October 26, 2024 • 39 mins
Left Behind. Ellie flashes back to an innocent mall outing that ended in love at first bite, and wrestles with survivor's guilt in the present in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I welcome to stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Will never told you production if I hurt you, And yes,
we are just we decided we're just gonna play all
these last of those classics is we we got too
far in it didn't make sense to stop, so we're
(00:30):
just gonna keep going. This is in part inspired because
it is October spooky season. We did go to Seattle recently,
Samantha and I did, and that is where the second
game takes place, and I had a very fun time
being annoying and pointing out all of the things. So, yes,
(00:52):
this episode was a downloadable content. It was something we downloaded.
People who play the game downloaded later and it's when
you see how Ellie got bitten. And it was a
very moving episode.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
It did have a lot.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Of the that that content that like playing that was
very different than a lot of stuff in the Last
of Us, but also that I've just ever played because
it had so many like let's take pictures together, or
let's play this water gun game, or it was just
(01:30):
a kind of very sweet mini game thing that was
happening within the Zombie Apocalypse world, but within the backdrop
is how Ellie is dealing with Joel dying, and so
it's seeing her, seeing her trying to save him, trying
(01:55):
to get him this medicine, and having these flashbacks of
her first love Riley, and they share a very sweet,
messy kiss and it's cute.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I describe that.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I think it's cute because it's clear they're not experienced,
like it's a very awkward kiss.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
But of course zombies come in and a ruin of thee.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
But she's having these flashbacks in part because she feels
like she's always she says throughout the first game, like
I'm afraid of ending up alone. Everyone's always left me
all of this stuff. Joel is telling her to leave
and she's like at the door, having these flashbacks of
like should I leave or should I stay? And she stays,
(02:48):
and that is what this episode is about. So please enjoy.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Hey this, and Samantha, I'm welcome.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
To Stephman Never Told You, Protection of iHeart Radio, and
welcome to episode seven of our nine possibly ten part
mini series on the Last of Us, the HBO Max series,
(03:24):
which is not a sponsor. And thanks to everyone who
keeps talking about the other official podcast. I appreciate it,
but man, every time.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Is it a little dnt my self esteem? No, not really.
I do love hearing about it. We are not the
official podcast, just fans.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
This is a love letter. It really is to the
game and show you from Annie love Annie.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yes, with Samantha support.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yes, with me as a ps like she's mad at you.
That's what I'm telling about.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And Samantha has been lovely this whole
time and has hosted our watch parties.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
This one was a cheese event.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Was very nice.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Oh yeah, I hate.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
All that garl cheese so much cheese.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I hate the garlic man, you know those garlic.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, yes, I loved it.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
This, yes, will have spoilers for the most recent episode,
episode seven, I Left Behind and everything that came before.
Samantha is my guardian and hopefully not spoiling anything else.
I feel like we've done a pretty good job, but
it has been difficult. She has too much knowledge I do,
and I forget. I forget sometimes. But I feel like
(04:43):
we've done it pretty good. So yeah, you should be fine.
And yes, this is a temporary thing. We're releasing on
Saturdays the week after the most recent episode, and it
is replacing my Happy Hours. But we will return to
regular program maybe. I think at some point this one
(05:07):
content warning for I guess general sadness, violence, trauma, trauma, yeah,
I guess alcohol use.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Potentially, especially among younger people.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
But suicide.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
It's suicide. Yeah, So yes, this is.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Based on the DLC, the downloadable content called Left Behind,
which I will talk about more briefly in a second.
But if you want to know more about that, you
can see our recent Fictional Women episode on Riley for
more information on her portrayal in the games and comics,
which is pretty much the same but a lot more backstory,
I would say in that if you want it, you
(05:46):
can also see our Happy Hour on the remake that
we did kind of recently, the Last of Us Part
one remake, and I'll talk about why that matters in
a second. But in the meantime, Samantha, do you want
to do your wonderful recap?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I can do this all right. So we are opening
scene of seeing bloody I guess tracks essentially going into
an abandoned home and where we go to all the
way down to the basement and realize that Joel is
lying there still at this time alive but barely, and
then in a lot of pain, bleeding out. For some
(06:21):
odd reason, Ellie keeps trying to make him press against
his own wounds, like he's not bleeding out, but okay, sure,
why not. At this point, they go back and forth
about how to do this. He finally grabs her and says,
you've got to go back. You gotta go north and
find Tommy. You've got to leave, save yourself. She's like, no,
I don't want to, and then he has the strength
to push her back, so I'm sure that gushed out
more blood there that is. And she kind of looks
(06:43):
at him in the shock and looks back up, and
then she runs up the door, hand on the door
to get out, and then we go to flashback. We're
in a flashback where she is at the QZ listening
to her Sony Walkman, which apparently was a thing in
the comics, because if you have listened to that episode
you will find this out as I did. And she
is running around in the gym. A girl comes and
(07:05):
bullies her and says, you know, oh, your protector's not here.
What are you going to do about it? They end
up fighting. She ends up getting that girl enough injury
that that girl has to have seventeen stitches, while you
know Ellie has a black guy. She sits in front
of an officer who pretty much tells her, Hey, we're
trying to make you an officer. You're so good at this.
We want you to live the life because apparently it's not.
(07:26):
There's like a hierarchy and if you're an officer, you
get all the good things while everybody else doesn't get
the good things. And so she's like, okay, I choose
to be an officer. Flashed forward to her going to
her room where she's in the dark room with all
of her posters. In her room, she pulls out a book.
It turns out to be the first pun book. And
Annie does not have this copy. And it's a shame
(07:47):
and I'm disappointed in you just a little bit. Yeah,
but it's okay, but it's okay. We turn to look
that the roommate is not there. Her side of the
room is completely empty. We have some moments of oh sad,
and then she goes to sleep. We know someone's crawling
through the window. Who could it be? And she tries
to cover Ellie's mouth. Ellie like jumps up, pushes her,
(08:08):
kicks her, and ready to stab her. Turns out it's Riley,
the roommate that has left, and she's been gone for
three weeks and for all that Ellie knew was that
she was dead at this point, but she's not. She's back,
and she's like, where the hell did you come from?
Where have you been? A little argument ensues because you know,
they argue apparently all the time, and then it turns
out Riley has joined the Fireflies, which Ellie thinks is
(08:28):
a joke until Riley shows off her handgun and she's like,
oh my god, you really have a little small argument
ensues because you know, Ellie's at now right now like
she's not pro pro fedra, but she is more towards
Fedra than fireflies. So we have a moment or in
exchange and all of these arguing. Riley's like, if you
(08:49):
will shut up, I've got a surprise for you. Come
with me. Throws pants on, makes Riley turn around to
put pants on. Right. I was like, this is so weird.
Why do you have to always do this?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
She's like to turn around.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
They get all their stuff, they go down the stairs.
They're like, you know, the Federal don't know anything. And
then I said, they're about to go exit, a Federick
comes by. She's like, Ellie's like, haha, see there, they
don't know anything, huh whatever. So they continue on. They
escape through a building which is so many stairs, and
she does the things that many of my friends too
(09:19):
that I'm very upset about. When they're like, it's not
far and then like twenty minutes later, you're like, where
the hell am I? You're like, you lied to me.
But they finally go up all the stairs, come up
to a body and they go to investigate a dead body.
They have a conversation about seeing dead bodies before. It
turned out that Riley had because of her parents. There
(09:40):
we find that the dude has a very expensive bottle
of whiskey that he had to exchange a lot of cards.
