4. Day One

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to the Last Cast, HBO's unofficial Last of Us
recap podcast. This show hosted each week by Me, Jack
and Andrew. Hello there, we'll take a deeper look into
the mega TV series event. We'll break down, assess, compare contrasts,
and have a little bit of fun as we go.
So grab yourself a cup of Joel's favorite blend and

(00:45):
let's get on with it.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
We gotta get on with it. Look at all these comments.
Holy shit?

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yes, yes, so I think last week our show had
twelve comments. This week technically we had fourteen, but I
deleted and blocked people. So three of those comments, yeah,
three of those comments were thrown in the trash banhammer.
I don't have time for that. It's not. If you're
going to waste time leaving spammy troll as shit because

(01:17):
your your life is sad and miserable, you're gonna get blocked.
That's just that's how that's how it is.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
That's tough. That's tough, you know, So all right, not.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Trying to be I'm not trying to be tough. I'm
trying to be No.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
No, I'm saying it's tough for them. It's tough, you know,
it's a tough place to be. All they can do
is be trolls. And you know that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
I mean, you could offer something constructive, but no, instead
you're just instead, you're just the fucking piece of shit.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Wait a minute, constructive on the internet. What you talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:49):
I know, I know, a hahahaha.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
The joke is on me.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
But here's the thing, though, I guess thank you still
for listening and giving us downloads. You're still listening to
our com your hate listening, and you know what, that's
still that still affects us, Yes, and and you know,
so thanks for the engagement. Yeah, but let's I do
want to our Our total record time for last week

(02:15):
was three hours and forty six minutes, even though at
the end it was like three twenty four because you know, mistakes,
start stops and all that kind of shit. But of
course I want to be very susynct with this episode.
I feel like we can be just like on I
feel like we can do it. So we're going to
dive right into comments. I'm going to start us off. Yeah,

(02:38):
we had two comments that were four episode two, but
they came in after we had recorded already. But I
still want to include them. So the first is from
Michael R. And Michael says Hijack and Hi Andrew. I
want to say that your guys's podcasts, wayfairn and the
last cast are the best podcasts I've ever listened to
at work. Your three hour podcasts make the day feel bearable.

(03:03):
I love what HBO is doing, although, like Jack, I
have my disappointments too. Lol. We are only three to
four episodes in, so I'm really hoping HBO doesn't ruin
my beloved world of the Last of Us with seasons
two and three, as the Last of Us world is
everything to me, and I fully agree with you, Michael,
but the game is why I love story games. So Michael,

(03:27):
thank you so much for taking the time to write in.
Actually Michael also commented on episode three, so we'll get
to that shortly. But yes, I mean these the story
of the Last of Us is so intrinsically important to
gamers and fans of the game franchise, and I feel
a sentiment a similar sentiment is being shared amongst the

(03:50):
gamers that this season isn't as beloved as it could be.
Starting to I'm starting to feel that a little bit
from things I'm seeing online and general reviews, and you know,
I don't give a shit about critic reviews anymore. But

(04:10):
I also know not to really give a shit about
like audience reviews, because a lot of people tank things
or bomb things just because they're petty. And given that
I'm tom petty, I understand that, but I don't understand
that level of petty where it's just like, oh, that's
a mess. You know, ten thousand people to downvote something,
that's just oh my god, again, stop wasting your time.
But but there is, uh, there's yeah, there's a lot

(04:34):
of things all over the Internet and various places where
it's just like, this is not really what people anticipated
or hoped for.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Okay, so it's worth noting, Yeah, it's worth noting. I
got the next one. This is from gen V. Jen
V says, I knew what was going to happen with
Joel because of internet spoilers, but I was more angry
than sad at that moment because I didn't know what
happened that soon. I thought it would be much later
in the series. And that was Jen commenting on episode two.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Obviously, Jenna and I talk every once in a while
over on Instagram, so hi, Jen, but I agree. I
was surprised that they put it as early in the
series as they did. But again, when you look at
HBO and things like Game of Thrones and even the
Sopranos and things like that, like they make bold moves

