1. Future Days

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to the Last Cast, HBO Max's unofficial Last of
Us recap podcast. This show hosted each week by Me,
Jack and Andrew. Hello there, we'll take an in depth
dive into season two's continuation of the Mega TV series.
Event will break down, assess, compare, contrast, and have a
little bit of fun as we go. So grab your
six string and revolver so we can get on with it.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Oh, we're getting on with it. Hi Hi, Hi, Hi hi. Everyone.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
The things we do for y'all, but also because I'm
gonna throw myself onto the bus a little bit here.
I have enormously high standards with podcasting.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Oof. You hate to hear it? You love to hear it?
I mean you love to hear you the listener love
to hear it. Yeah, but yeah, it requires a certain
shall I say, personal touch, Yes, Tenacity might be a
good word.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, So to get right to the heart of the matter.
If anybody out there is listening, I'm sure there's plenty
of you wondering where the hell is the show.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
It's Wednesday, it's Wednesday night. It's still not here. What's
going on?

Speaker 1 (01:42):
We did record a three hour and fifteen minute podcast
yesterday which was supposed to be delivered today Wednesday, April sixteenth,
twenty twenty five. Unfortunately, when I went to go edit
said podcast, the audio is.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Track real technical difficulty. Yes, very and I.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Posted about and immediately then had a mental breakdown and
cried myself silly until Andrew came upstairs and gave me
a giant hug and said, that's okay. We're just gonna
do it over again with this new equipment that he
had purchased that was delivered today. So hopefully we sound
just as good as we always do over on Wayfair

(02:25):
and Strangers, which is of course our other last of
us podcast dedicated solely to the video games. But yeah,
we're doing We're redo a lot.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
It's a lot to think about, and it's a lot to do.
But I think, you know what they say, practice makes
perfect and so we've really episode one, we've really got
this thing nailed down. I hope. So, I hope so.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
And we did come to realizations by the end of
the show of things that we had been discussing throughout
the three hours that I think now we'll get to
them almost mediately, So we will. While I'm sure you're yes,
you're gonna get a better show and it'll be slightly shorter,

(03:09):
which I know not everyone loves to hear, but Andrew
loves that. So but I just real quick, before we
dive into an Apple podcast review from January of this year,
I want to mention I want to send a wonderful
shout out to one of our favorite listeners, Slash Friends

(03:30):
from Wayfair and Strangers. Is a wonderful person named Ozzy,
not Ozzy Mandyush sorry Ozzy no last name, Ozzie, no
last name, who sent the most wonderful, encouraging message today
via Instagram after I had posted about the trash audio

(03:52):
and the disappointment, and he just said, basically, we can
hear the amount of effort and work that goes into
this show every week, and to hold yourself to that
and not just deliver shit audio to get it done
or out there, but to literally throw it out and
redo all of that. He appreciated, he sent his appreciation

(04:16):
and it was very much needed today.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
And that's what I said. I was like, I'm crying.
I really appreciate that, you know, because yeah, because it's
a lot of work. It's a lot of work this podcast.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
We are on day three of the week of an
actual business day working day week, and all three days
of my week so far have been the last of
us TV show. So we're trying to get it right,
which is why we're here. And thank you for the
extra time. This might happen sometimes it's a long ass show.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
It happens. No, Well, I mean, I think you posted
the new equipment that we are we did recording on,
so I'm excited. I'm going to be using this professionally
and we just get the benefit of having some real
high end shit to record our podcast with now, not
that what we were using before was not. This is

(05:12):
just going to streamline the entire operation and hopefully you
can hear in our voices that warm analog tune. Sure
of a whatever the hell this thing a vacuum tube amp.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, I mean it literally has the little vacuum tube
in there, which is.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's a nice touch. Even if you're not doing anything.
It could just be a small piece of glass, and
I'm like, man, that really looks good. I don't think so,
because when you put your hand against it, it's warm. Yeah,
it does get warm. We gotta we gotta finish this
podcast before before it blows, So speaking of this.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Podcast, Andrew, let's talk about the no spoilers thing that
we're going for. That we are this is the only
time we're going to say it in episode one for
the rest of the season. We are not divulging future
spoilers because we know as far as like big high
level events that happen in the Last of Us Part

(06:09):
two video game that season two is modeled after or
adapted from. Rather, we know essentially what's going to happen
on the high level, not getting into the shit, which
certainly a lot has changed already, of course, but we
will do our absolute best to keep the spoilers completely

(06:30):
free of this show.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yes, and that goes to.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Subtle hints or little nods or quippy little remarks on
my half, because I know I'm the guilty party here
for that, and I guess to segue into that. Would
you like to read the review from Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yeah, I'll do it right now. Okay, this is from
Star Wars Fan eight O seven Star Wars Fan O
EIGHTO seven. It is a five star review with the
title awesome podcast, love the long episodes. Okay, so already
Star Wars Fan o EITO seven and from me you
get three stars from me, but that's okay. But let's
say okay, here we go. This is a great podcast,

(07:07):
definitely worth listening to, though I probably wouldn't recommend it
if you haven't played both Part one and Part two
of the games. Jack and Andrew try to keep this
show spoiler free until a clear spoiler break in the episode,
but drop enough hints at the future, both vague and
slightly obvious, that it can get a bit annoying at times.
I have played both games, and although I appreciate them

(07:29):
wanting to do a spoiler free podcast for everyone out
there who was watching for the first time, I wish
this podcast would just go all in forget the spoilers.
You guys are trying so hard to keep them to yourselves.
There are other podcasts doing spoiler free format better. I
have listened to Wayfair and Strangers and love how deep

(07:50):
they dive into each moment. I would get a lot
more enjoyment if Jack and Andrew would just be completely open. Overall,
this podcast is definitely worth listening to. Sorry for my rambling,
this is still a five out of five podcasts. Simply
had this one quote unquote minor complaint. Thanks guys for
providing a quality resource for all TLU fans out there.

(08:10):
I look forward to season two. That's from Star Wars
Fan eight oh seven.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yes, thank you for taking the time to review us
and giving us a five star. Andrew said in our
bid guest yesterday, a little bit of a compliment sandwhich
happened Sandwich. Yet that's fine, I'll take it. I mean,
here's the.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Deal, right, I love the constructive criticis and we've taken
that and we have done not what you have suggested
Star Wars eight to seven. We're actually going the other
way where we're just going to we're not even going
to mention no anything that this might that there might
be a hint of anything, or it's just going to
be completely spoiler free and there may be TBD a

(08:46):
situation where we can get into spoilers, but we're not.
We're not there yet. No, And that's that's one of
the things.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
I had another conversation with a wonderful listener, Brian, who's
one of our friends from Wayfair, and he had commented
on some of the events that had taken place in
episode one that he didn't really care for, and I
had basically said narratively speaking, we have to keep to
what was given to us. And while I want to

(09:16):
just rip the fucking lid off of certain things, I'm
not going to. And I feel like I was successful
in yesterday's recording in that so I'm very confident going into.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
This re chord. Did this re recorded, stared.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
This read chord that we that I can maintain that
sure based off of the constructive criticism in this review
right because we had a conversation. We had a pretty
long conversation about whether we should we should switch this
to a spoiler show. But I feel like the majority
of people who listen to The Last Kiss have not

(09:53):
played the games and they do not know what's going
to happen, and I don't want to ruin that for them.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
We have the benefit of being a show that we
have the benefit of doing two shows. One is a
Last of US game show and one is a Last
of US TV show. And the numbers are an order
of magnitude larger for show watchers than they are game players.

(10:18):
It's not etty close, and it makes total sense. It
is a hit, prestige television show, and it just goes
to show that there is a large audience for this
that probably has not played the game and probably never will,
and so we're not going to do anything to sell
you that experience exactly.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
I will mention here though, for people like Star Wars
fan eight to oh seven, and we had originally saved
this to the end of the show, but I'm just
going to I think now is the perfect placed placement
for this. We are starting a Patreon. Oh boy, it
will be in the link to this episode, so going forward,

(10:55):
anyone who subscribes, you'll reap the benefits for the next
month after month after month going forward. But the big
exclusive content that will be over on our Patreon will
be Andrew and I going back and doing all of
season one and then when season two concludes, all of
season two and just a ripper and spoiler episode like

(11:17):
one after the Next Steps and us comparing what happened
in the show to what happened in the game and
what was different and what could potentially happen if there
ever is a part three, which is not looking gray
for that game wise wise, but I figured that would
be really fun to do to give more to both crowds.

(11:41):
So yeah, you know that will be that higher tier
will premiere will be posted when we conclude the last
Kissed Season two reviews.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
There'll be content for weeks and weeks and months and
months and yeah, months and weeks. We never stopped recording
long podcasts, no, unfortunately for.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Me, for two shows, and I know, you know, I
was a little worried about that last year or two
years ago, excuse me almost God, it was like two
years and two a month and a half or whatever
since the last of Us Season one had concluded in
March of twenty twenty three, that we just stopped cold Turkey.
We did two email episodes and then I basically burnt
out and I was like.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
I'm done. It's over a qui it, you know.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
But now, I having so much time under under my
belt and a lot of healing work the last year,
I'm ready to do all of this. So I was
going to mention the drop schedule here like we did yesterday,
for this show to get back into the show. We're
aiming for every Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
We promised over on Wayfair and Strangers that this would
be a video podcast again. That was part of the
experiment that we tried last night, and it just failed.
And I'm not entirely comfortable with that. So I felt
awkward and I felt like it was soiling. We didn't fail,
We just learned, Yes, we learned lessons.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
We learn. Yeah, you have a bad day and you learn. Yes.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
So we're going to hold off on the video for
right now. It might literally just be episode one is.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
The only one that doesn't have a fucking video. We'll see.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
But yeah, we're aiming for Wednesdays of every week, and
I know that we have received reviews in the past
where it's like I.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Wish it could be like a twenty four hour turnaround
me too, one day, me too.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
However, the notes take a very long time, recording takes
a long time, editing takes a long time, and I
don't want to compromise any of that to give a
shitty show.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
We may market ourselves as the longest last of US
podcast here. That's fair. I think that's fair. I think
that's a fair assessment.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
I'll just remove unofficial and just be like, we are
the longest last of US.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Podcast o HBO Max's Longest HBO. Wait, what did I
mean longest podcasts? I like lost my own train of
thought there.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, yeah, all right, So let's get into the episode.
Andrew tell us a little bit about the show. Just
background already.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
It's written and directed by our boy, Craig Mason. Okay,
we trust and Craig we trust. Hit the chest. You
got to hit the chest when you say that. The
episode summary, according to HBO, is five years after the
events in Salt Lake City, a now nineteen year old
Ellie makes a discovery while on patrol with her best
friend Dina. Back in Jackson Hole, Joel seeks help to

(14:33):
mend his relationship with Ellie. And you know that's pretty
that's the gist. I mean, that is the gist. Yeah,
leave some things out. We've talked to you, we've too.
You know, HBO has a history of getting it wrong
with their summaries. I'm thinking John travels, sirc struggles. You know,

(14:53):
for the episode, the episode hard Home, I believe it
was called one of the best episodes, one of the
best episodes of the show. And sure John traveled and
Circe did struggle. Those two things did happen. But you
know it just words are tough. Words are so hard.
Writing is not easy, I get even copywriting is not easy.
Is this.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Listen every week? I have to do a summary for
Wafer and Strangers. Now every week I'm gonna have to
do a summary for the last cast. And sometimes I'm like,
you can't give away everything that you talk about, but
you also have to ttilate the audience.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Just didn't know, right, we got a tickle yea.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
And sometimes I yeah, sometimes I've caught myself to just being.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Like, this is what we talk about, literally every fucking
thing that we talk about. Are you interested? Listen? But
now I'm like, no, Jack talks. Andrew replies, yeah, yeah,
and that's we all know how this goes. Welcome to
Wayfair and Way first, Jesus Christ, the last cast also
Welcome to the Wayfair and Strangers. Okay, all right, let's
get into it.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
So general reactions and some of our initial thoughts on
episode one. Yeah, so right off of the bat, Andrew,
how did it make you feel uncomfortable the whole thing
or just certain elements.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Just certain elements, just certain people interacting. I'm like, boy,
this isn't what I want. You know, mom and dad
are fighting, you know, it's one of those situations. Yeah,
so high level thoughts are really enjoyed this episode. They've
set up a lot of they've set up dominoes beautifully,
lots of them. We have everything that we loved from

(16:32):
season one from a technical point of view, like the
cinematography is great, the set design, there are certainly nods
to the to the game plays that are that are
present here. There's a care that's put into this world. Sure,
and that kind of stuff I love to see. Like
it's one of those things where it's like, if you're

(16:54):
not familiar with it, you probably look at it and
it's just interesting. It might just be interesting world building
to you, but for someone who knows that they're, you know,
maybe just looking for a little Easter egg here or there,
there's also that kind of stuff for you and I. So, yeah,
that was awesome. We were introduced to some new characters,

(17:14):
so many standout performances. We have our returning favorites really
great performances for the time that they're on screen as well.
I mean, this is a great episode. I like, what
a great way to come back. Really Sure, it had
everything that I could have hoped for. A little bit
of monster, a little bit of creepiness, all this other
good stuff. I'm in. I'm out. Most of us is back.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yes, the Last of Us is back. I'm not as
enthusiastic as Andrew never will be. So no, I never
will be, and that's okay and everyone. I'm just an
echo chamber now. But I certainly have some issues with
this episode. Sure, but I think the issues that I
have will surprise people. They're not what I've been reading

(17:59):
or on the on the internets, and I have an
to be fully transparent. I haven't read that much because
I made it very clear in our Expectations episode that
I'm I'm not going to be listening to that shit.
I don't care what and maybe that's terrible and terrible
networking on my half on my part, but I don't
care what the official podcast has to say or after

(18:22):
show interviews. I mean, I did watch it, Yeah, Andrew didn't.
I did, and there were legitimate spoilers in that those
that the after show interview, and that's what.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
I wanted to try in an attempt to avoid. I
just didn't want to be I love that. I love
to hear from Craig. I love to hear from the
people involved in the making of the show. Sure, like
the sometimes they'll have like the DP or the I
can't remember what if they had at last any of
the music kind of supervisors last season or whatever. But
I like, I like that stuff. But once the the

(18:58):
actors start describing, like maybe what their motivations, I'm like, Oh,
we're getting into some like territory that I would rather
just be surprised by. Yeah, so that's why I didn't watch.
I think that's your reasoning.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Mine is I don't want it to I don't want
it to become my own opinion.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, yeah, I don't want to just be fed something
and be like, oh, did I think that or was that?
You know? Yes, that's what Craig told me.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
And honestly, and maybe that that's part of my own
high expectation shit with this show and why we're fucking
recording again, because I don't want to be told how.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
I'm supposed to think about a situation.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
And it even got like I'm so strict with that
that even when I discussed this with my best friends
or family or whatnot, I'm like, I'm only giving you
high level opinions because I'm saving these for the show
because if I go too deep with you, one I
might forget a point I made that was excellent, and
two you might counter that, and if I prefer that,

(19:58):
then that's it's going to usurp what was in my brain.
I don't want, I almost want to be wrong about something,
but then invite in the difference in the debate. Okay,
I think that's just better for podcasting anyway. So okay, yes,
those are our high level pakes. But now it's time
to get into the breakdown.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Boy boy. So we are in an opening.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
The opening is a flashback, and we are revisiting the
lie at the end of season one. So the episode
opens with a somber reminder of Joel's lie to Ellie
from the season one finale, and reminder Joel tells Ellie
the firefly stopped looking for a cure and that her
immunity ultimately meant nothing. And this sets the emotional tone

(20:46):
for not only this episode, but if I'm looking way
ahead and making a prediction the ensuing season as a whole,
because everything that follows this lie is framed in the
shadow of this betrayal and it's hard to revisit this,
but that is ultimately truly what sets the course for

(21:08):
everything that happens in season two and beyond.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
So why and that's not a spoiler.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
That is a pivotal moment that everyone witnessed a lie happen. Sure,
And as a human being, if you feel you've been
lied to, that affects you.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Oh and the show is also showing you the show
could have done previously on Sure, but it chose to
open the show with the final scenes of the previous season.
I mean it did have a previews, I know, but
like I mean, even even that, it was like, this
is important. Yeah, we're showing it to you again. Yeah,

(21:49):
it's the cornerstone. Commit this to memory.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Yeah, so it's remember this thing, right, It's important. So
from there, we're still in the flat back, but this
time we are back in Salt Lake City and outside
of Saint Mary's and we are greeted, unfortunately, well first
with a giraffe, which is beautiful and wonderful. We love
the giraffe and the significance of that in Joel and

(22:13):
Ellie's journey a little bit different now though, because we
see a graveyard and the final resting place for the
fireflies that Joel killed in his efforts to save Ellie.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
And we all know how I feel. A mount of firefly,
so rest and rip it says losers here.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, I did say rest and rip losers. Wow, I'm
going to go the extra mile, even my notes.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
I mean, you get it. I'll say it. If you're
not gonna say, if we're not going to say what
you've written, I'll call you out fair enough.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
So a few rumors are discussed here amongst this small
group of remaining fireflies, and they share that they don't
believe the rumor mill that states an immune girl and
a supposed cure being the reason for what happened to
their comrades, their family, their friends. And then from there,

(23:07):
a man named Isaac is mentioned with a location in
Seattle that will likely take them in. Yeah, And we're
introduced to a young girl here named Abby, and she
begins to talk about this determination to find Joel. And
there is absolutely a feral girl glint in this girl's eyes,
and she talks of fairness here.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
And now I'm gonna soapbox a little bit. I'm gonna do.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
That's what the show does. We just soapbox. I just soapbox.
So nothing in life is fair. Ever, in post apocalyptic
Last of Us or real world life that you and
I are currently living in, there is no fairness. It
does not exist because the only time you ever talk

(23:53):
about fairness is when something is not fair to you.
No one's like that's fair, that's that's that's totally fair
because it benefited them. Why would they Why would they
call that out? Like from I know, we joke around
and say fair enough.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
And blah blah blah, everything is Yes, I agree. I
think people only complain when something is wrong.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
That's what I'm saying. Yeah, okay, that's the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
maybe I just didn't sell sell it. No, I get it,
I get it. That's just a it's just a not
even at and not even at fairness. Like we only
review things when we're like, well, well other than Star
Wars fan O eight O seven, but we're generally when
we're reviewing.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Like who's a piece of ship? When I got it?
I really can't stand that about why I tend to
ignore the five stars, I tend to ignore the one stars,
and when I'm shopping on Amazon, show me the fours
and threes. There's got to be something wrong with this thing.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, Which is funny because our podcast is currently sitting
on Apple Podcasts at four point nine.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
It's a perfect score.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
No, we have one two star review and one three
star review, and I'm like, I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
I'm going to work my ass off to convert those people.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
So I hope whatever they said either way, the fairness
conversation here kind of gave me. Gave me a little
bit of a pause, and I wanted to talk about
it because Abby is young enough to put together that
she was born after the fact, sure, and to think
that there is a concept of fairness in this world

(25:29):
was a funny choice of dialogue for me.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Funny in the not haha way, but in the that
seems so you know me, I'm always going to try
to bring it back to something that I that I love, right, Sure.
I'm reminded of Harvey Dent from The Dark Knight, where
he talks about fairness as well fair yeah, and he's like,
it's the toss of a coin. Sure, it's the same
shot that I got. It's just chance, right, it's chance.

