The Last Of Us |2x06 "The Price"

Episode Transcript
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(00:17):
We are squawking dead podcast pulverizing programs beyond The
Walking Dead universe. Sometimes we give you news,
sometimes we make it laugh. Most times we go deep.
I'm your host, David Cameo, and I'm joined by.
Karina at Karina under score D on Instagram and Edda Karina art
everywhere else. And also Bridget AKA Punky

(00:38):
Brewster you can find on youtube.com/punky Brewster
that's PUNKYBRUISETERI think youhave to do the at though.
Well, we'll figure it out at Punky Brewster for now.
Well, and we're here live with you to talk about, as Neo's one
says, LFG and everybody knows what that means 'cause I can't

(00:58):
say it. The Last of Us a 6th episode
it's penultimate season 2 finaletitled The Price.
Second to last, I guess I. Didn't know what that meant.
What's And I'm so glad to see both Neo's the one, of course,
and Francisco. But it was the best episode of
the season. I really enjoyed more Bella's

(01:19):
interpretation of Ellie when she's a kid rather than when
she's an adult. You can tell she's handed
different scripts maybe. Yeah.
Like, it could be that when somebody's writing for a younger
Ellie, it could be penned or headed by a different head
writer. That's not unusual, by the way.
It's kind of like an acting choice.
Like when you think about a kid,you act a difference a different
way. But it could be the same for

(01:41):
writers and writing. Francisco says.
Nice T-shirt, Dave. Yes.
It's our logo design T-shirt from our coverage.
Of Fallout. Fallout and Karina was there for
that and I love that for us. I'll be there for the next one
too, in December. Yes, you will.
And there's a specific thing that I can't wait to show you
people. It's so far away.
How am I going to hold it in? We're going to.

(02:02):
Seriously, Karina, this is like an exercise in what was said
often in this episode. Patience and delayed
gratification. I'm I'm good with that because I
didn't tell you all anything about fallouts that you didn't
need to know. So and same with The Last of Us
so far. I mean, technically, really, we
didn't say that on air is that Fallout Season 3 was greenlit
way before Season 2 would ever see the light of day, but in the

(02:25):
process they told us that Season2 would be coming out in
December. Of this year, December.
Yep. OK, which coincides with, oh,
like some of the newspaper articles, like, oh, the
Christmas present that we didn'tknow was happening.
It was Season 3 of fall. It's coming out way before
Season 2. I love it for us.
I'm so excited for all of it because I've seen screenshots of

(02:45):
specific locations and I'm goingto have to learn myself up on.
Some of them. Thanks actually Francisco for a
little of that, because he put some of those images in our
discord. Say hi to everybody first of
all. Hi, hi, I'm here.
Neil's the one says come back with the emotions and Francis
says I want that uranium fever soon from fallout.

(03:06):
And he said December is just a radiation away.
True. It's just a half life away.
Well, it's a half life away, a year away.
Housekeeping, actually. We dropped our interview with
Logan Schmucker who plays Victoron or played, let's just say
Victor on The Walking Dead Dead City.
Although that might have just spoiled Francisco a little bit
since he didn't start watching Walking Dead Dead City yet.

(03:27):
It was a great conversation. I highly recommend getting the
unedited episode recording of that interview because with
nearly two hours long and I shortened it down to about an
hour and 5 minutes. So you can tell there was a lot
of backstage banter and joking and stuff that just didn't make
the cut. Because sometimes when I'm
nervous, I'm cringe. That's.

(03:48):
Only part of it, but the other part of it is we have like
lengthy conversations about justgoing back and forth about life
sometime a little bit too and joking about the two Kermits bar
like Kermit the Frog that we were just, we started making
voices and it is in the actual episode, but we just kept going.
And I sort of cut that off. Let's say 2 Kermits come in and

(04:09):
decide to make a bar in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
How many people would flock to see it?
It's like when Bill Murray visits different bars in
Brooklyn. Just think that all of a sudden
that bar blows up in popularity.That would be the two Kermits
bar we dropped on YouTube this morning at 10 AM.
And as usual for the last several months, I do drop our
episodes on YouTube 12 hours before they end up dropping on

(04:32):
all podcast platforms like Spotify, Video, etc.
So by the end of this live stream, at the very least, you
will have it on all podcasts platforms.
So I highly recommend you check that out.
It's just such a wonderful chat.And I just remember throughout
the edit the last few days, I was trying to edit this
interview with Logan Schmucker. I was just smiling throughout
the entire process because it was it was just such a fun and

(04:56):
pleasant conversation. And just going into the acting
world and his music world and growing up.
And you could actually weave a sort of narrative of how he got
here and how his journey led to ultimately the thing that he
didn't think was possible, acting and playing music in the
same project. Because he was trained as a
violinist and he dabbled in acting and something kind of lit
him up there and he pursued acting.

(05:17):
And then the dead City thing made him circle a little bit
back to music and he had to get a teacher and to kind of train
up the pieces he was playing in The Walking Dead, Dead City.
And so it's pretty cool. And if you want to know about
how the sausage is made in ATV production, it's such a great
keyhole into seeing that world is through his eyes.
And I think that's something everybody does kind of want

(05:39):
every now and again. Most people want to know the
generic things like the character and the how is the
prosthetics and stuff like that.But I like to dig into the
process into what people don't often see what goes into this
this whole show even. Hope you guys check that out.
I mean, there's merch in our merch store, The Walking Dead,
Dead City, and there's obviouslythe last of squawks logo design.

(06:00):
I don't think we're going to have an art design for this
year. We didn't have much of one last
year either. That's like one of those cease
and desist please ones. Actually, I think it's still up.
Maybe let's get into this episode.
The First things first. Part of it is the price is the
title of this episode. And how does the price does the
title relate to this episode with such a Duffing?

(06:23):
Let's go to Bridget because thisis episode's very fresh in your
mind having just finished watching it.
Literally. Hey, Heather.
You're joking, Francisco, but atthe same time, you're not wrong.
He's joking. He's joking about the Legos, but
the Legos were the price for thecake.
So there's this idea of like this bartering system and this
smuggling kind of thing. Everything has a price, a cost.

(06:47):
Everything has a cost. The cost of keeping GAIL safe
was that she didn't get to see Eugene one last time.
It works both ways, like GAIL was robbed of it, but he was
also robbed of it. So it's a price that they both
paid. I did come back with the
emotions I would. Not want to do this like moments
after finishing an episode and I've played the game before.

(07:07):
I kind of did too, but she was just watching the episode for
the first time too. I was, yeah, that's the thing.
So. Everybody knows it's not for
notes. No.
And this is like, and I, I played Part 1, but I did not
play Part 2 because I knew what happened to Joel and that's why
refused my Part 2 even though I did buy it for the podcast.
Like I was like, Dave, I'll do it.

(07:27):
And then we had you on Karina for Fallout.
And I was like, please just ask Karina to do it and stuff.
Please don't make me. So the first thing that comes to
my mind is the price of Joel's honesty with Ellie.
He knew that he had to finally tell her the truth, and the cost
of that was going to be that shewould, as he puts it, turn away

(07:47):
from him. He would lose her.
I've always admired and loved the way that Joel never
apologizes for what he did. He never says, I'm sorry I did
this. He always says, if Lord gave me
another chance to do that momentagain, I would do it again in a
heartbeat. Even if it means that you hate
me for it, I'm still going to doit every time.
Or you turn away, which is more than hate.

(08:09):
Yeah. It's like I hate you and I don't
want to be around you. Exactly.
Not only that, but also the price of Joel saving Ellie.
The cost of that was the potential to cure all these
people. Maybe or maybe not.
In Ellie's mind, she believes that he robbed the world of a
cure. I don't believe that personally,
but I. I love how the show kind of

(08:30):
makes it seem as though, becausewe kind of spoke about this, but
the show kind of still angles into such a way that definitely
she was the cure. Just definitely.
For sure. And so does the game.
You have those hints of it was alittle, maybe it will work and
maybe it won't, but it's very subtle and it's very easy to
miss. I missed it the first time I
played the game. I mean, you find these audio

(08:50):
recordings and things like that,and the moment that you find
some of these major ones, especially at the very end of
the game, it's like, I just wantto see what happens, you know?
I mean, so you're like rushing through and you're like, I'm not
really paying attention. I'm getting chased by soldiers
or whatever. Like I'm not listening to this
audio recording. It's not going to take a minute.
Yeah, Nope. I don't have time for this so
it's ambiguous in the game, but only slightly.

(09:12):
So it definitely leans more towards she's the cure and
they're definitely going to cureit by using her to do that
maybe, I mean. Yeah, dissolves any illusions of
that. Yeah, for sure.
She. Would have been the cure.
Neil was just mentioning that itwas really cool that you got to
meet Logan in person and that he's almost finished with the
interview. Excellent.
Thank you. Thank you, you're a ride or die

(09:33):
honestly, I love it. I'm not ready to say that just
yet, but I'm I'm impressed. I'm impressed.
Heather says hello, my friends, and I said hi, Heather, Heather
Neo said. Did I come back with the
emotions asking me? And I did, very obviously.
And then Francisco said the cost.
Joel never promised his dad he would repeat the same mistake he

(09:53):
did, or he wouldn't. Repeat.
He wouldn't repeat. Yeah.
Yeah, I have so much to say about that scene.
I have so much to say about thatscene.
Yeah, I I felt that one too. Good.
It's good. OK.
I love how it blurred away from you actually like emotionally
just. Your camera.
Hide me camera, hide me. You're producing a magnetic

(10:15):
field, Bridget, which has affected your camera negatively.
I'm almost 100% sure that I willcry during this episode.
The. Filming of this episode.
Maybe you listen, Bridget. Maybe you will, maybe you won't.
We don't know. We don't know.
It's true. It's true, Karina, when you were
saying Joel was saying sorry, not sorry.
Yeah, he doesn't apologize. Yeah.

(10:36):
Ali sort of says the same thing earlier on and I I hadn't
written down in my notes at all.And it was the effect of I'm
sorry that I did drugs, tattoos and fooled around with a girl.
I don't know if she said fooled around with a girl or kissed a
girl. I don't kissed a girl.
Yeah, but also not, so I'm not sorry.
Yeah, like, in a way, like, I'm sorry you're upset about that,
but I'm not sorry that I did it.You know what I mean?

(10:57):
Like yeah, kind. Of sorry, I'm sorry.
Isn't that what he said too? Kind of in a way, Like with his
eyes, first of all, crying, yeah.
Well, it's this concept of beinglike, unapologetically you,
yeah. Or like, I'm sorry I took that
away from you. OK, I'm going to say this
loosely and I'm going to clean it up later.
But in a way, Ellie took away the idea that he had of her

(11:17):
before he found out about her. He had a vision in his head.
Yeah, I. Understand what you're trying to
say. How hurtful it must have been
for Ellie for him to say I'll come back and talk to you when
you're yourself. And she was probably the most
herself she had been in her whole life in that moment.
And he dismissed it like it was not important or something that
should be ashamed. Of well, we should clean that up

(11:40):
because he's of a generation. Of course it's 1983 and it's not
about that. No, it's because she's high.
Yes, that's that's. Tattoo what he means by. 17 you
know, she's too young to be engaging in any of this.
I don't care if it's with a girlor a guy or whatever, you know,
he's got this image of her beingthis innocent kid and she's just
not that like. You know, yeah.

(12:01):
And I love how they laid the groundwork for his thought
process in the years prior. Yes.
How was he like, are you, man? I see the way you look at him
like this way. It doesn't come out of nowhere
when he drops this weird bomb that you think is a bomb, but
it's not really a bomb because they laid that pretty total.
It's like, yeah, she's 16 at thetime.
And she's like, how about this? I promise I won't get pregnant
if you let me go on patrol. And it's like already thinking

(12:25):
like this is an easy promise to keep, because there's no chance
of that happening. And you may ask yourself too,
why doesn't she just come out with it?
Well, she has things to protect yourself right?
In a in a, in a sense like, willmy not really dad not be cool
with this? Right.
Anything that you have to revealpersonally to that degree about
yourself, fearing that those close to you are going to reject

(12:47):
you for it, of course. I mean, it doesn't matter what
situation you're in. I think we all would have that
fear. It's something you said,
actually, Karina, but that it's not only that because yeah, of
course we all have that fear. We don't want to disappoint the
ones we love, but it's also thatadditional feeler herself.
She said to Joel, You mentioned loss in the last episode.
You don't know what loss is, kid.
And she goes, I've lost everybody and everything, and I

(13:09):
don't want to lose you essentially down the road.
And so you pair that with this and it's kind of like, well,
you're not really my dad, technically.
And so there's more of a chance in this logical but illogical
sense that, yeah, you'll walk away from me.
You're near. For him to just walk away if
it's. Too.
Hard Yeah. Like, yeah, he doesn't have any
obligation to her now that he's gotten hurt to safety and and

(13:31):
whatever else in her mind. I mean, obviously he's not going
to abandon her now, but she doesn't know that.
Why would she? Because Joel isn't really very
wordy. He doesn't talk about his
feelings all the time, obviously.
Well. That's what I was going to say.
Ellie and Joel have proven over and over again, because Ellie is
like Joel, that kind of stuff they keep private, right?

(13:51):
Like it takes a lot for him to say I killed these people
because I love you. It's not something that he's
just saying all the time. Like he calls her baby girl.
He he like does these really grand like gestures for her.
So the love is very evidently, but they're the kind of people
that don't say stuff out loud. So like, even if she's nervous

(14:12):
about the coming out aspect of it, I think a lot of it has to
do with the fact that, like, this is something that she feels
she should be able to maintain privacy with because Joel would
maintain privacy if he were in arelationship all of a sudden
with Sherman, he would hide thatfrom Ellie.
And you know, like he wow. If only for the ridicule, which?
Tests like he just didn't reallydiscuss or talk about it and

(14:32):
didn't show that in front of anyone.
And like even to test, he refused to admit the kind of
relationship that they had. He would not say it out loud and
like how challenging that must be.
And how accommodating. Yeah, for sure to get off track
a little bit like Tess was obviously a Angel.
Like to. To not only accept him exactly

(14:54):
as he was, but to not ask anything of him.
I. Had this thought too about
people really quick to judge therelationships of others and how
there's an imbalance here. Obviously something wrong is
going on. And just from my experience,
listen for what limited experience I have of both my
parents and other relationships and even my own for the last 10,

(15:14):
almost 10 years at ten, 9 1/2 years marriage, there is
complete imbalance. I mean, it's more about harmony
and what we're willing to do forone another than it is about you
do this and exactly the same amount that I do that and you do
this and exactly the same amount.
It's not about that. And if you count beans like that

(15:37):
in your relationship, you're doing something wrong because
then you're constantly looking at your partner right, because
this is what Ellie says earlier.I'm your partner, ride or die.
You got my back. I got yours.
It's that it's that's how you should be looking at
relationships. And then you figure out what
works comfortably between you 2 and there will be an imbalance.
One person's going to do 1 crazyamount of the other thing.

(15:59):
You are going to intrinsically do the other thing as much as
much as you can. Well.
That's how you make it work because you're not going to be
able to bring 100% into every single day because are going to
happen and when that happens, your partner is then supposed to
pick up the slack and vice versa.
You know, everybody will be likemarriage is hard.

(16:19):
I get that. I understand the sentiment.
It is work. It doesn't necessarily make it
hard. It's just work.
But going into it knowing like, OK, well, the goal is that like
the two of us should have like agoal together.
I shouldn't have like my own separate goals that you can't
get behind and you have your ownseparate goals that I can't get
behind because that's not going to work.
It's you're just going to butt heads.

(16:40):
But if you're working, and in this instance you're working
towards purely survival, which Ithink you could both get behind,
But Ellie is also, as we find out at the very end, looking for
meaning, which I 100% can understand so wholeheartedly.
Yeah, she's young. And so that's like top of her
mind right now, right? It's like, what am I?

(17:00):
Why am I here? What am I going to do?
Especially knowing something so grand.
You are immune when other peoplearen't.
Nobody else is. So even the small comfort that
she may have had in believing what he said about there being
dozens of immune people is takenaway in that moment that he
admits that he made all of that up and she was and is the only

(17:21):
one. And she feels like her life has
no meaning now, that there can be no cure given to her.
And you see how she struggles with it.
You see it in the game and you see it in the show somewhat, but
more so in the game multiple times when something happens
with someone who gets infected and she is powerless to help
them and she's keeping a secret.The fact that she is immune and

(17:42):
there was a way possibly for herto have helped all of these
people. Eugene, Nora in a way, you know,
she gets infected and she probably could have saved her if
there was some kind of vaccine in place.
Anyone that she's lost since Salt Lake, she feels some level
of guilt because she can't help them.
And she's placing a lot of that blame on to Joel's decision.