(05:30):
all the time they go they are a go big
or go home network. So I'm not surprised, and I
feel like a lot of people feel similarly. I don't
love it, but it is what it is.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, one percent. I mean, we even had some Game
of Thrones characters longer than we've had well not, actually
that's not true, So I don't want to say anything
Game of Thrones, so sure, yeah, that's good though, that's good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Our next comment comes from Kurth, and Kurth says, the
moral of this episode, meaning episode three, the Path is
something Andrew said. But I think in the first episode
of the season, if I'm not mistaken, and that is
divorcing the show from the games. But the show has
quote not lost the plot by making Ellie be more

(06:19):
interested in Joel's revolver than the watch, because in the show,
it is true that the biggest bonding moments for Joel
and Ellie came through violence, or in somewhat they were
related to violence. Obviously in the games it was different, Kurth,
I want to be respectful here, so I'm going to
try and keep this short, and I think the word
of this episode is succinct. But my whole entire point

(06:44):
in what they are doing on this show, you just
reinforced here. This show is not a show that HBO
created on its own. It's not a story that HBO
brought in writers sat down and birthed this. The Last
of Us existed for a decade before this show came out.
And to take something that is in the DNA of

(07:07):
the game and beloved too gamers and not make it
be an important aspect of the show, but instead make
violence the tether was wrong. And the fact that people
who have never played these games don't care about the watch,
don't think it's a big deal, is a failure on
the writer's part and the people who were gifted the

(07:27):
keys to the kingdom, which is Craig Mason, and I
stand firm ten toes down on my opinion and nothing
is going to change that. And beyond that, we're not
talking about the morality of an episode. We were talking
about the watch and its significance to Ellie and to
Joel individually. And Andrew mentioned to me privately in a

(07:51):
conversation that he and I had about how I needed
to divorce the game from the show, and I did
my best, but I'm a human fucking being, and at
the end of the day, this show would not have
existed without the Games. So I can't divorce this as
well and as truly as I want to, And I'm
not sorry for that, and it's not going to change.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
That's great. I don't know if I actually agree with
the assertion that the show is more interested in the violence,
at least at this point, Like what are the bonding
moments between Joel and Ellie in the show that are
around violence? Like obviously we have like common deaths bring

(08:36):
them together, like tests and stuff like that. But I
would say that for every one of those, there's also
like the giraffe moment, right, stuff like that. Sure, there's
the story of that we is only inferred, but I'm
sure that Ellie learned of Bill and Frank and stuff
like that, right, So we have these. I don't think
that it's lopsided one way or the other. So I

(08:59):
kind of disagree with the premise that all of their
bonding is done through violence. I don't think that's true.
I think dramatically, it's much more investing or it's much
more engaging for her to just grab for the gun.
I don't think we've seen the last of the watch
is what is my assertion. I think I said that

(09:20):
on the last episode. I think you did.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Okay, you did, Yeah, and I agree with you because
but the thing is is the show, so Craig Mason
is very much pushing this violent thread. So it's not
us interpreting or misinterpreting something. It's the little snippets of

(09:43):
the Last of Us podcast, the official Last of Us podcast,
and the opinions that the creators are going into this
show with each and every week that are doubling down
that the only thing that fucking mattered between Joel and
Ellie is this violence that they shared on their journey
in season one and then ultimately Joel's death in season two,

(10:07):
which was incredibly violent. Yeah, but that is not all
their relationship was. And the majority, the majority of Joel
and Elly's relationship was not predicated on violence. It wasn't
this trauma bonding experience where they just kind of linked
arms and let's go kill people. It wasn't that at all.
And the fact that I've had to talk about that

(10:29):
so much in recent episodes is a direct result of
what Craig Mason has been saying. And that goes back
to why I think they lost the plot and I
still believe that.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I I'll wait, I just
you know, once I have something that's a little bit
more complete, I can I'll judge it as a as
a whole and see sure, because again we don't know
what the what the grand plan is, and I'm not
saying I need to see all four five whatever. However,
many seasons there are, like at the end of this season,

(11:01):
when we have our final episode where we give our
overall thoughts, what we feel, all that good stuff. I'll
judge it based on the merits of what was presented
to me. So it very well could be that it's like,
oh yeah, they really leaned into the whole violence thing.
So but that Last of Us podcast, again, that's just
a that is just a marketing vehicle.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
So I don't, you know, no, I know, I know,
but I also and I'm not trying to push back
on you or change your opinions or how you're going
to approach anything. But at the same time, we are
doing a podcast where we have to look at things
critically and share our thoughts and opinions on that and
waiting to see the entire thing doesn't always work.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
No, no, no, obviously, I mean we what Yeah, And based
off of what I've seen so far, I know that
this doesn't seem that dissimilar from what was presented to
me game wise thus far, I would say like, yeah,
but we can, we can move on. We've Succinctness is
the name of the game in this episode. Yeah, so, okay,