(25:55):
And so that's kind of an interesting right, It's like
wrong place, wrong time, right place, right.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Time, And that's a bigger conversation about fate.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Then I don't want to get I don't know. I mean,
we're not only have five hours to record this podcast,
and then if we start getting in all this heady stuff,
that's what we do fair enough. Yeah, it is also
the it is also the what a young girl, teenage

(26:25):
girl is formulating. So we just reduce these things to
the concepts of fairness, like because you don't have a
greater grasp of and especially in the post apocalypse where
like they're not going to like grade school, high school, college,
they're not learning about like logical fallacies or anything. So
it's just like it's fair or it's not you know.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
So yeah, but I yeah, I understand what you're saying.
But wouldn't the fact that they don't have that typical
education system in place show you that nothing is fair.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
You don't know what you don't know, they didn't know it.
It's not Again, these are kids that were born into this,
so it's not like they it's not like Joel where
it was like I had X Yeah, now I don't.
So there's this generation that's older that has been like
we knew the before times. Now we know they can
be a little bit more like, well, it's not really fair. Yes,

(27:24):
I guess that's my point.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, Yeah, it was just and when you're talking about
killing fairness is stupid too.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
It's like, this is horrible.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
I can't believe this has And I understand she was
probably just inundated with grief, right, and we say, yeah,
we say what we say, and it is what it is.
And if I'm getting personal, I absolutely had those conversations
in my brain. When my dad got sick with cancer,
I was like, this sucks, Like why him?

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, what did he do? Why is this his lot?

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Like this isn't fair that I'm in my mid thirties
and I have to the rest of my life without
my dad, Like this is bullshit. So but I didn't
live in a world where this is happenstance.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
I mean, we live in.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
A world where murder exists, to be clear, but like
what but the post apocalyved killing is different? So anyway,
moving forward, God, we spent a lot of time on that,
all right, But the mission to find Joel and kill
Joel begins here in the aftermath of the Firefly massacre,
with all the remaining Fireflies agreeing to be a part
of this quest, all five. But they must regroup and

(28:35):
recalibrate first, as the information they have to go on
is far too thin, and they The other character that's
conversing here with Abby is a gentleman named Owen. Joel
Joe six feet tall, scar graying, and oh yeah, handsome,
Oh yeah yeah. So Abby says all of that, but

(28:55):
it's in response to Owen trying to basically say, if
we go after him right now on absolutely nothing, we're
gonna end up dead.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
So they take a beat. They have this conversation.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Abby kneels by a grave, places a firefly pendant over it,
and the scene concludes with Abby and the future plans
to kill Joel, and she says, when we kill him,
we kill him slowly. And she repeats this because Owen
basically is like the fuck and she doubles down as

(29:30):
she's kneeling with.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Tears in her eyes, and that is psychotic.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
We talked a lot about grief and anger, and the
first part for me with loss was anger. It wasn't
sadness necessarily, it was I can't fucking believe this happened,

(29:58):
and I can't anything to change it.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
So it's that anger not necessarily at the event. You
are mad at the event.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Whatever happened to someone you loved that caused you to
lose them forever. You're mad at that, but then you're
mad at yourself because you couldn't do anything right. And
that's I would probably say the deeper origin of what's
fueling this psychosis of hers right now. And I'm I

(30:27):
don't like it obviously because Dooel is just my number
one everything, but Kaitlyn Deaver, who plays Abby in this
very short scene, gave it her all.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
She's great and I'm not surprised because I have seen
Kaitlyn Deaver. We discussed this too.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
I think I've only seen her in Unbelievable and that
was so hard hitting and so impactful, and she's an
incredible actor and she was my choice for Ellie originally.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
So it's to.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
See her in this role and what this character will
or will not do in the future.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, which remains to be seen. Yeah, I mean a
lot of again right out of the gate. Yeah, here's
a domino and it's just placed right here, and I
think narratively that's how it should be.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
I truly believe that I can't go into that more
because we don't have more information, but I think starting
off the episode with the lie, then followed up with
the aftermath, the visual aftermath of what Joel did and
then explaining the motivations from the get go is the
smartest way to tell a story.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
It's we set up a clear antagonist other than you know,
obviously the creatures that are, you know, just out there.
But again, once we have established that we have that
we now just live among these things, we establish ways
to very efficiently route them. Sure, now we need a
new Now, what's the you know, it's the Walking Dead,

(32:08):
it's any zombie thing like you know, it's people. People
are dangerous. Now, people have always been dangerous, but they're
especially dangerous when there are no consequences. Yeah, so there
you go.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
And I'm eager to this might be the one time,
this or the one instance that I'm curious to know
people's thoughts on this character. Initially, people who have not
played the games specifically, and I've seen some murmurations and
I won't repeat them because I can't remember the names,
to be perfectly honest, that were sent to me against
my will, because again I'm trying to hide my head

(32:40):
in the sand about all this. But people are already
nervous and on edge, and I think that also helps
to continue the undercurrents that will run throughout this season
that are set up in this episode.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
I'm right there, I say nothing. I'm waiting for them
to take me wherever this journey goes. Sure, that's what
I'm saying. That's what I'm saying again, and Craig, we trust.
Let's go. Yeah, let's talk about life in Jackson.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
Though, well, the credits rolled and they don't appear to
have changed.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Oh, it's important to just note these things we do. Yeah, not,
you're like a Game of Thrones or even I'm trying
to think of other really high end prestige Westworld, all
these high end HBO Max type shows that have a sequence,
not just a you know, it's relevant to location. Right, Yeah,
I'm thinking like Righteous Gemstones is a show we watch,

(33:32):
But that's just that's the same every season, and it's
only about ten seconds long. It's just basically a stinger. Yes,
shows that have the longer intro sequence. This one is
in that vein of unchanged. I think, I don't think
anything's changed. It looks it looks identical. We could do
a shot for shop but sure, yeah, it's fine. But

(33:53):
then after that we're doing some life in Jackson and stuff.
Here we go because the title card says five years later.
So love good time jump. Let's go. Let me see
these characters. Now. Ellie is in a barn and she
is fighting intensely with a much larger man. This dude
is ginormous. Yeah he is.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Yeah, and Bella actually received training in martial arts, oh
leading up to this season in particular, which I saw
a little behind the scenes, okay, over the last six
months or so, and I really appreciate the extra work
and the effort to give Ellie an edge with hand
to hand combat because Ellie's little, sure, and the enemies

(34:37):
or again, I'm five foot one, so when I put
myself in that in her shoes, I'm like, well, how
can I compensate for this training?

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Sure, she was doing like some It was some pretty cool.
It was like hand to hand combat, but it was
like grappling and wrestling, Like when you have an opponent
that is much larger than you, your only opportunity to
get the upper hand is to get them to the ground. Yes,
like when you have it, they call it that's mma.
Like the ground game is what it's all about. When
this dude's like four hundred pounds and you're like one

(35:06):
eighty soaken wet, You're like, I got to get this
dude on the ground. Yeah, on the tost that's it.
So that's what it's exactly what this was. It was
pretty cool. Ellie eventually gets the upper hand on this
guy and he taps out or attempts to tap out, doesn't,
she doesn't stop. But Jesse, we meet this character. Jesse
stops Ellie from going too far. She's already won. And

(35:27):
it was like this thigh choker arm bend situation. She
got him, she got his ass. So it was pretty good.
We get hints of Joel and Ellie's relationship. Ellie is
irritated her male opponent pulled his punches and that was
a result of an order from Joel not to go
too far. Otherwise they got to answer to him. And

(35:48):
so that's kind of a it's kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Yeah, And this is the beginning of our assessment of Ellie,
specifically in her behaviors and what is going on just
beneath the surface with this character. And it will we
will be talking about this and potentially a little repetitive
throughout the episode, but it's important because we are showed

(36:11):
time and time again examples of what's happening, and I'm
not going to skip over any of them. So the
fact that Ellie would take would rather take a full
force punch to the face from a full grown, large man,
large man versus adhere to the guidelines that her father

(36:34):
figure put forth to keep her safe is interesting.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Raging against the machine, you know. Let's I'll say this,
it's a theory that I have, we can we'll revisit
it in numerous times about this episode. I think, think
of Ellie right now engaged in violence, right that does
not feeze her, actually phases her. Is the protection of

(37:04):
this person from her life Joel. Yeah, And so her
wires are set up in such a way where she
is conflating protection with violence, like as an act of aggression.
Getting punched in the face is not aggression, that's just life. Yeah,
telling someone to pull their punches is like, how dare

(37:26):
you do this to me? And so I sit with that.
I think, just keep well, let's just keep that in
mind because there are numerous other instances of that happening
in this episode. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, it is wild.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
And even she glances back before she leaves the barn
and says don't pull punches. And this, paired with what
you just said, is very ominous for the overarching story
of the Last of Us and the development and evolution
of Ellie's character.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Did I say evolution or what did I say? Evolution?

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Did I say, I don't know. Maybe it's important. I
just like blacked out talking to you. I mean, it's
important to the evolution of the character of Ellie even
from season one. Now, going back to season one, she
certainly had violent tendencies and concerning moments of expressions and

(38:22):
behaviors that were questionable that can potentially be explained away
by her having the infection a part of her body maybe,
but it's so enhanced and I think blown out of
proportion because of what's happening between Joel and her in

(38:44):
this episode. That authority, his authority, specifically the protection that
he's trying to give her, is sending her over and
it's a trigger.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
It's one hundred percent trigger for her right now. So yeah,
and here's the funny thing also, is that now she
has put this large gentleman in a position where he
has to choose between do I make Ellie mad or
do I make Joel mad? And that seems like a

(39:18):
no win situation for him. Yeah, so just worth noting that.
Poor guy. He's like, I'm just the big glof. I
just fight people. I'm just the spar and don't put
me in the middle of your ship. Sure. Here's where
we also see the moth and fern tattoo for the
first time. So, you know, eagle eyed viewers will note

(39:41):
that jack has this tattoo if you follow her on
Instagram or anything like that. That's the tattoos had it
for a few years now. Yeah, it'll be well, you know,
I think that'll play a larger role. It may just
I mean, you know, we'll see, we'll see how it goes.
But we learned there's a dance tonight and ute unquote
the thing mentioned because it's New Year's Eve. After leaving

(40:04):
the barn, we are greeted by kind of a bird's
eye view of Jackson and it's awesome. Yeah, it's such
a cool, like, this place is enormous, right. We get
some local establishments in the like kind of immediate area.
You can see some signs for Titan Mountaineering, real Estate, Jackson,
Jackson Jaction, and Casey Creek Square. Let's go with Casey

(40:28):
Creek poly c a cee Casey Creek is what I'm
going to go with.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, it was tough to see, Like whenever I would pause,
it would just distort the image and I'm like, god.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Damn, yeah, goddamn motion blur. Yeah. As a as a
quick aside, this is a much larger This is like
much larger than the game.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
This is a yeah, this is like significantly larger than
the game.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
This is a small city that was you know, I
would categorize it as a town, maybe a hamlet if
you will. From here, we see and hear the sound
of construction taking place. We see a smashed sewer pipe,
broken open, and within it's you know, it's like a
clay pipe. I think it looks like to me at least,
but inside it's just like roots and like garbage. It's terrible.

(41:15):
It's completely overrun, and it's it's worth noting.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
It's worth noting we dove into this, I think a
little bit too long yesterday. But I think it's curious
to me that a lot like sewer pipes or lines,
or whether they're clay or metal, rusted steel, whatever, sure
that they would still be in this pore of shape

(41:42):
after this settlement has been around as long as it has,
presumably between ten to twenty years.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
And I know that there are two options here.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
One they just have never gotten to this particular line
because it's close to the wall.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
We sell the wall.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah, it's close to the outskirts of this town of Jackson.
Or option two, which is way more concerning. There was
a stoppage in this line discovered and they broke it
open and found that, and then it's like, how long
has this growth been here that we either haven't noticed
or maybe it's been since the season, And then that's

(42:22):
even more concerning.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
How fast it grew? Yeah, I mean either one. Either
one is either one. It's curious, that's all. I'm just saying.
It's maybe troubling. Who knows. Yes, I mean by the
end of the episode, it's pretty damn troubling. And it is.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
I mean, it's a Chekhov's gun. Because there was a
reason why we were introduced to that pipe, right, it
will play a role. I have no idea what that role.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
That pipe is top build on the next episode, Yeah,
just pipepiperson. Sure.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
So now we're going to continue here with Joel and Dina.
So Joel is sitting at a table and he's fixing
something and it turns out to be a breaker that
has blown. He takes a moment here and kind of
squeezes his right hand several times. It's apparently giving him trouble.
And I'm going to throw this back to season one,

(43:17):
particularly season one episode one, when he beats the Federal
soldier to death at the end of that episode.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Classic moment, and.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
There's an assumption there that he has some sort of
hairline fracture, but he's on the road, so there is
no really, not really a chance to heal that properly.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
And now it's five years in the future.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
He's in his early sixties and that shit is undoubtedly
bothering him. And I feel like that's going to play
a role here in this season in some way. It's
either going to create some sort of drag for him
to grab a weapon, or it's going to freeze up
because of the weather.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Like there's so.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Many different and I don't know anything, so I'm this
is just us spitballing speculation. How wear and tear on
the human body and injuries that do not heal properly
can come back and bite you.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
In the ass, and it's just worth noting again, it's
very clearly shown. Yes, and so you want to notice
these somewhat tiny things that are happening. But they definitely
linger on him acting out this motion with his hand,
and it happens later in the episode too. There's another

(44:30):
moment where he's doing that same motion with his hands.
So they're not like coming out, he's not coming out
and being like, oh my hand, but it's just pick
up on these little body cues.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Be aware that this is something. Yeah, it's important. There's
quite a few of these instances throughout this show. It's
a very it's the episode one certainly is a foundation.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
They're operating on like five levels. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
So at this moment, Joel addresses someone as kiddo and
we find out that it's Dina, not Ellie. What is
different and that's okay, But she's delivering a report to
him that things aren't going so well with the building
and the foreman is not doing his job. And Andrew
and I kind of deduced that she's sassing Joel and

(45:19):
he is probably the foreman in this situation.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
He's not doing his job.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
He's inside the house working on some sort of electrical breaker.
Not that that's not important, but but it seems like
he should be outside dealing with the pipe.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
It's not that it's not the job he was hired for.
He's like, I have to notice these breakers over here.
We're going bad.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
But if you look at the house around him, it's
in terrible condition. There's space heating, space heaters on the floor,
the walls are the plaster's broken through, even the wood
is broken through. There's holes here and there, Like, it's
just it's certainly a house that's under construction fix whatever.
His crew, like, how many people are part of his crew?

(46:00):
This is where they are at. They're dealing with this
house and these popes and whatever. But I just I
enjoyed the sass a little bit there. We could be wrong,
he might not be the foreman, but it seems to
fit really well. Yeah, but she shows interest asterisk, She
shows interest in what Joel's doing here and asks for
him to teach her. And she sits down across from him,

(46:22):
and she appears eager, but we learn pretty quickly that
this is just a ruse, and she gets right to
the issue and asks why Ellie is mad at him,
and we learn that this is a recent development, but
everyone is pretty much pretty much clued in that there
is something going on, but nobody knows what it is.

(46:43):
And then Joel goes in a little bit deeper here
with his role in Ellie's life being quote whatever he is, which,
of course we have agreed upon the father figure role
for him, and I've absolutely you know he feels the
same way, but he goes so far as to bring
Sarah into this conversation here with Dina, and I want

(47:04):
to pause and talk about how different this Joel is
and that's okay, and that's all I'm going to say.
I'm not going to talk about game Joel, but I'm
just going to say that this Joel is surprising me
in a lot of ways, and I don't necessarily like
them just to be completely transparent. Wow, because he rarely

(47:25):
spoke of his daughter ever since her passing, not to
his brother, not to Ellie. I mean we're talking minimal mention,
and yet with Dina he openly mentions his daughter. Yeah,
and not only that, but how he didn't get the

(47:47):
chance to be a father long enough to see his
daughter grow up and experience the different phases of her
life from being a teenager to being a young woman
to mid twenties to an adult, like an actual adulthood.
And and that's just an interesting take on his characters.

(48:10):
He and I'm gonna say this, but I don't want
it to be misconstrued.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Oh boy, here we go.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
He's softer. I get you know, well, he's too I
think he's too soft Joel Is. He had softness to
him in moments, okay, but he was never this approachable,
wear his heart on his sleeve, tell you what's going

(48:38):
on without you even asking person. And that's part of
the reason why it made it meant so much. And
I'm talking about season one Joel here too, like not
this is yeah, this is certainly Game Dool bleeding in
a little bit. And even season one was a softer
version of game Joel, but we've moved past that. But

(49:00):
he was very reticent, he was very hesitant, he was
stand offish. He made Ellie feel like fucking cargo like.
He made his intentions clear. And I know it's five
years later, and people get comfortable and they get complacent,
and they get used to each other and used to
their life and bringing people into the fold and so
on and so forth. But this felt like a stretch

(49:22):
too far from me for his character.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Okay, what I'm hearing is you like a hard Joel. Yeah, yeah,
that's what That's my key takeaway from everything you just said.
You like Joel hard, like rock hard, Jesus Christ. Yes.
How many times I just say, yeah, great? I just
wanted that on the record. Everybody's heard it. It's here,

(49:45):
it's recorded for posterity. We didn't even go there last night. No,
I just wanted to make sure that that was on
the record. It just feels I'll counter, I'll counter with
one potential explanation for this and just say that it
is Dina and it's this is not Joel. This is

(50:10):
not Joel to everybody. You know what I'm saying. We
have an example later in this episode where him just
standing up frightens someone, And so I think a lot
of people don't consider Joel to be approachable, soft or approachable,
or I think people are like pretty scared of this dude. Yeah,

(50:30):
would you talk about that a lot?