(18:05):
If you jump back to the present,which this episode does at the
end, in the pissing rain, as Joel put it earlier in the
episode, she comes back to the theater and there's something
waiting for her. There's things there, and we
don't know what those things are.
Karina might I want to say part of what brings us back to the
presence is that line, the line that was used in this show.
And that was I'm going to be a dad.

(18:26):
And I want to say having had this episode, that line makes so
much more pregnant sense. Yes, pun intended.
Because saying that is to say, Iunderstand why you did what you
did. Right, she has an opportunity.
And I I I love this argument because you will ask people this

(18:51):
question and you will get a different answer.
If you had a chance to save the world, kill like 5 of your
closest friends, would you do it?
That sort of scenario. Yeah.
But but you'd be saving the world from calamity.
You'd think that's an easy question, but it's it's not.
It's not at all easy. What about 1?
Would you kill your your only child?
And for Joel, the chance to saveEllie where he could not save

(19:15):
Sarah, he would not give that up.
And clearly he didn't, even though by the Abbey's standards,
by the rest of the Fireflies, maybe a lot of the rest of the
world would probably say, oh, the decision shouldn't have been
a a challenge at all. You obviously have to save the
world because that's the greatergood.
But in that moment, Joel is not thinking of that.
He's thinking of Ellie, the onlyperson that matters to, and he

(19:38):
just didn't give her up. And I don't blame him for his
choice. I really don't.
One of the best arguments to this, to this question is even
if you had the cure, this is something we actually sort of
talked about last year at the obviously the last episode.
It's So what? Who gets it?
That's the other conundrum. Will somebody control it?
Is the world still going to be horrible because it just fell

(19:59):
apart and it's too hard to rebuild society?
People have too much knowledge of the old still has enough
knowledge to know that it's either they want to hoodwink the
younger. Generations that came after or
during. There's too much corruption.
We're going to hack into your brain to take the piece that we
need for this very important vaccine that we don't know if we
can replicate, we don't know if it'll be successful.

(20:22):
We don't know a lot of things. And then So what, like what, you
get 1 vaccine out of it maybe. And then who gets that one
vaccine? But you've killed an immune
person to make someone else immune.
So then really the trade off is nothing ethically, it's the
trolley problem. It's it's bigger than the
trolley problem because you're dealing with the potential,
let's say all the conditions aremet and you can save the world

(20:44):
with this vaccine. Now you have to deal with
people, the people in charge of the vaccine.
And if it's the fireflies, look at the WLF as a model, right?
They're the people who defeated Federer.
And how are they looking right now with the Seraphytes?
Not great. That's your indicator what would
happen even if they have the cure, which should make you feel
a little bit better, by the way,for Joel's decision, because
it's kind of like the world ended and it's going to continue

(21:06):
to end or you have to live a different way.
But even if there was a cure, itmight not even matter because
let's say you cure everybody. You can still get bitten, hacked
apart by the infected that are still around by the way.
And does getting the vaccine make you immune or does it just
cure that one and potential infection the same way that if
you get a vaccine for the flu, you can still get the flu in the

(21:28):
future? You'll you'll be more resistant
to the and then who's to say later on down the road you
there's a. Mutation or strain?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's.
Bacteria or virus? It's a fungus, but the fungus
could be and well, it What is the Cordyceps anyway?
It's a fungus that resists. People infections become immune
to. That's the basis of the series.
In the very beginning, the very first episode, they talk about

(21:51):
what happens if a fungus evolvesto survive a warmer temperature,
to live in the body. And that's that's exactly what
happens. So it's already shown that it's
capable of evolving and mutating.
Of course it's going to evolve and mutate beyond the vaccine
that you make from it. I think over time it's going to
find a way to continue to proliferate it.

(22:11):
If it did it before, it could doit again.
Basically, that's what it's going to.
Find a way. Maybe let's go to the chat
because so much good stuff coming out of the chair.
I love it, including. Says Ellie.
Doing the drugs, music and sex. It's like all these kids in her
age who want to grasp into that lifestyle or reach into that
lifestyle, but that lifestyle ends up hurting people more than

(22:33):
make it cool, which is 100% trueof Francisco.
I, I lived, I lived that life. I'm just going to tell you I'm
not cool. So.
But she made it. She's here.
Right now I am alive. Amongst responsible individuals
who do not dabble in. Thank God for.
That substances. Joel since he lost his daughter.
I feel like the stoic personality is too thick to
crack and is probably hard for him to apologize on what he does

(22:56):
because he doesn't think straight, which I agree.
The stoicism comes from everything that he's been
through before, and that's what we're talking about earlier,
that inability to share your feelings.
Or to think a different way. But what I love about this
episode most is that he illustrates all the different
unlearnings that he wants to unlearn.
And, and even that night where he said the thing about, I'll

(23:19):
talk to you when you're yourselfagain, he thinks she's high and
so she's not thinking you're speaking straight.
So I want to have a rational conversation with you as an
adult when you're not as high. He takes a different tack when
he hears her going to the garageor about to go to the garage in
the pissing rain. I love that pissing rain.
Like he tries a different tack. And I really, really appreciated
that because he could have continued down the line of

(23:42):
saying my house, my rules, whichhe started off saying and then
she rationally and calmly, because again, we tests
accommodating him in his inability to connect.
Ellie does the same thing. That's what love is.
Sometimes you have to accommodate and sacrifice for
the ones you love. And then they could come around,
they might not. They have to sacrifice for you.
Ellie, you're kind of annoying. And so with Joel has to do that

(24:04):
for you. He's changing.
He's, you could see he's like a,like a butterfly, one could say.
Francisco said. I actually hate mods so much, so
desperately. I'm terrified.
Of that's one more in the con box of playing Last of Us too
'cause there's lots on the loading screen, yeah.

(24:27):
I have like a weird thing with Mothman too.
It's like I, I'm like, not OK with moths.
Yeah, Francisco is going to do alittle bit of comparison here to
Walking Dead, but I'm going to read through it.
There's a little bit of here. Rick Grimes in the show could be
very stoic and do actions he probably never apologized for
and he's living with them. In the comics, he showed more
emotion, but he also was more angry towards people at certain

(24:50):
points. Joel can also be a little bit
like Negan, maybe. Negan in the comics took a long
time to apologize for killing Glad, but also he never changed
who he was. They changed that in the show.
Of course Negan has shown a motion before because of
Lucille. But my main point is that both
could also be hard to apologize for what they did.

(25:10):
It could be hard to apologize for what they did.
Isn't that people? 100% and then Skyler Rose says
hi. Hi, Skyler.
Hey our whisper member, Whispersmember Skyler Rose PW, excellent
pro wrestler. Yeah, it's pretty impressive,
honestly, Skyler, I'm a little bit cool.
I'm a little bit afraid. She'd be jealous.
Kick my. Butt.
I would love to see you both in the ring though.

(25:31):
Kick. My butt for sure.
She's working out, man. She's doing it.
Let's go to that last scene because I think, do you remember
this is me admitting to a wrong,which I'm prone to do when I am
wrong about a thing. Remember at the end of the last
episode when I said it's not about Abby at all, She's not
going about them at all? Well, I was thinking it was

(25:52):
about her not having the chance to cut Joel's slack for what he
she knows he did. OK, it was meant for you to
think you're. Supposed to think that, yeah.
It's OK, now that we got that flashback, it's I'm right about
the thing I said or it not beingabout Abby at all, but not
really because it is about Abby and how she robbed her of that

(26:16):
opportunity that she first of all, how hard is that?
How hard is it to admit? Because what did I another thing
I said was Ellie will die beforeforgiving somebody for a wrong
that was committed upon her. She'll die.
Look at Seth, look at that wholesituation.
For goodness sake, put his hearthat in his hand.
He just did the thing with the sandwich.

(26:37):
He's doing his best and she's like F you sandwiches like I
don't. Believe this at all?
I don't even eat steak anymore because of your are my
interaction with you. To be fair, she can tell.
I think she's smart about being able to tell if something is
genuine or not because that apology was something that
Tommy, Joel. Did the same thing Maria.

(26:57):
Made him do so. She could tell that it wasn't
genuine, but I think she came around because Seth ultimately
stood up for getting justice forJoel and helping them escape and
everything like, you know, they do in the series.
It was a little different in thegame, but, you know, he he kind
of stepped up and she saw the the real character behind him
and the fact that people are capable of making mistakes and

(27:19):
maybe he was drunk. Not that it excuses it, but adds
a little more information to theinteraction that they had.
Well, and we know more now, yeah, because before the whole
thing with the, you know, what he said in the church, which I
don't know that I can say publicly, that's fine.
That was before Joel died. Yes.
And now Seth is 3 months later after their conversation on the

(27:40):
porch and then after Joel was taken away from her.
So I think she was a little bit more receptive after that.
Of course, whether he believes Seth was genuine or not.
And I can easily see it situated.
How many times have any one of you, because I can easily see
either of you, Bridget and Karina, I can easily see one of
you stepping in and getting two people to get together that

(28:00):
otherwise wouldn't have, would have died.
Not forgiving each other and just saying, hey, I know you
want to forgive each other. I know you want to make up, but
both of you are too stubborn. I would never do.
That, but you have. I wouldn't you I no, I haven't.
But here's what I here's what I will admit.
Here's what I will admit to doing.

(28:21):
I will showcase to people how meaningful it was to me to
swallow my pride and Rick reconcile with my own father.
I have so many persuade people. This whole episode is just going
to be a slew of my daddy issues coming up.
But anyway. It's OK.
Sorry. Maybe not.
We don't know. We don't know until it happens.

(28:43):
It's going to happen. I can tell.
But I, you know, I have friends who are like they have, they
don't talk to their father. I'm not even going to name
names, but someone that I know and love got married this last
year. You know who it is, dude?
Oh gosh, yeah. She didn't want to invite her
dad to the wedding. And I said, look, I understand.
I've been where you're at. I'm telling you right now you

(29:05):
should, because you're going to regret it if you don't.
You're allowed to be mad. You can totally be.
Mad though. Whole life mad Dave anyway, she
did invite him. I would never stick to people in
a room and be like look, I wouldnever do that, but I will give
you wholeheartedly 100% my opinion on exactly what I feel

(29:25):
like the mistakes are that you could be making not unsolicited.
I tried, I tried to wait until you ask, but everything that I
went through and all of the stuff that happened and now my
dad is gone have led me to be extremely thankful for that.
And so I was able to kind of play that other side for her and
just say like, hey, it's no big deal because it's still your day

(29:47):
if you invite him. But if you don't and then
something were to happen later, I feel like you might regret it.
It's just an invitation. It costs you change.
You should just. Try it and see.
And she did. And I'm really proud of her for
it. And I know that, you know, it
didn't fix everything for them. It hasn't fixed their
relationship. He hasn't apologized or anything
like that. But that's a really big step.

(30:08):
And now she has those photos andshe has those memories.
And so even if it goes 100% in the opposite direction now, she
at least still has his memories to say.
Like, for this day, he was therefor me.
I'm a firm believer in like, I would do that.
But I know, Dave, what you're saying.
Never in a million years. That feels so awkward.

(30:29):
I would never do that. It sounds like a Kareena move
though, no? I don't know.
I don't. Think it's too Kareena to talk
to each other I'm way. Am I the only one I think?
So I'm definitely more on like I'll take somebody's side and be
like, no, yeah, you definitely. I feel like they're they're a
jerk and I get why you feel thatway about.
It I will tell No, I did. You otherwise.

(30:50):
I will do the same thing, but I'll say I get your feelings,
but you were kind of a jerk also.
And you know, I told them the same thing.
And but what I also know is thatyou both actually care about
each other. And the reason why you're so mad
at each other is because you youwouldn't be mad if you didn't
care about them. Definitely there's something to
be said for being in a position where you can see both sides.

(31:12):
I guess I'm thankful that I've not really been in that
situation where I see two peoplethat I care deeply about, who
also care deeply about each other that are like falling
apart. But you know, I've never been
the 3rd wheel in that situation before.
Like you. Know what I mean?
So it's. Yeah, it would be a really.
Complex like I, I just haven't been in a situation where I had

(31:34):
the opportunity to be that person for anyone else.
And it's definitely been more oflike a no.
Yeah, what they did was messed up.
And I think you should feel. That way about it, yeah, it's.
Wrong. And I'm on your side.
Well, I guess going back to the point, I guess that's why I do
that. There is, there's a wisdom of
crowds when it comes to the ideaof getting two people together
in a situation where it's all about survival, right?

(31:56):
Right. You have to not forget that it's
not here and now. It's a further down the line
where there's mushroom monsters.And if you don't have the
cohesion and Tommy and Maria Mueller both say that or both,
they show the crowd, they Tommy's going through the crowd
and telling the kid, no, you don't run to the forest either.

(32:17):
You go to the basement with yourelderly and the women and
etcetera. So it's the idea of cohesion
like repetition. First of all, you repeat the
things so that people know what's up.
And what if things get into a panic situation?
The repetition helps them remember in a panic situation.
And but it's the idea of repetition and we all we have is
each other. And GAIL even shows us in her

(32:37):
therapy session with Joel at thebeginning of the season.
It's the idea of, yeah, well, I don't like you much.
In fact, I probably hate you. And especially the way she found
out like, Oh my gosh, that is such AI wrote in my notes like,
well, I didn't expect to cry over a character that only
appears in text and conversationin a game.
And that one scene or that one set of scenes that Eugene gets

(32:59):
is so moving and so like difficult to watch because Joel
isn't wrong for what he did trying to protect the community.
Because all it takes is one infected to get in and and wreck
a whole community, as we saw with Ish.
And you know, as you see with the one community in the second
game, Hillcrest, same kind of thing, you know, wrecks a whole

(33:23):
group of survivors. Which I think we're going to see
in the next episode if I'm not mistaken.
So it would have happened on Ellie's way to the hospital.
So we did skip over it again. It's, it's mostly something that
happens in game when you're traversing this long expanse of
like just broken down houses andthings like that.
And it's a lot of environmental storytelling and notes and
things like that where you basically get a story similar to

(33:46):
what you see with Ish in the sewers building this whole
community. And then it falls apart because
somebody left the door open. And that's all it takes.
So to Joel's credit, I understand why he made the
decision he made. And I understand completely why
he lied to GAIL about it. And I don't think that Ellie was
right to do what she did in her anger, but I also understand
what she did because she realized in that moment he is

(34:08):
capable of lying to my face and being very convincing when he
does it. And so all of those fears that
she's had about. Him lying to her.
Yeah, about. Was he lying to me about this?
Like, I think she was trying to gaslight herself into believing
that he would never do that. And in that moment, she realized
he would, and he probably did. And so her anger about that is
all coming out. And she's like, Nope, actually,

(34:30):
this is what happened. And it's Joel's fault because
she wanted to hurt him because she felt hurt.
And that's a very childish thingto do.
But, you know, she was 17. Like, you know what I mean?
Who makes the best decisions at?17 Bridget would actually have
something to say about that too when she comes back.
It's the idea of you know, when your parents make it so that you
have to be an adult before you're ready to be an adult like

(34:51):
even though Joel makes a concerted effort on her
birthdays to kind of make her feel like she's still a kid and
like don't don't hurry up to be an adult.
You haven't had much of A childhood already.
Let me just get as much of that in as possible before you go out
on patrols and stop becoming my baby girl, even though you're
always be my baby girl. You can see in Ellie throughout
this episode, and I don't know if you guys registered it, the

(35:13):
idea of in a way, how dare I have these thoughts right for
someone who saves me. Exactly.
He's he protects me, he saves me, he's like my dad.
Why would he when? Everybody else is gone, Yeah.
And why would? Why would I think anything bad
out of him? Or how could I?
Yeah, exactly. But she still pursues because
she's Ellie, you know, right? It's like the two warring sides.

(35:33):
These questions that she's got all written out that she wants
to confront him with and she just can't find the right time
or place to do it. And she's scared to do it
because she is worried that he'seither going to lie to her again
or that he's not going to lie toher again.
And he's going to tell her exactly what she's been fearing
was the truth the whole time, inthat moment when she saw him
promise her that he would take Eugene back and then didn't do

(35:57):
it. It's like all that pussyfooting
and all. That just disappeared.
And she's like, wow, he really did just lie to my face and he's
lying to Gayle right to her face.
And he's convincing. And of course I would believe
it. And in that moment, I think all
of that shattered for her and she just lashed out at him
because she's she was upset and made a horrible choice in

(36:19):
telling Gayle the truth. I don't think that was the right
move at all. The way she told the truth, told
the truth too. It wasn't even right too.
I think she'd seen more. Than she hurt Joel again which
is not fair. It's like both sides aren't
right. It's like even though you told
the truth, it's still not, but isn't.
That the point was messy, and that speaks to the larger

(36:40):
narrative as well. Who are you actually punishing
with your actions? Are you punishing Abby?
Are you punishing her friends? Are you punishing yourself?
Are you punishing your friends and not hers?
Like who's actually suffering inthis mission?
It's not Abby. What's the price?
Exactly what is the price? What's the price of the truth?
What's the price of violence? In our thing, the price of the

(37:02):
truth. That's why I live back around.
Listen, we have to move on because we had feet with big
feelings, right? Everybody with big feelings.
And two, Francisco's point. I just saw that.
That was cool. He's a good actor.
Joe Pantaliano. Do you know who Joel Pantaliano
is? Let's go backwards in time as
opposed to right to the cause bridge.
Tony. Dalton, it's Tony Dalton.