(12:01):
this comes from a bunch of numbers, and just so
you'll be able to identify yourself that this is your comment.
It starts with twelve nine to eight and then a
lot more after that. Maybe it's your phone number. If so,
please stop doxing yourself. Twelve nine eight says on the
Gail issue, I think she is a jaded, complex character
whose point of view cannot be completely trusted. That being said,

(12:24):
I also think she is partially correct. People can only
be helped if they want help. Ellie is not at
that place yet in her journey, so she is right
that wasting energy on saving her isn't going to go
very far. Also, funny and unserious bit that another pod
mentioned maybe Seth was just trying to play the bigoted

(12:45):
long game in getting those ones out of town. Wow, Wow,
that's a that's a thing. I don't agree.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
I don't know what that other podcast is talking about,
but I don't agree with that at fucking all.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
If they're just doing a bit, I mean, you know,
that's but who would be able to predict that far ahead?
You know?

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yeah, I mean the only way that we could have
that confirmed is if it cuts back to Jackson and
he's like, yeah, I'm glad the gays are on, Like,
that's it.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
We did we did it everybody.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, we're gonna have a straight pride for fuck off,
fuck all the way off. But I agree, I think
you bring a very compelling point here when it comes
to Gail. I love I love bringing trust into this
because this is something that I don't think is mentioned

(13:34):
a lot in post apocalyptic stories. It's just an undertone
to every relationship that we are experiencing in real time
or whatnot. But I agree that she can't be trusted
there is something going on that we don't know about
for sure. I also one hundred percent agree that people
cannot be helped if they do not want help. Yeah,

(13:56):
and I've been in that position many years of my life.
I've like wasted away to depression and despair. And I
know that's dramatic, but it's fucking true. And the only
person that inevitably pulled me out of that was myself.
No matter how much Andrew loved me through it, or
my family or friends or anybody. The only person at
the end of the day that that could have gotten

(14:19):
me through to the point of where it was like
I need help was me. So it's a sad, unfortunate thing.
And I don't really want to open this to a
broader topic because it's way too deep this early in
the episode for something that has nothing to do with
episode four. But it's important to acknowledge that. And just
as a side note, because I love and care about
all of you, if you are struggling or having a

(14:40):
hard time, please reach out to someone. I want you
to want to be better. Yeah, And that's a very
It's a good thing to want better for yourself. It's
not selfish, it's not wrong. You're allowed to take up space.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
There you go. I want to say one thing about
Gail real quick too, well, just before we move on,
since she's the only mental health professional in town and
everybody talks to her, she has like this, she's like
basically like a shadow government. She can kind of just
push people in a certain direction, you know. So that's

(15:14):
just worth noting that she knows all of the secrets.
She knows where all of the the bodies are buried,
as it were, and so that is something that can't
be denied. You know, what makes this person tick, what
hurts this person, what they're scared of, what's going on
over here. And you can kind of see her being

(15:35):
maybe a puppet master. And again all speculation because Gail spoilers,
not in the game, not a character that we have
any familiarity with, so's she's a great wild card in
my opinion.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
I agree she's omniscient to a degree. Yeah, which is
a dangerous position to have. So our next comment is
from the lovely, wonderful, amazing person human being Mary and
Marie says, I one hundred percent agree with you when
you mentioned how they portray Ellie on this show. I
felt bad since season one with the quote activation comment

(16:11):
when Joel kills the Federal soldier. Since then, they keep
hammering that she's this wild feral cat, which has nothing
to do with the core person that Ellie really is.
This is my biggest criticism of the show. To me,
she was the embodiment of the last shreds of innocence
and hopefulness left in the world. And Mari, you know,

(16:32):
I would love to spend ten minutes just like chatting
with you and talking about all the wonderful things that
you say and bring to our lives. But I agree
with you, and I literally have nothing to add. That
is the perfect way to put this. She was the
last remnants of innocence and that is gone.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
She would would you say she was the last of us? Yes? Amazing.
I have nothing to add there, so that's yeah, I agree.
I mean I have nothing to add. So gen V
comments again what gen V says. I have been checking
every couple of days for this to drop. I couldn't wait.