Speaker 3 (50:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Well, and so that is, you know, if we keep
the focus on Dina and her role with literally everybody
else in this episode, disarmed me. I think it come,
I think it comes into a clearer focus. It might
just be this character sure, not a character trait of Joel,

(50:54):
you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Yes, and I can respect that and understand that, but
for episode one, sure, right out of the gate to
have this rapport with a brand new character, and even
at this point, if you're going into this sight unseen,
this would be jarring for someone. And that's a questionable

(51:19):
directive because if you don't know that Ellie has a
thing for Dina, which people who haven't played the games
wouldn't have known that at this point and not yet,
but not yet. That's that's my point here. I'm saying
that this feels out of place. But then when you

(51:40):
look at the whole episode and you see the importance
of Dina in Ellie's life, they.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Clear I think they clear it up. They do.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
They bring it around in a sense, but not enough
for me that it's like because and again I've seen
the you know Joe was loving on you know, his
daughter in law and things like that, or you know, joke,
just jokes like that. I'm not spoiling anything at all.
It's literally just people spouting shit on the internet. But

(52:08):
it caught me off guard, that's all, for him to
be so cavalier about the most devastating thing that had
ever happened to him, that shaped fully who he was
in season one.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Okay, so that's all. But but moving forward here, when
he does his like what did I do? Like?

Speaker 1 (52:25):
It was so rich that even for me, the number
one fucking dol fan, Sure, I.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Was like, really, Joel, what did I do? Well? It's
a moment of it's denial. It's denial. Yes, denial is
not just a river in Egypt. Joel came, he went there.
I went right there with the pun I did I did?

Speaker 1 (52:48):
Because it's revealed after this moment that Joel is in therapy,
because he makes a comment about how he can't be
responsible for other people's emotions, and this clues Dina in
and she calls him on it, and that also is
an interesting development, but we will talk more about later, sure,
And there is no further conversation about this, and he

(53:11):
even goes so far as to ask her to keep
it their secret as she's leaving to get back to work.
So now not only is Joel sharing something that he
never shared with anyone in talking about his daughter Sarah

(53:34):
and his relationship with Ellie, being the father figure and
never having a chance to see one of his children
grow and now being pushed away by the other one
and feeling a certain way about that.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
As we all would. Yeah, of course, of course.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
But now Dina is keeping a secret for him. It's
an odd direction right off the bat. This is a
weird This was a weird inner action for me, and
very out of the character for who Joel is presented
to us as. And we'll talk more about it, but

(54:11):
that's that was the introduction, and they're first scene together,
and I had.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Some questions that just had to get that out there
so everybody knows.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah, But we move from here to Ellie and Tommy
and she is sniper training with Tommy and there are
some clickers and runners on the mountain side that she well,
the one she got a fucking nasty headshot on, and
that was great.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
It was awesome. It was awesome.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
It was like one and then the second one not
so great, but still dropped its ask.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Definitely incapacitated. It's definitely not as much of a threat. No,
it ain't running anywhere.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
But they're showing Ellie here between the fighting in the
beginning of the episode and now the sniper training, they're
giving Ellie these different skill sets, and we compared it
to leveling up a character. Yeah, and that's what's happening
to her in real time, in real world application. And

(55:09):
it's very good to see because to just have her
with the same inexperience from when she was fourteen to
nineteen and show no initiative, right, would be dumb. I mean,
it would just be literally ludicrous to believe.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
That this is the opposite of a training montage. It's
not like somebody goes from zero to hero in like
a week or something like that. This is like, clearly,
this is like a recurring thing that she's doing this
like the Barn fight club in the morning, then I
do sniper training in the before lunch, then you know whatever,
whatever the day in the life of a murderer, you know,

(55:45):
damn a murderer, like a like a clicker murderer. Sure,
So that's what I mean is just like, you know,
it's kind of cool. It's kind of cool.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
It is cool, it is cool, and it fits it
fits the development really well. Yeah, complains though once Tommy
reveals that she is on a change of assignment. She
is supposed to do Gatewatch apparently, and that sucks according
to her, because it's not thrilling enough. She needs the patrol,

(56:14):
she needs the thrill. She needs the chase, I guess,
and she decides to act out and holler on about
her immunity here, which stresses Tommy out to high heaven.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
We don't want to stress Tommy out. No, we do
not come. And I could not stand this scene.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
This was probably my least favorite scene in the entire
episode because it's so fucking childish and immature and the
acting is terrible. Okay, And I understand they're trying to
sell us on a teenage girl, but she's nineteen. She's
not fourteen anymore. And this is nineteen in a post
apocalyptic world, not our regular, everyday world. And if our

(56:57):
child at sixteen did that shit now in this life,
I would be like, what the fuck.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Are you doing? Wrap it up? Real cringe bruh. Yeah,
but no gap. But I just well, I didn't like it.
To push back a little bit. I think it might
show a little bit of a lack of emotional intelligence.
I would go with that. When you were making up

(57:23):
for it with these other more useful in the Apocalypse skills,
but not necessarily great for peopling. You know what I'm saying.
She can like punch it, she could like take out
a dude that's three times her size, and she can
snipe a clicker from however many yards, But when it
comes to just not getting her way, throw like a

(57:46):
little temper tantrum. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. So
it's the it's a weird like arrested development thing where
it's it's like she got stuck at the mentality of
a sixteen year old but then and just continued to
grow an age but still like, you know, I don't know,
it's kind of interesting. Yeah, I mean I agree, I

(58:08):
agree with you. I don't agree with necessarily about the
acting part, but I agree. I was like, Wow, this
is like really really truurlish. Yeah, it really was.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
And to jump ahead to the end of the episode
when there was the interviews with the actors and such,
Bella Ramsey sits down and talks about how Ellie has
matured so much and she's on the you know, she's
much she's five years older now, so the maturity is
much more, is much greater and blah blah blah, and

(58:37):
like it was the maturity in the fucking room with us,
because I'm like, if you are that unawares, yeah, that
this character is not. And again, you and I are
in our fucking forties. So how we view teenagers versus
how Bella Ramsey views because I think they're early twenties. Now,

(58:57):
sure I don't, I don't know how old they are.
But if I put myself back in the shoes of
a twenty year old who was just previously a literal
teenager at nineteen, would I look back at those years
and just be.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
Like, oh, I'm so much more mature now. Probably, yeah,
probably twenty one for the record, twenty one exactly. So.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
But they filmed this in February of twenty twenty four,
so a year ago, so they were twenty, yeah, and
right fresh out of the teenage years.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
It's basically the age that Ellie. Ellie is like, that's
what is trying to be portrayed. You know, there's ayeh
to one and I'm just changed.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
I didn't like that. I get the conversation. I was like,
there is no maturity with this character. It's stunted growth.
She's acting out in a tantrum. She's stomping around because
she's not getting her way. And again, if we're looking
at the protection comes a trigger for her. Tommy is
Joel's brother, Like, that's the same DNA talking to her.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Yeah, well, and we learned that this, you know, the
impetus behind this gate assignment ultimately is Joel. Yes. And
so here is an instance again where once she discovered
I think once she discovers that is when she well,
she was pulling the immune shit before that, okay, but
then when we find out that it's Joel, it's even

(01:00:29):
then then she pulls the card of like you know, well,
we might get into it a little bit, but it's
it's just another It's just another instance of someone's trying
to help or protect in a very roundabout on the out.
It's not like he goes to her and says, hey,
don't do this, don't do this. It's like I'm gonna

(01:00:50):
tell my brother.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Everything is just passive in this episodere. No one desper
down the lane.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
No one's fucking talking to anyone, and that if we
just had a conversation, most movies could be solved, if
we just had a conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
And here's the thing that we didn't I it just
popped into my brain. One of the biggest tropes. There's
this communication trope that's been like a thing lately, and
I see it talked about quite a bit on like
book talk and Bookstagram and all that shit, and people
fucking hate.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
It because it's like, if you just had.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
The conversation with the person that is giving you a headache,
none of these.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Events would unfold.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
I get it, and it is to this whole episode,
and that's kind of a big minus for me now
that I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Thinking about it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
The whole episode is predicated on miscommunication.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
None of this and a lot of what we could
assume is going to happen would happen if people just
fucking talk to each other. Yeah, which is even funnier
because they introduced therapy, which we'll talk about shortly, but
clearly that's a fucking waste of time because nobody's doing
anything about it. Maybe we don't know so all right,

(01:02:09):
So continuing they go back and forth, Tommy and Ellie
go back and forth about Joel here and again. Joel
is the hot topic in this episode between Abby and
her group, Ellie and Jesse, Dina and Joel too to
an extent, and now Tommy and Ellie. Everybody's talking about Joel.
Everyone loves Joel, everyone hates Joel.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
And Joel's over there talking his shit too, Like, just
talk to each other. I don't know what to say,
don't have time for this, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
But Tommy says, basically, they're so similar, they're the same
damn person. About Ellie and Joel, and Ellie immediately she's clever.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
So we might complain about her lack.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
Of maturity or this, that or the other, but Ellie
is incredibly clever, and she leverages Tommy's declaration that her
and Joel are the same person to get her way,
basically saying, if Joel and I are the same person,
then you know, I'm not going to do X y Z.

(01:03:09):
I'm going to do what I want to do, which
is not the gate assignment. I want the Alpine run.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
And Tommy gives in to the petulant child and she
gets her assignment and everything as well. There we go.
We did it. It's annoying. It's annoying, but again, we
gotta there. We got to start somewhere. If we don't
start at a place where we don't. You know, you

(01:03:35):
can't like the character the entire time. Is there any
is there any instance of like? I like this character
from the beginning to the end. Me Joel in the games, Okay,
in movies or a television show, think about Walter Man
of Steel, talk about Walter White Man Man is incorruptible.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Clark Kent doesn't count. It does give me my.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Symbol of American hope and dreams. All right, you want
to bring Breaking Bad into this? I support.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
I was all in on Walter White the whole time
until the very the last season, I was like, God,
damn it, I think I need to be part.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Of the problem. Kill kill again. It was one hundred
part of one hundred percent. He was okay. Maybe he's okay.
He's doing it because he's trying to take care of
his family. He just wants to take care of his family. Yeah,
that plot changed pretty quick. Oh boy, oh boy. Spoilers
from Breaking Bad. I guess I would have thought, let's
go back to Jackson. We get a shot of some

(01:04:27):
refugees arriving. It's a trailer. They're on a hay ride.
It's a beautiful hay ride. We cut to an office.
Maria and Joel are in there. They're conversing about the
bloat of Jackson. There's too many people, too little time
to build and expand we get that funny little we
got this knob, that comment, we get this knob and
we just turn it the construction knob or whatever is

(01:04:49):
pretty funny. Paul's Yeah, wasn't Jackson.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
Known by locals surrounding the outskirts of Jackson?

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Yeah? People?

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
Wasn't it said that people who go there don't come back?

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
That's right?

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
So there was a lot of fear and mystery shrouding
this place in season one, But now Jackson's like the
hot place to be. Yeah, in twenty twenty eight, almost
twenty twenty nine. Sure is what changed there?

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
I'll tell you. I'll tell you. It's a local legend. Sure,
that's what it is. It's a tall tail. Sure you
know that, right? What was that guy? I can't remember.
I never remember that. We got youa It never happened,
It never happened. You ever see that meme? You know?
You know, I mean you've seen that meme, but that
you know the guy? What was it? Unsolved mysteries? I
don't even know what that heped that wasn't true. Yeah,
we made it up, you know, Like it's just just

(01:05:43):
play that meme. Literally drop it into the episode right
here if you can. It never happened, just a couple

(01:06:11):
seconds of it. It's really really funny. I think the
situation was is that the people of Jackson set up
this story that got spread where it's like people, it's haunted,
they're ghosts, you'll get killed. It's whatever. Tend to keep
away the people that they don't want coming there, Like

(01:06:34):
you don't want to be raided, you don't want to
have you know. So if you just if you're like,
we heard about this place called Jackson, seems like they
got it pretty sweet over there, then you get all
these narrow dwells trying to show up to get their peace.
But if you hear about this place called Jackson and
no one has ever come back, it's like, well, maybe

(01:06:54):
we'll just try Utah. We'll just maybe go back to Utah, whatever,
going north to Canada. I think that's I feel pretty
confident that that was the situation. And again we saw
in season one when you got close there are patrols.
It was very scary. For a second there with Ellie

(01:07:15):
and Joel. Yeah, before Tommy realized who it was, right, Yeah,
and I think that was the case. Like, I don't
think they're going out there to kill people, but if
someone gets a little close, they send out this party
that's very intimidating and they're like, turn around, we don't
want you here unless they make a determination that it's like, oh,
it's a family or something like that. But for the

(01:07:36):
most part, that seems like the play. Yeah, all right,
I'll buy that for an dollar. We made it up.
It never happened.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
But so keeping with the conversation of Jackson bloating and
being overrun by too many people, when you deal with
semantics and population numbers, and you look at the size
of Jackson from that initial that we were agreeted with
earlier on in the episode, wouldn't you assume, and maybe

(01:08:05):
that this is just making an ass out of you
and me, Wait a minute, but wouldn't you assume that
with the level of people in Jackson, that the expansion
and maintenance would be properly handled more than it currently is.

(01:08:25):
And we're again, we're talking about people who have now
lived twenty five years into this post apocalyptic world. They
have to have some sort of skill set that they're
bringing to the table. Otherwise they would have died off
because of Darwinism.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Yeah, no, I agree. I I don't know what the
situation is in terms of how long integration takes into
the community, like protocols and such. Yeah, like whatever that is.
I'm sure everyone's checked by a doctor, maybe they go
see maybe they get therapy for a little bit to
make sure that they're not an insane person. That's kind
of what that's kind of my feeling about why Gail

(01:09:03):
would be important in this world. It's like, we want
to make sure that nobody we let in is completely unhinged. Yeah, right, sure,
and clearly, as we'll talk about soon, she's like a
very good judge of character.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
So great, And then what happened We didn't talk about this.
What happens if someone arrives and they seem fine, they
get checked out, they're not infected, they're not sick, they're
not bringing lice and everything else to the fucking towns
like whatever, any kind of diseases and shit, like they're

(01:09:36):
on the up and up, okay, and then something happens,
violence breaks out and somebody is killed. Do you think
there's some sort of like holding cell or jail or
is it just death?

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
There's probably some like old recycled saloon set, you know,
I'm thinking like the Old West or something like that,
Like you're in there. Yeah, so tossed in the drunk tank. Yeah.
But get back to what you were saying, is I
think everybody that comes in, aside from potential children and
like the elderly. And again with David, we saw that

(01:10:10):
there were elderly, there was somebody that was a little
bit older. At least on the shot of the wagon
coming into town, there was at least one kid on
that wagon. Maybe more. I didn't I wasn't looking that closely.
I think probably everybody has a skill, but building may
not be part of that, or they need to be
trained up because you can't just like pick up a hammer.
We're framing a house. It's like nope, that's not how

(01:10:34):
that works. So there's not quite time for apprenticeships either, right.
So there might be people that are like farmers. There
might be people that are cooks or bakers or like
somebody like it was like, oh I could I make bread?
I know how I like up in my head. I
have the recipe for bread, I can make it. I
can get all that you give me the ingredients, and
I'm right, there's people that do all that kind of stuff, right, armor. Yeah,

(01:10:56):
the Greeves are important in the post apocalypse. And so
that's what I think is like there's there's the elderly,
and then there's children, and so they're kind of maybe
an elderly person could you know, work at the day
gat work in some sort of service, right, But then
there are there's everybody else who might already have a skill,
and you know, it might not be construction. So they're

(01:11:19):
just we just have this lack, just this lack of
either really or yeah, or people that can just physically
do the work right. It's it's strenuous. Not everybody even
now is cut out to do construction. Some people just
be like fall over. Sure, it is my dream to
buy like a rundown. It's my dream to be a

(01:11:40):
construction yeah, but it's.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
My dream to buy a rundown abandoned home and then
gut it and spend like, you know, two hundred thousand
dollars fixing it up and going through the whole process
and learning how to do everything Okay, that's my dream though,
and that is that's.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
My dream, she says, it's one of my dreams. I
have a lot of them. So anyway, continue, So we
have the protocols, the inspections, the integration, we talked about
all that, you know, everything. We cut to a young
boy who's been playing with toys in the room with
Tommy and Maria with with no Tommy and Maria. He's
been playing with toys and we see that that's Tommy

(01:12:17):
and Maria's son, name unknown. He joins Joel and we
learn a little bit of how they present the world
to this child, which is interesting. We then go onto
the difficult topic of refugee refugees and what's right for
both existing and suffering folk. And it goes back and
forth between Joel and Maria this like they're both making

(01:12:39):
excellent points. I would say it's a situation where neither
one is wrong. There it's a little Joel is I
would say, excuse a little more callous, Maria e skews
a little bit more understanding, but again neither are wrong.
Like at some point there has to be a determination
made to talk about this.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
Because I'm reading a book called A Night to Remember
by Walter Lord, which is about the sinking of the Titanic. Yeah,
and it's the last Night that it goes very in
great depth and the part that I'm I'm almost on
the book, and it's talking about the dynamic of the
lifeboats and the passengers that were saved, and it's almost

(01:13:23):
like Kismet timing where I'm at in that book versus
what we're talking about right now. Because again, and I'm
not going to go so deep into Titanic factual or
lure this that or the other, but those boats there
were never go There were never enough boats to take
care of all the passengers for everyone to survive. Everyone

(01:13:43):
knows that. However, the boats that they did have were
barely full, and only one of them went back to
the fifteen hundred people that went into the water.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
Just like the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Exactly like the movie, but unlike the movie, this goes
into very great detail of what people in those boats
said to each other, and a lot of it echoes Joel,
because they're like, there was one boat with twelve people
that could have held forty five. It's spacious, and they

(01:14:16):
were like, we need to go back, like there was
that one person that's like, do you not hear like
there are screamed your loved ones are literally fucking dying
and freezing to death. We need to go back and
there would be a higher up person because remember the
classiest society was enormous.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
Yeah, back then in the ocean you go, and they
basically said that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
They were like, if you try to take this boat,
you are getting tossed in the water.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
I'll take care of us with me. Yes, that's what
I'll do.

Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
And there, but they just kept saying, they were like,
if we go over there, they will all swamp us
and all of us will die, so nobody will live.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
And I think that when you take that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
Very real situation that happened one hundred and thirteen years
ago and you apply that to the situation that we're
experiencing in this fictional television show, Yeah, there's absolutely basis
and grounds for both.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
But there has to be a happy medium.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
And what that is I don't know because we've never
been you know, knock on Wood presented with that situation
where it's like my life has been spared, but will
that change if I try to save other people? And
do I want to take that chance? Maria is more

(01:15:37):
willing to do that. But is that right? Is she caring?
Is she caring for her townsfolk?

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
The right way? The right way? It's interesting. She's the
boat that goes back, is what you're saying. But should she?
But should she? Who knows those boats should have went back?
That's all say. We should all be more Maria. But
I also agree with Joel. But I also agree with Joel. Yeah, sorry,
I understand. It's a real it's a real jolly's choice.

(01:16:06):
Tommy enters the office space, and instead of telling Joel
the truth when asked about the details of the sniping session,
he just lies. He was like, it was just me.
I was just out there just blowing off some steam,
shooting some infected you know, does Tuesday? Why the lie?

Speaker 1 (01:16:28):
Is this to protect Ellie or to avoid a concussive
blast from his brother?

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
I think it's probably just like it seems like everybody's
on eggshells around these two. Yeah, and it's probably easier
to just not bring the other one up, you know,
That's what it seems to me. Tommy just learned that
lesson right up. It's like, so he's good, He's gonna
be like, well, you know, what I'm removing myself from

(01:16:57):
this equation. I am just gonna say it was me
just out there having a great time, shooting, shooting infected.
That's it. Because when I talk about Ellie you get
all sad, and when I talk about Joel, she gets
all pissed. Yes, and I don't want to deal with either.

(01:17:18):
So it's self preservation in essence. Yeah, I think so, yeah,
more than anything else. I'm gonna be nitpicky here. Okay,
I'm ready.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
This is just a quick throwaway comment. We don't have
to dive into it. But why on God's green Earth
did Pedro take off his fucking glasses and put them
on so many times? He did this during the scene
with Dina when he was sitting at the table. Sure,
now he's doing it at the scene with Tommy and

(01:17:45):
Maria and his nephew. Just like the glasses off on
the table, pick him up, put them on, put him down,
pick him up, put them on, put him down. Pick
It was over and fucking over again.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
Oh, it's cinematic texture, is what it is. Was cinematically annoying.
I mean, hey, you know, when a character has a prop,
they're going to use the shit out of it. I guess, yeah,
all I get to work with. Here are these glasses, Well,
guess what I'm going to use these. I'm going to
use the shit out of these glasses.

Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
It was it was just it was annoying, and I'm
glad it stopped. After that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
That's okay, all right, I understand. Then he didn't. Then
they're like, you know what, let's just lose the glasses
for the rest of the show. The scene concludes with
Joel leaving and losing a firefight with his nephew. You know,
they they're doing the old finger guns situation, and just
something worth noting. I thought this was interesting. Joel says
off handedly as he's leaving, he's like, Okay, you don't

(01:18:38):
forget to shoot the monsters or something along those lines,
and his nephew begins shooting him right now. It's possible that,
in an offhanded way, he's just a child. He doesn't know,
he's just fun. He's just excited to go. But I
feel like historically this show always has like just one level,

(01:19:00):
maybe two levels, maybe three levels, maybe four levels deep
of subtexts, And so when Joel says shoot monsters, don't
forget to shoot the monsters whatever he says there, and
the child just responds by immediately blasting Joel, there's something there,
there is this might be you know for sure, So
there you go, There you go. Maria closes things out
by reinforcing her values and point of view by reminding

(01:19:23):
Joel that he was once a refugee, which is Marie wins, yeah,
I get the last word. Yeah, and Joel acknowledges that
though too so in his defense he gives like a nod,
like it's a knowing, like you know what he's like,
You're not wrong, that was us so but I said
what I said.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
Yeah, And again, Jackson might have been a completely different
community five years ago, with a lot thinner numbers compared
to now, So his and Ellie's coming to Jackson might
have been hugely beneficial, not only to just them and
their safety, but to the community as a whole, whereas
now maybe word has gotten around that it's a safer

(01:20:06):
community and a refuge for stowaways and such.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
So absolutely, yeah, absolutely So from here we are now
with Joel and he is in therapy.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
The answer just gave me a look, because I feel
like he knows what's coming when it comes to this conversation. No,
I'm speaking of therapy. This episode is brought to you
by Better Help, No, by better Gail, Better Gail. But
speaking of Gail, Gail's a brand new character on the show,
portrayed by none other than Catherine O'Hara, the Goat, the

(01:20:39):
goat level.

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
Yes, and we are introduced to Gail's home first and foremost.
And I just want to mention that it looks very
similar to Joel's house in the Last of Us Part too.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
The video game. The video game.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
Yes, Now, we haven't seen the inside of Joel's house
in the TV show yet, only the front porch and
the unattached.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
Garage, the detached garage.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
And I wonder why they chose to decorate Gail's home
and show us just enough detail of that before showing
us Joels. I don't know why I got hung up
on that, okay, but it was one of those things
where when he first walked in, my initial thought was, Oh,
Joel's doing therapy in his own house.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
No, that's not how therapy. No, you go to the
you go to the therapists. I think virtual therapy is
in your house or in a private space. Yeah, but
the therapist is also in their house. True, but it's
still therapy in home. I guess, yeah, I mean we're
we're really grasping. It's grasping at strass. Yeah. But yeah,
generally you go see a therapist, yeah somewhere. You never say, hey,

(01:21:46):
my therapist is coming to see me. Yeah, I'm going
with that. I'm going to see my therapist is the
common nomenclature. If I, if I had a therapist, I
would love for them to make a house call. Now.
The number one question I have for you, doc, do
you do outpatient outpatient calls?

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
Yeah? So you just never know. You just never know
how to be the first therapist that's traveling too. You
got to ask my whole course of life anyway. The
barter situation here, the payment of choice turns out to
be weed.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
Yea his poor weed, but still weed.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
And Joel presents this to Gail for their psychotherapist session together,
and Gail accepts this, even though she kind of slams
it a little bit as being like shitty or not enough,
but Joel makes the argument, it's the dead of winter.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Sure what am I in high school? I think it
was what she said, like stems and seeds or whatever.
Pretty funny. It is not quality, not quality material that
she's working with, but she accepts it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:46):
And we learned today because she initially opens after the
barter situation. She offers whiskey to Joel, and we learned
today is her birthday and she is sad, hence this
invitation to drink alcohol during their session, and she shares
that after forty one years, she's celebrating her first birthday
as a widow, which also coincidentally is bound to be

(01:23:09):
her first New Year's as a widow, and going into
a new year without her husband, which is a significant
event in someone's life when they experience something like this,
of course, so she's not operating, presumably on her best,
and yet her best is more than enough, as we
find out throughout this session. And Joel begins here and

(01:23:31):
presents his and Ellie's issues and talks about them being
relatively recent, and we learn that the shift between I'm
assuming everyday business with Joel and Ellie to this kind
of cold standoffish She ignores him, only sees them in passing.

(01:23:52):
Wanted to move out of the house, so he let
her move into the detached garage, which he regrets.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
If he sees her throughout.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
The day, he'll get like a Kurt nod or something
like that, it's very cold, not even that, not even that,
it's very.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
Yeah, it's very cold.

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
So this is I would say, within the last three
to six months, maybe if we're basing it off of
Joel's Woe is Me session timeline with Gail, and I
say that lovingly, sure, but I mean, hey, I say
that because he's wasting his time here essentially at the
end of it, and Gail calls him on that. But

(01:24:31):
for you and I, let's go back and talk about
a potential catalyst for this about face from Ellie and
some of the undertones that we've been talking about. Sure,
you and I know the reason, and I'm sure that
it is the same reason. It's the lie, the betrayal
that Ellie feels, but it's why so recent, why so

(01:24:55):
I need to get the fuck away from him now.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
I think it's probably based on a lot of the
things that we've seen through this episode, like there is
this there is this lie between them, and again they
open the episode with that, and so they're like, note
this down in your copy books. It'll be it'll come
up on a test later, right, But also throughout this
entire episode, we've seen this invisible hand of Joel trying

(01:25:23):
to guide Ellie's life, and I feel like that maybe
has just gotten more and more, or maybe she's just
reacting to it more. Maybe like when they first got
the Jackson, that was okay, yeah, and then you get
it a year old safe. Yeah, you get a year
older and a year older and a year older, and
there's still this person who feels responsible for you that

(01:25:46):
is saying like, oh, maybe just be on the gate
duty today, Or you don't need to go out and
learn how to snipe. That's let's let Tommy handle that.
He's the guy for that. Or you're sitting you're sitting
this now, you don't need to learn how to fight.
I'll fight for you. Yeah, I'll you know, I got that.
So it could be stifling and maybe it's just kind

(01:26:08):
of coming you ahead. But again we've had we have
multiple examples of just this is one day. This is
the same day, guys, we'll watch a lot. That's a
very eventful day. It's New Year's Eve. Okay, this is crazy,
but everything we watch happens in one day, and there
are three to five instances of Joel kind of steering

(01:26:31):
her life. So I completely understand her being like, hey man,
I understand her pushing back.

Speaker 1 (01:26:39):
Sure, but I don't the cutting off, like just cutting
off a limb is what it seems extreme? Yeah, I mean,
so that's when I'm asking specifically about a catalyst or
a potential abrupt shift. Is it all of these things
like death by a thousand knives or is it something

(01:27:00):
that we don't know about because we haven't seen it yet.

Speaker 2 (01:27:04):
I don't think we've seen it yet. I'm just basing
it off of what has been presented to me. I
can see how the situation for her would be very annoying. Yeah,
but I don't think we are privy to if it's
as recent as you say, within the past few weeks.
I don't think we're privy to the reason.

Speaker 1 (01:27:22):
Yeah, and we learn that it is four to five weeks,
because that's how many sessions that Joel has had with
Gail since he started.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
Yes, I believe this is his fifth session.

Speaker 1 (01:27:33):
And continuing to get back to this moment, Joel drones
on for a bit here, kind of repeating himself. We
learn and Gail ultimately closes her notebook, deeming it useless
because she has taken all of these notes before with him.

(01:27:54):
But before she speaks, Joel brings Dina into the conversation
and says, you know, Dina talks to me like I'm
a human being. She doesn't blow me off, she doesn't
give me this cold nod. She doesn't she doesn't pretend
like I don't exist essentially, and that's ultimately what Ellie
has been doing to him, which we can assume drove

(01:28:15):
him to get therapy, but not for the right reasons.
And Gail calls him on this by basically saying, I'm
gonna put my notebook down and basically break it down
for you that healing the only way, the only path
to healing is to speak the truth out loud. Whatever

(01:28:37):
the event was, whatever the problem was, the lies that
we are holding at bay, all of this is a
cancer spreading that will ultimately doom you. And she lives
this example in real time, so it's not just merely
a prompt for Joel, it's one for her. And this
is where we learn about Gail's husband, Eugene, who she

(01:28:59):
met mentioned earlier by name. In this exact conversation, when
the weed was exchanged, and we learned that Eugene was
killed by Joel heh boy and it was necessary, so
we can assume.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
That he was infected.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
Yes, But between it being Gale's birthday, her being a
widow for the first time on her birthday, her first
New Year's without her husband, the alcohol that she has
consumed both during this session and as Joel calls it before,
she rips into him and just basically goes back and
forth with herself here and it's incredible acting and Catherine

(01:29:33):
O'Hara stole every moment that she was in, which were
too few in my opinion, But she fights with herself
and she almost has very jerky movements where she makes
fun of him. Initially, Oh, if only your problem wasn't
the most like dumbest shit in the world, essentially a

(01:29:55):
nineteen year old acting like a nineteen year old with
her dad, but it's it's so far beyond on that,
and because Joel keeps on, she reveals her shame and
says that she hates Joel for what he did. Even
though she understands that he had to do what he
had to do, she can't stand that Joel is in

(01:30:17):
her house. She can't stand sitting across from him and
listening to his bullshit. And then she kind of sits back,
takes a breath, and says, my shame is out there.
I can't take it back. You have to do the same.
I know you're lying to me, I know you're omitting
something from me, and you're holding back. And she's not

(01:30:42):
passive at all. She's the only fucking person in this
whole episode who is saying the words. And Joel is
sitting across from her and evolving during this part, and
Pedro's acting is extremely well done. Yeah, and I I
literally wrote out in words the shift that Pedro delivers

(01:31:06):
to us, because as Gail is talking, we see this
moment of his facial expressions go from delusion, which is
a resultant of his buried guilt and his lack of accountability,
to this knowing when he remembers what he did and
the lie that he said that he told Ellie to

(01:31:28):
an unwavering adamance that what he did was right and
he does not regret it. And this all happens in
front of us, in front of Gail, and it's quiet
for a moment, and then she hits him with a
series of questions that are very probing on a specific level,

(01:31:49):
and says did you hurt Ellie? And he nods, insinuating
that he did hurt Ellie, And then she continues on here,
did you do something to hurt her, insinuating something much darker,
to which Joel denies because he did not do what
she's insinuating. Yeah, but he basically says, without saying anything,

(01:32:12):
that he hurt her, but not in that way. And
when Gail finally asks one final time, Joel, who is
crying and visibly breaking down, ceases all of that emotion
and hardens and just says I saved her, and then
gets up and leaves, and Gail reacts by flinching to

(01:32:36):
Joel's standing up and walking away. Here it is, And
that's another instance. The next talking point is why is
everyone so afraid of Joel? And some of the ideas
that we threw out yesterday was maybe he's the guy
that when community members are infected, he's the one to
take care of that, and Eugene might have just turned

(01:33:01):
from some patrol or something one day, and Joel's the
one responsible for that, regardless.

Speaker 2 (01:33:07):
Of who it is.

Speaker 1 (01:33:08):
Yeah, we don't know the circumstances surrounding Eugene's death.

Speaker 2 (01:33:12):
Yet, yet you don't cast Joey Pants without putting Joey
Pants right in action. It's not just going to be
like a photo of him on the shop. They're like, hey,
we got Joey Pants to be in that photo. Yeah,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:33:26):
But it is interesting this vein of threat, this air
of threat.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33):
That surrounds Joel. Yeah. I mean it's also possible that
people know him. His reputation precedes him, you know what
I'm saying. He was a well known guy in Boston
for doing the work. Yeah, you know, yeah, and so
it's possible.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
It's possible, But I think if he was that level
of violence or untrustworthy, he would not be allowed to
stay in Jackson.

Speaker 2 (01:33:59):
Yeah. I think a little bit of your past, you know,
people are like, oh, yeah, he's a dangerous individual, or
they've been out on patrol with him and they can
see what he's capable of. Right. I think what you
said is also equally it's possible that he does the
things that nobody else can do or want to do
or want to do. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:34:17):
So, I mean, go back to season one when he
would just throw the bodies into the burn pile and
picked up the child and did that. Clearly he's not
that person anymore, but that doesn't mean that that person
is gone either.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
At a it can be recalled, Yeah, at a moment's notice. Yeah,
so interesting. And I want to talk about Joel Miller
in therapy. Just as he's doing great. I think he's
really doing the work. He's putting the work in. No
he's not. He's making really good progress. I think. No,
he's trying to.

Speaker 1 (01:34:47):
But Gail calling him out on that, basically saying, you're
not telling me the truth. So nothing that we do
in this room, in this space together is ever going
to help you. He's just looking for someone to listen
to him complain about the fact that Ellie doesn't like
him anymore, doesn't want to be around him anymore, you know,

(01:35:09):
doesn't something's changed. He knows exactly what happened, but he
will not admit it to himself, he will not take
accountability for it. So instead he's paying someone to be
an echo chamber. And he even says that aren't you
supposed to say some things.

Speaker 2 (01:35:25):
To make me feel validate me? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:35:28):
Yeah, So he's not looking to do the work. He's
in therapy, but he's not in therapy.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
Yeah, no, I understand that. I understand that that That
line kind of actually sums it up, like, aren't you
supposed to validate me? Like that's what he is expecting
to get out of the session, not actually overcome the problem,
just have a sympathetic year, you know. So, I don't know,

(01:35:56):
I don't know. It's interesting, it is interesting, hey, but
let's move on. Yes to Ellie's garage. Oh boy, we
see Joel's house, but it's not time for a tour yet,
we won't. We actually don't get that this episode at all. Instead,
we are invited into Ellie's garage, where she now lives
as a result of Joel letting her move in there,

(01:36:17):
and as we mentioned before in therapy, he regrets this,
but it seems like it's working out great for her though.
There are a whole lot of Part two Easter eggs
in this space, and we will talk about them at
a time and a place. So let's our future Patreon shows.
On our future Patreon shows. Right, Nirvana's love Buzz can
be heard before we're even in the garage. The music

(01:36:38):
is very loud. Yeah hashtag teen hashtag teen and Ellie
is inside cleaning her pistol, So let's talk about music
for a second. Yeah, music is very integral to the
story of the Last of Us in season one, in
the game in this the name of this episode is
the name of a song. Everything is music, Everything could

(01:36:59):
be trace back to music.

Speaker 1 (01:37:01):
Yes, and this song in particular, I think is perfect
timing because Ellie is very smitten with Dina and the
lyrics to this song are repetitive to the point of
it's just a declaration of love over and over and
over again.