(37:23):
Eugene Eugene, Joe Pantagliano. Yeah, if you go the two most
recognizable roles, 1 is in the Matrix.
He was cipher in the Matrix. That's the first thing I always
think of because it's the first thing I recognize him from.
Oh yeah, I know. That's.
Not the first thing. That's not what he makes me
think of. He was one of the Fratelli
brothers in the Goonies. That's the first thing, I think.

(37:45):
There you go. They didn't wanted to do the
first thing first because like, OK for the young kids, you know,
I mean young kids, some of thesekids aren't even born, even born
when the Matrix came out too. So.
How old do you feel now? Just stop talking about it I'm.

(38:06):
Going to talk about that. So yeah, OK.
And he had a hairpiece. So if you know, you know, it's
fine. I got to say actually too, he
was a very good looking younger man in The Goonies, but I got to
say he's he's aged quite well IMHO.
Oh yeah, I think so. He's different.
He's still incredibly recognizable.

(38:27):
Oh yeah, for. Sure, what a career too.
He was in Memento also, by the way, to those.
Who I was excited to see him such.
A good movie. Because he's so great.
He is a bit of a that guy, you know what I mean?
Like you recognize him from. Things, but it takes.
A minute to try to figure out, like, what he was in Captain
Howard in Bad Boys, says Francisco.
So. Oh yeah.

(38:47):
Yeah, that's right. So he's a bit of a that.
Guy. But like the best, the best
possible that guy. Yeah, I hate that.
That's I, I relent. And I have to say, yeah, he is.
Because just because I know him and we'll go on the screen like
and know his name because that guy is defined by, not.
Knowing his name, obviously I didn't know his name at all.

(39:07):
I just. Didn't either, but I knew who
you were talking about as soon as you said it because it was
like the only other person I didn't know the name of.
I looked up because I recognizedhis.
Face. I didn't look up anybody.
I was like, hey, you're that guywho played that other guy.
Tiny Easter egg, though, becauseI didn't want to forget about
it. Catherine O'Hara is wearing a
Canadian Maple Leaf earring, too.
You thought it was a marijuana? That's not the thing.

(39:29):
That's not the. Easter egg Bridget Bridget, I'm
starting slow like I said with Joe Pentagon in the matrix
Canadian Maple Leaf in her left ear, which is kind of kiss
Catherine or Harry's from Canada, but also she's reading a
copy of Just say it. Bridget Earth abides.
Bye. I don't remember because it's
George our Stewart. Isn't being in the.

(39:50):
Front, I did notice the earth abides.
Yeah, I got. So excited when I saw it and I
laughed out loud because I was like how fitting do?
You know who I thought of first,Bridget?
Who you? Me.
Well, that's because we, you andI, went hard on the earth.
I had a moment talking about this podcast, but just for those
who. Don't know, left us.

(40:11):
Everyone else said this is boring and you would are like
no, it's really cool actually. And actually let's talk about
how cool it is. First of all, let's say the
obvious thing, which is in case you didn't know, we did cover
the miniseries Earth Abides on MGM Plus or MGM, we should just
say technically it was a six episode run.
It is kind of post apocalyptic. A there is an outbreak and there

(40:32):
are survivors. It's a different kind of tale.
It's more on the uplifting side though.
There are insane tragedies and even a Negan like character in
that series. I will say love it for us and
also how meta because in this world there is a Earth Abides
book by George RR Stewart and itis also a post apocalyptic time

(40:54):
and I hope GAIL learned something from that book.
A little about forgiveness. She obviously did because she's
willing to talk to Joel about his therapy.
I did. I want to say I did love that
scene too, where she was like, no, moths mean death.
And then she's like, why? Because like, she feels like she
got baited in. Now she's curious.
And he just gets up and walks away and she's like, what the

(41:16):
freak? You know, now I'm interested and
now you don't want to talk. Like.
Yeah, I do love that. How soon afterwards that did the
death of her husband happened? Eugene?
It was the two year jump and then then then it happens.
Or was it in that same time frame?
It was I think around the same time frame because I think she
turned 18 or 17, I can't remember now. 17.

(41:37):
She turned 17 when he finally let her do patrols, and that was
her first patrol. No.
OK, so she asks about the moths in her just after her 17th
birthday 2 years later. Two years later, OK.
Death happens. I'm sorry, two years should have
just said it so I feel bad. I couldn't remember either
because in the game it's set up very differently.

(41:58):
Before we move on from the last scene, I do want to mention the
differences from the game and mythoughts on them.
Let's go to the chat first. I don't eat steak anymore.
I understood that reference. San Francisco.
And I say it's very cool that Lalo Salamanco played Joel's
dad, Which. Let's comment on that.
Yeah, I was excited. I was excited.

(42:19):
He was also in Daredevil briefly.
And so so I've been. Seeing New York.
I've been seeing him a lot lately and I'm just like hey
I'm. Pretty sure he plays the
swordsman. That's right.
That's right. So, and he's has a.
Vigilante. Yeah, yeah.
He has a bigger part in Hawkeye actually in the Hawkeye
miniseries, so. Did I have like a mind erase him

(42:41):
or was he not like technically cast for that?
I just don't remember. I'm pretty sure he's the same
character, isn't he? Not the same.
Maybe he is. He might be right.
You might be right. OK.
Ohh, he's. Isn't he the girl's dad?
Her mom's boyfriend. Mom's thank you.
She doesn't. Like him, but like.
Oh, OK, I remember now. Yeah.
Kate Bishop doesn't like him. He's dating her mom and he's

(43:06):
actually a good guy. Like he's definitely portrayed
as somebody that Kate is very suspicious of through the whole
thing, but he's actually, he's agood guy and he's.
In a way, she's right to suspecting because he is sneaky.
Technically, yeah. His cameo in in Daredevil Born
Again. I was very excited because I
have watched Hawkeye a lot because David loves Hawkeye.

(43:26):
Like this his. Favorite miniseries?
He loves that character so like he has watched it so many times.
Well, that's who doesn't like that's like Hailed is like one
of the best Hawkeye storylines. It's so good though, yeah, not
like. Show but the original comic book
that is based on that's like theHawkeye.
I can't go on a tangent just about this Marvel thing, so I'm
gonna get off topic if we keep talking about it, OK it.

(43:47):
Was exciting to see him let me. Just mention one thing, another
obvious thing that we did because we did at Earth Abides,
but we also covered the last season of Better Call Saul.
Francisco, in case you're interested in watching it.
And I have to say that was a Seminole moment for the podcast
because it's when I dropped a prank on Bridget that she I
didn't want her on the podcast anymore, even without her money,
because I said you can become a full host.

(44:10):
So that was very fun to do. That was when I was I officially
was inducted. Yeah, and.
Co Co Co host. What an emotional series.
It was good. Also.
The other big deal about that isthat that is the first time that
this podcast covered something outside of The Walking Dead.
Technically true. Yeah, I think so, yeah.
That's when you finally relented, Dave, and you were

(44:31):
like, fine, we try other things.Context is important too,
because you have to consider thefact that we had just gotten off
so much Walking Dead stuff. We just finished Tails, We did
The Rest of the World Beyond. I think it was that year, if I'm
not mistaken. Maybe not OK, I don't know.
I believe so. Fear still going on.
The Walking Dead was still goingon.
I think it just finished, right?2020, yeah, maybe.

(44:53):
Maybe. Yeah, around that.
Or it was on the verge of finishing well, so we weren't
even done with it. So context matters because it
still was a lot of stuff to do and we front loaded a lot of
those episodes. Well, a couple of these episodes
of Friend with the Audience. At the time, we didn't know
either where do you go with a podcast that covers a show
that's ending? So that was like a big

(45:14):
discussion, like where do you go?
What's considered like us, like what's in our vein?
And so we tried a thing just to see and it just so happened to
also be on AMC. So it kind of looks a little bit
like we just cover AMC shows, but we do cover.
It's kind of true actually. And man, just one more thing
about that. I mean, considering the volume
of of shows that we were pumpingout it, that was the hardest

(45:36):
part is can we do it? And we covered a live stream and
a follow up breakdown every weekand which?
Was interesting and we'll never do that again.
We will never do that again. Yeah, we were trying to do that
with the House of the Dragon, but I don't.
No, it didn't work out. No, let's just nobody showed up
to you. So thanks, everybody.
You're the one at fault. Yeah, it's your fault.
You weren't here. You guys didn't even know we

(45:58):
were doing it or who we were at the time.
But that's your fault. Made it worse.
Neo did say that that was cool. That guy who plays Lalo soccer,
Tony. Dalton is a good actor.
Tony Dalton, let me just say Tony Dalton that he's a great
actor, and he is. He is very much so, Francisco
said. O'Hara acted the hell out of
that scene. I'm going to say I never really

(46:19):
cared for her or thought about her, but I think Joel needs a
shrink. But after this hour, I think
Joel needs a shrink. But after this episode, I think
Joel lying to her about her husband added the layer of
sadness to Joel lying to people in similar ways.
Oh, and the price, right? Who else are you going to hurt
in your pursuit? That's the price.
He was in Portugal a few weeks ago.

(46:40):
With her, With her wife. With his wife.
I think he was in Casais. Oh, cool.
Tony Dalton. I don't know who that was in
reference to. Also for GTA fans, Joe voiced
Luigi Godarelli in Grand Theft Auto 3.
Wow, what a what a what a callback GTA3 is taking GTA.
Three, like, yeah, wow. That's my gaming heyday.

(47:01):
The exit right at the threshold of the exit, basically where I
couldn't call myself a gamer. After that, you're still.
A gamer. I'm a gamer once.
A gamer, always a game. A gamer.
Even though sometimes I'm like why do we play Candy Crush on my
phone, I'm still technically a gamer.
That's gaming. I can't play those games, you

(47:21):
know? You know that I can't play those
games. Be frustrating because I have to
watch an ad every 3 seconds and like gosh can I just pay $60.00
and half? Can I just admit something?
Can I just admit something that that zombie game where not
zombie, I guess zombie, that zombie game where you're a
character shooting things and barrels for more artillery and
you're moving through the thing like.
A House of the dead. It's like a vertical mobile

(47:43):
game. The ads that come up for it, I
guess it's sometimes it's zombies, sometimes it's Vikings.
Yeah, yeah. I.
Know OK, OK. I just get addicted to watching
the ads of the of the whatever who it is playing it, but you
don't know who it is half the time but.
I don't because they never play it good and it's like one of
those reverse psychology things.Oh yeah, it makes me so mad.
And then? The thing is.

(48:03):
The game that you click on is not going to be that game.
No, it's not. It never is.
Which is what they say in the ads, too.
Oh, that game. That's not the game.
Never the game. It isn't the game.
And then you don't. But this is the real game.
Anywho. OK, Joe.
Joe. Pentagon was in Portugal.
OK, cool, cool, cool. I love that for him and us.
Actually, I want him to have a good life because he was great.

(48:25):
And Goonies, he's such a nice guy too in interviews because he
played such a crappy character. He usually plays mean people.
I mean, maybe his character in Bad Boys wasn't like that, but
he was. He was like a good guy though.
He was like a good guy. Yeah, technically.
All right, let's go to the porchto see the patio scene.

(48:48):
Whatever you want to porch. It's a porch tape.
Porch I guess. Patio was the.
Party on the porch at night on New Year's Eve.
That's definitely an old man thing to do.
Sure. Waiting up for his baby girl in
a way, right? Right.
And the whole back and forth of is she gonna stop?
Isn't she? Like she walks past him several
times and then finally comes back.

(49:09):
I love to say before you get into that, the heater, the
space, the space heater being onthe porch was something that was
caught by viewers during the original scene.
So in the first episode, right where we see like Joel waiting
up for Ellie and she walks past him, viewers caught that there
was a space heater out there on the porch.

(49:31):
And so they had written like, he's he's waiting for her.
Like, these are obviously peoplewho just watched the show.
They don't play the game. They didn't know what was going
to happen, but they were like, he's clearly waiting for her.
Like you don't put a space heater out on a porch and just
set up like he's. This is intentional.
He's not being mood a Moody teenager and be like, it's cool,
let me wear a jacket. Sorry, channel something.

(49:56):
It's, it's very telling that he would choose to on January 1st,
December 31st, January 1st, whatever.
It's the middle of the night andit's cold as crap out there.
You're not going to sit on the porch to play your guitar.
Like he's clearly doing that as an invitation.
Like I'm more accessible if she can see me.
I'm right here. You shouldn't have to go into
the house. There's no barricade.
Like sometimes that mental barricade of a closed door is

(50:18):
enough to stop you, you know? What I mean?
Yeah, if you're just on the porch, then she can just walk up
and talk to you. Obviously, he's waiting for her.
Also the opportunity. Game you would know.
So you have to interact with them in the game.
You have to punch N skippable cutscene Exactly.
No, but I want to say something else You may have said OK you
can explain away the space heater but there was a gaffe in

(50:41):
this episode. Scrolling on social media as I
was posting clips for the show that I do regularly during work
which makes me feel bad all the time.
I caught something and that was there was a guy in the
background. He's in the trees, and some
would speculate that it kind of looks like Craig Mason in the.

(51:02):
Little. Safari hat.
I mean, you can't make it out enough to know who it is.
You can make it out enough to know that there is a person
there. It's not an infected, it is a
person from the crew. Some.
Guy. Some guy, probably Craig Mason,
you'll catch it in the left sideof the frame.

(51:22):
And if I do post this for Spotify video, I will try to put
a grab of that person. Whomever it is, I I will have
better resolution compared to most.
So maybe I can make it out and point it out and blow it up and
say Craig Mason right there. He's ready, which I'm doing now.
If you're watching this on Spotify.
Interesting, huh? Oh.

(51:43):
Yeah, I I missed that. I missed it.
I didn't see it. I didn't see.
It was a Starbucks cop and Castle the Dragon's final
episode, that's what. Francisco just said the
Starbucks moment of The Last of Us.
The patio scene, as with a lot of the major scenes in the
series, is following the game pretty spot on.
Except right in the middle they jam in the entire storyline of a

(52:06):
previous flashback. So they they put two major story
points in the game into the samescene.
And I kind of wish they wouldn'thave done that because they're
both so poignant. It's a difficult scene to watch.
The one that they put in the middle where Joel finally
confesses to her, what happened does not happen at the porch.
She's known for several years bythat point in game.

(52:28):
So in game she starts to get suspicious and she runs away and
she runs all the way to Salt Lake and she steals a horse.
She goes there. She goes back to the hospital.
She's searching around for stuff.
She finds an audio recording that basically recounts what
happened from the Fireflies point of view.
It spells out everything that Joel did and the fact that

(52:48):
there's no cure because of him and all that stuff.
He finally tracks her down, figures out where she's at.
He comes riding up, you know, the next morning as she's
sitting out there just contemplating and listening to
this recording over and over again.
And she tells him, this is your last chance.
Tell me the truth, whatever it is.
If you tell me the truth, I willgo back with you.

(53:10):
Whatever it is, I don't care. I will go back with you.
But if you lie to me again, we're done for good.
So those things happen, of course, in this scene.
Just different places. Just a different place and she's
a little bit younger when it's happening.
I think she's just like 17 when this is happening.
First thing was second game. Second game, right?
Second game Yeah, second game. So as I described before, at the
end of each day, you usually geta flashback to an earlier time.

(53:34):
So the birthday gift at the museum is 1 flashback.
Her running away to Salt Lake isanother flashback.
And then the scene on the porch actually occurs at the very end
of the game. It is almost the very last scene
that you see in the game after the end of everything else.
That is the very last scene. Yeah.
So you have to wait the entire game to see her say the best

(53:55):
line in the in the game, which is I want to try.
So that's very poignant in moving that.
That is the last thing that you see her interaction at the end,
all of this strife. Say I'm kind of impressed with
Neil Druckman for the game because do you know how in the
beginning of The Walking Dead, anybody could go?

(54:15):
It could be anybody. And then eventually one of the
people we didn't want to go, most ends up going in Season 7,
episode one, technically the endof Season 6, that idea that you
can go there, there's a cruelty in the writing of saying, I know
I'm doing this to you, but trustme, it's worth it.
And then when you after all the events, right?

