable and sometimes awful things, and the vast majority of us are capable of understanding that they are not solely good people.

“cottagecore postapocalyptic bear fantasy”

This is a weird way to describe a pretty conventional couple who live together in a house.

Fair take. Another approach would maybe be do this episode later in the season. It did feel a little odd to completely leave Joel and Ellie for most of an episode already.

“It feels contradiction for the sake of it.”

Yes.

And I’ll add that he shouldn’t write reviews or interpret what an episode means until viewed through the lens of the whole story, or season. He is wildly wrong about why this episode exists or what it is meant to achieve.

That said, Last Of Us has always been great but overrated. It excels in many areas, but he is right that it borrows tropes and plot devices from a long library of zombie and post-apocalyptic medium. I immediately thought of Children of Men back playing the game.

However, it’s strength lies in the Joel and Ellie dynamic. That’s what elevated what might be forgettable zombie fare into something really special. And that’s what he’s missing - because he doesn’t have the whole story.

I've never held a gun in my entire life and I still understand the concept of 'cover.' That guy is waaaaaaaay more capable than I am and knows waaaaaaay more about guns than I do and I could still do better than that. It was inconsistent.

"What we really wanted out of this episode was to see Joel dismantle wire traps for an hour and fifteen minutes before having a two minute conversation with Bill. Ellie and Joel learn about Frank's fate from a couple of notes that they read aloud to each other in the truck. Ellie makes a gag about a gay magazine she's lifted from Bill's place... tosses it out the window. Roll credits. Simple"

Adherence to the source material!

> That guy is waaaaaaaay more capable than I am

He believed 9/11 was an inside job and burst out his door with a bandolier and gas mask after cursing out the NWO scum.

Like a lot of preppers and gravy seals, you can be very capable at hunting and knowledgeable about guns, but still living a fantasy of what combat actually looks like.

He wasn't mentally healthy. Dying in a shootout against NWO thugs and looters was the fantasy he lived for. Frank served an important role by grounding him and giving him something to live for.

I'll note that I could be wrong and maybe it's not intended. But I thought from the very beginning when he bursts out of his home as the pandemic starts that he was terrible at using his guns. Seeing him standing in the open Cowboy style wasn't a surprise at all when it happened, as it's reasonable characterization that he's not practical about firearms and gunfights. Unlike Joel and Tess, we have no reason to think he's experienced in actual firefights.

Again, I've never touched a gun but I'd shoot out of a window, or from behind a building, or even in a bush.

​

It took me out of it.

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I really think my "he abandons cover to get frank out of the line of fire and that's how he gets shot" would have been much, much better than what happened.

Children of Men meets the Happening meets [insert smart/fast Zombies movie here].

And despite derivatives (aren’t all stories these days?) I’m hooked because it feels original with the writing and acting.

Honestly I’m loving how much seeing a gay couple being themselves is triggering the fuck out of people. Die mad about it 🌈💖

Finally someone looking at it with some sobriety, unlike yesterdays wankfest of "best hour of television 10/10". Could not agree more.

I’ve never played the game and have been watching the series with my son who has played. Neither of us were fans of the latest episode. It was solely because we felt that we were tricked into watching a romance novel instead of a monster movie. I expect it was a necessary episode for whatever happens in the future, but we were both insanely bored for most of the show.

Loser take that is nothing more than rage induced click-bait. So tired of the lame takes that skewer any highly emotional media. It's not clever or smart, its pedantic and condscending.

I am reminded of the David Foster Wallace quote: "What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic."