The Last of Us - HBO *Spoilers* See warning in post #1

Evade

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120296019#Comment_120296019

It made a bit more sense too because both parts took place in a mall.

trashcan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120295337#Comment_120295337

Yeah, she is an absolute revelation. Stunning performance in my view. I enjoyed the episode. I really don’t get the boring comments. Seems that unless there’s zombies every five minutes it’s not enough for some people. For me there was a real air of tension in the mall as you waited for the inevitable to happen.

De Bhál

Great show but that episode dragged a bit.

She's some actor though.

ejmaztec

That episode was fast-forward material, and they could have shown the "surprising" end result of the bites on the pair, that would have made it more watchable.

murpho999

As usual as the show was not action packed then people complain it was boring.

Thought it was a great episode that developed the characters and explained Elle’s decision and logic not to leave Joel. Also we saw how she got bit.

I wish people would stop saying that episodes like this and episode 3 don’t add to the plot. Character development and humanising of people adds to the plot and richness of the show and we don’t have to have action or plot reveals in order for a piece of work to be good.

Anyhow the episode was filled with tension as I expected an infected attack at any moment and thought when it came it was handled well with great combat.

Finally the acting from the two girls was top notch and I don’t see what more more people could expect from an hour of TV.

bucketybuck

I wish people would stop dismissing valid criticism with lazy "You just want smash bang zombie action" strawmen.

thegame983

Show peaked with episode 3. This was easily the worst.

I don't care if 'nothing happens'. I just found it uninteresting.

Heckler

May not have been the most action packed episode but Bella Ramsey was top drawer in this one.

Heckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120296362#Comment_120296362

I've never played the game but am loving the show. Whats your valid criticism ? In my mind and apparently a **** ton more of others its well written, really well acted and pretty close to the game. What exactly do you want or were expecting ?

walkonby

Ramsey was excellent but this is just not as good as the game.

Spoiler Warning

The end of Left Behind when Ellie and her friend are desperately scrambling from a gang of infected is one of the best action scenes in the game.

Here it was a short fight, in one location, with a single infected.

And Ellie “playing” the arcade game was much smarter and more charming in the game.

walkonby

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120295602#Comment_120295602

It’s definitely not a bottle episode. They had a whole mall to play around in for just this one episode. Bottle episodes are cheap one-offs where they reuse sets.

kerplun k

A backstory on how Ellie found out she was immune… Not the best of episodes TBH. Reminded me of that Episode of Lost where we found out how Jack got his tattoos. I don’t care 😀

pc7

As a non gamer felt it dragged and no not cause 'no zombie/action', it was just slow, I know they were trying to give her bite back story but it could have been done a bit quicker to keep the viewer engaged. There have been other episodes were stuff felt so rushed it had loads of room to be expanded so in the same way this could have been quicker. I've liked the show and will still watch it, its a great set up and brilliant acting, but that was a meh one for me.

ULMarc

Stupid TV show. Making me feel.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120296019#Comment_120296019

I think as with a lot of changes they've made for the show, it's done because if Joel/Ellie were so adept at taking down infected/hunters as they are in the show or are having so many encounters with them, it diminishes the effect of them. It works for gameplay, and Ellie searching through the mall to look for supplies to help Joel would be kind of boring without the encounters with infected/hunters which happens there.

Same with only having one infected attack Ellie & Riley in the mall. They've been training with FEDRA, but they're still unexperienced. It also makes more sense that Riley/Fireflies were using the mall to hide explosives because they thought it was empty but actually they missed one infected who was still there. Whereas if you had the amount of infected that were in the game in that section, it wouldn't have made sense and would just have ended up with a slight chase scene before the fight with one clicker anyway. It works for gameplay, but just ends up being unnecessary in the show.

I liked the dichotomy and parallels between the two malls in the game, but sticking to the immediacy of Joel still bleeding out in the show and showing that Ellie had an out and was going to leave, then seeing her story with Riley before cutting back to her deciding to stay with Joel and not leave him, made perfect sense.

Penn

Also, I think the reason they missed the infected in the Mall is because he was growing into the wall. In the first episode Joel & Tess find an infected in a basement but the fungus has spread around him and the wall. They don't treat him it as any kind of threat. I'm guessing there might be different kinds of progression where maybe if the infected can't find any way to spread the infection, it might just find a place to grow through fungus and use the body as a food source rather than a host. Maybe in the mall they presumed that infected was the same and that the body was dead, but they stayed away from it so as not to activate any fungus/tendrils and alert others.

In other circumstances, I think the fungus just continues to grow around the body and causes Bloaters like in episode 5.

facehugger99

If episode 3 was the critic- bait then episode 7 was the gamer- bait.

Not surprisingly they have been the two weakest episodes this season.

Both episodes could have been wrapped up in 20 minutes.

This series still has a long way to go to cross into 'greatness' territory.

Mad_maxx

She is an incredibly natural ( unshowy) actress

hadn’t seen the black actress before but she was also excellent

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120296761#Comment_120296761

Had to Google what I'd seen her in before as I knew she looked familiar. I knew she was in Euphoria but I never watched it. However she was in When They See Us (the HBO show about the Central Park Five) and she was Bloodsport's daughter in The Suicide Squad.

Former Former Former

Good episode but dragged a bit, trimming five or ten minutes would have told the story, kept the suspense and lost nothing.

OK it's a fantastically shot and acted episode but I can see the negatives too.

The story was fine but it's hampered by knowing what it's leading to (even no game playing wife knew where it ends).

As such it's hard to get invested in a budding relationship between characters and the slow burn date night pacing grinds down. Some of the heavy pauses between them could have been trimmed, just to keep it moving.

I would have loved it if there was closer editing, early on, with the two of them spending time after the bite. Seeing it's affects on one but not the other. I imagine we'll get a small bit more of Marlene finding Ellie at some stage.

I'm not going near any other sites. I dread to see the comments about the 2 stand-alone episodes and the same sex relationships in them.

Dial Hard

I really thought it was going to play out that Riley gets bitten first, and then she's the one who bites Ellie.

It was a 6 or 7 out of 10 episode for me. In "grand" territory, really. I do agree with others about the tension building throughout as we kept inspecting an attack and it kept not happening.

ejmaztec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120296328#Comment_120296328

I don't expect each episode to be action-packed to be interesting, because progress of some kind or another is made in action-free episodes, and when they're not set in the past, there's no saying what might happen.

There was no progress in episode 7 with all that happened in the past, and as I pointed out, I would have expected to see the moment when Ellie discovered that she was immune, not to mention what happened to her pal.

Le Bruise

Really enjoyed that episode again. Very well acted by Ramsey and Reid with some proper tension from the moment you saw the clicker being alerted to their presence. I think adding the present day mall search could possibly have been done...even if it was just a brief set-up to the flash back? Any more than that would have been a bit dull, as it's only a search/stealth killing exercise which works great for a game but not for a story. Can't wait to replay the DLC from the game now.

I get why some folk didn't like it and that (in their opinion) it drags out a piece of backstory for too long. I just think it develops the reasons Ellie is the way she is so much more than just a nod to how she found out she's immune.

I'm watching the series in unison with 2 non-gamer mates, who will both be catching up tonight. Can't wait to hear what they think of this one as both very much enjoyed episode 3 and liked the flashback element of the series.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120297179#Comment_120297179

I think what the episode does well and why it couldn't have just been a 20-30 minute section is that it explores Ellie's issues with loss/abandonment, her youthful innocence and curiousity, her fears of ending up alone (as mentioned to Sam and in her argument with Joel in the last episode), and just generally her issues with trust and authority figures. Maybe at most you could cut out the scene of them travelling to the Mall, though coming across the guy who killed himself ties in with their decision to not just kill themselves when they discovered they were infected. They wanted to have every last moment they could.