(54:35):
You're saying this is after all the events happened?
After the epilogue and everything so.
It's the final keystone, keystone to understand basically
everything you've done in both games.
Yeah, and. It's like, yeah.
We're rewarding you at this point.
Yeah, it's not the literal last scene of the game, but it's one
of the last things it's part of you're no longer playing the
game at that point. You're just watching the end of

(54:58):
the game at that point. So that's part of it.
Very, very important scene that we've witnessed much earlier in
the story. Still a good point in the story
to to reveal it because we're we've yet to experience day
three, which a lot of stuff happens in day three and we're
going to be a lot to process. I'm just saying it wasn't bad to
put it there. I just wish they would have
given us a separate reveal sceneand not jam them together

(55:21):
because Ashley Johnson's performance in the game as Ellie
during that scene is so moving and so heart wrenching.
Because Ellie finding out what Joel did when he admits it to
her, it's a lot less tearful too.
He he says it very matter of factly with this expectation.
You can tell like he knows that he's safe in the fact that he

(55:42):
knows that once he tells her thetruth, she's going to go back to
Jackson with him. But he knows that their
relationship is changing after this point.
In this, of course, I loved how much more emotional Pedro Pascal
is in revealing that to her because it works better in the
series for him to be that emotional.
But in game, it's Ellie who's emotional in that scene after he

(56:02):
admits to her that there were noRaiders, there are no other
immune people. And yeah, he killed Marlene.
He killed everybody to get her out of there.
She has a nervous breakdown, like she's clutching her chest.
She's she's freaking out at thisinformation.
And he tries to comfort her and she pushes him away.

(56:23):
Like don't touch me. And like he's like, I'll go back
with you, but we're done. I will go back with you.
And also we're done. Like they have about two years
of that dynamic before this. Incident.
Yeah, before this incident wherehe pushes Seth and she doesn't
want to, you know, deal with it.And then she comes and you wait
till the very end of the game tosee that.

(56:43):
She says I don't think I ever can, but I want to try.
And that's so telling. And in game, I will say Joel at
that moment becomes very emotional and you can tell it's
a very reserved performance, buthe's emotional about it.
And he's like, OK, all right, I'll take basically, I'll take
that. And, you know, he's got tears in
his eyes and everything. And they just, you know, to go

(57:04):
their separate ways and like, and they're very, both of them
very reserved emotional states where they're not trying to be
overdramatic about any of this because they're just not that
way with each other. But it means so much to both of
them that she's willing to try, even though she's as mad as she
is at him. And also she's had more time to
process this. She's had about two years where

(57:25):
in the series, this kind of all happens at the same moment.
And I feel like it took something away from it a little
bit to have it. Happiness.
Yeah. For me, I don't know about for
Y'all. I feel like it's probably very
impactful anyway. But having seen the original
version of the events in the game, I prefer that version of
it. But the emotional story beats of

(57:47):
that moment on the porch are still there.
It was still very moving. I think it was still impactful.
I just feel like I wish y'all could have seen the other scene
that they kind of jammed in the middle of it.
You know, I'm actually OK with what I got because it allows me
to be a little bit more clear headed of what they were trying
to do with the show. To your point, I will say there
is a danger in doing what they did because putting it all in

(58:08):
the same episode, there's a chance that you may not feel the
long arc of time had they not included that scene from his
childhood, which wasn't in the game, obviously.
Right, Right. Yeah, that's a new.
Scene, we don't know anything about his upbringing or anything
like that, so yeah, that. Is new what you start off the
episode with that scene. So now you have an anchor to the

(58:28):
past so that when you come to the not present, you can feel a
little bit longer of an art thatthis is part of a longer story,
an older story that we can now recontextualize the present
with. Which again to going to your
point about including that sceneat the end of the game has a
little bit more meaning even forthe game players.
It adds extra meaning that you wouldn't otherwise have gotten

(58:51):
an extra feeling that this is a longer than just this game.
This is going back further. Appreciated that scene and that
addition to that dynamic that he's striving to be a little bit
better and then saying the same thing to her.
Like, I hope you're just a little bit better than I, you
know, obviously I failed to in some way.
I did the best I could. Was that?
One in the game. No him saying that to her.

(59:12):
No, all of that. That whole interaction with his
father. I really liked that.
Yeah, and I hope you do a littlebit better.
That's all in the series only so.
But I love it. I love the addition of it.
It's great. And we talked about that, too,
before the scene ever came about, in a sense, didn't we?
Didn't we talk about, well, I was doing generational trauma?

(59:32):
I've talked before, I don't knowif it was during this series or
not, because the series I alwaystalk about my grandmother and
how my grandmother, the whole thing about how she went to
college and she saw people hug and she thought that was so nice
that families hugged. So she tried to hug her mom and
her mom's like, what are you doing?
Because they didn't, they weren't physical.
And so then she said that she was very affectionate with my
mother, but my mother was like, no, she was not.

(59:55):
And my mom was affectionate withme, but I am very affectionate.
So even what my mom gave me was like to me, it wasn't a lot.
It wasn't enough for. Yeah.
And so now, like, I am very overly affectionate.
And probably it will be a detriment.
Like it might be a detriment to my own children.
They might be like, whoa, I don't.
And now I've gotten way too muchin my life.

(01:00:16):
They should be so lucky, ungrateful, ungrateful already.
They're not even here. But I'm already like chiding
them. I hope I live long enough too.
And also growing up with God, rest his soul, wherever he ended
up. I have no idea.
My father was abusive to my mother and that was something I
grew up with. And then I subsequently ended up

(01:00:36):
in a domestic violence situationin my 20s.
That scene, I didn't cry. I didn't cry at all while
watching this episode. But that scene was so impactful.
And so to add that in to Francisco's point, he hasn't
said this in the chat, but in previous episodes, he said, like
you got, they're just like cramming all and all this extra

(01:00:57):
stuff. This is the extra stuff that's
worth the time. It is just like, just like the
episodes. It's this large picture that we
just didn't have before. I appreciate all of that extra
world building and storytelling and us getting a moment to
understand who Joel is before fall and after him getting an

(01:01:18):
opportunity and sort of the second chance with Ellie that he
didn't ever get with Sarah. Joel failed Sarah in a basic
survival situation and he vowed to not do that with Ellie, which
I think he successfully managed to keep Ellie safe in a basic
survival way. But he never had the chance of
the opportunity to help her and raise her as a child and as his

(01:01:42):
own in a just a normal domestic kind of way.
So he's obviously trying to do his best and maybe falling short
a little bit, at least accordingto Ellie.
And so he just relies on what his father said to him, which is
I'm doing the best I know how todo.
And if you might not think that that's good enough, but maybe
you'll do a little bit better than I did, you know?
And he says the same thing to her.

(01:02:04):
You don't understand the way I love you.
And maybe you will one day once you have your own, and maybe
you'll understand another way. But I did this and I'm not sorry
about it. I hope that you understand why
in in the future. I don't even expect you to
understand now, but the fact that you're willing to learn or
listen or find that out for yourself.
Just stick around long enough tofind out, to understand where I

(01:02:27):
came from. And I think This is why I went
back to that line. I'm going to be a dad.
That's how you know, which is interesting because, well, what
do you become? What are you fighting for now,
Ellie? Are you fighting, fighting for
the thing that you can't let go,the thing that you never had to
say the past, essentially, Are you fighting for your baby boy
or girl? Do you know what I mean is I

(01:02:48):
love how the line that is controversial that when it was
said, people said things about it on the Internet.
Now, you know, I know you wantedto erase that from your brain,
Francisco, but I, I'm and I listen, I know it sounds like
it's corny and it's still probably still corny to you, but
I think that having this arc, this scenes that weren't in the

(01:03:09):
game gives you so much more context to that line.
It is corny. It's like in a good way.
It's still Ellie, yeah. It's the.
Character Ellie. She's a kid that has this
underlying humor to her that youdon't get to see a lot.
In the first game, she's firing off all these dumb jokes at Joel
from this joke book, and it's like her favorite thing.

(01:03:31):
And even in the beginning of this game, you get a moment
where Joel attempts to recite a silly joke to her, and he messes
it up really badly. And then another part of it
where he plays the the song thatwe hear him play.
Yeah, part of the the very beginning scenes where he comes
to visit her and another small but also large change.

(01:03:54):
Ellie lives in the garage from the start of the game.
That's just where she ended up. She was never in the house, to
my knowledge. She's just living in the garage
since she was like 14 years old.So the fact that she chose to
move out of the house with Joel and into the garage at that
point hurt me a little bit. In my heart, I was like, oh,
that, That makes it worse. Like instead of her just like

(01:04:16):
deciding that she's going to live in the garage like right as
soon as they get there. But now she chose to leave.
But then doesn't that add more flavor to at the end of the
episode you get that Joel flashback.
Happy birthday kiddo, She's in her room.
Yeah, before everything. Happened, yeah.
Yeah, before everything went crazy.
It's her desiring to go back because I think that's where it

(01:04:37):
comes from too. Like like.
Remembering back to a time when before everything kind of fell
apart, before things got difficult between the two of
them, when things were just goodbetween the two of them.
It could have been this way always.
And I mean, Joe did what Joe didwhat he did.
But, you know, I wanted a chanceat forgiving him.
And wouldn't it be better if I didn't know it all?
I mean, we all think that way, too.
I know Bridget's going to say I want to know the truth.

(01:05:00):
That's a Rachel thing. It's something Rachel and I
share, yeah. And I'm like, well, you know,
but don't we all wish, I mean, because depend.
And if you're, you're lucky, if you live a life where you wanted
to know the truth all the time, because I, I think there's some
of us who would have rather not known some things to have that
in there to haunt your days. Like in bad moments, you think

(01:05:21):
of these things and it's, it just makes you upset.
And I want that for everybody. I want everybody to seek the
truth while they still have it in their head to not want to
know the truth. This also contextualizes a whole
other part of Joel that we don'toften talk about.
It's something that I feel very deeply.
Unfortunately, it's that most people see themselves as the

(01:05:42):
hero of their own story. Oh, man, why me?
And you know, it's like Joel knows who he is and it's never
more clear than when you see that past scene with him and
Tommy. I'll be the villain.
I'll be the I'm willing to be the villain.
I have no illusions that I mean,I'm a dirtbag.
I committed violence upon that kid.

(01:06:03):
And you would mention Karina. I think it was something in the
games. I'm not sure if it was said on
the show, but something the effect of Joel didn't have to
kill all those people from the truck of supplies and stuff like
that. There was like a something
either like Tess was saying. I think I was referring to the
the way he lived his life, surviving all of those years.
Like, did he have to do those things to survive, or did he

(01:06:26):
just choose to do those things because he was angry and hurt
and decided that people weren't worth giving the benefit of the
doubt or trusting? Yeah, exactly.
But there was a specific examplethough.
There was something about a delivery truck and was he always
like this and and something to the effect of he did things that
he didn't have to do, but he did.
I think I might have been. Referring to the trap where they

(01:06:48):
in the first season and in the first game where they're like,
are we going to stop and help that guy?
And he's like, that guy ain't hurt.
And then him being on that luring side of that trap instead
of the the one. Like on the other side of that.
Yeah. Did he have to do that?
Was that necessary for survival?Or was he just doing that
because he could, because he doesn't care about anybody else?
That was the point I think I wastrying to make, was like, you

(01:07:11):
know, did he make these choices truly out of survival?
And then him admitting that I was on the other side of that, I
was the one luring people. So that that's kind of what I
want to get to. Like I did what I did.
Sometimes it's about survival and sometimes like pre survival,
right? That idea that I got to get them
before they get me. Right, I'll get you first and
then you won't be a threat. Yeah, exactly.
Because everybody's a threat essentially, right?

(01:07:31):
And that is the excuse, isn't it?
Bridget will say 100% don't be acrybaby, this is the world we
live in, blah, blah, blah. Get them before they get you.
Rachel will say go even harder than the paint with that that
and I'm like a Carlyle and I'll admit it and I hope to God that
I have Bridget's and Rachel's inmy life to protect me.
And but I think I hope to God that I am a Carlyle for them and

(01:07:55):
that I can help them on the other side of that.
I all this to say, I really wantto go back to Joel.
It's really cool, like in a showdon't tell sort of way, to see
Joel's psychology because he is better than his dad.
Yeah. Essentially.
But he doesn't see that. You look throughout this
episode, he's just hoping that what he's done is enough.
He's always questioning, is thisgood?

(01:08:16):
Did you like this? And he's trying a little bit
more every year. Every year, a year in the
apocalypse. Over at the top?
Yeah, like what? Yeah, I mean, but to him it's
like, is it enough? Is it enough?
Is it? Enough.
Yeah. And for her, it's the most
magical thing she's ever experienced in her life.
He's like, did I do OK? She's like, are you freaking
kidding me? Like.
And I mean, of course he's feeling that.
So of course he's going to try again next year.

(01:08:37):
They go, yeah, I'm going to go even harder in the pain.
That's yeah, like make a bigger ordeal out of this.
How do I top dinosaurs in space travel like you?
Know exactly. And you know and you don't and
isn't that the case? That dude, you don't have to do
too much, just be you, you are enough.
You are enough. The just be thing that Dina said
just be isn't that what we're all trying to do is just be?

(01:09:00):
And isn't that supposed to tell Ellie a bigger story?
This thing, this mission that you're on, isn't that an
elaborate distraction? Isn't living the most defiant
thing you can do in a post apocalyptic world?
Yeah. Absolutely.
So when you go back to Joel, whohad no purpose, who had no
mission, and it was all about survival and I got to kill them

(01:09:21):
before they kill me, it's easy to see how over the years before
he met Ellie and gradually getting out of that, how he saw
himself as the villain. He made no illusions about his
his I'm not the hero of my own story.
I know what I am. I'm just existing.
I felt that really hard. I've there's times where I feel
like I'm the bad guy, especiallywith this podcast asking things

(01:09:42):
and and that's learned behavior.Everybody that's learned.
By the way, you should learn to value yourself.
People. Just a little lesson that I'm
going to teach to you is that you are enough.
I am enough. Yeah, everybody, I am enough.
Yeah, that's right. It's an affirmation podcast,
everybody. Just like your hat says, what a
difference a Dave makes. Yeah, so that's all my hat says.
She already got that for me. I.

(01:10:02):
Think it's important to your point?
Like every having all those different types of people in
your life are important, whetherwe're talking about just our
everyday lives or a post apocalyptic kind of thing.
You need someone who's willing to put the gas pedal to the
floor and someone who's willing to say, hey, maybe we shouldn't
be running these people over just because they're there, you
know, hit. The hit the brakes, hit the
brakes, hit the emergency brake,deploy the parachute.

(01:10:25):
Please. Right.
Like, hold on. Like but you can't be both of
those. You can't be 1 extreme or the
other all the time. You need the balance.
Also, we were describing Joel's thought process and then
thinking about him going to therapy and and stuff like that.
Like for so many years, for 20. Going to therapy, we forget. 25
years or more making these decisions and having to live

(01:10:46):
with them. And I think, you know, anyone
doing that, especially the kind of decisions that Joel is making
where he's hurting people, probably unnecessarily, probably
unprovoked in his mind, he's coping with that by saying, I
had to do it. This was there was no choice
there. I was survival.
It's what I had to do. And when you start to feel that
way for a long time, you stop even questioning your own

(01:11:09):
decisions. Like I did this for survival
reasons. It it was the right choice.
Right, you move past the last start.
Yeah, but when you start to takea step back and say maybe I
should have let Eugene go to hiswife, even though it was
dangerous and. It's worth the.
Risk. Yeah, it's is it?
Wasn't it worth the risk? Then he'll have to take another
set back. Maybe I shouldn't have hurt that

(01:11:30):
person. Maybe I shouldn't have saved
Ellie. Maybe I shouldn't have done this
or that. And how far back do you go?
And how much chaos do you have to answer for at that point?
So I think it makes sense for him to have this very like, I
did it. What I did was the right choice.
I'm not going to apologize for it.
And like I said, I do admire that about his choice to save
Ellie. But is that a healthy way of

(01:11:52):
dealing with your actions? Always going for the difficult.
This is the way it's got to be. It's a survival thing.
It's the safety of the whole town.
Like, did it have to be Joel? Did it really have to be, like,
at least trying to convince you that he had time?
He wasn't really showing signs of infection yet.
I think they probably could havemade it back to Jackson, and
they could have set it up in such a way that made it safe for

(01:12:13):
the town. And the only person at risk
would have possibly been GAIL, but I'm sure she would have been
willing to take that risk. It's her husband.
It's the last conversation she'sever going to get to have with
him. Yeah, I think it would have been
worth it. But Joel won't even consider it
because he's so used. Just making that split second
decision like this is going to get me killed if I don't do it
this way. He won't even take the risk.

