The Last of Us (HBO) TV Show • Page 38

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Ok this episode was fantastic but the hype is getting A little bit much. I just saw a YouTube video essay titled "TLOU episode 3 was HBO's Magnum Opus" ok calm down. This was a ray of light in the current prestige draught but like this isn't even the first beautiful but tragic queer love story one off episode in a HBO drama

 

well the major difference between this episode and the Johnny Cakes arc is... this was good, haha. love the Sopranos but that's possibly its worst storyline overall

 

The Last of Us Makes an Egregious Pivot Under the Guise of Positive Representation - PRIMETIMER

The entire article goes in depth of the plot of both games so it is probably best avoided if that is important to you.

 

If seeing Bill and Frank in bed is making people lose their minds, wait for Bella Ramsey engaging in lesbian love/romance intercut with scenes of an athletic woman hero-killer and a non-white trans teenager kicking ass.

 

That article is just a remarkably cynical and joyless take that is still just as bad as the first time I saw it.

 

People are allowed to feel how they feel about this episode but I definitely don’t agree that the original plot in the game for Bill was nuanced. Apparently W. Earl Brown had to ask if Bill was meant to be gay when they were making the game.

I also don’t feel this quite falls under the bury your gays trope either. They’re in a post apocalyptic world with a fungal pandemic that is still spreading. If they hadn’t gone out they way they chose, it was very likely either one of them would have been bitten and become infected. They altered the story to allow those characters to go out on their own terms. Would people have really wanted to the see it play out the same way with Bill finding Frank? With Ellie and Joel leaving Bill to again be alone and now grieving over the death of Frank?

 

Not to mention that section of the game ends with Ellie finding a magazine with pictures of nude men in the truck and making a joke about Bill jerking off on to it. (Should note she’s not directly making fun of Bill but using it as a joke to mess with Joel)

Just don’t really see how the game version was better than what they gave us at all.

 

This happens with every show that gets popular. Best to just enjoy it for what it is. In time it will fall into place if you care about that kind of thing.

 

There’s also no way you can say this episode does not connect to the bigger themes of the show/game.

 

Non game player here with a couple questions…

Are most of the infected usually in large groups in one place, like that scene from ep2?

Also, I know it’s implied that they have a hive brain type of communication, but why weren’t more alerted when Ellie was killing that infested in ep3?

 

you can find them in groups and randomly have individual ones in the game.

The hive mind network thing is a show in invention so it’s not 100% clear yet. But I think it was supposed to be implied that since that infected was stuck in the rubble, it had likely been there for a long time and there were no other infected nearby for it to be connected too. Compared to the area outside of Boston that had tons of them.

 

I agree.

 

Also, from what I remember, the tendrils attached itself to the host, which then alerts the horde. If there's no tendrils, there's no line of communication.

 

I think the hive mind is dependent upon the fungus being on the ground/walls. They don’t just randomly sense each other when one gets killed, they need to be physically connected to that “network” when it happens, and only over a certain distance (Joel and Tess said about a mile). So that one Joel shot in episode two was touching some fungus on the ground that the cordyceps wiggled out of the body and connected to to alert other carriers of nearby potential hosts to infect

 

Luckily this is one of the few negative takes written in this format (IE - not a trash social media comment.

Also, it's sad that a lot of jokes are like 'oh, we just got brokeback mountain with zombies' because it goes to show how underrepresented and ill seen queer romance stories are. That was 17 years ago! That's your reference?

Last thing on this before I move attention on to the hype of the next episode, is that anyone who complains it was gratuitous is just admitting it made them uncomfortable. Every single romance on a prestige show like this goes further than this did. They had a smooch in bed, talked about it being Bill's first time and then there was implied off screen oral. Like... that's the bare minimum you get when a same sex couple crosses the line into lovers. Stupid people making people stupid complaints instead of just being quiet and contemplating why queer romance on screen still makes them uncomfortable.

EDIT: I could be a bit off base, but it's one of the few gay stories I've seen, where being gay wasn't even part of it. There was no opposing force to their relationship based on it being a gay one like there is in most other stories. There was no coming to terms with it, or dealing with family or random bigots, it was just a romance like any other. I mean honestly, they could have ham fisted in some hunters watching their house and coming by to kill them with extra motivation because they were a gay couple, but they went a very simple route of this is just a love story. I think maybe that's why it's being hyped compared to similar representation?

 

I have only played the game once when it first came out so I had honestly forgotten most of the original bill stuff from the game besides all the traps. Reading up on the differences it definitely seems like they made the right call as I don't think it could have bend adapted as well straightforward.

 

if there's a thread, i can't find it lol. link?

 

The Leftovers (HBO) • forum.chorus.fm

 

The discourse around episode 3 is really disappointing. Many people hiding their bigotry and homophobia claiming it was 'filler' and it's veered too far from the game.

Season 2 is really going to rile a lot of bigots.

 

I think you're allowed to criticize the episode for veering too far from the game without being homophobe. Sure, bigots are going to be especially vocal for shitty reasons but it did turn a pretty intense part of the game into a quiet love story.

 

This. I don't agree with the people that think it veered too far from the game, or the people that think it's filler because it doesn't focus the full runtime on Joel/Ellie, but I also don't think all of the people with those specific complaints/criticisms are automatically bigots and homophobes.

 

No the change was good and it was very well done

 

Other than obvious troll sites and far-right provocateurs (who got mad at anthropomorphic candy) are there really that many people criticizing it that way?

 

i've seen a ton of mad people online about it. mostly on the shittier parts of social media.