(17:10):
I love you guys and absolutely love this podcast. It's
like spending time with friends talking about this show every
week as it comes out, looking forward to more each week.
Thanks for all you do for four hard emojis. Thank
you so much. Ja. That's awesome. Jen, thank you.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, we really appreciate you. And it's nice to just
get a comment like that every once in a while too,
just to be like you're doing a good job. Here's
a gold star.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Really really appreciate that our episodes cover half of someone's workday,
like you.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Know, yeah for ready a half hours better or worse.
So our next comment comes from Marty, but I can't
read the entire comment because it is very spoilers for
the Last of Us part to the video game, which
will likely translate into the show and not even this
season in future seasons. So I can only read the

(18:03):
first two sentences, three sentences whatever. So Marty says, don't
really understand the hate for Abby. Joel murdered her father.
Abby murdered Joel. It should have been over and that's
all we can say. Marty. I'm not gonna sit here
and waste my time or your time trying to explain
my hate for Abby. I feel like I've explained that

(18:25):
several times now over the last few episodes. Joel killed
Jerry Anderson, Abby's father because he pulled a scalpel on
him first and prevented him from getting to Ellie. Joel
didn't torture her father. He didn't do horrific things and
taunt him and give an enormous amount of exposition before

(18:46):
doing so. So that's a lot different than what Abby
did to Joel. A lot fucking different. And I don't
want to explain the differences between killing and murdering and
torturing su. I have my hate for Abby and it
is unwavering.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
There it is. Do I have to say this person's
user name? God damn, I actually.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Think this person is our wonderful friend Ozzy.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
God damn it, Ozzy if this is you. This comes
from Lemon Condom didn't notice Joel's absence in the episode's intro. Well, thanks, Andrew,
you made me cry. Sorry. I didn't do anything. I
wasn't working on the intro to the show. That was
all them.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
It's not easy.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Can't imagine we would have too many more huge title
sequence changes. Seems like they just wanted to. They had
that one in the barrel ready to go for all
subsequent episodes.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
So there it is, sure sure. Our next comment is
from Alex R. Why did Ellie need to take the watch.
It can still mean something, but not worth taking. In
the moment, seeing and smelling his jacket made her break down.
It clearly meant more to her than both the gun
and the watch, but she didn't take the jacket either.

(20:10):
The gun symbolizes the connection they share perfectly. Joel was
Ellie's protector. She took the gun because it reminds her
of Doel while also being practical. It's not a game
with unlimited inventory space, so she doesn't need it right now. Alex,
you present a wonderful point of view here, and I
respect that. But back again to the conversation that we

(20:33):
just had about Kerth's comment. I explained the intrinsic nature
of grief and needing a piece of someone that isn't
just based or rooted in practicality. And while I do
agree the gun is more practical for what she plans
to do, even though you know, the town council meeting
and this, that and the other hadn't even happened yet. Yeah,

(20:54):
I don't know how more I'm willing to explain the
important nature to the watch. I think I did like
a ten minute spiel in episode three about the importance
of objects and our loved ones who leave us and
I feel the way that I feel. And also the

(21:14):
game doesn't have unlimited inventory either, it's very limited. And
she still took the watch, So.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
We really we've really struck a nerve with this whole
watch debate.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
He yeah, we struck. It's just two comments.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
It's fine. No, it's fine. I would say, yes, there's
obviously the gun is a practical thing, and when space
is at a premium or whatever, I believe that Ellie
believes that. Well. No, actually, what is presented to us
from the show's point of view is everybody thinks that
there's just six or seven of these motherfuckers and that
they're going to go do this and then they'll be

(21:47):
back and it's kind of like Sean of the Dead like,
and then we'll all have a pint. So I think
that's that's literally the reasoning. I could be wrong. Again,
Let's just keep an eye out on that watch. Let's
just keep an eye out.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
This one comes from Michael R. Michael R. Says, Hello,
jack and Andrew. I just wanted to say that I
do agree with the graveyard not being inside Jackson. However,
my thought in the reason why the graveyard isn't inside
Jackson is so they can build more homes as they
are letting people in. Yes, it's a big place, but
the more people, the more homes you'll need. That's from