I'm guessing that's the currency. And then this assumption is
that he had taken pills and drank that did this
on purpose, so it's now deceased. During this time, he
falls to the floors. Very scary. It was a jump.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Scary, y'all.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
We all we all went what I had a moment.
They grabbed the whiskey, which is still fine. These young
underage drinking is a no no, but they drank and
we're like, okay, haa, let's move on. So they move
on and they come to the roof and they have
more conversations about how she got discovered. Turns out Marlene
(10:18):
is mentioned at this point and she was impressed with
how Riley was able to sneak around in the in
the show, and so she was then asked to join.
Then they go hopping across roofs, which was like I
would die because I would fall down off every immediately. Yeah,
then none of I'm like, these kids are courageous because
I'm like I would have died.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It would have been over.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
As they continue on, they finally make it to their place,
which is the mall, which apparently this whole area was
supposed to be quarantined and shut off, but it's not.
And she's like, you know, there's all these infected but like,
really is there though? Hmm. And turns out that the
feder had turned power on over there to extend their
territories for more people to have apartments and such, so
(11:01):
this area has power. What rauh? So they go into
the area, they don't know where they're at, and then
Riley's like, shut up. I got a surprise for you.
If you'll go this way, go take a right, go
through the door. Stand there, tell me when you get there.
All this ensus Finally Ellie's like, I'm here, and then
she turns the lights on it. Oh my god, it's
the mall. Yeah, it's the mall. She's like, oh my god,
(11:23):
we're at them all. Where's that infected? All these things?
Won't they see? And apparently they're in a bunker essentially,
so they can't see underground. I guess they're low enough
that no one can catch the lights. So she says,
I have all these wonders for you, and we're gonna
call them the Five Wonders. It took me a minute.
I had to re like, we remember where all these were,
and we're gonna start off with the electric stairs or
(11:45):
the escalators, which is a cute little scene of her
trying to figure out what they do and going She's like,
I'm not moving, look at me as she goes up
a down escalator and then they have fun. She almost
does die because she almost fell off of it, and
that's the thing. So they finally come to that and
she's like, that's fine, Yep, I've got to four other wonders.
Let's go so they can walk down. They talk about
(12:05):
how it was looted at one point in time, and
of course the most important things were taken first, and
the unimportant things like lingerie from Victoria's Secrets. There's a
lot of product placement here, y'all, a lot of product placement,
including a spirit which does that? Is that still around?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
As I was, it would have been in like two
thousand and three, right, which is when that hand.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I guess, So I guess, so I guess. So you're right.
There was targeting spot which I think is still. There's
no b Dalton. Oh were they? Okay?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
We We have a cute little scene about lingerie and
having eliewhere and being laughing about that because there's this
song which really looked uncomfortable to me as well. It's
like why. But then the whole time we're seeing Ellie
kind of trying to primp herself and look cute because
she'd planned all these things, and it's like, are we
on a date? What? And she's like, close your eyes
and they hold. She takes he to the next part
(13:02):
the carousel, which they have a cute moment and have
a conversation, and then they get a little deeper into
the conversation. They're not happy about it, like things are
happening about the fireflies, conversation, QZ trying to be an officer,
all these things. What are you doing? Why are you
doing this? It's still sweet. They move on to the
next thing, which is the photo booth, and she has
(13:25):
a five dollar bill, which is worthless because we see
money everywhere. They take very faded pictures with several different poses,
which you have said in our previous episode that you
can play. Yeah, these things and all the poses are
actually in the game. So we have that moment and
they come out and they go to the next big thing,
(13:47):
which is the arcade Holy and she's come prepared. She's
been working on hours to break the coin machines so
they can play. They play their favorite game, Mortal Kombat.
Is very loud, he's getting loud. They're having fun, and
then they go down to where she has a present
for her, and they come down and they find out
(14:09):
that that's where Riley has been sleeping. She's kind of
hanging out there. That's where Riley gives Ellie her the
second pun Book.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
YEP Volume two, Volume two to you.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Oh, and so they start reading that off a little bit.
They don't understand one of them because they have no
screensheps like, what's that really? And then you find that
there was bombs there, that there's homemade explosives. Riley has
been stationed there, and they get into another big argument
(14:42):
about you know, blowing up people. Would you do this
to me? This is you know, terrorism, all these things,
talking about how bad these things could be. Why would
you do this? Blah blah blah. So she's about to leave,
so she finally admits that this is the last time
she's going to see her. They're not going to see
each other because she's been reassigned to Atlanta, and so
she wanted to do this big thing for her, and
(15:03):
she's asked if Ellie could go, but they said no.
So all this heartbreak is happening. This was the big goodbye.
Ellie's mad, and she's like, you know what, go fine,
and she leaves, and then of course she comes back.
They have a more conversation. She's like, I do have
one more surprise for you. She leaves, but we do
see a second shot of one of the I guess
(15:25):
the communicator zombies, which are they're stuck to the wall,
but I guess they're able to communicate to other zombies
to let them know that there are people here. Oh
my god, there's here. So that's what we see. So
we're all on the edge of our seats thinking, oh,
they're coming, They're coming. But then we also hear all
of a sudden screaming woman and Ellie, here's a screaming woman.
She runs screaming Riley Riley, and she comes to a
(15:48):
halloween store with one of those prop graveyards, and Riley says, surprise,
this is your finale. I say this for last because
I knowed you would love it. They have another big
conversation about her leaving and whether or not she was
said and I'm mad and why you would do this,
and then they kind of make up when she sees
the store and everybody like whatever, and turned out Riley
(16:09):
had taste stolen her walkman gotten uh. She's like, you
have bad taste the music and puts on the EDA James,
I got you, babe into the PA system, and they
put on Halloween masks, get on top of the glass
counter and start dancing, at which time I'm like they're
gonna fall and die, but they didn't. It's okay, just
in my head, they have the best time and they're
(16:31):
having a good moment. And she takes lay the head
off and she's like the mask off, and she's like,
don't go and Riley says okay, and then Ellie kisses
Riley and it's a sweet moment and Ellie goes, I'm sorry,
and Riley's like what for? And they both smile really
big and she's like, what do we do now? She's like,
I don't know, And essentially they're going to talk about
(16:51):
like staying together. It's really beautiful moment. And then we
hear some noises. We hear those noises, and then we
find one clicker who was very damn fast, goes after
both of them. One shoots at them, one throws things
at them. They do the knife where and all these things.
They finally kill them, and then we see Riley looking
(17:12):
at Ellie and Ellie going holy, that was amazing, like
really excited for that moment until she looks down to
where Riley's looking down and sees that she's been bitten
on the arm and she has a panic attack. She's like, no, no, no, no,
And then we look up at Riley and realize that
Riley has been bitten on the hand. So both of
them are like, ohh and then Ellie loses it and
(17:33):
start busting at all the glass, screaming, angry all these things,
knowing that this is the end. And you see Riley
just sitting against the counter, and then Ellie comes over
his heads and she's like, oh my god, what are
we gonna do? At this point, Riley says, you know,
we have we have these options. We can a kill ourselves,
(17:53):
b we could just be real poetic. And then she
was like, well, what's the third option. She's like, there's
not one. So but I choose to different people take
different times. I've seen it. It could be two hours,
it could be two days, and I choose to make
the best of that time. So essentially, I think and
I think it'd be poetic to lose our minds together
quote unquote, and you see them just hold on each other.