(01:12:33):
So, but, and that's not his fault, like, you know, he's
lived for 30 or more years that way.
True and habit right People are slow to change the guy go to it
again. Joe is was changing just for
everything that we just said. It's just just because he
doesn't acknowledge it doesn't mean it's happening.
I will say you do see the signs at FEDRA of the stages of
infection. So he's well aware of them.

(01:12:54):
Ellie brings a call back to the first episode as well, holding
out her hand every single time, counting do the alphabet,
whatever it is with Marlene constantly.
Francisco said it seems like theshow is trying to reshape the
gameplay or not put in an order so that they don't have more
seasons or they can add more scenes.
But yeah, that moment in the porch scene seemed it jumped in

(01:13:16):
time. I feel the show is adding a lot
that wasn't in the game. It can work on the for the
advantage of the story or it can't.
But for this change and Joel telling the truth about the
fireflies, maybe it will help. He then apologizes to me because
of everything that I went through.
But I'm I'm just going to go ahead and say this.
I don't share these things for anyone to feel bad for me.
That's not why. Please do not.

(01:13:38):
No, he's just saying I I hated that for you.
Yeah, I just, I, the reason I share it, it is because one, if
there are other people out therewho are going through some
stuff, then please feel free to reach out because I've, I've
been through it and I know how much it sucks and like, I'm here
if you need it, but also becauseI want people to know that
they're like, you're not alone. Life is hard and I I made it

(01:14:01):
through so many different things.
I don't know, I just take this as an opportunity to air my
grievances about how sucking my life has been.
It's very self-serving it. Is I feel better afterwards?
Don't ever apologize. It's fine.
I'm the person I am today because of everything that I've
been there, good and bad, so I'mthankful for it.

(01:14:22):
I think it was more a reaction to saying the line than the line
itself. It's corny, but it's toasted
corny in reference to the I'm going to be dad.
There's some truth in my family I will never know, but I am not
too worried about to know about them when survival means doing
everything without any regrets. Well, sometimes in the moment
you kind of have to not have regrets.
I think it's OK to have regrets even in survival.

(01:14:44):
I mean, I have regrets about in my life and we all do, right?
Like we all have. Do you have survival's guilt?
Survivor's guilt. Oh, 100%.
I do 100%. I relish at my survival,
ironically. I know.
But well, to some degree though,Dave, like I didn't have
survivor, survivor's guilt aboutlike the drug use or, or the

(01:15:04):
alcoholism or any of the other stuff that's gone on in my life.
My survivor's guilt is the fact that I was that person got out
of it, but honestly, by the grace of God and nothing to do
with me ended up where I am and then died suddenly and then was
like, why am I here? Because I cannot tell you how
many people told me stories of like the same thing happening to

(01:15:25):
their neighbors, their neighbor and they would die and they die
or the I knew a woman at church.She said my neighbor had that
happened to her and she came back and she had no memory.
She didn't remember her husband.Oh wow, so hard.
Like, you know what I mean? Like so I have like I have a lot
of survivor's guilt because I was granted, like I have all my
memories. I've the memories of my wedding,

(01:15:47):
the three weeks before I get to be here.
I don't know why and I don't know why I'm here.
And that that's a conversation. That's the conversation between
me and God. I am the prophet, so I know.
Well, thank you, Dave. I'm big mad about the fact that
I don't know why I'm here, but anyway I.
Keep telling you, maybe that's what she mind erased is.
I keep telling you, maybe it's like a post hoc thing.

(01:16:08):
Or maybe I'm so embarrassed. Anyway, so survivors, survivors
guilt is a real thing. And I think that that's
applicable to the apocalypse as well.
You have to kill the people around you in order to survive,
even if it's like they're not them anymore.
Technically it still exists, right?
It's still there. I think to a degree it has to be

(01:16:31):
turned down though at least. I mean decent, just being
desensitized to it I think woulddo that for you eventually.
Repetition. Right.
Well, exactly. Like guilt over time becomes
easier. I don't mean like in like
processing of time, I mean, likegrief.
Yeah, yeah. You know, the amount of times
that, you know, people to die, eventually you're like, well,

(01:16:53):
everybody dies, like, and that'skind of part of it, right?
It becomes, it becomes that it'snot because you're like a cold
person or anything. It's just that you've processed
it many times before. And so makes it a little bit
easier to process it again. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Francisco also said I always like to believe when it comes to
survival in a world with no laws, Charles Darwin's ideology,

(01:17:15):
the hero and the villains get thrown out of the window.
There are no heroes or villains but just people doing people
things. And maybe that should have been
the story for Part 2 instead of the revenge plot arc with Abby.
Part 1 and Part 2 feel like 2 distinctive stories.
In my opinion, they are. But I would argue that the
overarching story of Part 2 is that there are no heroes and no

(01:17:37):
villains because. It's really to drive that home.
Yeah. And equal measure both of these
sides of this Abby and Ellie coin are very similar.
In almost every way. Yeah, exactly.
We haven't seen Abby's side of it yet, but we will.
I'm assuming Season 3 is going to focus on the second-half of
the game as this season has focused on the first half of

(01:18:00):
that game. So I'm sure we will see more of
that in the third season by. The way, contrary to what we
thought would happen, we'd go straight to Abby after the was
it the third or second? I wasn't sure, yeah.
I wasn't sure what they were going to do, but they've.
Divided by. The way we thought.
Would go like back and forth andthat would be kind of cool, but
no. Yeah, they've decided to full on
commit to Season 3 being the Abby story, which is it's a

(01:18:23):
great story. I hope you guys stick around for
it because it's worse. I know you might not like her,
but there's a lot of really goodmessages, there's a lot of great
characters and I think you will grow to love Addie as a
character as I did, because don't let's not forget, I did
not like her either when I firstplayed this game.
But I've come around. She's she's a likable character.
She's a likable person, like. I love splitting the room

(01:18:45):
they're making. Really interesting decisions for
the TV show that I think are kind of making it maybe more
digestible than the game, right?Because the game received so
much criticism when it came out and people were like of.
Course, I think a lot of people were basing that off of strictly
the fact that Joel is killed offvery early on in the game.
Like, and that was shocking because you play as Joel for the

(01:19:06):
whole first game and like, why wouldn't you get to play as him
again? You get to play as him for like
a hot second in the very beginning, like to ride a
horseback to Jackson and that's it.
And then the rest of it is either Ellie or Abby.
So I get why people were obsessed said about it, but I
think looking at it from a distance of time, you know, some
time removed from the initial shock of it, it might be

(01:19:28):
reviewed a lot more generously. By doing things like changing
this reveal to be earlier, I think is to make all of this
more palatable to the audience. So like, instead of having to
sit through both this story and then also Abby's story and then
finally get this gratification of knowing that she was willing
to try to forgive him, that we get it now.

(01:19:51):
So that it makes Season 2 not such an emotional, you know,
just, yeah, well, it's just likea trudge, right?
Like through like all of this stuff.
So to finally get that is like, OK, well, that's like.
The uplifting part, and that's fitting for now, and I'm sure
there'll be some hook at the endof next week's episode to really
feel like I know what it's goingto be.

(01:20:11):
OK, I know. What it's going to be for sure.
Let me add one more thing I think to kind of flesh out what
you're saying though, is and on a technical level, you can do
what you did in the game becausethere's a literal hand eye
coordination investment. You are the character.
You're moving them around, you're influencing the story.
You're punching Nora, as you said earlier.
Literally hitting her with the pipe, Yeah.

(01:20:33):
There's a little bit of fallacy at some cost, like I already did
so much horrible crap that I'm finally starting to register
that I'm doing because I'm faced.
I'm looking at the thing in the right in the face and looking at
Nora right in the face as I'm killing her.
That's the hook. That's why Druckman can do all
the horrible thing, emotional horrible things to us with the
hope and prayer that there is a promise of payoff at the end.

(01:20:55):
Here. When it comes to the show, there
isn't that technical hand eye coordinated.
You're not manipulating the characters, they're manipulating
themselves and showing you the thing.
And so you have to feed the birds a little bit.
We have to give them a little bit of, you know, a little bit
of extra tuna to the cat. Definitely notice that in the
way that Ellie is portrayed in the series versus in the game,

(01:21:16):
because in game she's a lot lessjokey.
She's a lot more focused and determined, almost to a fault
because as I said, the whole interaction with Dina, finding
out that she's pregnant, Ellie takes it very badly and it makes
her, I guess, to some audiences may make her very unlikable
because she doesn't react well to Dina's pregnancy.

(01:21:39):
She doesn't react well to being told they need to go back.
She doesn't react well to anything aside from pushing
forward to get Abby. That's all she wants to do at
the expense of everything else. She doesn't really spend a lot
of time joking, even. You have a couple of moments
with Dina when they're talking to each other and they're being
cute together and everything thing, but it's not a majority

(01:21:59):
of the gameplay. You're not seeing that side of
Ellie's personality. Having the benefit of knowing
who she is from the first game makes a big difference, right?
But watching the TV series is different.
So I understand why they've madethose changes.
I don't hate them and I don't I think it was a good place to put
the reveal that she gave Joel a chance or wanted to give him a

(01:22:20):
chance to, you know, to be forgiven or to forgive him.
I think it was a great place to put it because knowing what's
going to happen in the next episode, it would be a lot to
try to add that in and also it it is asking a lot to wait for
that payoff all the way to the end of Season 3.
Right. That's kind of what I was saying
is that you're asking a lot of the audience to get that.
No, absolutely reasoning. Yeah, right, right.

(01:22:42):
Whereas, you know, you could hook people in game, right?
There's a tactile investment. There's also a feedback loop of
like, you enjoy the gameplay even though you might be playing
as a character you don't like, the gameplay is essentially the
same, so you're still enjoying that aspect of it.
Because games are fun to play, that's where.
We play and. Why else?

(01:23:03):
There's checkpoints, there's goals.
There's a lot of goal oriented thinking when it comes.
To games, something you feel like.
That alone. Yeah, there's a good feedback
loop of like positive feelings that you get playing a game,
even if you having to shoot dogs.
Reward reinforcement? Sure, yeah.
Yeah. As a, as a prize for we're
clearing this stage, I'll call it.

(01:23:24):
Yeah, there's here's a cutscene reward.
It's like not only you accomplish that thing, you get
something back. So.
You do, you do. It's peppered throughout with
the very basic thing. Like if we go back to some of
the earliest games that I played, like Mario, you're going
around collecting coins and you get the little power up and
stuff like that. The same thing is happening in a
game like The Last of Us, where you're going around and you're

(01:23:44):
finding crafting supplies. Like every time you see that
little triangle button. I play on PlayStation, so it's
triangle. Sure.
You first time you see that little triangle button, you're
like, oh, let me check this drawer.
And when there's nothing in it, you're like, oh, and then you
open it up and you open it up and there's like rag in there.
Oh yeah, Rag. I need that.
I need everything fill up, my inventory, my bag of holding.

(01:24:07):
Basic concept of going around collecting coins like you're
going around collecting all these little things.
It gives you an immediate rewardto find a crafting thing and put
it in your bag or whatever the mechanic is for whatever we're
talking about like that is. And it's flexible, like you
said, you can skip certain beatsof the story.
I mean, you could skip the guitar shop outright.
You can skip the little notes that are scared that flesh out

(01:24:29):
the store. You can be like, I'm not
interested in that. But then some people will be
like. We missed all of Hillcrest and
the awesome Russian guy who became like an amazing Archer
who like just snipered all of the infected out of the area.
Like that was a great night story we didn't get.
Anything. I'm kidding.
He's not excited. They.
Passed that point already. It's over with.
All right, fine. Watch that be the last episode

(01:24:51):
of the season. This is Hillcrest story.
They're like, all right, I'm eating more words, so never
mind. Francisco does say Craig just
came out saying that they will do the season 4 to tell the rest
of the game. I wonder how much they will add
in the show. Did he say that for how?
Much more the rest. Are they going to put the entire
epilogue into season 4? I mean I.
Could be cooling. That out it's it's pretty cool

(01:25:12):
and different like a. Like an intertwined, yeah.
And I got to say, I mean, talk about patients feel like they're
talking to us a little bit because if they're telling us
there's going to be Four Seasons, Part 2 is going to be
the Abbey side. The rest of Seattle and then I
would say Part 4 is probably Santa Barbara, which is the
epilogue. Oh, oh, OK, well, the epilogue

(01:25:32):
and maybe a little bit of the end of the third seat, so
doesn't matter. What I'm saying is a little bit,
but yeah, there has to be some overlap because the stories are
intertwined. They're just trying to postpone
until the third game it comes out.
This is one of those. They're even going to make one.
Because they they keep saying that they don't want to make
another game. I yeah, I mean, what is there to

(01:25:53):
say? Portion of this game.
It's almost like The Lord of theRings with its 25 endings, the
portion of the game feels. Less part of I know Lord of the
Rings. Some people love it.
They hate it, I. Know, I get it.
It's like Carl's death. How many endings are there?
No, the game feels like it's over with at the end of day
three in Abby's story, but it's not.

(01:26:15):
And then it just keeps going andthen it keeps going and then it
keeps going and it's like oh, this feels like a different
game. Almost like it feels like
another chapter in a different game or like an add on a DLC or
something like that. It's so different.
The environment is different andthe enemies are all the same,
but if feels like so much more than you were expecting right at
the end. Now that I've played it many
times, I I'm expecting that to be the end.

(01:26:36):
But when I first played it, I was like, how much longer is
this thing like this is going onand on.
Like we're introduced to a wholenew faction and all kinds of
stuff is introduced in the epilogue.
The game's almost over like we're adding all this new stuff
and I could see them easily stretching the epilogue into an
entire season. I think that they could do that.
There's enough there. And what an opportunity to tell

(01:26:57):
this is what this was all for byway of treading.
Obviously, you're going to see things along the way that
reinforce that what you learned from playing the game or the,
you know, the story, watching the story, that this is the
lesson applied essentially. And it can't always be like this
or it can't be all about this mission.
Sometimes it has to be about learning when to stop and what

(01:27:18):
are you fighting for you. Know the lesson wasn't applied.
Before that, sure, why not, but let's go to the other comments
and we'll go to moths. We keep saying that by the way,
we're not going to moths. No, we're.
Never going to moths. Who cares about moths?
Who really who cares? That's fine.
Have you seen a rosy Maple moths?
They're cool. No, they're not.
They're horrible. They're horrible and they'll
find their hair and they'll lay eggs in your hair.

(01:27:40):
Silence of the Lambs, right? I think that's.
A deaf head. Moss.
Yeah, that's a cool. That's.
Not what I meant. That one is cool, but that's not
what I was talking about. One time I stepped out on my
friend's porch, I was dog sitting for her, and there was
one of those giant Atlas moths out there that I only know
because I play Animal Crossing and I nearly died.

(01:28:01):
You were going to say that you stepped on a moth and I was
like, no, that would traumatize me too.
But. No, no, no, no.
I wish I had stepped on it. How would I?
Francisco said. It's like playing with Rick in a
Walking Dead game from the beginning, but then you have to
play with Maggie or Negan halfway through.
Yeah, yeah, I would feel. That.
Honestly I think people have media illiteracy.
Oh thank you Francisco. It's true sometimes.

(01:28:23):
And don't see the video game shows.
Comics are all different aspectswith liberties and to do and not
do what they want. No, I am a bit worried about the
God of War show because the director said he only played the
game a few minutes and gave up. Oh good Lord.
Yeah, that's. Concerning.
I would be very afraid because there's a lot of lessons in the
second game, at least as far as I've seen.

(01:28:45):
Yes. About fathers and sons, yes.
So I didn't play it, but I watched Travis play all of it
and. It was, it was very emotionally
invested. They could tell from your face.
It's very riveting. Oh, I was invested.
I was so invested in that. And like, when are we playing
God of War again? What are you playing that again?
Because I really like Need. To know what happens.
I'm really eager to re traumatize myself.

(01:29:05):
Sure. I need to know what's going on.
So I do want to mention Sharindyalso did share her thoughts in
our discord. So I just wanted to read off
what she said, but she's she didn't say a lot.
So I'll just say really quickly.But my main take away is that
I'm so happy that they had a moment of understanding and
reconciliation before Joel died.Everyone's sentiment, really,
yes. And that Tony Dalton was perfect

(01:29:27):
casting. Perfect.
He looks like Joel was looks like Paige was so.
Good. And that Joel wears his father's
watch. Yes, that's the watch that gets
passed down to Ellie. Oh, and Sarah fixes that watch
and her first episode? She loves him.
I had to sing that, sorry. Anyway, that's it.