(22:23):
episode three are our last episode, So yeah, I think
that tracks. I think that's probably you know, space is
a premium and every time they have to expand, they
got to extend this wall, and I you know, who
knows what the logistics of doing that are, right, So yeah,
that feels good. I like that.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah, I have nothing to add. So our next one
is from Tom, Hi, Jack and Andrew. Zombie Tom here
that is a familiar name. Hello zombie Tom, please help.
This is an SOS. I feel like I'm going nuts
after seeing episode four. While I generally enjoyed it, the
back end just unraveled and fell apart from me. The

(23:06):
guitar scene, the underground train and infected scene, even Ellie
getting bit there by revealing her immunity all played fine,
but the entire theater scene was horrendous. Dina's response and
the lighthearted moments after question mark what show are we watching?
So we obviously have a lot to talk about when

(23:29):
it comes to episode four, which we are about to
get into once we conclude these comments, and I'm interested.
This was actually to give a little spoiler. This episode
I enjoyed for the like literally the first episode of
this season that I can say. I actually kind of
liked that.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
We eat like the Last of Us?

Speaker 1 (23:52):
What excuse me? Don't I love the Last of Us?
I don't like the show that much. But when I
did go and do the notes is when I started
to see the cracks again and start, you know, critically
looking at things and pulling things apart. So we will
discuss this more, but I'm curious to know when we

(24:15):
get to the theater coverage if we find it horrendous
as Tom shared here, between Dina's response to Ellie and
then the lighthearted moments after, you know, in the confusion
over just what exactly is happening in this show. But
I think that these are bottle moments that feel likely disconnected,

(24:38):
and I understand why people would get frustrated with that.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
It's interesting. Interesting. This next comment comes from Beck, not
the musical artist. This is Ek. Yeah, I true, it'd
be cool if Beck was I was a listener to
our show, though, you know, the musical artist. I would
love that this is from Beck b e K also great.
I truly don't think I could get through this season

(25:03):
without the validation of Jack and Andrews's opinions slash review.
I feel so seen as I spiral into madness over
the direction HBO Craig decided to take this show. You
guys are seriously the best and are helping me get
through this. So thank you.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Oh Beck, that's another familiar name and a wonderful person
I've communicated with and messaged along the way. Thank you
so much for your comment. And I'm glad that we
can all just kind of be in this together because
it is frustrating more than not. So we're all just
hanging out and talking about the last of us on HBO.

(25:43):
That's all we're doing.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
For the most part. I'm pretty positive on this season,
so I mean it's I'm fine not being I'm fine
being the odd person out on this one. So I
know that Beck does not agree. They can't agree with
both of us. So if Beck is backhandedly disagreeing with
me because she sides with you, I'm totally fine with that.

(26:05):
I'm totally think I'm totally fine. All I try to
do is just point out the things that I like
and the things that don't make a lot of sense,
and then maybe give the show a little too much
credit for some things, you know, give them the benefit
of the doubt, I would say more than credit.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
I don't think Beck is giving you any kind of
slight or backhanded, backhanded compliments sand which is I just
you know, it's how they feel and it lines closer
with my viewpoints than yours, and that's all.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
That's okay, Beck. I'm letting you know you're off. You
can tear into me. Next episode be like this positive mother.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
So I know that's sometimes the positivity rattles my bones too.
Don't worry people.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Our final comment from episode three our podcast The comment
on our episode three podcasts is from es Bernard, what up.
I'm happy to see a thriving comment section I connected
deeply with talk about memories through smell or touch, even
recipes to taste. I agree this is an odd grieving
and totality. But while speaking, they said that they are

(27:10):
going to take out unrelated WLF personnel. Are we solely
out for revenge? For revenge gives a lot to Tommy's
comment about how Joel would come to save quote my life,
meaning Tommy's life, almost like he was saying, quote, I
don't know what you're going to do, but in the end,
protect Jackson. It's safe and this is normal sentiments, is

(27:33):
what I'm gathering Espernard meant to say here. Yes, we
love a thriving, healthy comment section. So I agree with
you very much, and I'm glad that you connected deeply
with the talk about memories because sense of like I said,
sense of smell is the most triggering memory for human beings,
or is the most triggering sense for memory in human beings.