Speaker 2 (01:37:16):
Yeah, it's I have it right here. Would you believe
me when I tell you are the queen of my heart?
Please don't deceive me when I hurt. You just ain't
the way it seems. Can you feel my love? Buzz
as a question multiple times and then repeat that first
Standzaut verse, and then that's it. That's the whole song.
That's the whole song.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
It's almost funny that they picked a song that does
drone on and on and on right after Joel's therapy
where he just droned on and on and on but
never really arrived at the point like nothing ever happened.
But that is a little different because This is perfect
timing given the fact that Ellie has these deep feelings

(01:37:59):
for sure, and.

Speaker 2 (01:38:03):
What happens another thing worth noting. You know, we know
from season one. I'll just throw out there that this
is a song from nineteen eighty seven, so it is
an eighties song. Yeah, and what do eighties songs signify
in our world? Trouble? Trouble? So yeah, you know again,
could be nothing, could be something we don't know, something,

(01:38:25):
could be something I don't know if it's a coincidence.
There are a lot of Nirvana songs, A lot of
them are love songs. Not all of them were in
the eighties, though, Yeah, this is a kind of a
more obscure Nirvana song. If I was gonna put this in,
if I was gonna rank it, I'd be like, I
don't know if a lot of people know about this one,
Yeah I didn't. I mean, I am not a Nirvana fan, no,

(01:38:45):
nor am I be on the you know, the standard
grunge thing in the ninety three isshit, you know that
area that that neck of the woods. Sure, so worth
just worth noting there, So we get another closer look
at the moth. Then firnt on her arm and covering
the ruined tendril scar. You know, so they have the

(01:39:06):
chemical burn and then a tattoo over the chemical burn,
so you know, double double coverage. Yeah. Her love interest
buzzes the door just then, and Ellie opens to a
work ready Dina. They're on patrol and they got to
get going. Ellie equips her new shotgun holster, which she

(01:39:26):
traded an old pair of boots to get an old
pair of boots for a shotgun holster. Deal or no deal,
I give you. We're in Jackson, it is winter. Yes,
I give you shotgun holster. You give me boots. Do
I have another pair of boots or they are my
only pair of boots? You you have a pair of Chucks. No,
I do not trade.

Speaker 1 (01:39:47):
Like any fucking intelligent person, you should not trade boots
in winter.

Speaker 2 (01:39:52):
You have your walking or anything. Okay, I mean chucks
are the worst for weather. I don't know. And this
is I'm I'm currently recording with a pair of Chucks
on right now, okay, And I just my leg up
in the air to prove it to you. Not even
good podcasting shoes, to be quite honest, let alone just
hunting in winter shoes.

Speaker 1 (01:40:13):
They're no great, and this is another tell to the character,
in my opinion, regressing a little bit, because she started
off in season one wearing Chucks, and then by the
end of it, because it was winter, she was wearing boots.
And now she's back to wearing Chucks and traded her

(01:40:35):
only pair of boots for a fucking holster, which okay, great, Yeah,
but I feel like avoiding frostbite might be a little
bit more important.

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
Just a couple of extra pairs of socks. I'll do that.
I'll do it, not with Chucks, thermal socks, thermal socks.
It's fine, it's fine. Dina shares here that she has
plans to watch quote unquote movies Joel likes, I e.
Curtis and Viper series, and that's a throwback to season one,

(01:41:06):
episode one. If y'all remember Joel and Sarah the night
before everything went to shit, they were watching Curtis and Piper.
So there you go. Let's talk about that for a second.
Dina has a movie night planned with Joel. It's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:41:18):
It's weird, and we the example that I gave last night,
I am bringing back. Okay, here we go to this
because now I want to be very clear here that
I'm not making it weird in the sense that there
any kind of romantic bullshit is happening between Joel and Dina.

Speaker 2 (01:41:36):
Not at all.

Speaker 1 (01:41:38):
It's weird because I understand from a high level that
both of them their end goal is to spend time
with Ellie. It has nothing to do with Dina wanting
to hang out and watch a Joel that watch a
Joel watch a movie that Joel likes, And it has
nothing to do with Joel wanting to hang out and

(01:41:59):
show him Moe that he likes to Dina. It has
everything to do with maybe this could prompt Ellie to join,
and then we ultimately both get what we want, which
is time with the girl that we love in very
different ways. And I'm not a fucking idiot. I understand
that that's essentially almost certainly what was supposed to happen,

(01:42:20):
that's the plan. But this is the strangest fucking method
of getting there with a young, like early twenties, late
teens girl hanging out with a sixty something year old
dude hoping that his daughter hangs out too. And I'm
the example I'm bringing in is legitimately from me and

(01:42:42):
Andrew's real life, and I want everyone to listen to
how fucking weird this.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
Is hre we go.

Speaker 1 (01:42:49):
Okay, Andrew and I met in two thousand and late
two thousand and six, I started working fun Fact some
fun facts behind the curtain.

Speaker 2 (01:43:02):
Oh boy.

Speaker 1 (01:43:03):
I started working for Andrew's dad in two thousand and five.
In early two thousand and five, so I knew your
dad for almost two years before I even knew you existed.

Speaker 2 (01:43:14):
And pretty rude. That's though, you just rarely showed up.

Speaker 1 (01:43:20):
Well no, okay, so I knew him about a year
and a half because you started hanging out because Andrew
liked me immediately, and you just started randomly showing.

Speaker 2 (01:43:27):
Up more and more guilty, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:43:31):
So this is equivalent to me wanting to date you.
But my only method of getting there is to hang
out with your dad, and that would be like, Hey, Ed,
because that's Andrew's dad's name, Hey Ed, do you want
to watch one of your favorite movies and hang out?

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):
Maybe Andrew will show up? Yeah, I mean, you know
that's either bag. It depends on the movie. It's weird,
you know, no Groundhog Day, stop that d's It.

Speaker 1 (01:43:58):
Doesn't matter, it doesn't And I have a wonderful, wonderful
relationship with my father in law, and before he was
my father in law, had a wonderful friendship with him. Yeah,
but it was never let's hang out after work together
so I can get closer to your son. That is
a strange fucking direction. This show went okay, and I'm

(01:44:22):
I do If any fucking person listening to me makes
it this weird shippy shit, I will literally fucking put
you on blast on Instagram and all of our social media.

Speaker 2 (01:44:33):
I heard it here first.

Speaker 1 (01:44:34):
I'm dead serious because there's too many people misconstruing and
out to just cancel people. Now I fucking hate cancel culture,
but like, there's too many people out there trying to
take what someone says to be like, oh my god,
that's really fucking weird jack to make themselves feel better
and more important online.

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
Shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 (01:44:52):
Listen to what I'm saying to you and what was
presented to us on the show. Okay, Yes, I'm getting
defensive because I'm pre fighting in my head.

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
It's a pre fight, but it.

Speaker 1 (01:45:02):
Is just a weird it's it's a weird thing. I
understand having an established repport. I understand if she's part
of the crew his like construction crew or maintenance crew
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:45:13):
Patrol crew. Also, yes, saving saving people, hunting things.

Speaker 1 (01:45:16):
Yes, a supernatural reference for anyone not in the know.
But if this is solely in an endeavor, excuse me.
If this is solely an endeavor to get close to Ellie,
this is not the way to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:30):
Yeah, you know, I'm not gonna I won't argue too much.
Is not a hill I'm gonna die on, you.

Speaker 1 (01:45:36):
Know, I just it's not even really it doesn't have
to be a hill. I know, I know I'm making
it a mountain, but it's just I feel like bringing
in that very real world, real world application of your
dad and you and I is exactly what this is.

Speaker 2 (01:45:53):
Hey, Dad, what's going on? Yeah? Oh, nothing much. I'm
just gonna watch a Jurassic Park tonight with Jackie. Oh,
I'll be right over.

Speaker 1 (01:46:03):
If that's the goal, I mean, okay, But then what
if Ellie doesn't agree.

Speaker 2 (01:46:07):
And she goes up and watches fucking Currison Viper. I
know it seems like Ellie is not going to go,
and for the most part gives her a look, that's
what it seems like. So whoops, yehoops, that's all. There
you go, weird weird choice riders. Okay, out the door
we go, and we are introduced to Shimmer again. Hans

(01:46:29):
Hans horse. It's a horse. It's a horse. He was
going with the Hants horse meme. It's great, you know,
get a little, just a little. Ellie love to shimmer there.
You know, you could tell she really likes this this horse. Yeah.
Jesse gives instructions to the five members going out on
the Alpine Run, throwing a Curtis and Viper tease at
Ellie for how she's currently dressed and outfitted, which is funny.

(01:46:51):
She does have like the shotgun on and like a
gun and a holster, so I can imagine if you think,
I think Curtis and Viper, you know that that fits.
That fits, So it's cool. Her reaction, yeah, is the
fucking best. What the fuck?

Speaker 3 (01:47:06):
Yeaheah, just suck like just like, what how is this too?
Curtis and Viper references in five minutes acting with fucking yeah,
she crushed that. She crushed that part.

Speaker 2 (01:47:19):
It's revealed that these people kind of referring to the
the people that are also going on the Alpine run.
Cat and then there are two other gentlemen, older gentlemen.
They look up to Ellie and Dina, and huh, I mean,
here's what I'll say, you know. It's it was a
little like Jesse comes over. He's like, these people look

(01:47:42):
up to you, and then it cuts to them like
the rest of the crew. And I look at Cat
and I'm like, Cat is maybe probably the same age,
like roughly give her take. It's like, but these other
two dudes, they're older, they're like forty five year old mountaineers.
Like there are people probably that lived in Jackson, you know,
and they just show up and they're like, hey, guys,

(01:48:03):
you are extras on a television show called The Last
of Us. Please sign here, here and here. You're not
gonna have any words, you're not in sag, we're not
going to pay anything. But you're you're in the show.
How's that sound? And it's weird that like it doesn't work.
I couldn't. I couldn't. Like picture it would be a

(01:48:24):
lot like kind of a situation where it's like what
if my dad looked up to me? Yeah, like what
the but not me as a forty one year old,
me as a nineteen year old correct.

Speaker 1 (01:48:34):
Yeah, that is it's it doesn't work on quite a
few levels. And this is where we're going to start
ripping into the immaturity issue a lot more from here
on out.

Speaker 2 (01:48:47):
In this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:48:48):
Yeah yeah, because to sit there and say that these
people look up to you, meaning Ellie and Dina, they
prove within minutes of Jesse telling us this minutes in showtime,
not in their real time, how absolutely fucking reckless they
are and disobedient to orders.

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):
Because Kat is the leader of this patrol group.

Speaker 1 (01:49:10):
But all they are doing is not only jeopardizing their
own lives, but jeopardizing everybody else on this particular crew,
and that is the antithesis of a fucking leader.

Speaker 2 (01:49:23):
Yeah, well, I could see maybe, and it could be
just that Jesse said something out of out of line also,
like not not necessarily using the right words, Like maybe
people do maybe people are impressed with these two, Like
I think that's different from looking at think them. They're
you know, they have lady balls, right, yeah, Like they're

(01:49:44):
very clearly capable, both of them, sure, as we'll see
in a few moments. But so you know, maybe it
was just a maybe it's just like a miss misuse
of the word, but again, the writers have the the
writers write the words. Yea, well it was Craig amazing,
I know, right, yeah, that's what I'm That's what I
you know, I don't know how much, if any clarity

(01:50:05):
will get into into that that idea, but I do
think it's true that just based on their history and
what we're about to see that. Yeah, Like probably people
are like, oh, these are these are people that are
very good at at.

Speaker 1 (01:50:21):
This, Like if they're cocky, the irresponsible sometimes that is
you know, that's the balance that you strike, right, I'm
sure you've met somebody who is very good at something
who is also an asshole.

Speaker 2 (01:50:34):
I mean me, I'm certainly an assholes. Yeah, yeah, so
I you know, I guess there there there comes a
there's a balance with everything. So it struck me when
I heard it that it's like they look up to
you and I and it cuts cuts over to them,
and I'm like, huh, yeah, it's just one of those
like what these like if it was like other twenty somethings, right, sure,

(01:51:00):
I would I would be less buy it more, right,
That's all I'm saying is like I would it would
have been less distant. I just would there wouldn't have
been such a disconnect for me in that in that regard,
So there we go. There is a shared look between
Jesse and Dina at this point that sparks like a
little bit of jealousy in Ellie, but it's fleeting, and

(01:51:21):
then we kind of set out. So there you go.
So Wyoming is heaven on Earth, and I truly truly
hope we go there soon. It looks good. It looks good,
you know, I'd like to see it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:31):
We have to be one of the nasty world destroyer
billionaire people to buy real estate there though, So that's
pretty much the only way you can move to Jackson
Hole Wyoming now is to be a fucking piece of
shit billionaire.

Speaker 2 (01:51:46):
I guess if that's what I gotta do, then, you know,
oh shit, oh spoks, gee gee will lookers. Yes, I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:51:55):
I guess I have to go make so much money
I become an actual threat to the planet Earth.

Speaker 2 (01:52:00):
I guess I'll just develop an AI or something, you know,
That's what I'll do. Get on it. So all right,
now we are on patrol.

Speaker 1 (01:52:09):
So the upcoming dance is discussed between Dina and Ellie
here and it's revealed that Kat and Ellie have some
sort of past, but there's also this additive from Dina
where she's like, she certainly left her mark on you,
and as Andrew pointed out yesterday, but unfortunately that audio
is lost, she's referencing or pointing in the direction of

(01:52:30):
Ellie's tattoo. Yeah, so we can infer that Kat was
the artist, sure, and they had some sort of romantic tryst.

Speaker 2 (01:52:40):
Let's call it an entanglement. And I love that I do. Yes,
it's a double. It's a double Chandra left your mark.
It like left a mark, but then also physical. Yeah,
the tattoo is a literal mark as well.

Speaker 1 (01:52:54):
So Yeah, However, Ellie basically shoots this option down because
he and Cat clearly are not.

Speaker 2 (01:53:03):
They're just not talking anymore. So something happened. Dina was
so funny during this scene where she like refers to
Cat is like the other one of like the like
She's like, why not catch she and the insinuation is
like she's the other lesbian, you know, And it was
I mean, Dina Isabellahmer said, is like absolutely crushing it.

(01:53:28):
This episode among like Juggernauts, really so very funny, very funny.

Speaker 1 (01:53:33):
Yeah, I just I love how she sasses everyone. Yeah,
she gives everyone the same level of attention, right, which
could be confusing for Ellie.

Speaker 2 (01:53:43):
I think I think that's the I think that is
the that's why she hesitates a little bit later. You know,
there's a something that's written over and over again in
a journal, and I think that is why, because it's
like she does this with everything. She shines a spotlight
on you and you feel you know, it worked on Joel,
it works a little bit later on somebody, it works

(01:54:04):
on you know. So it's I can get that. There
would be like am I reading this? Are we vibing?
Or am I reading this wrong? Like I should grow?

Speaker 1 (01:54:14):
So yeah, yeah, so she's Yeah, Ellie's playing it's safe
and I understand that. But from here, Gina, Gina, Jesse
and Dina's history and potential future is talked about here
because Ellie thinks that they'll be back.

Speaker 2 (01:54:28):
Together in two weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:54:29):
But Dina offers up that, you know, if you're not
going with anyone, and I'm not going any with anyone,
maybe we could go together, but not in the romantic sense.
It's like a hey, let's just go to this same
place at the same time, next to each other.

Speaker 2 (01:54:51):
It's one of those it's dangerous to go alone.

Speaker 1 (01:54:54):
Yes, it's not a date, but it's not not a
date either, right, it's it's in between.

Speaker 2 (01:55:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:55:01):
Unfortunately, though, this conversation and the cute little flirtiness is
cut short by a blood trail that grabs everybody's attention,
so Ellie and Diina immediately disregard the patrol leader's orders.

Speaker 2 (01:55:15):
Again.

Speaker 1 (01:55:15):
This is kat to return to Jackson, report what they
have found, and then come out with a bigger crew
to assess the situation, but instead Ellie and Diina gallop away,
and the remaining three trail behind them. Yeah, the disobedience
continues to be hugely disrespectful. And while we can blanket
certain things under the teenager argument does not fit in

(01:55:37):
this situation because they absolutely should know better.

Speaker 2 (01:55:40):
Yeah, that's they're thrill seeking right now, they're thrill seeking,
but they are This isn't a fucking game, right? Well again,
I feel like it might be a little bit to
Ellie and because she's detached right now, Sure she's not. Yeah,
do we talk about this now or do we know?

(01:56:01):
We'll save it for I feel like you, just me
and you're at this age, at this time of your life, right,
you know, you're on the in nineteen going on twit,
you know, I, I you know you are like I'm invincible.
I'm invincible. I think it's more than that though maybe,
but yeah, but I but certainly that's part of it. Though,
that's certainly a part of it. Is Like for Ellie,

(01:56:22):
she's got this secret that's like her superpower, so her,
especially now Dina, I don't that's that's interesting. That's the
more interesting thing. As far as we know, Ellie is
the only person in the whole world that's immune because
of a fraction of a tiny millisecond thing that happens. Right,

(01:56:46):
So anybody else who like rushes headlong into danger is
Completelys got some issues, maybe probably a problem, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:56:57):
And it makes me wonder if Dina is acting this
way specifically because she is with Ellie, Like, how does
she act on patrol when Ellie's not there?

Speaker 2 (01:57:06):
That's what I would be interested to see, Yeah, with
Kat but no Ellie, or with Jesse or with Joel.

Speaker 1 (01:57:12):
Yeah, Tommy, I feel like she'd be a lot more
reserved and not as brazen. Sure, So this is another
combination of I wanna look cool, you know, I wanna
look good. I want to look fearless. Let's go, and
it's stupid, okay, But so we are led down the
road to a supermarket and a gruesome scene awaits. We

(01:57:34):
see a scattering of dead infected lying around a dead
bear that has been ravaged quite savagely, and there are
signs that additional infected have survived this fight and took
to the supermarket for some sort of shelter.

Speaker 2 (01:57:52):
Which is interesting. Is this temperature based?