(18:17):
Coming back to the current moment where Ellie was about
to walk out the basement, she looks down, runs out
the door to look for supplies, scrambles everywhere, looks for things,
only comes back and has a needle and thread essentially
and is sewing him up. She gives a nod, he
nods back, and we see them sewing each other up
and it was super gross. They hold each other's hands
(18:38):
and still super gross.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Oh I am well, thanks again, excellent recap.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Episode has a lot to tack about it. I just
recommended I think you haven't seen you should watch it.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
But whatever, it does have a lot of Easter eggs,
I will say, especially like in Ellie's room and then
things in them all.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
They have a lot of call forwards, which is what
I'm calling them.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
It's not a callback, it's call forward to what's to come.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
So that's very fun.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
And in the like post show thing, they talk about
how this is a you know, what was it like
to be a kid in this world and what was
it like to skip school? So before we get into it,
just very quickly again, see our recent episode we did
on Riley for Fictional Women around the World for more information.
But this episode is based on the DLC Left Behind
(19:44):
plus the comic book American Dreams. DLC stands for downloadable content,
so basically the game came out in twenty thirteen on
Valentine's Day, in twenty fourteen, they released this thing that
you could download that was, like i'd say too, our
gameplay that.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
You could add on, and it was more to the story.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
And I know the next day I told you, Samantha,
but I was kind of laughing because a lot of
people were arguing about where this came from. They were like,
what was this? This wasn't in there, Yes it was.
It certainly was more on that a second too. I
do want to say the gay mechanics of it are
(20:27):
very different. As I said in that Riley episode, it
is interspersed, it's different. The main difference I would say
is that it's interspersed with Ellie.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
At an abandoned mall trying to find medical supplies to
save Joel.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It also kind of shows you how she got him
to that house, and she's having these flashbacks to what
happened with Riley innerspurs between that. But the game mechanics,
as I said in that Riley episode, are very different.
They're very sweet, like you're literally playing you have like
a water gun fights, and you choose which pose you
(21:04):
want to do in the photo booth, and you are
reading puns to each other and you can do that
at kind of any time until you run out of puns,
which I definitely did. So it's kind of like a
very sweet thing, but over the whole of it is
you know how it ends, So there's the anxiety throughout.
(21:27):
So I think the way they did that in this,
even though, like if you've been paying attention, they've mentioned
Riley several times already, is that when they show you
the zombie in the basement against the wall, is when
you're like, oh gosh, this is not good. This is
not going to end well. So that kind of that
(21:48):
anxiety hanging over. If you want more of Riley's backstory,
the comic The Last of Us American Dreams has a
lot of it. As I said, there was a big
backlash to this when it came out, so that was
one of the reasons I kind of chuckled to myself
even though it's not really funny the next day when
(22:09):
people were arguing about, like where did this come from?
Because I think a lot of those people would be
like the so called fans who were just so mad
at that they didn't even play it or either ignored it.
But people were mad. People were mad. Not everybody, but
there was a pretty loud, small group of people, but
(22:29):
very loud who were angry about it. But yeah, let's
talk about Riley, who this was kind of her big story.
She has been mentioned several times in the show, in
the first episode, second, one, third, one, I think the
sixth one. Arguably, I don't think like directly, but if
you know who Ellie's talking about, then you're like, oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
She is somebody who can stand up to Ellie.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
As you said, they argue a lot, and like that
scene where she's like telling Ellie what to do, like
you go up the stairs, taker right and out the
door and tell me when you're there, Like very strong personality,
but it's it's very sweet. It's like the game is
(23:14):
very sweet, and this was very sweet because it's sort
of a innocent young love like the mall date, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, And so when.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
You see especially as you know us who I don't know,
I grew up with that, when you see like Ellie's
face when the lights come on, she's like teary eyed
because they've never seen anything like that.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
She had never seen anything like that.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
And Riley having this like date planned even though it's
like not really a date, but it's pretty much a date,
like I'm going to show you like the best parts
of the mall, and I've planned it out.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
I love that part.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
What Ellie's like, you planned things and Riley's like, it's
just very sweet.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
It's very sweet.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Like their first kiss is very very sweet, Like you
can tell it's kind of their first kiss. It's sort
of clumsy, and then they laugh really loud, it's really hard.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It's just really adorable.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
And then when they're like playing Mortal Kombat and they
like are just exuberant at the chance to do this,
which they probably had just you know, read about magazines
and the scene had never done.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
And there were so many instances.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Of that in this of like you know, Ellie's reaction
to the escalator and then again, yes, I think I've
said this in a couple episodes ago, but their reaction
to the lingerie where they're kind of like, what were
people up to?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
What is this?
Speaker 3 (24:39):
And then I mentioned also there's a poster for this,
like I think it's called like Dawn Up the Wolf,
which is definitely a Twilight refuff right right that it
was coming out and Joel in there's a lot of
conversations in the game that you can miss.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
They're very easy to miss.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
And one of the ones you can have is where
Ellie looks at that poster and it's kind of like,
what is this essential says, Oh, my daughter loved it.
I took her to see it and all this stuff.
So that's sort of another connection there. I did notice
and one of my multiple rewatches that went into kind
of like zooming into the zombie. Oh they infected in
(25:20):
the basement. It's like an American girl doll store or something.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Oh, it's not.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
I don't think it's that, but it's essentially that, okay,
And it says every story has the beginning over the
cross of it, like, oh, yep, okay, and then I
do I did want to say I have the I
didn't buy this, but it came with something else I
bought that was last of us related.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
But I have the polaroid of Ellie and Riley on
my fridge. Very very cute.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
One thing that they did differently that I don't know
that I necessarily like it better in the game, but
it's a very cool thing in the game. It's a
big difference is in the arcade because, as I said
in that Riley episode, Warner Brothers owns the rights to
Mortal Kombat, so they played Mortal Kombat. But in the game,
(26:11):
it's this game called Turn the Turning and when they
get to the arcade, it doesn't work, and Ellie is
so disappointed, and Riley tells her to like close your eyes,
and it's a very beautiful sequence of Riley just describing like.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
He and sheees his knives, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
And Ellie's like kick like and it you can hear
like the sounds in her head of what it sounds like,
and the the lights are kind of on her on
her face, and I think they're gonna do that. There's
another sequence when they do that, so I think they're
saving it for that, but I do. I do love
that part and the lighting. I thought the whole set
(26:53):
was really cool, and like the lighting of it was
really really cool. The mask that they wear, the Halloween
masks are exactly from the game.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yeah, yes, and this is actually Ellie hates Halloween stuff,
by the way, because of this, because she associates it
with this and you do encounter it in the games
a lot, because you know, Outbreak Day was the end
of September and so they already had their Halloween stuff out,
but she hates it. But one of the other things
(27:28):
I wanted to talk about was this whole idea of goodbye,
because you see Ellie really not wanting Riley to leave,
but sort of struggling with like, well, what how do
I get her to stay? Or should I let her go?
Or what does she want and a lot of internal thoughts.