(01:29:47):
That's it from. The how can you not?
Love that, that's so adorable. I mean, it's cute from a
distance, it's close. It's.
Pink and yellow it's. Like it's a little on it near
me. I'm not so afraid of bugs.
It's kind of good of thing. Just get it away from me.
I'm not afraid of bugs, but moths.
I'm sure you agree, Karina. A little.
Bugs are a different story. No, moths don't bother me unless
they're trying to be in my mouthlike this.

(01:30:08):
That would bother me then. That's what they're trying to
do. When they fly at you get.
In your mouth I. Mean basically.
Everybody stop talking right now.
Yeah. Dave's also terrified of Moz
now. Just you saying that and also
stop saying get in my mouth because.
Because that's why we get restream.

(01:30:29):
Thoughts showing? Up and cheap viewers.
Cheap viewers here. Oh yeah, Stream bow.
Yeah, let's do stream bow.com, everybody.
An advertisement for streambow.com.
It's streaming money, please. Money.
Stream Boo. Which, by the way, Speaking of
money, you could have all along if tipped us during the stream
and a message would actually popup on the screen if you head

(01:30:49):
over to ko-fi.com/squawking Deadslash tip if you're interested.
And when you do tip us, a littlemessage comes up and it actually
reads up well, your message along with your tip.
So if you have any questions that you you want to stop the
podcast and have us answer you right away, That's why we'll do
that. We'll because of that and
ingratitude to your tip. I should have said that from the

(01:31:10):
start, but you know, hey, here we are everybody.
Moving on. To moths and why that's
important, let's. Talk about.
It she was hoping we'd forget. I find it really interesting
that at a very young age, Ellie,well, I mean, there's a greater
obviously narrative reason for why she thinks about death.
Or maybe she doesn't know she's thinking about death, but she
apparently read it in the book, so she knows she's dreaming

(01:31:33):
about death. Or if she's using that as an
excuse. I don't know.
Bridget, what did you take from that meaning?
Let's say that Ellie says it butdoesn't say it.
She says it, but she doesn't sayit's about death.
She says it's in a dream that I had.
But is that real? And Joel is interested.
In that I don't know if that's real or not, but what I thought.
About might be, but it might notbe.
We don't know. We don't know, Dave.
I love that about you. What I thought about when it

(01:31:55):
comes to that is that she's, she's been surrounded by death
her whole life. I mean, she grew up in this
world, so dreaming about it wouldn't be that unusual.
I'm not big on dream interpretation.
I believe that it's a possibility, right?
Like obviously it's in the Bible.
I, I believe in the Bible. So I believe that it's possible,
but I find that God often doesn't give you a gift that you
cannot decipher. So it seems a little bit weird

(01:32:19):
to me that you would go to a professional to be like, tell me
what this dream means. Did people do that in history?
So who knows. Who am I to say one way or the
other? I agreed with GAIL when she said
the stupid doctors do that. I was like, yeah, that's fair.
I kind. Of agree with that too, but I
just I just. Think it's like a, it's like a
pseudoscience. So I don't give it much
credibility, but I think it's aninteresting idea, yeah.

(01:32:40):
Narrative wise, to say that you dream about death or lot, is it
foretelling in some way? Maybe it could have been viewed
as like a premonition of some kind?
To what extent is it a recurringdream?
Are you having the same dream over and over again?
If that's the case, is it alwaysabout the same moth or is it a
specific moth or you've seen moths everywhere, You know what

(01:33:02):
I mean? There's like, there's a lot of
information we just don't have. I wished I looked it up actually
the the specific pattern of thatmonth.
Oh, that could have been. Well, maybe I'll do that.
Informative. In some way, the choice to hide
it from Joel, that's really whatthe most interesting part of it
is. In plain sight too, which is
kind of interesting. Like they're all over the walls.
How tattooing it on your body. Really hiding it so much as just

(01:33:26):
not discussing it with him because there's a difference.
I just mean like the hiding, like when he asks point blank to
hide the meaning to say like, I don't want to talk about course,
of course. That's the part that's kind of
weird to me because yeah, she's not hiding it.
It's everywhere. She literally has it on her arm
now. Well, then that's one, because
the moth itself has camouflage. And what is she trying to do

(01:33:47):
with the tattoo? That's something there.
That death was here, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
A literal sense of this thing that should have killed me
didn't, and therefore I'm going to mark it with the symbol of
death. You know what I mean?
I think there's more weight to it in terms of like, if we're
looking at this concept of like,is she the key to preventing

(01:34:10):
death? That's that's like where I think
this gets like a little bit like, is that why is that why
you don't want to talk about it?Because Joel could understand
you're surrounded by death. You've grown up around and he's
been surrounded by death. Everyone in this world knows
that. I mean, there's a bit obvious,
there's a bit on the nose for you to be like, I'm a teenager

(01:34:30):
and I have feelings and nobody gets me.
I'm sorry though, let me just say this one thing.
I find it overwhelmingly common to the point where it's you can
say every teenager or every young person does not think
about death to the point where my wife is my wife.
Well, they think about death in the abstract, but they do not

(01:34:51):
think about their mortality. Can we agree with that?
Because I don't know, I did. So that's a little horrifying,
but OK, let me let. Me.
Drill down on this. Maybe this is the wrong like
sample group to have for this? Question then why would you do
drugs if you knew that like thatwould lead you down that because
when you when I'm talking about mortality, I mean I'm talking
about your own mortality. It's not a.
Fear of mortality. You're talking to someone

(01:35:13):
mentally unwell. So like, I just.
Oh, OK. Yeah.
So wait a minute. Let's get on with the wrong
sample group for what you're doing.
Let. Me, let me just let me, let me
talk you a little, a little bit because my, my wife is a high
school teacher. A lot of the people she deals
with are people who do not understand the consequences of
their actions. Why would they?
Their kids is. My point is that they don't.
Undeveloped. Well, there's that, sure, but

(01:35:34):
there's the idea of consequences, like every action
has an equal and opposite reaction.
They don't. And why would they?
Because their parents want to protect them from those things,
to give them enough of a life tolive, to kind of get whatever it
is out of their system, or to have little less consequences
for that actually, 'cause they're still learning and
growing. And why, You know, that's
rational. You don't want to punish your

(01:35:54):
kids for a thing they didn't know existed, right?
Fire burns when you're a kid. You don't know that until you
touch it. But hopefully you can with
repetition. We talked about that earlier.
You can tell them enough or you can show them a YouTube video of
how much it hurts, but they still might actually touch the
fire. See, this is like the thing
you're kind of dealing with withthese kids is that even if you
show them apsa of somebody smoking in the after effects of

(01:36:16):
smoking, they'll be like, yeah, I'm going to live forever.
So that's not going to happen tome.
Not me. Not precious me.
And I will say that, Dave, I didalso feel that way.
But those two things are not mutually exclusive.
You can not fear your mortality and at the same time be like
unaware. I don't know.
Well, no, no, let me let me drill down a little bit on that

(01:36:36):
because it's like as you get older, those two, you could say
that when you're younger, you have an idea or a concept of it
and you have this, that I'm going to live forever.
But as you get older, those two things aren't as mutually
exclusive. And even though I still vape and
I know that could have could have, it's not 100% like proven
right? Now I'm still a child.
I'm still going to live forever,but still I understand

(01:36:56):
understand it. It.
What I'm trying to say is I likethat this is in the show that,
but also that's having this little thing that she's thinking
about links to the end of the episode, because what she says
right after Joel admits it is I was supposed to die and maybe
she had that in her head the entire time.
What it would take to have to get the cure.
I'm saying it works nicely narratively on a story level.

(01:37:19):
I don't know. And let me speak to spooky
Bridget for a minute. I'm say spooky, but also
spiritual Bridget. Sure, because I I could see a
world in which one could say I had a feeling about something
that I couldn't put my finger onthis whole time.
That sometimes messages or feelings are sent or delivered
to you by higher power, let's say, and that you can't quite

(01:37:40):
put a finger on it, you don't know exactly what it is until it
finally has been revealed. That that's the way I felt the
entire time that I was supposed to die, had it not been for a
divine intervention sort of situation.
Sure, I could definitely see that.
I mean, dude, you're talking to a person who was driving crying
in her car, contemplating leaving my entire life behind
and a wiffle ball came through an opening in my vehicle this

(01:38:02):
big and hit me in the side of myhead.
So. So you knock it off.
Yeah, and I told this story before, like, that's insane.
It's like, what are the odds? Those are astronomical odds.
So astronomical the thing, the way that thing whizzes through
the air. It's a wiffle ball, like how it.
Curves and bends through the air.

(01:38:24):
What if it had been a real baseball?
Like everything happened exactly.
Was supposed to. You just got a tap.
You know, yeah. So I could definitely see that.
Well, that's why I said, like, is it the premonition of things
upcoming, right. But yeah, you weren't specific.
I was thinking not even the premonition of things upcoming,
what was supposed to happen. Sure, sure I could.

(01:38:45):
That's that's kind of what I'm referring to.
Like it's not like I'm living onborrowed time, but it's more
feeling like. Well, is it?
Was I spared? Something should I be?
Aware of survivor's guilt. She knows what happened.
Deep down she knows what happened.
Her questions that she comes up with, the formulation of those
questions, everything is so specific, Dave.
She knows what happened. She's just looking for the

(01:39:05):
confirmation that it happened inthe way that she fears.
So she knows deep down inside she's like, this is probably
what happened, but he lied to me.
And is he capable of lying to myface like that and being so
utterly convincing? And that's all she's waiting for
is to find out whether or not hecan really lie to her that way,
the way that he lies to other people.

(01:39:25):
Turns out he. Can he can't.
And did. And I say this only because I
don't think people jump to the idea that she would have to die
to get the cure. If I was the one who was had the
cure, I wouldn't think that I'd be like, oh, they just take some
blood. And which is kind of what was
said on the show. They take some blood and do the
thing and hey, vaccine. Hey, all right, Because that
knowledge was concealed from her, but she didn't know the

(01:39:47):
reason why. She just thought like, oh, and I
know what she thought. Let me put it that way.
But I I do think that it's possible that the only way she
would know is through this kind of feeling or whatnot.
Not about the truth, but the idea that she would have to die
to get the cure. Is that plausible?
It is plausible, Speaking of thescene that they didn't really
cut from the series, but sort ofcombined into the the porch

(01:40:08):
scene. She asks him why would you stop
them? And he just calmly explains that
making the cure would have killed you and I wasn't going to
let them do that. And then she also has a similar
reaction where she's like, you know, I should have been my
choice to decide to do that, andyou took that choice away from
me. And that's, you know, kind of
what she says in on the the court scene where she's like,

(01:40:30):
you took the choice away from me.
It wasn't your right. Yeah, you.
It wasn't your right to choose that for me.
And. Again.
My my same argument of the fireflies would have just let
them have a conversation before they took her away.
All of this could have been avoided.
All of it. But like they just decided that
they knew best and they whisked her right into the surgery

(01:40:54):
straight from nearly drowning bythe way, in game.
Like she almost drowns and then they immediately take her to
this hospital and she's knocked out for the entire time.
She's no knowledge of ever actually getting there or
anything. What a wild way, like with
someone into surgery like that with no chance to say goodbye,
no chance to do any of that stuff and like.

(01:41:15):
And you understand why it's their.
Fault. Yeah, it's their fault.
Joel's actions were Joel's actions.
But if he could have had that conversation with Ellie where
she could have made an informed decision and said, OK, yeah, I
see that making the cure is going to kill me, but I can
choose to do that for the greater good.
This isn't your choice to make. It's my choice.
Please let me make this choice think things would have been
different. I think he maybe would have

(01:41:36):
reluctantly allowed her to do that and it would have broken
him, but I think he would have done it.
You don't think so? I don't think so at all,
actually. I think it would have always
ended up the way had he known. Obviously he got that in Intel
and found out, oh, wait, hold ona second.
There's she'd have to die or maybe die or even a chance of
her dying, whatever. It sounds like they'd have to
because it was the brain. That's what they had to get to.

(01:41:56):
I don't know if they were that explicit on the show about that,
but he had overheard it, let's say, on the show, and he said,
wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
OK, hold on a second. The only other side of that
conversation I want to focus on just a bit is the idea that from
the first episode of the first season, it's clear that the
fireflies bomb indiscriminately.They kill indiscriminately, and

(01:42:19):
the wolves, WLF is kind of like a had they succeeded WLF, that's
what would have happened. And then they would become more
and more, and it would become like Federer.
Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
The WLF arose against Federer just like the Fireflies did.
And then they then became sort of exactly the same thing.

(01:42:40):
Like, essentially. I mean, and in the Hillcrest
story, they mentioned that, like, we didn't fight and die to
keep our independence for this neighborhood, just for this new
group to tell us to do the exactsame thing that the last group
was telling us to do. Like, I don't think we should
listen to them. Like, you know, yeah, they're
bigger and stronger than us, butwhat do we do all this
sacrificing for if they're just going to do exactly the same

(01:43:01):
thing that the last group did that we were fighting against?
It raises a good point. And there's a great conversation
between Abby and Owen about a very similar thing about them
being fireflies and the things that they did as fireflies in
context and it juxtaposition to Seraphytes it's.
And we'll probably get that. Yeah, I'm hoping that we will.

(01:43:22):
It's a conversation they have ina flashback scene, so possibly,
yeah, we might get that. I am curious for how that's
going to play out because I saidthey have omitted a big piece of
storytelling information from the scenes with Abby and her
group. They've taken out a story
element altogether from the series that I'm not going to

(01:43:42):
mention specifically until we actually see it happen.
I agree in season. 3 So, but so I'm curious to know because it
sort of has to do with that sortof not really, but yeah, they
have a really great conversationabout how the Seraphytes do very
similar things to what the fireflies used to do to Federer.
So in. The Seraphytes, are we the bad

(01:44:03):
guys? Yeah, like, are we the bad guys
them having this conversation? And she doesn't don't really
want to hear it necessarily. Like I'm not the bad guy here.
She's like basically she just dismisses it as saying.
Don't be an idiot. Don't say that in front of
everybody else, like, you know, like, maybe don't talk about
that. Like.
Don't let Isaac Dixon hear you say that.
Yeah, because they'll just murk you.
But yeah, to hit that point evenharder, going back to Salt Lake,

(01:44:27):
I think they would have killed Joel preemptively had they known
he would have had a because he doesn't know they don't know
that they have this relationship.
They. Were going to do that anyway
because they they were like let him go and then they kept all of
his supplies. So essentially, they were either
going to kill him by sending himout there with no supplies,
which is basically a death sentence, or they were just
going to shoot him as soon as they got him out the doors

(01:44:48):
anyway because that's exactly what's going to happen.
Which is why he attacked the guard to get his stuff back.
And the same thing happens in the game where Marlene's like
see him out. In other words, like get rid of
him like. You don't want to be, Yeah.
Like get rid of this guy becauseI know he's going to be a
problem. Let's just like, take care of it
right away. Like they knew they were just
going to kill him anyway. And like how ungrateful that

(01:45:10):
they got your miracle cure all the way across the country
without help, without supplies, completely against what the
actual plan was. And your thanks for that is to
just take them out after, just assassinate them at the end of
it. Ungrateful.
I don't think the Fireflies are good guys, right?
Right. They pretend like they are, but
they're not really. It's such a great stacking

(01:45:31):
because everything is sort of morally Gray in a sense,
because, OK, well, can you blamethem in a sense, if you're
thinking about the greater good?Yeah.
I mean also you're the same. Way in the like I said, there
are no heroes and there are no villains really, if you start to
look at it and you pick it apartbecause what would have been the
safest choice? Well, Joel is the kind of person
who's going to cause problems for us, and he would never go

(01:45:52):
for us doing what we need to do to get this cure out of Ellie.
So let's take care of the problem before it becomes a
problem, just like Joel took outEugene and took care of the
problem before it became a problem, before he had a chance
to turn and to possibly infect other people.
Like it's the same kind of thinking.
It's justifiable, but it's also cruel.

(01:46:13):
Are they at a point in their survival where they can start
from Dead City? Are we living or are we just
surviving? What point do we get to move
away from just surviving and start living?
And like, I think a lot of thesedecisions are being made still
with that survival mentality, which who can blame them?
Exactly. I say that with that in mind.
Yeah, but you you can, as much as I will rail against the

(01:46:34):
Fireflies for being actually in many ways incompetent as well.
Right. Yeah.
There's the spirit of the thing,which is who can blame them for
trying? I can, but still, I I see that
point. We should go to something I spot
in the comments. Thank you, Francisco, the
Hatosaurus, because let me read the full comment.
Don't forget about the Hatosaurus jokes, Karina.