Speaker 1 (01:57:55):
Is this just I don't know, But the method of
how they got into the supermarket, it is the same
one that the girls take in a few moments, and
that is interesting. To climb up onto the hood of
a box truck, then up onto the actual cab of
the box truck, then up onto the fucking actual truck,

(01:58:17):
the box of the truck to get into the second level.
That's intelligent. Yeah, so interesting. I guess we'll leave it
at that. But Dina throws a pun at Ellie here
with a barbecue joke pun excuse me, which is the
fastest way to Ellie's heart, as we all have come
to know and love. But she once again disregards Kat's orders,

(01:58:42):
and they throw some dumbass excuses about how there could
be people or children or a baby somehow trapped inside
of the supermarket and they have to go and inspect
some shit. So they follow the blood trail and the handprints,
the bloody handprints, and they climb up onto the box
truck to get to the second level. And this is
of course video gaming as shit, because this is one

(01:59:03):
hundred percent what you do in games.

Speaker 2 (01:59:06):
You climb up shit and you throw down shit. Yeah,
it's the best.

Speaker 1 (01:59:11):
So it's confirmed here that there are two infected inside,
and both Ellie and Dina figure this out, Ellie picking
up the sound of the first clicker, Dina being the
brains of the operation. Ellie's the brawn, Dina's the brains,
and she stops her from just rushing in headlong and says,
there are two, so we need to strategize here a

(01:59:31):
little bit, so at least one of them has a
fucking brain on our shoulders. So they enter and they
begin to stalk the prey, which turns out to be clickers.
So they're up against two separate parts of a wall.
I think there's a doorway in between potentially, and they
formulate a plan together, and they throw in some unseerious

(01:59:52):
fucking jokes here by like you know, pretending to stab
their throat and bleed out and gush and all this
stuff before turning around and getting set to do the mission.

Speaker 2 (02:00:04):
Just to quick aside for.

Speaker 1 (02:00:05):
Any gamers listening, there are some fun easter eggs in
this part regarding the employee of the month wall, but
I'm not going to go into that because nobody else
will understand, and that will be on a future Patreon episode.

Speaker 2 (02:00:16):
Okay, bye. So Ellie sees a glass bottle, picks it up.
That's a game thrang thing.

Speaker 1 (02:00:21):
You use it as distractions or you throw it at
them directly and they get stunned for a moment. And
then from there she leaps on the back of this clicker,
uses her switchblade, stabs it in the throat until it dies.

Speaker 2 (02:00:34):
This also game thing. Love love that they continue to
do that in this show. It's just so good.

Speaker 1 (02:00:41):
But then something unexpected happens here in the way that
it really wasn't unexpected at all because of the creaky floorboards.
But whether you have played the game or not, I
think everyone was under the understanding that Ellie was going.

Speaker 2 (02:00:54):
To fall through the fucking floor.

Speaker 1 (02:00:56):
Maybe she goes over the creaky spot once and they
make a point to focus on that spot, and then
she kills the clicker and then she backtracks to get
to Dina who's on that other side, and steps on
it again and that's when she falls through the flooring.

Speaker 2 (02:01:11):
I just love that she was trying to show Dina
that one employee of the month was a dog. Did
you get that? That's a big easter egg from no, no, no,
I'm just I mean, but that's the reason why, like
instead of going forward more into the building, she's like,
you got to check out July. But as she's saying July, yeah,
you know that's what happens. So yes, but that was

(02:01:32):
significant because the code for a safe Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's but you know, just at a just at a
high level, it is very funny that is dog is
the improvm to that, right. Could you imagine working at
a place and you're an actual employee at a supermarket
and they're like, the employee of the month this year
is this dog. I would love it. I mean, I'd

(02:01:54):
be like, that's a good boy. I can't Yes, I
get it, but like you're like, I am walking my
us off. Here are you working your ass off? Though?
If you're stocking shelves, if you're I mean, if I'm
assuming you know whatever, there are there are jobs at
a supermarket that are very you know, all the jobs
at a supermarket are important. But I'm like, some of
them are very taxing and whatever, and they're like, what

(02:02:15):
did the dog do I rather than be a good boy? Yeah, which,
but I don't think that that was I know, I'm
just saying it's it's it's just at a high level.
I just think it's hilarious.

Speaker 1 (02:02:26):
But I think it was replaced. Like the July was
an actual employee at one point. But then in the
post apocalypse, when the manager or whatever had to hide
some ship, they were like, well, put pop pop a
dog picture in there.

Speaker 2 (02:02:39):
We're gonna put a dog in there. I could be wrong,
It could be it could it could have been that, no,
we really took a portrait of this dog. It might
be who was just helping people left it. Boy, I
needed to make a soup. Listen, Retail fucking sucks. If
I worked at a place and a dog worked there,
just greeting people who walk walked in the door. Employee
of the Year, I'd never leave.

Speaker 1 (02:03:00):
So yes, again, little notation, there's a lot of video
game ass shit. There's a lot of TV as shit
happening here. But Ellie continues to pay attention to absolutely
nothing and does not mind her surroundings. One bit, oh man,
so Batman begins reference it absolutely fucking is.

Speaker 2 (02:03:17):
You never did learn to mind the surroundings.

Speaker 1 (02:03:20):
So it's time to wander the supermarket now that she's
crashed through, and it's established that it is very quiet
in here. Because again, clickers, runners, bloaters, they all respond.

Speaker 2 (02:03:30):
To extreme like they exploit. Excuse me, they.

Speaker 1 (02:03:34):
Respond extremely fast to any noise whatsoever. So a human
being falling through a fucking floor, landing on metal shelves
that would have drawn everything out.

Speaker 2 (02:03:44):
Yeah, so clearly there's nothing down there. Clearly there's nothing
down here.

Speaker 1 (02:03:48):
But wait there is wait minute, so this entire scene
becomes one big cat and mouse hunt between between Ellie
and a new type of who also hunts her.

Speaker 2 (02:04:02):
Let me just say real quick, this is one of
my favorite things. I said this, but I just love
when you do this in a horror movie where it's
like something's out of folk. You know, it's like we're
looking at our character. The background is really beautifully lit,
but a little dark. And then they the character's like,
all right, I guess everything's cool, and they just start
walking and then some shit moves in the background. You're like, oh, oh,

(02:04:26):
be careful girl. Yeah, I love that. We're talking alien,
we're talking even predator. Man, It's great. I love it. Yeah, no,
I agree.

Speaker 1 (02:04:35):
I think that the impact was a little lost on
me here because the moment it was established, nothing was
down here in the way that we've come to you,
we've become used to. I knew exactly what it was,
so I immediately started searching the background of all the scenes,
completely ignoring Ellie.

Speaker 2 (02:04:54):
I thought it could have been like a human, like like, yeah,
I mean, you never know, somebody, hold up, like this
was my supermarket. I looted this thing. I was here
first looting. It's okay, though, yeah, we know it's but they.

Speaker 1 (02:05:07):
Would have been trapped in there because they was so
what they chained themselves in there. Yes, okay, all right,
but it mirrors the previous scene, This whole bit with
Ellie down here in the darkness in the supermarket. It
mirrors the previous scene so perfectly and it surprises Ellie
quite a bit, so her complacency, her bravado goes right
out the fucking window because this is a new type

(02:05:29):
of infected that she has not experienced before. And I
will circle back to what we just talked about the
execution of this scene. I would rate it like a
B plus or an as overall because the tension was
likely greater for people who have never played the games,

(02:05:50):
even though it was exciting for people who have played
the games.

Speaker 2 (02:05:53):
Sure, exciting is not tension.

Speaker 1 (02:05:56):
So I was excited to see the stalker and spoiler warning,
this is the only thing that I'm gonna spoil in
this whole fucking episode. They are called stalkers, and again
I don't think that's a big spoiler because even when
they recount this at the council meeting, which we're going
to talk about shortly, they said it was stalking me.

Speaker 2 (02:06:14):
So I mean, we're we're being walked right to that direction.

Speaker 1 (02:06:19):
Yeah, but it was exciting for me to see this,
but I wasn't scared, and I'm interested if other gamers
felt similarly to that.

Speaker 2 (02:06:29):
I would like to hear your opinion right in with
your thoughts and feelings. Yes, please was it tense for
you or was it just exciting?

Speaker 1 (02:06:39):
Because yes, yes, but the dark ambient sounds of this space,
paired with the music that is playing is it is frightening.
It is a frightening setting. You are supposed to be afraid.
And then this incredible moment that I will admit gave
me chills because it happens every time you come across

(02:07:01):
the fucking stalker. Ellie has her light pinned onto her
backpack strap so it's not in her hand, and the
light doesn't directly hit the eyes of the stalker. It's
just slightly off to the side, and you get this
quick flash of milky white eyeballs just like staring back

(02:07:25):
at Ellie, which is not normal.

Speaker 2 (02:07:28):
The infected do not look. I mean runners can, but
that's about it.

Speaker 1 (02:07:32):
Yeah, because clickers, yeah, clickers don't have eyeballs anymore. You
can't really even see when a runner spots you because
they're fucking running at you so fast. Clickers do not
have eyeballs. Bloaters barely have a fucking head. So like,
when it comes to the human element of infected, a
stalker is absolutely the closest one to it. Yeah, and

(02:07:53):
it's technically stage two of the infection runners are stage one.
Stage two is Stalker, which is interesting to me because
of how intelligent and clever they are.

Speaker 2 (02:08:04):
Sure because there's still.

Speaker 1 (02:08:06):
A human element in there, I think, but it's absolutely
corrupted by the infection. So they're being led around by
the infection, but they have the strategy of a human
mind at their will.

Speaker 2 (02:08:19):
Yeah. I don't know. See, I don't know. I never
thought of it like that. I don't think of it
like a stalker is a leveled up runner. I don't
think like eventually becomes a stalker. I just think that
it's like this is some other kind of mutation that
has happened to this, just this group of these like

(02:08:39):
whether it's a proclivity of the who the person was,
and I'm just saying more like at a genetic level,
like there's something in the body that was like.

Speaker 1 (02:08:47):
Oh, you're going to be smart. Yeah, it's real scary.
Yeah smart infected is this? Stalkers by far and away
are the scariest ones in the games for me. Yeah,
I mean, you know, not even the big giant bastards
that come after you, Like they're just impressive in that.
I'm so overwhelmed by this way. Yeah, but stalkers are

(02:09:08):
fucking creepy. There are actually, and I'm gonna talk about
the game for like ten seconds, but there are moments
in the game where stalkers will watch you, but they
will not attack you. Yeah, and unless you look around
for them, you don't even know they're there. That's how
fucking creepy they are. And that is like, I just

(02:09:32):
the stalker's like.

Speaker 2 (02:09:33):
Okay, this one's got a flamethrower and two shotguns and
a handgun. I'm not no, I'm just gonna I'm gonna
hang out over here behind the desk. I'm just gonna
be a part of the wall. I'll wait to the
one that just has like a knife or a stick.
That's the one I'm gonna get.

Speaker 1 (02:09:48):
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. There's an intelligence, there's
an intelligent design behind me, an assessment. It's made an assessment,
and it has decided I'm going.

Speaker 2 (02:09:57):
To do this or not do this. Yeah, it's incredible,
it's just so incredible.

Speaker 1 (02:10:01):
But when we talk about this particular socker, when we
get a better glimpse of this person, it's shown to
be a younger girl, probably not too much older than
Ellie and Dina, And it brings up for me questions
of how long has she been infected and caught in
this place? Sure, because she's seemingly alone down here, and

(02:10:29):
was she the one to lock the doors with the chains?
And if that's the case, was it because she realized
she was infected and didn't want to hurt anybody else.

Speaker 2 (02:10:38):
My thought is that this is the one that was
outside with the bear and then climbed up and went in.
But how did she get down there? Like was there
a route down there? I think the route out and
in is the same because it's the clickers.

Speaker 1 (02:10:51):
No, but remember Dina, there was no direct entrance to
the locked supermarket. She had to find an alternative entrance.

Speaker 2 (02:10:58):
Yeah, Dina, I'm sure there was like a their case
she was Dina didn't like break a door down or anything.
She's just like, I'll go find the stairs or whatever.
So but if the stalker is smart and it has
been there for a while, it's like, oh, you go
through this way, up these steps, out the window, there's
a bear. I'm when to eat that thing. Come back up.
And she did have blood on her face. Yeah, that
was that was definitely what was in my estimation out there.

(02:11:19):
That's the little blood trail that was going up the
up in that's what they spotted. And I'm like, oh, yeah,
this thing is crazy. It took out a bear. I
mean not alone, not alone, but you know, or but
it was smart enough to probably wait after the bear
was taken down. Then it goes outside and it's.

Speaker 1 (02:11:36):
Like I'll have a little munch now, yeah, with the
other clickers dead. Which also it's like, would a clicker
attack a stalker?

Speaker 2 (02:11:45):
No, they're all communicating. Yeah, they are communicating, and a
game that doesn't happen.

Speaker 1 (02:11:50):
Wouldn't that be interesting if the clicker sents some level
of oh, you're not all the way there.

Speaker 2 (02:12:00):
Well, I mean I think they're all the way there,
but it's just like we're splitting hairs. Now. I know
what you're saying, but I don't think that a clicker
or that the infect it don't attack each other because
they are just like it's all one network, Like what's up, brother?
You know it's one of those situations sure, sure, or
not even brother, it's just like you're also me, Like

(02:12:21):
I'm you, you're me, we're here, we're here, one entity.
So bear let's go.

Speaker 1 (02:12:26):
Yeah, but this continues on here and Ellie gets very
frustrated to the point of where she screams at this
stalker to attack her, like run at me, because she
knows the protocol, she knows what to do in that situation.
But the stalker just kind of makes her creepy little
noises and then just disappears again into the darkness. Eventually,

(02:12:49):
we see the stalker creeping up behind Ellie and Ellie
hears the telltale sign that it's behind her, spins around,
fires off the shotgun. Missus, it's gone, She's gone, and
then she very much velociraptors Ellie here and just tackles
her straight to the gap to the ground. Yes, the
shotgun goes flying and the stalker bites her on the belly. Yeah,

(02:13:14):
that said doesn't last too long, and Ellie kills the
infected with her pistol. So the seeing the line that
one single line of infected tendril just like moving on
the outside of Ellie's body, knowing that the other half
of it was inside of her is fucking gagworthy every time.
It's done so well, but it's so disgusting.

Speaker 2 (02:13:36):
Yeah, just a real quick shout out though. The character design,
the creature design of this thing. Yeah, you know, it's
we were talking about. It's the same guy who did
Game of Thrones in terms of the creatures, and I
guess the effects or I don't know how much of
this is practical and how much is digital or whatever,
but this girl looks to have like a fungus crown almost,

(02:14:00):
And it's so I mean, in addition to like the
eyes and the movements and it's you know, it was
it was really really well done. I just that was like,
oh boy, these are not to be trifled with. No,
And it's almost interesting now that you're talking about the crown,
maybe she was the one. Oh god. I don't want to.

Speaker 1 (02:14:21):
Assign too much, like I don't want to it's weird.
I don't want to anthropomorphize infected because they are not
people anymore. But there were the two infected clickers that
were up on the second level that Ellie and Dina
dealt with, and what if they were some sort of
security system protecting the stalker downstairs.

Speaker 2 (02:14:39):
I mean, we don't know, we don't know how they
work in this world.

Speaker 1 (02:14:42):
Yeah, so, but I like the idea of that, plus
paired with a visual crown, even if it means nothing,
look at me, I am the queen.

Speaker 2 (02:14:52):
Though, yes, you know, it's one of those situations. Jesus.

Speaker 1 (02:14:57):
Anyway, so Dina eventually finds Ellie, who immediately shrouds her
abdomen a little bit more suspiciously than she probably realized
she did. There was a draft, sure, but it's not
too long from here on out that they return to Jackson.
And now we see that the girls are at a
council meeting. It's around eight o'clock at night, and they

(02:15:17):
are recounting the encounter with Tommy and Maria and co.
So they kind of go back and forth here asking
the pertinent questions. Ellie is doubling down, reaffirming that yes,
this really did happen. I'm telling you, I ran into
a new infected it was stalking me. It was clever,
it was cunning. And Tommy brings up the issue of

(02:15:40):
Ellie and Dina basically bypassing orders and going in, and
Ellie fires back, well, if it was you and Joel,
you would have both went in. And Tommy leans back
and he's like, well that's different, and Maria kind of
looks right over and questions her husband like, why would
that be different if it was you and Joel? You

(02:16:01):
really stepped in it now, tom Yeah, And again everything
comes down to men versus women.

Speaker 2 (02:16:07):
No matter how long the world has been dead to humanity,
this shit persists. I want to be very clear here, though,
There is a difference between misogyny and having no confidence
in a female's capability, in a woman's capability to a

(02:16:28):
man wanting to protect the wanting to protect the women
he loves with his life.

Speaker 1 (02:16:32):
Yeah, that is they are two separately different things. And
I know when you get into the broader conversation of feminism,
a lot of people get upset very easily and well,
men should trust that they can protect themselves. And yes,
that is true, but I think there's also an innate
knee jerk reaction from most men to just be like,

(02:16:53):
I want you to be safe. And I think in
Jackson in particular, and Tommy Miller being the man that
he is, with the history in the fucking military that
he has and seeing his fucking niece gunned down in
front of him twenty five years ago, he does not
want to repeat of that. So those are his motivations.

(02:17:14):
It has nothing to do with whether Ellie and Diana
can handle themselves. Yeah, No, I And that's the separating line.

Speaker 2 (02:17:21):
I'm buying that he was like, I would go in
just to make sure that everybody else is safe, not
because I don't think you can. Yes, you know, I'll go.
I would go in with you, right. I never thought
it was like, well, what were you two doing? Why
were you even on patrol? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:17:38):
And I'm not saying that Maria necessarily believe that. I
think that she was just kind of like, what the fuck?

Speaker 2 (02:17:43):
You know? And I probably would have done the same
thing for you. Let's just clarify. I have a couple
follow up questions, Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:17:52):
It's okay to ask the questions, but I think people
are very quick to just judge these moments of well,
men fucking suck, and it's not that.

Speaker 2 (02:18:01):
In this situation. No, I don't think that. Yeah, I
mean especially Yeah, and we have no reason to believe
that about Tommy specifically. He's never you know, he's never
done anything that would indicate that he's like a woman
hating as he's got like a wife, and he's got
a son that he seems to really care about and

(02:18:21):
all that stuff. So I was like that's fine. My
favorite part of this is that, like Ellie's telling all
this stuff and then they look at Dina and they're like,
and what about you? And it's like, oh, it's exactly
like what she said. Oh yeah, they don't believe her
at all that yeah, and she's lying her ass off,
but it's like, it's just very funny. Oh yeah, it's
exactly like what she was. I was there, it was
it was it was nuts. She was not selling it, no,

(02:18:46):
not even a little bit. And she knew it too,
that's true. But Maria, Maria calls her on it. But
after she basically says, I believe Ellie.