There's one scene on the carousel that I think is
(27:50):
super cute where you could tell she like almost reached
out to hold her hand and then didn't, but she's
trying to hold her there, and so she let's.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
She kind of.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Has this fight like, oh, you don't care about me,
like leave whatever, I don't care I'm leaving, and then
she says like, I'm your best friend.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
If this is what you want, I'm gonna let you
do it, like I let you go, you should.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Go, And then has this moment after they're dancing of
like no, please stay, I ask you to stay, and
Riley says yes, and then they say like, oh, we'll
figure it out together what it is, and it kind
of goes back to her fear of being alone, as
she said.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
But one thing I also want to mention.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
As I've told Smith, I've recently learned in the last episode,
they were watching this movie right and we didn't know
what it was.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
We were just were like whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
But it's called The Goodbye Girl and she leaves before
the ending. And I haven't seen The Goodbye Girl, but
basically the plot is Richard Dreyfus's character comes into the
lives of this woman and her daughter, and the woman
has had a lot of men come and go in
her life, and so the girl, the Goodbye Girl, has
(29:06):
really gotten used to people not staying around and is
expecting this guy to leave all the time.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
And she.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
In the end sort of learns like that goodbye doesn't
mean that's the end, or that that's it doesn't have
to be this horrible thing, and she leaves before she
sees the ending of it, so that I.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Feel like that was very purposeful.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
And this is one of the times where you kind
of see Ellie trying to say goodbye but then having
that fear of being alone. And then also this is
like her first crush, like this is the one person
she has. She's very isolated, and she doesn't want to
let this person go, and she asked her to stay,
and Rally.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Says yes, and then of course, because it's the.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Last of us, I can't have nice things.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You can't, you can't.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
They both get bitten, and then we get to see
the difference between how Ellie reacts, which, in the words
of Craignizing, the showrunner, is very dark and violent and angry,
versus how Riley reacts. And he says, that's because you know,
Riley has experienced loss and Ellie hasn't at this point,
(30:26):
or at least not to a degree where she can
really remember.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
And so because really, I mean, she talked.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
About like what happened with her parents and this feeling
of belonging wanting that back, and then you know, you
see them talk it through and like every second counts
and if I can be with you, I want to
be with you as long as I can be, Because
if you think about it, that was a big question
people had when we knew we had like Riley's name,
(30:54):
and we knew they got bitten at the same time
in the first game. But they were like, well, so
why didn't they die or like why.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
What how would this come about? Right?
Speaker 3 (31:05):
And so the answer is that they have this like
packed where we're going to stay together as long as possible,
but that they both thought they were going to die,
like when they would have no reason not to think that.
And I guess that's another thing where I almost asked you.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
About this before.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
But apparently some people are arguing about whether or not
Riley dies.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Really she did?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, yeah, well she says it.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Yes, she said it in the first episode.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, the very first episode.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yes, But I guess some people don't pick up on it, but.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I know I was.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I was like, literally like, well now do I what
do I do? But no, she dies, She's dead?
Speaker 1 (31:48):
She did, Like, sorry, she really did.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
They said it in the first episode.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
I'm pretty sure they like when she in six when
Ellie's like, I've lost people too, that's she was talking
about Riley. And Riley does hangover all of the show,
so's not that's not the end of her. But it
is certainly, like I said, that building of tension, because
when you're playing it, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
That that's how it ends. It was very very moving.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
It was very very sad Samantha had to get us tissues,
me and my friend Katie. I think it was sadder
than the game because in the game, it's less it's
the same conversation, but they're more like tired. They're kind
of more like, well, here's what we do. And it
does cut away before you see them die, which it
(32:37):
did in the show, but in the show it was
just kind of I think they they made it more emotional.
So Riley's death does hang over Elliott. It has shaped
(33:02):
her worldview. It is this treumatic event or somebody she
cared for, had this crush on, maybe loved died and
they thought they were going to die together and she
they didn't. Because Ellie survives this whole thing, and so
this is part of her survivor's guilt where every time
(33:23):
someone she loves dies, and even not even someone she loves,
every time somebody dies, she has a guilt about it
because she didn't. So you see that with Joel after
she flashes back to what is going on because she
is opening door and she's thinking about leaving it, and
she's remembering what Riley did for her and how Riley
stayed there and didn't let her die or kill herself,
(33:47):
like held her hand, and so she's remembering all of that.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
But it is like one of the.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Biggest shaping events for Ellie something that she just just
hangs over and like, like I said, when you plays her,
you look in the backpack and she just has all
of these like she still has the Firefight London, she
has the pun Book, she has all these things. You know,
it hasn't been that long at this point, like maybe
(34:13):
a couple of months, but I did want to shout
out storm Read who nailed that performance amazing.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Was so good.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Yes, and like honestly like she made it her own,
but was exactly like the characterization in the game, so good.
And she's already spoken out about like the review bombing
the response, and it's been like, I back up what
Bella Ramsey said. If that's what you're worried about, you
need to straighten up your priorities. Yes, agreed, Yeah, uh huh.
(34:46):
Something else I wanted to touch on briefly is I
think and I'm gonna have a lot of thoughts about
this in the last episode that we do, but they
are they're definitely setting up fedro versus Five Flies in
a way that they did it in the game, or
at least not as in depth because that was always there,
(35:07):
but they've they've really built it up and that's all
we'll say. And also, I did I think they had
that kind of chilling comparison to Kansas City when Riley's like,
when if we, you know, free this place and we
take over, it'd be so much better. And then we
saw what happened in Kansas City when that happened, and
(35:28):
that that you know, that's not necessarily to say that
would have happened here, but it was kind of I
think a chilling pointed comparison. Something else I wanted to
talk about, and I'm going to talk about very briefly
too because no spoilers, but I will say I didn't
mention this in the last one, but Joel's injury. He
(35:48):
falls on a pipe and gets stamped through, and it's
a really cool scene where.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I mean, it's very upsetting, but it's.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Very cool where Ellie's like taking charge and having to
lead him out and he's kind of passing out, so
it's a different injury. Also, Joel's anxiety medication. I didn't
know this, but they added that into the remake so
you can see it before the pandemic, before the outbreak.
It's on his bedside table, So I guess they kind
of did that as a nod as to.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
What was coming.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
But there's been a lot of articles about it about like, oh,
this is exactly like that's how anxiety feels to me,
kind of like your heart stopping, it hit suddenly whenever,
and all this stuff. So that's interesting. As I mentioned
in our recent Daddy episode, there's also been a lot
of articles about single parent based on this and something
we'll have to come back to that. I have seen
(36:42):
a lot of stuff written lately about Bella Ramsay's comments
about chest binding, because I think she said she spent
ninety percent of this with chest binding filming, and she
was talking about like how you need to do.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
That safely and all that stuff. But there's been a
lot of conversation about that.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Yes, so what is to com And honestly, this one's
I'm no spoilers here, even if you've seen the trailer,
I want to tell you scary stuff is coming. I
think it's the scariest part of the game, but that's
up for interpretation as always and debates. I was wondering
if they're going to put the infamous rabbit scene in there,
(37:19):
and I don't think they are.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
I don't think they are.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
We were waiting.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I don't think they can. I've thought about it, of
course I have.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Well, technically I'm trying to figure out how they would
do it.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Everyone who doesn't know it's like what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
This as an insight, yes between us, not not y'all
who have not seen what's going on. I don't know.
I think they still have time. That's technically we don't
know how Joel is doing and they're going to be
in that.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Uh no, I mean stuck for a while. I agree,
but I don't know. I'm just I'm not sure how
they pull it off.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
With effect see it, but I see I see what
you're saying now, Okay, glicious, Okay, like strategically on Oh yeah, okay, okay,
I'm here.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
If they can do it, they did it. Oh man,
I can't wait to talk about that. Everyone's like, what
is going on? There are only two episodes left?
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Can you believe it?
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Who?
Speaker 3 (38:16):
I hope it's always that you're enjoying this, whether you
have seen the show or not, whether you've played.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
The game or not.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
And yeah, we love hearing your thoughts about it. I
am excited for the next couple of episodes.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
You can contact us at Steph Media, mom Stuff at
iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
That is our email.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast,
or on Instagram and TikTok at Stefan Never Told You
and YouTube now if you just want to listen to
us there.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Thanks as always to our super producer Christina. Thank you, Christina, Yes,
and thanks to you for listening. Stefan Never Told You
the projection of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
For more podcast from my Heart Radio, you can check
out the ihart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or regular listen
to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I welcome to stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Will never told you production if I hurt you, And yes,
we are just we decided we're just gonna play all
these last of those classics is we we got too
far in it didn't make sense to stop, so we're
(00:30):
just gonna keep going. This is in part inspired because
it is October spooky season. We did go to Seattle recently,
Samantha and I did, and that is where the second
game takes place, and I had a very fun time
being annoying and pointing out all of the things. So, yes,
(00:52):
this episode was a downloadable content. It was something we downloaded.