(01:46:55):
We need it after all this conversation about death.
I was circling around, yeah, I was going to get there.
Ellie's birthday, 16th birthday for the series.
Pretty sure because she asked for a convertible or she thought
she was getting one. Anyway, that flashback scene
occurs with them walking throughthe woods just like they are.
She's trying to guess her birthday gift.
And she goes through the range of things like, is it a

(01:47:17):
dinosaur? Well, she says, is it a bunch of
kittens? And he's like a litter?
And she's like, what is a? Litter.
A lotter of kittens. Is it a convertible and is it
sneakers? And he's like, don't you have
enough of those already? And she's like, never.
So she's a shoe girl too. Like she just likes Converse
and. Like removed from the show.
Yeah, criminal, criminal jokes. They get to this museum and it

(01:47:40):
is MF and dinosaur like and she's that scene is amazing and
great and I love, you know, small changes.
She jumps off of the dinosaur into a pool of water because
they had to swim to get there inthe game.
Like it doesn't matter. It's just to illustrate that she
knows how to swim now. That's the only reason so.
It's a game mechanic you'll get exactly.
It doesn't matter, it's not important.

(01:48:01):
Same basic idea. She climbs up on top of the T
Rex and nearly falls off of it and Joel's like, what are you
doing? He's freaking out.
And they go inside the museum and there's a whole dinosaur
exhibit. So we skip all of that in the
series and we go straight to thespace exploration part, which is
also part of the game, and it isbeautiful.
I love that scene. This is the main reason I said I
think you guys are going to lovethis episode because I knew that

(01:48:23):
this was coming in this episode.But I do miss that we did not
get some of the gems of jokes that we get in the dinosaur
scene because we get to see Ellie's personality a little bit
more. Where as I said in the game, in
the present moment of the game, she's very laser focused on this
revenge mission and she does notcare about frivolity or any of

(01:48:44):
that kind of stuff. She's barely flirting with Dina,
you know what I mean? Like that's all we really get
from her. And you get to have this little
flashbacks where not only do we get to see Joel some more, but
we also get to see Ellie's real personality, like who she is at
the court, who she was. Yeah.
Is she still that person or not?She finds immediately like a
Indiana Jones style archaeologist hat.

(01:49:05):
And she puts it on and, you know, she's walking around and
she goes behind the desk and it finds this old phone.
And she's like, oh, I'm sorry. You know, all the dinosaurs are
busy. And she's like, oh, wait.
Ones right here Joel, it's for you one of my favorite jokes and
he's like very funny let's go and then she goes around the
corner she's got this dinosaur pamphlet and she's going through
like looking at all of the displays and reading them out

(01:49:28):
out and mispronouncing every single one of them and I love it
because how do you know how to say any of those things Joel is
making comments like hey I saw this one there was this one
movie he's very clearly talking about Jurassic Park and this
could be the reason that they omitted the entire section he
never says it by name in the game but it's you know what he's
talking about and I think maybe.Licensing.
It could have been a licensing thing where they're just like,

(01:49:50):
well, if we're going to be true to the game in the sense of the
conversations that they're having, we kind of need to omit
this whole thing because it has a lot to do with Jurassic Park,
because how could it not? And also, how does that fit into
the story? And it seems like the even
including the dinosaur is just alittle bit of fanservice.
A little bit. I mean, it's just a world.
Thing. It's a moment for you to enjoy

(01:50:11):
Joel and Ellie having a normal day together.
Anyway, she has this hat and shedecides her thing is going to
be, she's going to place this ontop of a dinosaur skeleton and
he's like, what are you doing? You know, she's like, what?
It's funny, it's great. It's really fun.
And she's like, look, it's a hatAsaurus.
And and then you can pick it up.And obviously you're controlling

(01:50:32):
Ellie doing this. So you can choose as many times
as you would like to place the hat upon each individual fossil.
So there's like a Stegosaurus, ATriceratops, A Dametrodon, you
know, all kinds that you can place it on top of his
commentary through the whole thing is like, is this going to
be a thing? And she's like, it's great at
the end of it. Well, near the end of it, you

(01:50:52):
can choose to put it on Joel, which I always choose to do
because it's great. He's like, what are you doing?
And she's like, don't you dare take it off.
Basically, just like it's my birthday, you cannot take it
off. And he's like, alright, fine.
So they go upstairs towards the end and it's like a
brachiosaurus or a brontosaurus or something, a long neck
dinosaur. She makes the parallel that it

(01:51:13):
reminds her of the giraffe. And so, of course, it's a huge
symbolic thing from the first game in the first series.
And Joel throws the hat onto Brontosaurus where we now cannot
get it off of there because it'sfar enough away from your reach
that, yeah, like it's there now you're not getting it off.
And he's like, I see the appeal.She's like, see, I told you it

(01:51:35):
was fun. So then they then proceed into
the area with the space stuff, which she is just amazed over,
and that same device that she's cranking to like do the solar
system and everything that's in the game.
You can spend some time looking at the displays and things like
that. So to me it felt a little rushed

(01:51:55):
getting them into the capsule. But at the same time, do you
need all of that story building stuff for that scene in the
series? No, you get the meat of it.
It's fine. It just for me, being the gamer,
I was like, where's the rest of it?
It's all magical and they're cutting it out.
But I still loved the scene. They kept it true.
I love also the little nods to gameplay that they give you in

(01:52:19):
small moments that may not be noticeable to you guys.
Where she breaks the glass to get the helmet out, it's.
Well, he gives her the rock to Yeah, it's a very.
Very common game mechanic to just throw something through a
window to get what you want and you don't have to do that in
that moment in the game. It's just available to you.
You just pick up helmet and you go.
But just throwing those little nods to gameplay in there

(01:52:40):
without it being intrusive or obvious to a non gamer, I think
is a very smart way to throw those things and without without
it feelings fanservicey like if natural for the scene, like, oh,
she's got to break the glass to get that.
That makes sense. It didn't feel like, oh, we're
taking a minute and we're going to do the listening mechanic in
a. I can tell way.
As somebody who didn't play the games, yes, it did feel natural.

(01:53:05):
I would love to hear y'all's, you know, thoughts on that scene
because I know how it makes me feel in the game every time I
see it. It makes me tear up every time I
see that scene of her in the helmet just imagining taking
off. Like it's so emotional because
of how pure that scene is compared to everything else
that's going on in this game. You know?

(01:53:27):
That's very heavy and emotionally draining.
You get to see this moment wheresomething is magical for her,
where she maybe has never experienced that in her life
before Us growing up, we might get to go to a theme park or go
watch a movie and stuff like that where she doesn't really
get a lot of opportunities to dothose things in her life.

(01:53:49):
So I think it's a super special scene.
I thought it was a little cruel,actually.
No, I don't let me complete thatthought because she never will.
And that's just like, here's thething, you'll never have.
So enjoy it. This is what we lost, everybody
I really have. Us going to go to space?
Like I have hopes. Also, I'm going to live forever.

(01:54:10):
Just so you know, I'm still aside from.
Since we're going to live forever you.
Know OK, so that scene in particular one, it's so
overwhelmingly emotional to watch like as someone who has
not played the game, it does have to do with the fact that
you're getting a break from likethe trudge that is the story.

(01:54:30):
But also it just goes to show the depth of Joel's love for
Ellie to know that he found thisa while ago, saved it for a
special day and he found the tape that played the sound that
you can assume was probably likeaccessible in the museum.
But you need to find out where that was and and like a working

(01:54:50):
one that wasn't. Destroyed by nature or whatever.
Like batteries? Yeah, yeah.
After all, the idea of like getting a a Walkman or whatever
to that works and and a working audio tape of a launch, you
know, like. It's insane to think about and
the acting in the scene is phenomenal.
Bellas face that look of pure joy while the sun is like coming

(01:55:15):
down on her and she's like basking in that light.
Well, not even the sun, but the light from a launch.
You know, she's like living out this dream in her head.
It's so incredibly beautiful. And like what a beautiful piece
of of acting and and cinematography to deliver that
to the audience in a personal perspective.
I just felt sad. I don't know, maybe you guys

(01:55:37):
have different experiences growing up, but like have you
ever been given a gift like that?
I'll never get a gift like that.Oh.
My gosh, so intensely beautiful,so intensely thoughtful and
connected and like, all I could think was this is the type of
parent I want to be for my kids.But also, you're enough,
Bridget, just want to say that. You're enough.

(01:55:58):
Just want to say that. But like just knowing because my
parents were not perfect people,like by any means, no one's are
had a tumultuous life. You know, it's not been all
sunshine and and happiness. And so like seeing this just, it
hit like a part of me that I waslike, Oh my God, how would I
even respond? Receiving a gift like that?
For her to know love in such a way from Joel that she feels

(01:56:20):
safe to sit there and close her eyes and feel this is just so
beautiful and so incredible and such a rarity in our world now.
And they're in the the lips. Yeah, I don't.
Know and then for him to feel like he needs to ask her like
did he do enough did I do good like you know that's.
The old world. That's.
The old world seeping, yeah. Yeah, but the villain, you know,

(01:56:44):
like always. Like is this enough?
Am I enough? Yeah.
Yeah. Did I do alright?
Like I don't see. That's why I ask if I'm the
villain of the podcast, 'cause Ido stuff like this and then cry
on stream and then I'm like. No, no, sure.
I I will say like. Maybe I am.
We talked a big game about Joel and see himself as a villain and
mission oriented thinking like, but just for the sake of the
mission, like I'll kill them before they kill you, that sort

(01:57:05):
of thing. Well, isn't it interesting to
see somebody change and change the mission parameters?
And the mission is I'm going to walk through life and every time
I see, you have to really appreciate this.
I'm going to walk through life and every time I see something
that's the person I love might appreciate.
I'm going to file it. I'm going to put a pin in it for
later. Not just birthdays, but just
like I imagine this extends beyond birthdays.

(01:57:27):
Oh yeah. There's actually a scene where
and another flashback that they kind of glossed over and used in
a different area where Ellie is on patrol with Tommy and Joel.
Tommy's letting her use the sniper rifle.
And you know, of course, that's a fun gameplay moment.
And then you're riding out with Joel.
And this is right before she's discovered the actual secret.

(01:57:48):
So it's roughly a year before she's already starting to have
that sort of divide. You can kind of tell she's her
mind is elsewhere and she can't stop thinking about something is
bothering her. Her relationship with Joel is
starting to get a little distantand a little strained.
But they go out on this patrol together.
And Joel says and makes it a point to mention, hey, we were
on patrol through this other area and I found some of those

(01:58:09):
star comics that you like. I don't remember the name of the
actual comic, but you know this sci-fi thing that she enjoys and
she's like, Oh yeah, what did you think of them?
And he starts describing becausehe read the comics that she
loves. Like he found them and read the
comics so that he would understand what she like.
And yeah, like, and what she likes about it makes it clear
that he actually did read these comics and and formed a real

(01:58:31):
opinion about them. Because he starts talking about
the characters and he's like, I feel like she's kind of cool.
And, and Ellie's like, yeah, she's a real badass.
And he's like, I think this one guy got what he deserved,
though. And she's like, oh, yeah, for
sure. And like, you know, like he's
having this whole conversation with her about this thing that
she loves and he never would have even mentioned.
He's like, it's not really my thing, but I know you like them.
And so I read them while I was out on patrol and like, you

(01:58:54):
know. So yes, it does extend and
beyond special occasions and birthdays, he is trying to make
a real connection with her. He wants to have a real solid
relationship. He wants to understand who she
is and why she likes the things that she likes.
So to see him be such a devoted father does strike a chord,
especially I think with people who didn't have that in their
life. The idea that you want to do

(01:59:15):
your best to understand your child so you can better interact
with them or just because and that's.
How it should be? It's how it should.
Be. Yeah, exactly.
It's. Just like it's just so beautiful
to see it like depicted in this way in a world where nothing is
the same as it is now, to see that still be a constant.
That we're making room for this,yeah.

(01:59:36):
I was going to say. Like to that kind of life.
In a type of life where it wouldbe easy to justify not having
time for that kind of thing, he's still making time for it.
Where in today's world we've gotparents who can't be bothered
with. Savage Starlight.
Thank you, Francisco. I couldn't remember it either.
I was like, I couldn't. Remember it Just like my comic,
she likes Francisco. San Francisco.

(01:59:57):
Thank you. Well, now that's what I'm going
to call him from now on. San Francisco.
It hits that emotional chord in a way.
This guy is striving his best tobe a good father.
And in ways, he's surpassing theexamples that we may have in our
own lives of what we could not everybody but myself and clearly

(02:00:20):
Bridget also, and like, you knowwhat I mean?
We did not have the best examples of fathers in our
lives. And to see somebody who's like,
this isn't even his biological kid and he wants to make this
connection and he's trying so hard to make it happen.
Wow. What would it be like to have
that in your life? Statistically speaking, that's
like what, a majority in Americanow?

(02:00:41):
So I'm wondering, I don't. Know about that but.
It's closed, it feels like. It.
Feels like it. I would say that maybe that's
why this game resonated with so many people.
For some people, this feels likea hole that you were like
looking to fill is like the and that's I think why people
connected with Joel so well and then for him to be killed off.
I think it's why people had sucha visceral reaction to it,

(02:01:03):
because it's like. He's.
Like your father figure, I mean as what?
Happens with time too. Yeah, so it's Pedro Pascal and
he's like. The.
Most. Actor.
He is daddy. In the world right now and like,
how could you do this? Can I, can I hit on something
that I feel like there's a sentiment here.
You're hitting striking a bit ofgold here because it's not just

(02:01:26):
for kids to see how it could be or whatever and all that.
But then when you see that father figure or parent parental
figure removed from the equation, it's a lesson for
children to to not hold on to anger and even if things are
bad, to have a little, well, like you were saying about your
friend Bridget, to leave a little room for people to try.

(02:01:48):
To see everybody is imperfect. Yes, that's the primary
reasoning, but also it's to kindof allow for the possibility for
people to change. Because if you keep that door
closed, there's a greater chancethat they won't because they've
you've closed the door. There's no reason they'll always
think of themselves as a villainin your eyes.

(02:02:09):
I just think it further drives home that concept of even if for
children. Even if you didn't.
Receive this love, you can do better.
That's it. Wasn't that the first scene?
Isn't that the first scene? He's saying.
I know you a little better. Don't like me right now?
Yeah, but maybe when you have one of your own.
And my best will still not be the best, but at least it's

(02:02:29):
another step in the right direction.
Look at this show, look at this game.
It's such a great way of communicating these feelings and
and to allowing like even in thebrutal world where you have to
kill everything, basically that leave room for the people you
care about on either side of theequation.
As a parent playing the game andyou have kids, like I want to
hit you and no, don't do that. But also maybe leave a little

(02:02:51):
room for your kids to have a little room for them to kind of
educate themselves and come around.
You know it's not always about you parents because they are
always. Say this all the time, but like
these zombie shows, they're justzombie shows, but they make us
cry. They're like intentionally
emotional. She's ridiculous.
And there's more to that flashback scene I would like to
talk about. This scene in the series ends

(02:03:12):
with her seeing actual firefliesin the forest.
And it's sort of for a moment, distracts her.
It's. The it's the start of it.
In the game, of course, this scene is different.
She doesn't see a literal Firefly, but she sees the
remnants of a member of the. Fireflies.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool.
She goes into less subtle. Yeah, very less subtle.

(02:03:35):
Extremely. So she goes into another area of
the building that Joel had not explored yet because she just
wanted to see more of it. And he's like, all right, fine,
let's try to figure out a way in.
She gets in, he can't get in thesame way.
So she's supposed to be going through to look for a door to
unlock for him in the meantime. So you're now in the Natural
History. So like there's a bunch of

(02:03:55):
taxidermied animals, you know, representing a whole range of
wildlife and things like that. And there's no lighting or power
or anything obviously in here. So it's very creepy.
And every time she shines the light, somewhere you see the
glowing eyes of these animals, which is very eerie.
So it's taking a very different turn from this beautiful scene
of her imagining herself in thisshuttle launch to now we're

(02:04:16):
going through this haunted forest kind of.
And she's seeing all these spraypainted notes on the walls.
Things like we locked them in the van and lit it on fire.
And then the kid was just running through the street.
I couldn't stop him before he hit the mines.
Just horrible things that you'reseeing throughout.
And, you know, Ellie's making comments like, man, this guy

(02:04:36):
needed a hug. Eventually you see the body,
body of this Firefly because he paints the Firefly symbol and it
says there is no light. A complete reversal of look for
the light. Because clearly this man has
experienced as a Firefly doing all these horrible things to
people. For what reason he can't
decipher, you know, in his little suicide note that he

(02:04:57):
writes, you know, saying like, Ijust can't do it anymore and I
can't live with the things that I've done.
And he's like, please forgive me.
And obviously, he has killed himself.
And you're left to crawl througha small opening to get out of
here after seeing this. And you get surprised by a boar,
like, just a wild boar. And it knocks her down.