It doesn't really explore anything new or unknown about Ellie, but it's an episode to explore her character and show why she is the way she is and how she's changed over the course of the journey, rather than provide some big plot development or just leave it up to an exposition dump where she explains it to someone.

murpho999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120296968#Comment_120296968

Why do you need "progress" and how do you judge it?

You got backstory to Elle and her friendships, sexuality, previous life and attitudes.

I also thought the episode showed how they she missed out on a normal childhood that we take for granted hence her excitement at things like an escalator and video games.

It also shows how the incident formed her character and decision making which eventually led to her not abandoning Joel.

A show does not always have to have major plot reveals or twists each week. It can just show how the characters life is in the created world and how they cope with it and leads to the character you see in other episodes.

For me it gave a better understanding of Elle and that will shape how I view her in future episodes.

bucketybuck

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120296924#Comment_120296924

That could have been interesting at least.

I had expected that Ellie had went into the mall with a friend, they got attacked and Ellie ran and left the friend behind to die instead of helping. That would have explained the episode title and would have offered some actual tension to the possibility that she was going to leave Joel behind as well. It would also have fit better with what she said in episode 2, where she omitted the friend from her story of when she got bitten.

People talk about character development in this episode but I'd love to know where it was hiding? It told us very little we did not already know about Ellie. We already knew she was in Fedra, we knew she went into the mall and got bitten there. What else did we learn?

Nobody got "Left behind", because she helped Riley and they remained together after the attack. Riley didn't leave her behind, because she had agreed not to go with the fireflies before the attack. We didn't get to see how they both handled being infected, how Ellie learned that she was immune and how she ended up a prisoner of the fireflies, all things that would actually have been interesting.

It was an hour of awkward teenage flirting that may have been backstory, but certainly was not interesting backstory that advanced either the plot or our understanding of the characters. I stand by my original opinion that it was simply just boring, and will probably end up being the most skipped chapter in box set rewatch history.

One thing to add, it also diminished the earlier scene of wonder where Ellie saw an old Mortal Kombat arcade machine in the filling station, from episode 3 I think. She reacted in joy at seeing that, as if it was the first she had ever seen, when in fact just a few weeks earlier she had spent an evening playing a working version with her friend who then died hours later. The associative memory of seeing that cabinet should have been very, very different for Ellie in retrospect.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120297322#Comment_120297322

Ellie was the one who was "Left Behind". At the end of the episode, she and Riley decide to wait it out together and let the infection take them. The infection took Riley, but not Ellie. Ellie was the one left behind to deal with the guilt and abandonment of being the one who survived. This then translates to her decision to stay with Joel. She doesn't want to leave him to die. She decides to stay with him and do her best to save him even though it puts herself at risk. It's not about leaving Joel behind, but rather she doesn't want to be the one who is "left behind" again.

As for the MK2 arcade machine, I think her seeing it in the filling station made her think of a happy memory with Riley. She was happily telling Joel about how she had a friend who knew everything about the game, how she played as Mileena etc. Ellie thinking about Riley doesn't always have to be a negative emotion about her death. She was thinking about one of her happiest moments with Riley.

ULMarc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120297322#Comment_120297322

To be fair. She also still enjoys the No Pun Intended book. So she seems to be suppressing the memory.

bucketybuck

At the end of the episode, she and Riley decide to wait it out together and let the infection take them. The infection took Riley, but not Ellie. Ellie was the one left behind to deal with the guilt and abandonment of being the one who survived.

Actually seeing that might have made the episode worthwhile. Two people sitting there infected, one turns and the other doesn't. The practicalities of how that plays out could have been interesting but if you really wanted to show survivors guilt then why not show Ellies immediate reaction to still being alive while her best friend is not?

I guess teenage flirting was easier to film.