People who play the game downloaded later and it's when
you see how Ellie got bitten. And it was a
very moving episode.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
It did have a lot.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Of the that that content that like playing that was
very different than a lot of stuff in the Last
of Us, but also that I've just ever played because
it had so many like let's take pictures together, or
let's play this water gun game, or it was just
(01:30):
a kind of very sweet mini game thing that was
happening within the Zombie Apocalypse world, but within the backdrop
is how Ellie is dealing with Joel dying, and so
it's seeing her, seeing her trying to save him, trying
(01:55):
to get him this medicine, and having these flashbacks of
her first love Riley, and they share a very sweet,
messy kiss and it's cute.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
I describe that.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I think it's cute because it's clear they're not experienced,
like it's a very awkward kiss.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
But of course zombies come in and a ruin of thee.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
But she's having these flashbacks in part because she feels
like she's always she says throughout the first game, like
I'm afraid of ending up alone. Everyone's always left me
all of this stuff. Joel is telling her to leave
and she's like at the door, having these flashbacks of
like should I leave or should I stay? And she stays,
(02:48):
and that is what this episode is about. So please enjoy.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Hey this, and Samantha, I'm welcome.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
To Stephman Never Told You, Protection of iHeart Radio, and
welcome to episode seven of our nine possibly ten part
mini series on the Last of Us, the HBO Max series,
(03:24):
which is not a sponsor. And thanks to everyone who
keeps talking about the other official podcast. I appreciate it,
but man, every time.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Is it a little dnt my self esteem? No, not really.
I do love hearing about it. We are not the
official podcast, just fans.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
This is a love letter. It really is to the
game and show you from Annie love Annie.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yes, with Samantha support.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yes, with me as a ps like she's mad at you.
That's what I'm telling about.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And Samantha has been lovely this whole
time and has hosted our watch parties.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
This one was a cheese event.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Was very nice.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Oh yeah, I hate.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
All that garl cheese so much cheese.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I hate the garlic man, you know those garlic.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, yes, I loved it.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
This, yes, will have spoilers for the most recent episode,
episode seven, I Left Behind and everything that came before.
Samantha is my guardian and hopefully not spoiling anything else.
I feel like we've done a pretty good job, but
it has been difficult. She has too much knowledge I do,
and I forget. I forget sometimes. But I feel like
(04:43):
we've done it pretty good. So yeah, you should be fine.
And yes, this is a temporary thing. We're releasing on
Saturdays the week after the most recent episode, and it
is replacing my Happy Hours. But we will return to
regular program maybe. I think at some point this one
(05:07):
content warning for I guess general sadness, violence, trauma, trauma, yeah,
I guess alcohol use.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Potentially, especially among younger people.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
But suicide.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
It's suicide. Yeah, So yes, this is.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Based on the DLC, the downloadable content called Left Behind,
which I will talk about more briefly in a second.
But if you want to know more about that, you
can see our recent Fictional Women episode on Riley for
more information on her portrayal in the games and comics,
which is pretty much the same but a lot more backstory,
I would say in that if you want it, you
(05:46):
can also see our Happy Hour on the remake that
we did kind of recently, the Last of Us Part
one remake, and I'll talk about why that matters in
a second. But in the meantime, Samantha, do you want
to do your wonderful recap?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (06:01):
I can do this all right. So we are opening
scene of seeing bloody I guess tracks essentially going into
an abandoned home and where we go to all the
way down to the basement and realize that Joel is
lying there still at this time alive but barely, and
then in a lot of pain, bleeding out. For some
(06:21):
odd reason, Ellie keeps trying to make him press against
his own wounds, like he's not bleeding out, but okay, sure,
why not. At this point, they go back and forth
about how to do this. He finally grabs her and says,
you've got to go back. You gotta go north and
find Tommy. You've got to leave, save yourself. She's like, no,
I don't want to, and then he has the strength
to push her back, so I'm sure that gushed out
more blood there that is. And she kind of looks
(06:43):
at him in the shock and looks back up, and
then she runs up the door, hand on the door
to get out, and then we go to flashback. We're
in a flashback where she is at the QZ listening
to her Sony Walkman, which apparently was a thing in
the comics, because if you have listened to that episode
you will find this out as I did. And she
is running around in the gym. A girl comes and
(07:05):
bullies her and says, you know, oh, your protector's not here.
What are you going to do about it? They end
up fighting. She ends up getting that girl enough injury
that that girl has to have seventeen stitches, while you
know Ellie has a black guy. She sits in front
of an officer who pretty much tells her, Hey, we're
trying to make you an officer. You're so good at this.
We want you to live the life because apparently it's not.
(07:26):
There's like a hierarchy and if you're an officer, you
get all the good things while everybody else doesn't get
the good things. And so she's like, okay, I choose
to be an officer. Flashed forward to her going to
her room where she's in the dark room with all
of her posters. In her room, she pulls out a book.
It turns out to be the first pun book. And
Annie does not have this copy. And it's a shame
(07:47):
and I'm disappointed in you just a little bit. Yeah,
but it's okay, but it's okay. We turn to look
that the roommate is not there. Her side of the
room is completely empty. We have some moments of oh sad,
and then she goes to sleep. We know someone's crawling
through the window. Who could it be? And she tries
to cover Ellie's mouth. Ellie like jumps up, pushes her,
(08:08):
kicks her, and ready to stab her. Turns out it's Riley,
the roommate that has left, and she's been gone for
three weeks and for all that Ellie knew was that
she was dead at this point, but she's not. She's back,
and she's like, where the hell did you come from?
Where have you been? A little argument ensues because you know,
they argue apparently all the time, and then it turns
out Riley has joined the Fireflies, which Ellie thinks is
(08:28):
a joke until Riley shows off her handgun and she's like,
oh my god, you really have a little small argument
ensues because you know, Ellie's at now right now like
she's not pro pro fedra, but she is more towards
Fedra than fireflies. So we have a moment or in
exchange and all of these arguing. Riley's like, if you
(08:49):
will shut up, I've got a surprise for you. Come
with me. Throws pants on, makes Riley turn around to
put pants on. Right. I was like, this is so weird.
Why do you have to always do this?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
She's like to turn around.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
They get all their stuff, they go down the stairs.
They're like, you know, the Federal don't know anything. And
then I said, they're about to go exit, a Federick
comes by. She's like, Ellie's like, haha, see there, they
don't know anything, huh whatever. So they continue on. They
escape through a building which is so many stairs, and
she does the things that many of my friends too
(09:19):
that I'm very upset about. When they're like, it's not
far and then like twenty minutes later, you're like, where
the hell am I? You're like, you lied to me.
But they finally go up all the stairs, come up
to a body and they go to investigate a dead body.
They have a conversation about seeing dead bodies before. It
turned out that Riley had because of her parents. There
(09:40):
we find that the dude has a very expensive bottle
of whiskey that he had to exchange a lot of cards.
I'm guessing that's the currency. And then this assumption is
that he had taken pills and drank that did this
on purpose, so it's now deceased. During this time, he
falls to the floors. Very scary. It was a jump.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Scary, y'all.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
We all we all went what I had a moment.