(02:05:18):
And Joel busts through a door moments later.
And he's like, hey, come on. Like, we got to get out of here.
I want to make a fire before it gets dark.
She's like, yeah, OK. And like, obviously, this
experience has triggered something in her.
So it has a much more sinister tilt to it.
And she sees this Firefly symbolon the wall and the fact that
this Firefly is disillusioned with what happened.

(02:05:39):
And I think she's starting to connect the idea that her not
being able to make the cure is what led directly to this guy's
falling apart of the fireflies. Because previous to that, the
fireflies, her experience with them is that they're like these
freedom fighters who are striving to make the world
better. And then obviously all of that
fell apart. And I think she sort of

(02:06:00):
internalizes that a little bit and places the blame of that on
her because she wasn't able to provide this cure that they were
looking so forward to. And such pressure to put on
yourself at 16 that you're somehow responsible for this
person you've never met and their decisions to treat people
in the world the way that they did.
I can't imagine what that must feel like.

(02:06:21):
That you're directly responsiblefor their actions as you
decisions. Because you weren't able to
provide this cure that they wereso looking forward to that she
then must feel, and this is not something that she says out
loud. This is just something that I've
interpreted from the game, and Icould be incorrect in my
interpretation of it, but you know, I've played through many
times and it definitely does seem to be the catalyst or the

(02:06:41):
thing that reignites her intention to figure out what
really happened. Because I think.
She, yeah, in the same way that you mentioned she saw the
literal Firefly in the forest. And she kind of it starts her on
this idea, like reigniting that little nagging doubt that Joel
lied to her because she knew that he lied to her at the end
of the first season, like, and she chose to ignore it.

(02:07:03):
The nagging doubt, but also the idea that here I am enjoying
myself at the height of my exit.Right?
That kind of. Guilt.
Yeah. I'm feeling such a good way
about my life. And what right do I have to do
that when I should be dead? And what could have been right,
Right. Or I could have provided the
cure, but it just wasn't meant. I wasn't enough.
It wasn't enough. See, there's like another.
I feel like Joel now. Whatever the reason why I wasn't

(02:07:25):
able to provide a cure for thesepeople, it's my fault and how
could I enjoy my life going forward when other people's
lives are falling apart because of it?
Or so it I am led to believe at least.
Playing through that area, that she feels in some way personally
responsible for what happened tothis guy in the same way that
she feels personally responsiblefor a lot of the people that
she's not able to save, like Eugene.

(02:07:47):
And like, another example that Idon't think we're going to see
in the flashbacks sequences, this is in the series where it's
during the same time where she'slike on the trip with Joel and
Tommy, when she's on patrol withthem, they go through like a
hotel building and they get ambushed by quite a lot of

(02:08:07):
infected, including a bloater, which almost kills Ellie.
Yeah, it's it's pretty intense. It's an interesting combat
scene. But she also feels responsible
because they found bodies of people who had run away from
Jackson. And they write in their note,
Jackson is a great place. We don't fault anybody who wants
to live there. But we can't keep seeing all
these refugees coming into this town and not do anything to help

(02:08:31):
them. So we're going to go out into
the world and see if we can helpthem.
And unfortunately, you know, they write later on in the note.
We barely got an hour out of Jackson.
We got attacked by a horde. We're both bit.
We're not going to turn into these monsters.
So they make like a murder suicide type of pact.
The boyfriend kills the girlfriend and then writes on
the back of the note, I can't doit.
I'm a coward. And he ends up turning into a

(02:08:52):
clicker by the time they find him.
And so Ellie, of course, comes across this.
And in her mind, she's like, this is my fault.
This is this happened to these people because of me.
And so I think she internalizes all of those instances where she
feels like she failed people that she doesn't even know, you
know what I mean? She's she's taking on a lot of

(02:09:13):
burden, but unnecessarily. And she's not discussing this
with with Joel or with anybody. So she's just left to spiral out
about it and. She doesn't know about you as a
player, so you're just this weird omniscient viewer going on
here. Yeah, exactly.
She's putting a lot of pressure on herself and this build up to
her confronting Joel is much more drawn out.
Like I said, these are all separate flashbacks that these

(02:09:35):
are happening in. It's a nice way of showing you
what you're talking about in thegame to the audience in a way
that makes more sense for the audience.
The passage of time leading up to her decision to confront Joel
and also some of her motivationsfor why she, I think, feels like
she needs to, I guess, make up for what happened to Joel in a

(02:09:55):
way, just seeing this change andfinding out what happened also
between the events of the first and second game.
Because like I said, we start with her five years after the
events of the first game. It's like 5 years is a lot of
time, especially when you're talking about a kid going from
14, 19. Like it's a huge gap of time
that we're also learning about what happened to.
Her when you were talking describing the Firefly body in
the game, I was thinking the other way.

(02:10:16):
This is a seed for later on about human nature or how bad
the fireflies were. This is like an indicator of how
bad they were. We thought we were the heroes, I
think. It's also that, yeah, it's also
that, but from her. It's funny how we see things.
Perspective. Yeah.
From her limited perspective of it, this is how she's
interpreting it for us as the player, as the viewer.

(02:10:37):
Easily, you can see that OK, theFireflies weren't the best
people to be giving this miraclecure over to because again, as
we discussed, what guarantee do we have that everyone was going
to get it? It was it.
Was only going to be other fireflies and people they deemed
important. They wouldn't have given it to
every. A lot of power.
Exactly. It's foolish to think that they

(02:10:59):
would have just magnanimously given it to the world.
That would not have happened. They definitely would have
monetized it, probably, and theywould keep it for the people
that they felt deserved it, which would not be the common
folk. True.
Yeah. I mean, I think about that a
lot. I did want to mention one tiny
little thing, which is the titlesequence.

(02:11:19):
You do see the dual fungus that represents the silhouettes of
Ali and Joel at the end of the title sequence, which I thought
was kind of. I did do the thing where I was
like, well, other brother's backis Joel's back, which is kind of
like, it's so manipulative too. It is.
It's a little bit of Druckman inthere.
It's like, you know, let's bringit back just to take away in the
next episode. Just for yeah, for a moment.

(02:11:40):
And until the next episode, wheneverything falls apart.
Apart yeah I have to say so far I'm safe to say that and this
usually happens with penultimateepisodes I feel like that
becomes my favorite episode and this one clearly is mine because
we got so much out of it maybe self servingly as a podcast
because we got to dig into so much look where it's two hours

(02:12:01):
and 45 minutes in obviously in the Spotify podcast it's going
to be shorter or the you know the podcast platforms but just
so you know like we went throughsomething everybody that watched
the YouTube replay and Franciscowatching live let's well.
Just like cut out my crying and that's like half an hour.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, I cut off laughing and
crying, right. I never, I never could.
I actually leave some of those pauses in when you cry too,

(02:12:24):
because for a fact, because it sounds really terrible.
If when you it really does soundbad when you cut it short,
Right. Yeah, like right.
Between dregs. Between what is it called?
Not dregs, Jags. Jags.
It's just all Francisco. So I'm not even going to say
anything else. It's just all Francisco.
God of War 3 is one of the best games hand down.

(02:12:45):
But also it depends on how they explain it without hurting
anyone's feelings about your kids.
The warning about fire or whatever.
Look at final Destination. It's all about desk design.
That's kind of what I was saying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, I would love if they
showed it next season in a flashback so we could have more
good moments with Ellie and Joelbefore jumping into reality.

(02:13:07):
That's in reference to the dinosaur.
Oh, if they. Go back and show that later.
OK, maybe. Maybe they can film without the
Jurassic Park references. I'm sure they could.
Because HBO would be getting copyrights left and right with
that. Gamers be like they stole it
from us Carmine. They took it they.
Took it. I don't know what that's.
Wrong. I'm so.
Sorry. I think it was very beautiful

(02:13:28):
because the discovery of space. That world needs to be enjoyed
in some capacity, just like enjoying zoos.
The best part is that it's a free gift for Ellie because that
Space Museum you would have to pay to see.
It's priceless for her and Joel though.
And you probably for sure would not be able to get inside the
capsule in a museum. So.
This is an experience she could only have had in the time period

(02:13:51):
that she was born. This is also a lesson for us in
life is that we have these things with which we can visit.
Probably not. Go inside the capsule, but don't
let stuff like that pass you by.Go to a museum, Go to watch an
art exhibit. See an exhibit from a friend or
a friend of a friend to have some wine and cheese and whatnot
or whatever you decide to do, but just live life.

(02:14:11):
Joel does mention that he brought Sarah to every or she
dragged him to every museum in the States.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the conversations that
they have with each other in that scene.
That's awesome. Francisco also said I enjoyed
the streaming. I can't believe that we only
have one left now, but I've enjoyed the discussion, lore
dumps, and the seriousness of these characters.
Why did it have to be fireflies?Why can't it be butterflies?

(02:14:35):
They're just day mods. Get out of here day.
Mods, another bloater. In the show would be sick.
Tommy burning the Bloater and Jackson was raw.
Please last the bloaters, pleaseI've.
Really seen Joel in the intro. It gave me hope and Neo said
we're leaving the crying. Yes, we're doing it live.
And Francisco said I'm almost falling asleep, but I am still

(02:14:58):
here. Let's allow Francisco to go to
sleep, and also me. And if you want to go to sleep
everyone well before you do, or maybe when you wake up the next
day, head on over to ratethispodcast.com/walkingdead.
Five stars and a well, just I think there's only a butterfly
emoji is all we need to know that you love us.
Is there a Firefly emoji or a lightning bug?
Bridget would say. It's a lightning bolt and no.

(02:15:21):
But yeah, you could do a lightning bolt and then a bug
or. You could do a family in a
lightning bolt bolt. I know those two exist, so leave
whatever you know what, do whatever the.
Heck, you want, just remember to.
Leave it after every single episode.
Tell us what you like, Tell us what didn't like.
Communicate with us like Neo's the one did in the YouTube
comments or Iris Boysenberry didin our Spotify coverage of the

(02:15:41):
dark winds she left. There are comments on Spotify
you can leave which I have to read.
There are actually some new onestoday which I haven't yet.
I will. Because we have analytics, we
can see how many people watch the show.
The problem is sometimes I'm notsure because podcasts are
aggregate and some of the streamnumbers are inflated because
some podcast platforms download the audio and make it available

(02:16:05):
on their site. So it's very mixed in terms of
what we can see. It's not easily clear.
It is really great to see that people are watching, so when you
do respond, it does actually help us understand what you want
on the extreme of the end of things, but it's also nice to
hear every now and again. It really is, it really is.

(02:16:26):
I mean that's why I say Neos areright or die.
Because like ever since he started watching and making
comments, you've continued to make comments and be here for
the lives. And I really appreciate that
Francisco, you're always here for these lives.
I'm so thankful for you. Also, don't be too don't think
that I'm not saying I'm thankfulfor you We.
Love you. Oh, look at Rob.
Look, I I want to say his name. Look, look, she is a right

(02:16:48):
'cause not. You.
Not this again, Dave, Not you with the He's got the hand and
he's doing the whole thing. Yeah, Rob says I got to follow
you more closely. I just saw you guys were live.
Yeah, well, you know, it happens.
The camp apparently had a stream.
It's a whole thing. You know, we don't have their
reach. But Lucasey.

(02:17:09):
Lucasey, thank you very much. I love to be crazy.
Now he's going to go Luke Casey.Luke Casey, he's.
Going to do. My gosh.
Again, it helps to know that we're on the right track and Rob
proves that point. I didn't know he was watching
and he let us know and that really helps go beyond that.
You can tip us on stream when wedo go live, your message will
show go up, it'll be auto didacted into my ears and will

(02:17:34):
show on the stream to all the other people and also everybody
else. When you do tip us, it'll show
that you did buy us a coffee or something when you head on over
to ko-fi.com/squawking Dead. In return we give you the
unedited episode recordings whenwe don't go live as well as my
pre Squawk insights which are filled and filled with tons and
tons of reference links that mayend up making it to the blog.

(02:17:55):
It may not usually does not actually lets you into my
thought process as well. And it's all for your tip.
And you also get forever access to our Discord when you tip.
Join a membership tier on eitherKofi or patreon.com/walkingdead
or ko-fi.com/walkingdead and youwill get more access to our
Discord. You'll get well.
If you happen to join the Whisperer, Survivors or Great

(02:18:15):
Mt, you'll get a free classic T-shirt upon signing up.
Whispers have to wait a little longer.
If you happen to join the Survivors or Great MTR, you can
show up in these episodes along with us, lending us your
thoughts alongside us. And if you happen to join the
Great MTR, you'll have access toour core channel on our Discord
where we talk about all things internal.
You will have the ability to bring up things in the core

(02:18:36):
channel for us to digest and think about because you'll be a
junior producer. You have that right.
You join the calls, you are partof our part of it all.
And I will say, if you're skittish about joining it now
because of the sticker shock, wait a little while because
we're going to be reformatting our membership tiers.
So it is a little bit more enticing for everybody.
I just want to bring more peopleinto the conversation and how we

(02:18:57):
shape this podcast in consolidating these tiers and
making them more appetizing to others.
And we get more people on streamto discuss their thoughts as
well. I would hope that would be
something you'd want. And you know what?
I look forward to it. I love it and it's true.
He can, he can be bullied into agreeing with you so like.
Just know that. I'm just slow to I'm Joel

(02:19:19):
Miller. I can't believe how much I am
identifying, but I didn't think I would actually until this
episode. And well, I'm not Joel Miller.
I've been your host David Cameo,and I was joined by.
Bridget, you can find me at ko-fi.com/punky Brewster.
That's PUNKYBRUISETER. And Karina, it's CARINAE under

(02:19:41):
score D on Instagram and ETA Karina art on everything else.
Yeah, and I hope to God-given the episode link on YouTube and
undoubtedly the link, it'll be on podcast platforms, that you
enjoyed this. I thank you for watching this
far. Including Rob Lukasey, who
joined us on Facebook. It may take a little while

(02:20:02):
longer for us to get the episodebreakdown for the season finale
of Season 2 of The Last of Us. It may take us a little longer
for maybe even the Dead City episode.
But we do have some plans to do some things at the camp, if it's
even possible, kind of like the interview that we did with Logan
Schmucker, who played Victor on The Walking Dead.
Dead City long all podcast platforms go straight there.

(02:20:23):
So we're hoping to do something similar with the coverage of
Dead City's episode this weekend.
So hey everybody, can't wait to see the next one.
Can't wait to break it down alongside with you including San
Francisco over there in the chatand see you next time.
We love you guys. Love.
You too. Yeah.
Love you, Bridget. You're enough.
Thank you so very much for making it to the end of yet

(02:20:44):
another episode of Walking Dead.This one, the 6th episode of The
Last of Us, is second season titled Price.
I am checking in from the camp, which is why I sound a little
bit different than I normally do.
I don't have my little professional.
Microphone in the effort of making.
This short and sweet. I do want to get to the
acknowledgments and other perk that members receive the end of
every episode. 1 bit of factoid information that you may want to

(02:21:07):
know that I discovered during the edit of this podcast, which
took me quite a long time. I'm trying to fit it in during
my time here in snowy Georgia. The scene where the background
actor could be Craig Mason couldnot be might not be only now
appears in the screeners for this episode.
When it was discovered that the background actor was there, the

(02:21:28):
team must have placed some form of CGI or a bit of foliage in
front of that person to conceal them.
So if you do happen to go back to the episode, you will not be
able to see it. You'll only be able to catch it
in this episode on the Spotify video.
That's the only place that the player.
And in fact, I will say eventually when the blog does
come out, I will include the screenshot that I included for

(02:21:51):
the Spotify video. And now we move on to our
acknowledgements. It's a perfect the survivors
Grade M and Whisperers tier members receive not quite in
that order. Starting with the Grade M tier,
the greatest this year we have at Real Ryan GM on Instagram and
X moving on to our whispers herebecause we have no survivors.
We have at Skylar Rose PW on Instagram and X as well as whom

(02:22:13):
we met this weekend at the camp at Kim dot Rowley, the number
one on Facebook. I'm so happy to be here in
Sonora, Georgia. This episode breakdown has taken
me a little bit more time away from my time at the camp,
realizing that our audience is bigger than just the folks at
the camp. And sometimes we have to make
sacrifices to make sure these episodes at least make it out

(02:22:33):
before the next episode is released or shows up on HBO or
HBO Max. Or now I guess it's just called
Max. That's the whole thing.
I appreciate you guys waiting solong for this episode to come
out. Next episode might also
similarly take a little longer to release.
We'll be in touch with you more on that.
It will be a live stream. I will update you accordingly.

(02:22:53):
We will probably be recording our breakdown of The Walking
Dead Cities 4th episode in person, which means there's not
going to be a studio. Hang tight, sleep tight, don't
let the bed bugs bite. I don't want people say that
they're gross, but remember thatwe are squawking dead.

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