Speaker 1 (02:18:55):
Yeah, yeah, she's like, I know that Dina is fucking
lying to me and everybody, but Ellie's telling the truth, right,
And eventually Dina and Ellie are dismissed, and then Maria
kind of talks about this gut feeling she has that
something is just not right, something is coming, something's off,
and she can't put her finger on it.

Speaker 2 (02:19:16):
Boy, And.

Speaker 1 (02:19:18):
We don't really linger here too long because eventually everyone
disperses because it's New Year's Eve. It's time to get
to the dance again.

Speaker 2 (02:19:25):
We've talked about how long this fucking day is, and
we will actually break down every event of this day.

Speaker 1 (02:19:30):
Sure, in very very shortly we will do that. I
want to point out Ellie's smirk to Dina as she's leaving,
because again, it's just another fucking immature thing of going
from I need to seriously be believed you people need

(02:19:51):
to have confidence in me that what I'm telling you
is the truth to now I'm cool, calm and collected girl,
I'm cool. I got this, I got this, like I
just it's it's annoying. Maybe because I'm older and I
just find teenagers annoying. I don't don't understand, just don't understand.
You just don't get it.

Speaker 2 (02:20:11):
God, mom, God.

Speaker 1 (02:20:14):
But I I love Maria's perceptiveness and her receptiveness. She
is an excellent leader. I really want to Maria's presence
in this this particular episode was perfect, like the same.
Everyone is giving such high level performances in this show.

Speaker 2 (02:20:37):
Yes, and they'll and they have.

Speaker 1 (02:20:41):
I've had complaints here and there with certain people in
season one, but overall, no one is dialing it in,
and even in minuscule scenes like this one, it's still
impactful enough to be talked about on a podcast, which
you know, everyone has a podcast these days, so that all.

Speaker 2 (02:21:00):
Three and a half hour, four or four hour podcasts, though,
you know, a little bit more rare, a little bit
more rare air, sure, So yeah, that's the that's the
end of that though. All right. So in this never
ending day, okay, we were looking at Ellie's new bite. Okay,
back in the garage and Ellie is sterilizing her switch blade.

(02:21:20):
We're pouring a little alcohol on it, you know, on
the sides, like one side and then the other side,
but not not the tip where which is what she
primarily uses to cut the cut. Yeah, the wound, so
it's but the rest of the blade is completely clean.
So that's good. That's good. And we're turning the teethmarks
into just like just a cut essentially. I think that

(02:21:43):
was smart. Oh, you look like you have something said,
I do. Okay, I do.

Speaker 1 (02:21:46):
And I'm gonna make this quick. It was a little
lengthy yesterday, so I'm just gonna say this, Shpiel. The
topic of Ellie cutting into her belly has come up
under the lens of potentially being self harm, and I
want to put out in the world right now that
this was self preservation. Ellie went immediately into survival mode,

(02:22:11):
ensuring that no one asks questions, no one accuses her
of anything, or any potential health inspections will reveal nothing
about her and her immunity. She did not cut into
her body because she wanted to harm herself and feel
a rush of pain. I have self harmed in the past.
I know the mentality and the method behind all of it,

(02:22:32):
and that was not present in this scene. And I
understand when people try to romanticize themselves with their favorite
characters and potentially put their own trauma out onto a
fictional character to have some sort of codependency with someone
who doesn't exist, because it makes you feel less alone.

(02:22:56):
And I'm sorry if this upsets anyone, but that's not
what happened here. And if you are struggling and you
have a problem, please talk to someone.

Speaker 2 (02:23:06):
Sure. That is not the way to go about dealing
and coping with pain. Yeah, I mean that did not
ring for me in terms of that angle of it.
I'm looking at this and I'm like, oh, yeah, something
that we brought up yesterday but is worth worth just
diving into a little bit, is that the probably are
regular health inspections in Jackson from a doctor, and so

(02:23:32):
you know, again it's a secret. Nobody knows that Ellie
is immune. But if you show up to this doctor
and you have a bite mark, it doesn't matter if
you're like I got it four days ago, I got
it yesterday, Like I know that everybody knows that it
comes on quick like the bite we saw with tests

(02:23:53):
and season what we saw. We saw a lot of bites,
right and how quickly. What the onset of that is,
but that is it's probably it's death. It's it's literally
death in Jackson. It's like Dina. Dina says the line
like do I you know when she shoot you? To
shoot you in the face and then you know, which

(02:24:13):
was very funny in the moment, but it's also probably
what happens is that it's just instant death. And also Eugene.
You know, we learn about Eugene earlier. We don't learn
about it, but we just have the understanding that Joel
kills him probably under very similar circumstances. So when she
goes in and starts cutting, I'm like, boy, this is

(02:24:36):
gonna this looks like it's gonna fucking hurt. But it's
literally just like we gotta I gotta connect these teethmarks
to make it look like I got shanked or something.

Speaker 1 (02:24:44):
Like something simple caught on something, tripped on something rock
or yeah, what can.

Speaker 2 (02:24:50):
Half open can whatever? Yeah, it is very much still
a mouth bite kind of Yeah. I mean it's like
an upper part in a lower part. I could, you know,
it's enough to there's enough deniability there where it's like
two long cuts. Sure, and I don't have any symptoms

(02:25:10):
versus like a bite, whether they've the judgment is made,
you know what I'm saying. So there's that. The whole
bathroom scene really screams like a little bit like I've
you know, I do the sniper training, I have my
fight club in the morning, but you know, I've just
never sat with the doctor, you know elan Triash Challenge
level five, and I haven't graduated from the one oh one.

(02:25:34):
The lights are on, but only in the bathroom. The
door is open. It's dark behind her. Again, this is
all could be just signs of like rushing to like
take care of this part. She uses just one hand
to cut the other one's holding her shirt up right.
That's one of those are it's janky, it's uncoordinated. It's
not sterile, it's you know again. It all leads to,

(02:25:56):
in my mind, this is a rush to just cover
this up, like I gotta live, not trying to die today.
It's the dance, it's New Year's Eve. I don't want
to die today.

Speaker 1 (02:26:07):
Yeah, we saw her poor alcohol from a flask onto
the knife in an attempt to sterilize it. An attempt
was made, a poor attempt, an attempt, and we deduced
that this is definitely survivability kicking into overdrive, probably the

(02:26:28):
method of thinking, or maybe even the mode, the panicked
mode of being on the road with Joel for a year,
just literally being triggered and I need to take care
of this immediately. But she mentioned shortly when she's at
the dance to Jesse that it took her quite a
bit of alcohol to even get to this kind of event. Sure,

(02:26:49):
and I think that that was a little bit of
a throwaway of another I'm too cool for this bullshit,
even though she wanted to be there because she's falling
in love with Dina. But I think she untimately probably
got herself a healthy buzz before cutting into her skin. Yeah,
because she doesn't really react to the pain of cutting herself,

(02:27:10):
which would fucking hurt.

Speaker 2 (02:27:12):
It's a knife. Yeah, it's like one for you and
one for me, and two for you and one two
for me, none of those types of situations. So she's
for every time she sterilizes. Every time I sterilize the
knife to a shot, it's okay, I've done three shots.
I want to keep a track. Sure, yeah, I get that.

(02:27:33):
I get that. So from here we move once the
once the surgery is done, the microsurgery, which she relaxes, Yeah,
she relaxes. You know. It's kind of journal which is
really just a kind of important capstone of every day,
especially in New Year's Eve. And this is a big
part of the Last of Us Part two, the video game.
The journal. Ellie's journals are very important. It plays a

(02:27:56):
pivotal role, and not in the four Front either. It's
a thing that you can check passively that from the
last time you've checked it has new things in there
that you've done, and new sketches and stuff like that.
So I hope, I hope you know it at least
makes it a couple more episodes in the show. It
would be really it kind of be a really nice
job to make it through the whole show.

Speaker 3 (02:28:17):
I know.

Speaker 2 (02:28:17):
I mean I realistically, I don't know how much of
a from a storytelling and visual point of view, how
how it can feel a little ham fisted. Right in
the game, you literally just like open a book. Sure, right,
and that's your book because you have it. But on
the show, I don't know. Yeah, we'll see. I'm hoping
it's there. It's a great insight into Ellie the person. Yeah,

(02:28:40):
it's like a you know, it's a journal. It's a journal.

Speaker 1 (02:28:43):
And now before you continue, how many fucking hours are
in this day and break down all of the events.

Speaker 2 (02:28:50):
Okay, so we start with morning fight club, morning fight club.
Probably there was breakfast, which you always want to start
with breakfast in the mess hall. It's the most important
meal of the day. Then you go to then you
go to breakfast, fight club. Post breakfast fight club, you
do not put punches. Then you gotta go. You gotta
run right up a really big hill to sniper training.

(02:29:11):
We got sniper training, post sniper training, we do what
no that it was Joel and Dina after the barn. Oh,
I was just talking about Ellie's I was just talking
about Ellie's day. I imagine a lot of these things
are happening in parallel. But if you're just following Ellie's thread, Okay, yeah,
let's fall Ellis all over the place, breakfast, morning, fight club,

(02:29:34):
sniper training. However the hell long that takes? Then back
from sniper training to clean and and sanitizer pistol far
better than her own wounds. Later, then prepping for patrol,
going out on patrol, you know, encountering a new infected
from there, coming back, going to a council meeting, reporting

(02:29:57):
on your findings. I don't know how long that takes
a lot of your It was eight pm. It was
eight pm at that point when they dismissed, right, then
you got to come back. You got to do a
mini surgery on yourself. We have to journal. This is crucial,
It's crucial. When did the dance start? Like how long?
You know, when did the dance even start? You got

(02:30:17):
to figure there's women, there's children, there's elderly people, there's
young people's so like you know, if I was saying,
like a community dance, probably seven, right, We didn't even
get out of the council meeting till an hour after.
You know what I'm saying the whole council was not
at the dance when it started. We had to hear
this bullshit about some new infected Then okay, so we're journaling,

(02:30:42):
and then we'll get a little bit, a little knock
on the door, and then we got some stuff that's
going to happen in a moment. Then we'll finally go
to the dance. I'm guessing conservatively eleven pm, just in
time for New Years, just in time, fashionably late. I

(02:31:03):
mean basically the end. I mean it was still popping.
Don't get me wrong, but that's in one of those
situations where you show up and everybody there is already
well well into the seventh orieth drink, and you go
to play a lot of catchup because you've had the
busiest day imaginable New Year's Day. So yeah, anyway, sorry, no,
that's okay. It's a long day. It's just a long day.

(02:31:25):
I hope they're all not I just I hope that
they're all not this, you know, this jam pack. The
apocalypse seems worse than life today, so I would say
the apocalypse is worse than life general. If I have
a meeting like in the afternoon, my whole morning is shot.
I'm like, oh, man, I got this meeting in the afternoon.
I don't know what I'm going to do.

Speaker 1 (02:31:45):
Oh yeah, if I have a doctor's appointment or something
on like Friday.

Speaker 2 (02:31:49):
By Monday, I'm like, well, I can't do anything. Yeah,
the week is shot. I got this thing on Friday.
I got to think about. I'm telling you, it's so close.
So we get this, We get an abrupt series of
knocks on Ellie's door, the garage door, not the garage door,
but the door to the garage, and her her facial
expression changes because it's like she knows this knock right,

(02:32:14):
it's Joel, and he is acting uncharacteristically awkward here. He's
like swinging around. He's you know, he's like telling her,
you know, maybe a big good idea for you to
show up and show your face of a dance, asking,
you know, about whether she's been playing guitar, and but
you know, not before he walks over to the old

(02:32:35):
acoustic guitar that's just kind of on a pile of clothes,
he looks at the strings. Yeah, it's kind of just
like they're not in a good place, not in a
place of prominence. At least, and he sees that the
strings are shot, and he's like, oh, here's the thing
I could do to help. This is what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna fix this thing, not the relationship the guitar strings,

(02:32:56):
to be clear, not this thing, this thing in my hand.
And so he then grabs that and hurries out right.
Also worth noting, Joel's not at the dance yet, but
nobody gives a shit about this dance. We're at probably
nine nine thirty, maybe ten o'clock. Joel's like, you know what,
we got that dance, but I'm going to fix this

(02:33:17):
guitar for a section. You know what I'm actually gonna do.
It doesn't take long to restring a guitar, though, assuming
you actually have strings. I imagine Joel has to. He's
walking around town. Anybody got strings strings? Anybody? No, he
might have that, he may have them, and that's okay,
but still it's not nothing. It's not nothing. So and
we all know that his right hand isn't what it

(02:33:38):
used to be, so it's you know, okay, there we go.
And this was the second moment you noticed him, Yeah,
in the in the garage. Here he does another hand gesture,
you know, with his right hand. He's you know, doing
his thing. And so that's just worth noting again that
it's you know, once I'll say, hey, that's that's interesting.

(02:33:58):
Twice is that you know, it's not one two three
as a pattern, it's in this show twice twice as
a pattern. Yeah, so let's call it. Let's call it
like we see it. There is like a stale on
this between the two of them, in this very brief
and awkward interaction, very difficult to watch. When you asked
me earlier when I said this episode was uncomfortable, I'm
speaking directly about this, sure, and what comes after this?

Speaker 1 (02:34:21):
Yeah, and after hearing them talk about each other all
day and now they're talking around each other, Yes, it's
very it's it's somehow worse than all of what we've
seen throughout the day.

Speaker 2 (02:34:35):
I could understand that if I was Dina or Tommy
or Maria, how I would not want to be around this. Yeah,
So it's uncomfortable. That's why nobody's talking about it, because
it's like, oh my god, no one's talking to the
actual person.

Speaker 1 (02:34:48):
They should be talking about it too, but everyone is
talking about it. Yeah, And I would even go so
far as to say, Tommy Maria in their fucking free time,
whatever free time these folks have, they are probably talking
about it at some point.

Speaker 2 (02:35:03):
Sure, But.

Speaker 1 (02:35:05):
Yeah, this was not an easy scene to watch at all.
I don't know in this long, never ending fucking day.

Speaker 2 (02:35:12):
That's rough. So now we're at the dance and just
FYI on the Expectations episode. I made it very fucking
clear that I cry very easily, and if that happens
in this scene, so be it. Okay, Andrew will happily
take over now because I can get through it. But

(02:35:32):
it's finally a New Year's Eve celebration, Andrew. We are
celebrating New Year's fifteen Minutes perform and we made it.

Speaker 1 (02:35:41):
But I absolutely love the people outside of the dance
hall or wherever this is being held, spinning sparklers, dancing around,
just reveling in the holiday and enjoying, enjoying the moment.
It's very It's a vibe, aeonderful vibe, and I am
here for it now. I have to say, right out

(02:36:04):
of the gate, this opening shot is directly out of
part two, and it was executed flawlessly. The bocal lights
out in the distance being the only source of light. Yeah,
were was stunning and even so far as the rear
of Ellie's head and her shoulders, it really was perfect.

(02:36:24):
And if they had done anything different, people would have
been pissed. Like and people is me and I'm I
don't need to talk about the game anyway. Yeah, but
Ellie is posted up against the bar and she's watching
Dina be Dina on the dance floor.

Speaker 2 (02:36:43):
Moving an all over the place. Yes she is, and
she's dancing and she's twirling from one person to the next,
and like, I just need to point out that Ellie
is staring, so.

Speaker 1 (02:36:59):
Her eyes do not break from Dina, not once. Sure,
And if you are trying to be subtle, this is
not the way. You are the most obvious person in
the fucking room. And it's funny to me because the
only thing that stops her from looking is Jesse walking up, yeah,

(02:37:19):
to talk to her about how they don't like these
dances and she needs to pregame and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:37:24):
And then where's the conversation. Move Dina, Dina, Dina, you know,
and she's the talk of the town. She is the
talking well, certainly in our crowd. She's the talk of
the town correct, but real quick, we want to make
a mention of Gustavo Gus. Gus. He was in the episode.
Gus is responsible. Gustavo, Yes, Gustavo Santo Olaya. He is

(02:37:48):
the genius responsible for not only the theme song the music. Yeah,
not just the amazing theme song, but all of the
music from the games and largely what is setting the
vibe and tone from scene to scene. Yes, and it's
very very powerful. It's incredible. And he's just he's just

(02:38:11):
there and he's a cool fucking dude. I feel like
I feel like I remember many many months ago that
he like posted he was like just so happy to
be there, and he posted a photo and HBO was like, Gus,
what are you doing? But because he's older, Yeah, it's

(02:38:35):
just like, you know, he's just like happy, I mean,
like whatever. I mean, he's had an incredibly what an
incredible career. He doesn't have to be on this show.
He could just do whatever he wants. But he was
just like, oh, look at this, And he took a
photo of him on the set with all this stuff
behind him and was like a port you know, And
so I thought that was pretty funny. I wonder if

(02:38:56):
you could find that if you were to search, But
I do I seem to remember him spilling the beans
a little bit about this. But you know, it's cool.
It's cool.

Speaker 1 (02:39:05):
It really it was, and that is an easter egg
for the gamers. But also I think music people will
appreciate that too.

Speaker 2 (02:39:12):
Yeah. So of course sat a decades long career of
music and an incredible guitar player.

Speaker 1 (02:39:20):
Yeah, and keeping with the music veins, So the band
on stage had a different name in the show, but
in real life they are named Crooked Still. Yeah, and
they are responsible for the music that you hear on
the show is identical to what is in the game.
And again I'm gonna say from here on out, everything
that happens in this scene in the dance hall is

(02:39:42):
it's almost identical to the word what happens in the game.
So I just need to set that precedent so I
avoid repeating myself, and then we can really just dive
into all the nuances of everything that happens here. So
Crooked Still is on the stage. I love that they
honored them by bringing them out and having them on.
So back to Jesse and Ellie. Jesse is still beside

(02:40:05):
Ellie and I enjoy their back and forth, but it
ends pretty quickly when Dina dances her way over, finishes
the rest of Jesse's drink, and then pulls Ellie out
onto the dance floor, where they share a quintessential moment
in their relationship. So, first and foremost, I want to
talk about Ellie referencing back to her journal that we

(02:40:27):
just saw, where she wrote don't fuck it up, don't
fuck it up, don't fuck it up, meaning she does
not want to ruin her relationship with Dina in pursuit
of a romantic relationship. And I feel like everybody on
Earth potentially has gone through this, and it's a very
confusing place to be as a person, worrying with your
feelings for both your friendship and the growing nuances of

(02:40:50):
what your heart is screaming at you.