They grabbed the whiskey, which is still fine. These young
underage drinking is a no no, but they drank and
we're like, okay, haa, let's move on. So they move
on and they come to the roof and they have
more conversations about how she got discovered. Turns out Marlene
(10:18):
is mentioned at this point and she was impressed with
how Riley was able to sneak around in the in
the show, and so she was then asked to join.
Then they go hopping across roofs, which was like I
would die because I would fall down off every immediately. Yeah,
then none of I'm like, these kids are courageous because
I'm like I would have died.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It would have been over.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
As they continue on, they finally make it to their place,
which is the mall, which apparently this whole area was
supposed to be quarantined and shut off, but it's not.
And she's like, you know, there's all these infected but like,
really is there though? Hmm. And turns out that the
feder had turned power on over there to extend their
territories for more people to have apartments and such, so
(11:01):
this area has power. What rauh? So they go into
the area, they don't know where they're at, and then
Riley's like, shut up. I got a surprise for you.
If you'll go this way, go take a right, go
through the door. Stand there, tell me when you get there.
All this ensus Finally Ellie's like, I'm here, and then
she turns the lights on it. Oh my god, it's
the mall. Yeah, it's the mall. She's like, oh my god,
(11:23):
we're at them all. Where's that infected? All these things?
Won't they see? And apparently they're in a bunker essentially,
so they can't see underground. I guess they're low enough
that no one can catch the lights. So she says,
I have all these wonders for you, and we're gonna
call them the Five Wonders. It took me a minute.
I had to re like, we remember where all these were,
and we're gonna start off with the electric stairs or
(11:45):
the escalators, which is a cute little scene of her
trying to figure out what they do and going She's like,
I'm not moving, look at me as she goes up
a down escalator and then they have fun. She almost
does die because she almost fell off of it, and
that's the thing. So they finally come to that and
she's like, that's fine, Yep, I've got to four other wonders.
Let's go so they can walk down. They talk about
(12:05):
how it was looted at one point in time, and
of course the most important things were taken first, and
the unimportant things like lingerie from Victoria's Secrets. There's a
lot of product placement here, y'all, a lot of product placement,
including a spirit which does that? Is that still around?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
As I was, it would have been in like two
thousand and three, right, which is when that hand.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I guess, So I guess, so I guess. So you're right.
There was targeting spot which I think is still. There's
no b Dalton. Oh were they? Okay?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
We We have a cute little scene about lingerie and
having eliewhere and being laughing about that because there's this
song which really looked uncomfortable to me as well. It's
like why. But then the whole time we're seeing Ellie
kind of trying to primp herself and look cute because
she'd planned all these things, and it's like, are we
on a date? What? And she's like, close your eyes
and they hold. She takes he to the next part
(13:02):
the carousel, which they have a cute moment and have
a conversation, and then they get a little deeper into
the conversation. They're not happy about it, like things are
happening about the fireflies, conversation, QZ trying to be an officer,
all these things. What are you doing? Why are you
doing this? It's still sweet. They move on to the
next thing, which is the photo booth, and she has
(13:25):
a five dollar bill, which is worthless because we see
money everywhere. They take very faded pictures with several different poses,
which you have said in our previous episode that you
can play. Yeah, these things and all the poses are
actually in the game. So we have that moment and
they come out and they go to the next big thing,
(13:47):
which is the arcade Holy and she's come prepared. She's
been working on hours to break the coin machines so
they can play. They play their favorite game, Mortal Kombat.
Is very loud, he's getting loud. They're having fun, and
then they go down to where she has a present
for her, and they come down and they find out
(14:09):
that that's where Riley has been sleeping. She's kind of
hanging out there. That's where Riley gives Ellie her the
second pun Book.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
YEP Volume two, Volume two to you.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Oh, and so they start reading that off a little bit.
They don't understand one of them because they have no
screensheps like, what's that really? And then you find that
there was bombs there, that there's homemade explosives. Riley has
been stationed there, and they get into another big argument
(14:42):
about you know, blowing up people. Would you do this
to me? This is you know, terrorism, all these things,
talking about how bad these things could be. Why would
you do this? Blah blah blah. So she's about to leave,
so she finally admits that this is the last time
she's going to see her. They're not going to see
each other because she's been reassigned to Atlanta, and so
she wanted to do this big thing for her, and
(15:03):
she's asked if Ellie could go, but they said no.
So all this heartbreak is happening. This was the big goodbye.
Ellie's mad, and she's like, you know what, go fine,
and she leaves, and then of course she comes back.
They have a more conversation. She's like, I do have
one more surprise for you. She leaves, but we do
see a second shot of one of the I guess
(15:25):
the communicator zombies, which are they're stuck to the wall,
but I guess they're able to communicate to other zombies
to let them know that there are people here. Oh
my god, there's here. So that's what we see. So
we're all on the edge of our seats thinking, oh,
they're coming, They're coming. But then we also hear all
of a sudden screaming woman and Ellie, here's a screaming woman.
She runs screaming Riley Riley, and she comes to a
(15:48):
halloween store with one of those prop graveyards, and Riley says, surprise,
this is your finale. I say this for last because
I knowed you would love it. They have another big
conversation about her leaving and whether or not she was
said and I'm mad and why you would do this,
and then they kind of make up when she sees
the store and everybody like whatever, and turned out Riley
(16:09):
had taste stolen her walkman gotten uh. She's like, you
have bad taste the music and puts on the EDA James,
I got you, babe into the PA system, and they
put on Halloween masks, get on top of the glass
counter and start dancing, at which time I'm like they're
gonna fall and die, but they didn't. It's okay, just
in my head, they have the best time and they're
(16:31):
having a good moment. And she takes lay the head
off and she's like the mask off, and she's like,
don't go and Riley says okay, and then Ellie kisses
Riley and it's a sweet moment and Ellie goes, I'm sorry,
and Riley's like what for? And they both smile really
big and she's like, what do we do now? She's like,
I don't know, And essentially they're going to talk about
(16:51):
like staying together. It's really beautiful moment. And then we
hear some noises. We hear those noises, and then we
find one clicker who was very damn fast, goes after
both of them. One shoots at them, one throws things
at them. They do the knife where and all these things.
They finally kill them, and then we see Riley looking
(17:12):
at Ellie and Ellie going holy, that was amazing, like
really excited for that moment until she looks down to
where Riley's looking down and sees that she's been bitten
on the arm and she has a panic attack. She's like, no, no, no, no,
And then we look up at Riley and realize that
Riley has been bitten on the hand. So both of
them are like, ohh and then Ellie loses it and
(17:33):
start busting at all the glass, screaming, angry all these things,
knowing that this is the end. And you see Riley
just sitting against the counter, and then Ellie comes over
his heads and she's like, oh my god, what are
we gonna do? At this point, Riley says, you know,
we have we have these options. We can a kill ourselves,
(17:53):
b we could just be real poetic. And then she
was like, well, what's the third option. She's like, there's
not one. So but I choose to different people take
different times. I've seen it. It could be two hours,
it could be two days, and I choose to make
the best of that time. So essentially, I think and
I think it'd be poetic to lose our minds together
quote unquote, and you see them just hold on each other.