Speaker 2 (02:40:52):
Right, yes it is.

Speaker 1 (02:40:55):
I don't want to lose this person in Eddie capacity,
but especially.

Speaker 2 (02:40:59):
Not my friend, and especially not in this small ass
post apocalyptic town of Jackson. Yes we are not. I
will not be able to duck this person exactly to
see her.

Speaker 1 (02:41:10):
All and Kat being a perfect example of that right
that broke down, and yet they're still going on patrol
together and being dead fucking silent towards each other. It's awkward, okay, ye,
like bikes not great, but bikes on bikes.

Speaker 2 (02:41:26):
But thankfully in this moment, Ellie doesn't fuck anything up
and is guided through all of this with Dina leading
the way. And it goes from this silly from silly
conversational prompts about smell, which is, I mean everybody knows
that is a ruse to lead one another closer in,

(02:41:48):
to have that physical contact. Oh, but it shifts to
Ellie kind of looking around like everyone is staring at you, Dina.

Speaker 1 (02:41:58):
But then Dina throws it back on Ellie, and then
Ellie doesn't see her as someone worthy enough to be
a threat to anyone who potentially might want Dina. But
Dina is there holding onto her, staring at her, reaffirming,

(02:42:19):
Oh no, everyone should be afraid of you in this
particular sense. I know I have to keep it to
this sense for right now. Well, yeah, I think the
word sheese is terrified. They should be terrified, which is
a strong word. If she said I'm not a threat,
and then the response is they should be terrified of you,

(02:42:41):
that's like, oh no, I feel this way.

Speaker 2 (02:42:45):
Too, like I'm not holding back. I was like, oh,
they should be a little scared of you. No, terrified
is the word. So the word choice matters.

Speaker 1 (02:42:53):
It does matter, it does matter, and it matters in
a grander sense, but not one we're going to talk about.
So there's the unresolved sexual tension here between these two women.
And I don't use that lightly. I don't use it
as a throwaway term. I don't use it as oh,
teens being teens and their hormones or raging and blah blah. No,

(02:43:14):
I mean it as they have deep feelings for one another,
and regardless of whether alcohol loosened their resolve or it
was just time to finally explore this whatever this is
for them, they kiss, and the kiss that they share
is com I mean, it is overwhelmingly incredible. And this

(02:43:36):
is the kind of kiss that you remember for the
rest of your life, the kind of kiss where everyone
in a room or in a space disappears and it
is just you and your person. And I point this
out so deeply, or so intensely, I guess is a

(02:43:57):
better word, because and this is where I got upset yesterday.
Ellie does not have a lot of happiness or joy
in her life. I don't think she has ever been
truly allowed to explore who she is what she wants.
I don't think she ever gets what she wants or
has experiences that she seeks specifically without throwing herself into

(02:44:22):
danger or some haphazard situation to go against the powers
that be.

Speaker 2 (02:44:28):
And this moment of her.

Speaker 1 (02:44:31):
Having something that she wants, yeah, and being wanted in return, sure,
is so fucking beautiful. And I love this for her
because her life has been so sad and hard. And
while people might make the argument, well, she's had five
cushy years in Jackson and a man who would literally

(02:44:54):
kill and die for her, like that has to amount
to something, and it does, and she certainly forgets that
right now. But I would imagine being in an a
post apocalyptic world, in a community that fucking knows everyone,
and being gay is incredibly challenging. Sure, it's probably harder

(02:45:18):
to just speak out and love who you fucking love.
It's already hard in our world because of the piece
of shit people.

Speaker 2 (02:45:24):
That we have to deal with. I mean, it shouldn't
be hard, it shouldn't, But I wanted to draw just
really quick parallels here to what you're mentioning about her
being happy and this moment and this special time, there
are very clear parallels to the episode Left Behind. Yeah right,
And I'm not just talking about like her and a

(02:45:46):
female partner or someone she loved or whatever, but like
the lights the Whimsy, when we saw Ellie's face when
they flip the power on at the mall and it
lights up in front of her, Yeah, that is like
what we're kind of seeing here. So I was like, oh,
that was like really nice mirroring of two parts of

(02:46:07):
her life, right, yeah, separated by a decade years, five years,
five fourteen when she got bit fourteen. Oh okay, so yeah,
so okay, so five years but yeah, so yeah, I
just I love that. I love that. I was like,
oh yeah, yeah, that's that's kind of that's kind of neat.
I think about the lights of the carousel and the
light and how they look like the lights here that

(02:46:28):
are kind of like boka e.

Speaker 1 (02:46:30):
And yeah, it's pretty and it's beautiful. Unfortunately it's cut short,
like this moment is. It was just so beautiful and
they were very much enjoying each other, and everyone in
their world disappeared except for one fucking bigot sandwich named
Seth who ruins it with hateful rhetoric. I'm not going

(02:46:52):
to fucking repeat here because he's a nasty, dirty old bitch.

Speaker 2 (02:46:55):
I'm gonna I'll just bring up someone named Anthony Emerson
on Blue Sky says that tweet. He posts a picture
of Seth and posts this skeet, I guess we call
them imagine surviving a fucking zombie apocalypse and still being homophobic.
I mean really, I mean fucking really, like perfect, that's
what you have to spend your time and energy on. Yeah,

(02:47:17):
it's the fuck. Come on, come on, guy, I mean,
come on anyway.

Speaker 1 (02:47:21):
But Ellie spins to confront Seth after he says the
nastiest word, and before she has the opportunity to do
anything about that, Joel is there and he violently shoves
Seth to the ground, and Ellie immediately accosts Joel for
this and humiliates him in front of everyone, telling him

(02:47:43):
I don't need your fucking help. Sure, and you know
what's wrong with you. And it's interesting because she was
on the cusp of getting violent with Seth in that moment.

Speaker 2 (02:47:54):
She was definitely going to do that leg lock maneuver
on something.

Speaker 1 (02:47:57):
She was gonna fucking do something, and I'm kind of
sad we didn't get to see that. But the question
to Joel of what the fuck are you doing that?
That's one of those things where it's like, what the
fuck do you think he's doing?

Speaker 2 (02:48:13):
Yeah, it's what he's been doing for the past five
weeks or whatever, five years, I mean, yeah, you like,
but specifically five weeks, right, you know, well five weeks
is just the length that he's been in therapy. It
probably has been longer than that. Yeah, no, no, no,
yeah that it attracts, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:48:29):
In the but just I would be if I was
a bystander at that dance in that moment and I
knew Joel and Ellie even if I knew of them,
but I'm like, oh, that's you know, their fucking family
or whatever, and that moment happened.

Speaker 2 (02:48:44):
I'd be like, what does she mean? What the fuck
is he doing?

Speaker 1 (02:48:47):
Didn't Seth just say like this fucking vitriol And obviously
he's trying to beat a man's ass because he is
being offensive.

Speaker 2 (02:48:56):
To his kid.

Speaker 1 (02:48:57):
Sure like it's it's it's captain fuck obvious. But Ellie
does not see that she just sees the trigger.

Speaker 2 (02:49:06):
Yeah, this is more. This is the third or fourth
or however many example of this. Joel's protection is poison
to her. She does not it's a bitter pill. She
does not want it and lashes out. Yeah, you know,
this is hard. This one is hard to watch because
it's very public and it's it seems like an open

(02:49:28):
and shutcase like guy the asshole, asshole, get pushed down,
guy who pushed asshole down? Good guy. Yeah, yeah, it
seems clear cut, but it's we're dealing with the situation
clearly that is far more complicated than we have insight
into yet. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, but it's just sad.

Speaker 1 (02:49:50):
And Joel leaves right after being told that he's not
needed by Ellie, and then the camera immediately cuts to Gail,
who's sitting quietly in a dark corner sipping her drink.
And this is just to bring a little levity. This
is very much kermit the frog tea drinking that's not
my business, or just an equally hushed I told you so. Yeah,

(02:50:11):
and either option works perfectly well.

Speaker 2 (02:50:13):
Here. I like to think that Katherine o haair Gale
has just continued drinking all day, all day, like all day.
She looked at her calendar, She's like, my only appointment
today is Joel. And he gets up and leaves with
in ten minutes, so she's got thirty five minutes. So
she just grabs the bottle. She's like and the weed.
Probably she's like baiting. I'll just I'm just being chilling

(02:50:37):
until dance. She was probably there at seven o'clock. Yeah,
just in that fucking seat. Yeah, all night, I'm smoking,
I'm drinking. Let's go fuck this day. Yeah, let's talk
about the post dance though, and this will bring us home. Actually,
Joel is playing Ellie's guitar on his porch. It's fixed.
So in that brief period of time between him getting

(02:51:02):
the guitar from her and then getting it fixed and
getting to the dance to protect from bigotry, he also
fixed the guitar and it's all tuned and everything. It
sounds great. And he's positioned in a way that Ellie
has to see him, like he's in the porch. He's
on the porch. You gotta go down the driveway to
get to the garage. As she's coming home, she passes him.

(02:51:25):
You better talk about this, and there's a very dramatic pulse.
It is. It is the stuff of legend. Actually, I
don't know if I don't know, if you can, I mean,
everybody you've watched it, if you're listening to this, if
you are this far into the show and you haven't
seen the episode, I don't know what the hell you're
doing here? How did you get here? Go back and

(02:51:46):
watch it and just count one Mississippi to Mississippi, you know,
I got to eight Mississippi. No, I don't know everything
we didn't count. But this is maybe the most pregnant
pulse I've ever seen in my life. She is twenty
feet from the porch, and so at that distance, you're like,

(02:52:07):
you can't really see if is Joel looking at me?
Am I looking at this? Can Jol see that I'm
looking at him? It's just just a shadowy silhouette in
the street. And then she just goes right by. You're
just like, right by. Yeah, Joel looks pretty sad about this,
you know. He was noodlet on the guitar, just hang

(02:52:28):
you know, hoping, hoping for a moment to explain. I
think is what it was to just talk yeah and
just be like I'm sorry, but that that moment just
it just goes right by. She walked on by. Literally yeah. Yeah,
and so we have this, we have this. You know,
it's very cold, very cold. Overall. After this, we see
some New Year's Eve celebrants and they are dancing and

(02:52:51):
living it up posts post dance, I guess the dance
is let out and really all these yeah, what time
next day? What time is it? Jesus Christ? But people
are just you know, still having fun and frivolity and whatnot.
Sparkler still And as a side note, where did they
get those? You know, is there was there a factory
that they found. I presented an option yesterday.

Speaker 1 (02:53:13):
Yeah, yeah, with tiny pieces of steel. Sure, roll them
in adhesive, roll them in gunpowder.

Speaker 2 (02:53:20):
Yeah, and that you know, of course, a quick way
to blow your goddamn handoff. I'll reiterate. It's like magnesium
and like an accelerant is what a Sparkler is. It's
like we're literally churning magnesium into a thousand degrees. Sure
it looks pretty though, but we got this place is
lousy with Sparkler's why they have so many interest.

Speaker 1 (02:53:41):
In Wyoming's a red state. I would imagine you could
raid some sort of firework store.

Speaker 2 (02:53:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I buy it. I buy it. Anyway,
a person drops a sparkler and it just so happens
to be right near Chekhov's pipe that we saw in
the beginning, Chekhov's pipe and the pipe that we broke open,
and we saw all that just nastiness, all the vines
and all the growth in there, and the tendrils. You know,

(02:54:09):
up until just that moment, it just looked like it
was frozen. But then we see from the light of
the sparklers and potentially the heat that the tendrils reach
out towards the sparkler. Now, whether they're reaching for light
or heat or just a sense of something that's different
from what they're experiencing, we don't know the extent. But
it was very creepy. Yeah, it was very very creepy. Yeah,

(02:54:32):
so there is that there's an odd thing.

Speaker 1 (02:54:37):
And I talked about this yesterday and I was thinking
I was potentially going to scrap it, but I'm just
going to say it. Sure, I'm not trying to be
fufu or otherworldly or anything like that. Well, but Maria
talking about how she feels like something is isn't right, okay,
And the idea that the pipe system literally beneath the
foundation of her town is potential overwrought with infected tendrils.

Speaker 2 (02:55:03):
Sure, is there any fucking way that some sense plays
into that. That's a tough one, I know. And then
there's no way to verify that because as far as
we know, she's not infected and she's not immune. No,
she's not. As far as we know, she's not. But like,

(02:55:24):
it would be interesting to think of the leader of
a town being like, something's not fucking right, and then
we see this pipe, which is one of hundreds under
this town.

Speaker 1 (02:55:36):
Being infected. So her town is literally infected from the
inside out.

Speaker 2 (02:55:43):
Now, yeah, I'm trying to think. I mean what you're
saying reminds me a little bit of I was trying
to think of her name, but it came to me
from the stand. Abigail, Captain Tripps. Well, mother was there.
They call her mother Abigail. You know, she was like

(02:56:04):
they all they all dreamed about the same person, and
they made their way to her.

Speaker 3 (02:56:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:56:08):
I know it was Abigail. I don't know if it
was mother, Abigail whatever. She was sitting on a porch,
but she had that kind of like sixth sense Spidey
sense thing too. So I don't want to attribute too
much to that. You know, we get into some weird
territory with like supernatural ship and yeah, I mean there's

(02:56:29):
already there's already this not sci fi, there's already this element.
It's like, okay, we've established that like fungus has infected people,
so and that we got one immune person by the
skin of her teeth, like literally, So you know, I
don't want to say I don't want to go into
like these sixth sense type things either. So it is interesting.

(02:56:51):
Sometimes sometimes in life you just do have gut feelings.
Though I would buy that if she thinks that there's
some you know, there are lots of tensions. There's the
tension of like that there's a lot of people in town.
There are a lot of new people. We don't have
enough places for everybody to stay. What the hell's going
on with Joel and Ellie? Why, you know, why can't
why can't any of these people communicate? There's this new

(02:57:13):
there's a new infected. There's a new kind of infected.
That a lot happening. Yeah, And so I mean her
comment about something feeling off was before a lot of this,
but maybe that was the gut I mean, it's a
gut feeling, you know, all these like little things are
in motion.

Speaker 1 (02:57:28):
Yeah, so yeah, I just needed to throw it out
there because it popped into my brain.

Speaker 2 (02:57:34):
And that's what the show does. It's important. We end
on a very ominous, ominous note. It's quick and it's silent,
but it's it's menacing. Nevertheless, the camera cuts from the
tendrils extending from the pipe to movement through a series

(02:57:54):
of trees like snowy trees, and then out emerging is
who we learned to be Abby and her compatriots. It's
five people in total. They emerge from the trees and
when the camera turns to kind of like see what
they're looking at, it is Jackson. Now here's the deal.

(02:58:15):
It's still really far away. It is. They're up on
a mountain and Jackson's at the bottom of the mountain
and thirty to fifty miles out. So visibility is just
really really good. But it's been five years and it
seems like the thread is at the door, right, and

(02:58:38):
I guess episode two, I don't know. Scary scary times. Yeah,
and we will wait to see what happens with all
of y'all, and then we will report back next week.
But yes, that is the end of episode one. Future days.
Somehow we did it again. Nine hours of recording this podcast,

(02:59:00):
just this one.

Speaker 1 (02:59:01):
Oh stop, Oh my god, it's longer that. Oh we
had a break though. We took a break to eat
like midway. Anyway, we'll see anyway. Some contact information for
us if you want to drop us an email or
link up, send a DM talk about some of the
stuff we mentioned on the show, or all of it
or none of it.

Speaker 2 (02:59:19):
Either way.

Speaker 1 (02:59:19):
You can do that over on Instagram at Telou Podcasts,
or over on Blue Sky at Telou podcast If you
go to YouTube or Spotify, you can find our videos
from the previous season. Just type in Wayfair and Strangers
or the last cast or Telu podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:59:34):
It'll all lead you there.

Speaker 1 (02:59:35):
Yep, once again, we have a sister show called Wayfair
and Strangers Podcast, where we break down the video games
in just as great detail as we do on these
TV show episodes and have quite a bit of fun
doing that. We've completely finished Game one. We are in
the midst of doing hundreds of emails with only a

(02:59:55):
few left to go. And then we are moving on
a part too shortly. And it's been an adventure. It's
been an adventure. If you would like to follow me
on the internet, you can do that at either Jaded
Vader or Through Wilderness which is th hru like through
Hiking Wilderness. Andrew can be found everywhere at Dark Driving
or over on Blue Sky at Andrew Gormley because he had.

Speaker 2 (03:00:18):
Some sort of averfe verification. Yeah, he's very proud of
himself for that. I mean, it's nothing, but you know,
it's something. It's something to Just a reminder, our Patreon
will be live by the time you are listening to this,
and if you would like to support our show and
show some love for what you're listening to and your hosts,

(03:00:38):
me and I he, then you can do that and
just go onto a patreon dot com and look for
Telu podcasts. That's there's a direct link in the notes.
Just click that.

Speaker 1 (03:00:50):
It'll be much faster than listening to me and Yeah,
if you'd like to leave a review for the show,
we'd greatly appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (03:00:57):
Rate and review five stars.

Speaker 1 (03:00:58):
Yeah, you can actually give us a written review that
we can reply to over on Spotify. Now you can
also delete those two, so just keep that in mind.

Speaker 2 (03:01:06):
My episode comments, yeah those are it's a whole thing, Yeah,
the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (03:01:09):
It's really good over there now and if you're still
going old school with Apple podcasts, you can Yeah, you
can do that there.

Speaker 2 (03:01:16):
Too, and we'd love a five star review if you
guys have some time. But that's it. That's our show. Yeah,
that's it. Thanks for listening to the I Will, but
thanks for listening to the world's longest list of US
podcast Yes, so thanks for being to be victorious. Yeah,
many many, many months and years running. Yeah, we'll be

(03:01:39):
back next week, standing guard on Gatewatch and making sure
no sinister strangers reach the walls. Bye, everyone, keep them
out in in, in, in in

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