(18:17):
Coming back to the current moment where Ellie was about
to walk out the basement, she looks down, runs out
the door to look for supplies, scrambles everywhere, looks for things,
only comes back and has a needle and thread essentially
and is sewing him up. She gives a nod, he
nods back, and we see them sewing each other up
and it was super gross. They hold each other's hands
(18:38):
and still super gross.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Oh I am well, thanks again, excellent recap.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Episode has a lot to tack about it. I just
recommended I think you haven't seen you should watch it.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
But whatever, it does have a lot of Easter eggs,
I will say, especially like in Ellie's room and then
things in them all.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
They have a lot of call forwards, which is what
I'm calling them.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
It's not a callback, it's call forward to what's to come.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
So that's very fun.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
And in the like post show thing, they talk about
how this is a you know, what was it like
to be a kid in this world and what was
it like to skip school? So before we get into it,
just very quickly again, see our recent episode we did
on Riley for Fictional Women around the World for more information.
But this episode is based on the DLC Left Behind
(19:44):
plus the comic book American Dreams. DLC stands for downloadable content,
so basically the game came out in twenty thirteen on
Valentine's Day, in twenty fourteen, they released this thing that
you could download that was, like i'd say too, our
gameplay that.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
You could add on, and it was more to the story.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
And I know the next day I told you, Samantha,
but I was kind of laughing because a lot of
people were arguing about where this came from. They were like,
what was this? This wasn't in there, Yes it was.
It certainly was more on that a second too. I
do want to say the gay mechanics of it are
(20:27):
very different. As I said in that Riley episode, it
is interspersed, it's different. The main difference I would say
is that it's interspersed with Ellie.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
At an abandoned mall trying to find medical supplies to
save Joel.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It also kind of shows you how she got him
to that house, and she's having these flashbacks to what
happened with Riley innerspurs between that. But the game mechanics,
as I said in that Riley episode, are very different.
They're very sweet, like you're literally playing you have like
a water gun fights, and you choose which pose you
(21:04):
want to do in the photo booth, and you are
reading puns to each other and you can do that
at kind of any time until you run out of puns,
which I definitely did. So it's kind of like a
very sweet thing, but over the whole of it is
you know how it ends, So there's the anxiety throughout.
(21:27):
So I think the way they did that in this,
even though, like if you've been paying attention, they've mentioned
Riley several times already, is that when they show you
the zombie in the basement against the wall, is when
you're like, oh gosh, this is not good. This is
not going to end well. So that kind of that
(21:48):
anxiety hanging over. If you want more of Riley's backstory,
the comic The Last of Us American Dreams has a
lot of it. As I said, there was a big
backlash to this when it came out, so that was
one of the reasons I kind of chuckled to myself
even though it's not really funny the next day when
(22:09):
people were arguing about, like where did this come from?
Because I think a lot of those people would be
like the so called fans who were just so mad
at that they didn't even play it or either ignored it.
But people were mad. People were mad. Not everybody, but
there was a pretty loud, small group of people, but
(22:29):
very loud who were angry about it. But yeah, let's
talk about Riley, who this was kind of her big story.
She has been mentioned several times in the show, in
the first episode, second, one, third, one, I think the
sixth one. Arguably, I don't think like directly, but if
you know who Ellie's talking about, then you're like, oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
She is somebody who can stand up to Ellie.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
As you said, they argue a lot, and like that
scene where she's like telling Ellie what to do, like
you go up the stairs, taker right and out the
door and tell me when you're there, Like very strong personality,
but it's it's very sweet. It's like the game is
(23:14):
very sweet, and this was very sweet because it's sort
of a innocent young love like the mall date, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, And so when.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
You see especially as you know us who I don't know,
I grew up with that, when you see like Ellie's
face when the lights come on, she's like teary eyed
because they've never seen anything like that.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
She had never seen anything like that.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
And Riley having this like date planned even though it's
like not really a date, but it's pretty much a date,
like I'm going to show you like the best parts
of the mall, and I've planned it out.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
I love that part.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
What Ellie's like, you planned things and Riley's like, it's
just very sweet.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
It's very sweet.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Like their first kiss is very very sweet, Like you
can tell it's kind of their first kiss. It's sort
of clumsy, and then they laugh really loud, it's really hard.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It's just really adorable.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
And then when they're like playing Mortal Kombat and they
like are just exuberant at the chance to do this,
which they probably had just you know, read about magazines
and the scene had never done.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
And there were so many instances.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Of that in this of like you know, Ellie's reaction
to the escalator and then again, yes, I think I've
said this in a couple episodes ago, but their reaction
to the lingerie where they're kind of like, what were
people up to?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
What is this?
Speaker 3 (24:39):
And then I mentioned also there's a poster for this,
like I think it's called like Dawn Up the Wolf,
which is definitely a Twilight refuff right right that it
was coming out and Joel in there's a lot of
conversations in the game that you can miss.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
They're very easy to miss.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
And one of the ones you can have is where
Ellie looks at that poster and it's kind of like,
what is this essential says, Oh, my daughter loved it.
I took her to see it and all this stuff.
So that's sort of another connection there. I did notice
and one of my multiple rewatches that went into kind
of like zooming into the zombie. Oh they infected in
(25:20):
the basement. It's like an American girl doll store or something.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Oh, it's not.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
I don't think it's that, but it's essentially that, okay,
And it says every story has the beginning over the
cross of it, like, oh, yep, okay, and then I
do I did want to say I have the I
didn't buy this, but it came with something else I
bought that was last of us related.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
But I have the polaroid of Ellie and Riley on
my fridge. Very very cute.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
One thing that they did differently that I don't know
that I necessarily like it better in the game, but
it's a very cool thing in the game. It's a
big difference is in the arcade because, as I said
in that Riley episode, Warner Brothers owns the rights to
Mortal Kombat, so they played Mortal Kombat. But in the game,
(26:11):
it's this game called Turn the Turning and when they
get to the arcade, it doesn't work, and Ellie is
so disappointed, and Riley tells her to like close your eyes,
and it's a very beautiful sequence of Riley just describing like.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
He and sheees his knives, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
And Ellie's like kick like and it you can hear
like the sounds in her head of what it sounds like,
and the the lights are kind of on her on
her face, and I think they're gonna do that. There's
another sequence when they do that, so I think they're
saving it for that, but I do. I do love
that part and the lighting. I thought the whole set
(26:53):
was really cool, and like the lighting of it was
really really cool. The mask that they wear, the Halloween
masks are exactly from the game.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yeah, yes, and this is actually Ellie hates Halloween stuff,
by the way, because of this, because she associates it
with this and you do encounter it in the games
a lot, because you know, Outbreak Day was the end
of September and so they already had their Halloween stuff out,
but she hates it. But one of the other things
(27:28):
I wanted to talk about was this whole idea of goodbye,
because you see Ellie really not wanting Riley to leave,
but sort of struggling with like, well, what how do
I get her to stay? Or should I let her go?
Or what does she want and a lot of internal thoughts.
There's one scene on the carousel that I think is
(27:50):
super cute where you could tell she like almost reached
out to hold her hand and then didn't, but she's
trying to hold her there, and so she let's.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
She kind of.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Has this fight like, oh, you don't care about me,
like leave whatever, I don't care I'm leaving, and then
she says like, I'm your best friend.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
If this is what you want, I'm gonna let you
do it, like I let you go, you should.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Go, And then has this moment after they're dancing of
like no, please stay, I ask you to stay, and
Riley says yes, and then they say like, oh, we'll
figure it out together what it is, and it kind
of goes back to her fear of being alone, as
she said.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
But one thing I also want to mention.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
As I've told Smith, I've recently learned in the last episode,
they were watching this movie right and we didn't know
what it was.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
We were just were like whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
But it's called The Goodbye Girl and she leaves before
the ending. And I haven't seen The Goodbye Girl, but
basically the plot is Richard Dreyfus's character comes into the
lives of this woman and her daughter, and the woman
has had a lot of men come and go in
her life, and so the girl, the Goodbye Girl, has
(29:06):
really gotten used to people not staying around and is
expecting this guy to leave all the time.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
And she.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
In the end sort of learns like that goodbye doesn't
mean that's the end, or that that's it doesn't have
to be this horrible thing, and she leaves before she
sees the ending of it, so that I.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Feel like that was very purposeful.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
And this is one of the times where you kind
of see Ellie trying to say goodbye but then having
that fear of being alone. And then also this is
like her first crush, like this is the one person
she has. She's very isolated, and she doesn't want to
let this person go, and she asked her to stay,
and Rally.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Says yes, and then of course, because it's the.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Last of us, I can't have nice things.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You can't, you can't.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
They both get bitten, and then we get to see
the difference between how Ellie reacts, which, in the words
of Craignizing, the showrunner, is very dark and violent and angry,
versus how Riley reacts. And he says, that's because you know,
Riley has experienced loss and Ellie hasn't at this point,
(30:26):
or at least not to a degree where she can
really remember.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
And so because really, I mean, she talked.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
About like what happened with her parents and this feeling
of belonging wanting that back, and then you know, you
see them talk it through and like every second counts
and if I can be with you, I want to
be with you as long as I can be, Because
if you think about it, that was a big question
people had when we knew we had like Riley's name,
(30:54):
and we knew they got bitten at the same time
in the first game. But they were like, well, so
why didn't they die or like why.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
What how would this come about? Right?
Speaker 3 (31:05):
And so the answer is that they have this like
packed where we're going to stay together as long as possible,
but that they both thought they were going to die,
like when they would have no reason not to think that.
And I guess that's another thing where I almost asked you.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
About this before.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
But apparently some people are arguing about whether or not
Riley dies.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Really she did?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, yeah, well she says it.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Yes, she said it in the first episode.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, the very first episode.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yes, But I guess some people don't pick up on it, but.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I know I was.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I was like, literally like, well now do I what
do I do? But no, she dies, She's dead?
Speaker 1 (31:48):
She did, Like, sorry, she really did.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
They said it in the first episode.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
I'm pretty sure they like when she in six when
Ellie's like, I've lost people too, that's she was talking
about Riley. And Riley does hangover all of the show,
so's not that's not the end of her. But it
is certainly, like I said, that building of tension, because
when you're playing it, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
That that's how it ends. It was very very moving.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
It was very very sad Samantha had to get us tissues,
me and my friend Katie. I think it was sadder
than the game because in the game, it's less it's
the same conversation, but they're more like tired. They're kind
of more like, well, here's what we do. And it
does cut away before you see them die, which it
(32:37):
did in the show, but in the show it was
just kind of I think they they made it more emotional.
So Riley's death does hang over Elliott. It has shaped
(33:02):
her worldview. It is this treumatic event or somebody she
cared for, had this crush on, maybe loved died and
they thought they were going to die together and she
they didn't. Because Ellie survives this whole thing, and so
this is part of her survivor's guilt where every time
(33:23):
someone she loves dies, and even not even someone she loves,
every time somebody dies, she has a guilt about it
because she didn't. So you see that with Joel after
she flashes back to what is going on because she
is opening door and she's thinking about leaving it, and
she's remembering what Riley did for her and how Riley
stayed there and didn't let her die or kill herself,
(33:47):
like held her hand, and so she's remembering all of that.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
But it is like one of the.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Biggest shaping events for Ellie something that she just just
hangs over and like, like I said, when you plays her,
you look in the backpack and she just has all
of these like she still has the Firefight London, she
has the pun Book, she has all these things. You know,
it hasn't been that long at this point, like maybe
(34:13):
a couple of months, but I did want to shout
out storm Read who nailed that performance amazing.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Was so good.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Yes, and like honestly like she made it her own,
but was exactly like the characterization in the game, so good.
And she's already spoken out about like the review bombing
the response, and it's been like, I back up what
Bella Ramsey said. If that's what you're worried about, you
need to straighten up your priorities. Yes, agreed, Yeah, uh huh.
(34:46):
Something else I wanted to touch on briefly is I
think and I'm gonna have a lot of thoughts about
this in the last episode that we do, but they
are they're definitely setting up fedro versus Five Flies in
a way that they did it in the game, or
at least not as in depth because that was always there,
(35:07):
but they've they've really built it up and that's all
we'll say. And also, I did I think they had
that kind of chilling comparison to Kansas City when Riley's like,
when if we, you know, free this place and we
take over, it'd be so much better. And then we
saw what happened in Kansas City when that happened, and
(35:28):
that that you know, that's not necessarily to say that
would have happened here, but it was kind of I
think a chilling pointed comparison. Something else I wanted to
talk about, and I'm going to talk about very briefly
too because no spoilers, but I will say I didn't
mention this in the last one, but Joel's injury. He
(35:48):
falls on a pipe and gets stamped through, and it's
a really cool scene where.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I mean, it's very upsetting, but it's.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Very cool where Ellie's like taking charge and having to
lead him out and he's kind of passing out, so
it's a different injury. Also, Joel's anxiety medication. I didn't
know this, but they added that into the remake so
you can see it before the pandemic, before the outbreak.
It's on his bedside table, So I guess they kind
of did that as a nod as to.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
What was coming.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
But there's been a lot of articles about it about like, oh,
this is exactly like that's how anxiety feels to me,
kind of like your heart stopping, it hit suddenly whenever,
and all this stuff. So that's interesting. As I mentioned
in our recent Daddy episode, there's also been a lot
of articles about single parent based on this and something
we'll have to come back to that. I have seen
(36:42):
a lot of stuff written lately about Bella Ramsay's comments
about chest binding, because I think she said she spent
ninety percent of this with chest binding filming, and she
was talking about like how you need to do.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
That safely and all that stuff. But there's been a
lot of conversation about that.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Yes, so what is to com And honestly, this one's
I'm no spoilers here, even if you've seen the trailer,
I want to tell you scary stuff is coming. I
think it's the scariest part of the game, but that's
up for interpretation as always and debates. I was wondering
if they're going to put the infamous rabbit scene in there,
(37:19):
and I don't think they are.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
I don't think they are.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
We were waiting.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I don't think they can. I've thought about it, of
course I have.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Well, technically I'm trying to figure out how they would
do it.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Everyone who doesn't know it's like what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
This as an insight, yes between us, not not y'all
who have not seen what's going on. I don't know.
I think they still have time. That's technically we don't
know how Joel is doing and they're going to be
in that.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Uh no, I mean stuck for a while. I agree,
but I don't know. I'm just I'm not sure how
they pull it off.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
With effect see it, but I see I see what
you're saying now, Okay, glicious, Okay, like strategically on Oh yeah, okay, okay,
I'm here.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
If they can do it, they did it. Oh man,
I can't wait to talk about that. Everyone's like, what
is going on? There are only two episodes left?
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Can you believe it?
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Who?
Speaker 3 (38:16):
I hope it's always that you're enjoying this, whether you
have seen the show or not, whether you've played.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
The game or not.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
And yeah, we love hearing your thoughts about it. I
am excited for the next couple of episodes.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
You can contact us at Steph Media, mom Stuff at
iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
That is our email.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast,
or on Instagram and TikTok at Stefan Never Told You
and YouTube now if you just want to listen to
us there.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Thanks as always to our super producer Christina. Thank you, Christina, Yes,
and thanks to you for listening. Stefan Never Told You
the projection of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
For more podcast from my Heart Radio, you can check
out the ihart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or regular listen
to your favorite shows.
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