(27:57):
And recipes to taste. I mean, you know, my grandmother
passed away twenty years ago this November, and there are
still recipes that my sister makes every single Christmas because
it brings our nanny, that's what we called her into
our lives at that time in a very literal like

(28:17):
not literal, in a very tangible sense. So it's a
beautiful thing to keep those things alive and keep those
parts of people that are not with us anymore with
us in everyday life. So I'm glad that that. I'm
glad that that worked, and yeah, it is. The grief
is just not being handled well. On this show. But

(28:40):
I do think Tommy's head, while screwed on tight, might
be facing the wrong direction. And that's okay.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
It's a wonderful image. Yeah, his head is on tight,
but it is also backwards.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Tommy, Yeah he's not. You look ridiculous. I love Tommy
so much, but he wasn't there. He wasn't there at
Joel's death, and that affects things and changes things on
a fundamental level. And we are seeing that happen. We're
hearing that happen. So thank you so much to everyone

(29:21):
who wrote in and commented, except for the trolls, fuck you,
but thank you for listening to our show because you
love to hate us. And I look forward to hearing
what people Andrew's still living about that to what y'all
are going to say for episode.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
For a review, it was good, It was good.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
You love me.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
It's just a straight like an arrow through the heart.
Fuck you, Yes, I do, I do love you. And
also wow, hilarious.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
So since you're taking the first section, I'm going to
talk about the production and some show info this week.
So the writer, as always is Craig Mason, but the
director for this week is Kate heron and I feel
like Andrew's gonna lay some knowledge on us.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
About heron the wonderful Kate. Yes one, nerds might know her.
She is responsible for one of the better Marvel TV shows.
She directed six out of like the nine or ten
episodes of Loki, which I thought was perfect, really really
really well done. The best episodes of Loki, the ones
that you remember, were directed by Kate.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
I mean that show is great.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, that was really really Marvel's had an uneven run
on television. I think I would say that's pretty fair
to say, but Loki being a real high point there,
so she's far sure for that.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
So yeah, one of my favorites is not even close.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
But this week's episode summary for day one, which is
the title In Seattle, Ellie and Dina find themselves amid
a brutal battle between the zealous Seraphites and a ruthless militia.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Okay, let's see how that goes. Let's see, we're going
to start in Seattle with Fedra. This is our cold open,
so it's a flashback. We have twenty eighteen Seattle Quarantine Zone.
That's our title card. We have a loud mouth recounting
some vulgar joke to the other feder soldiers riding in
the back of an armored vehicle real quick.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yeah, the Internet tells me that this guy's name is
Josh Peck and he was on some sort of like
Disney show or I don't know, we are too old
for that, but people were apparently freaking out. They were like,
what is Josh Peck doing in this fucking show? The
dickhead was John, Yeah, the dickhead. Oh yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
It must be fun to see like a Disney star
have a complete heel turn, you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
oh yeah. So whatever he was doing on Disney was
clearly not what he's doing here, So I guess that
must be pretty fun for a certain demographic. That's cool. Sure,
Only one of the men seems to pay no mind
to this bravado, though. There's mentions of disseminating pamphlets and

(32:06):
it wasn't WLF propaganda but rather some religious stuff. Greenberg
question mark, I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, there was a man named Greenberg brought up in
this recounting of a story, and I'm like, who the
fuck is Greenberg got it.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Okay, so we have a guy named Greenberg. We have
the name Greenberg mentioned at least, so yeah, we have
some more blah blah blah, matre jokes, shit, some some
other jokes and whatnot. There's one guy who looks a
little bit younger than the rest, and he asks why
they are referring to the people as quote unquote voters.
Throughout all of these stories and jokes, all of the

(32:45):
civilians were referred to as voters. So the blowhard gives
a small deck energy reply before an older gentleman in
the front of the vehicle replies, gives the real answer,
because we took away their rights. We took away their
right to vote, and somebody started calling them voters to
mock them. This shuts everyone up, and the thoughtless guy says,

(33:08):
didn't mean anything by it. The energy changed very quick
here and then changes again to one of like alarm.
The driver alerts the sergeant, the man who was uninterested
in the story, who just gave that little bit of
context for us and set the record straight, ding another
perspective for us to bear witness too.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, they just they love doing that in this story.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
It's interesting, it's interesting. We're gonna we don't have to
talk about it. Yeah, we don't have to, but it is,
you know, just you know, note it down. We had
to tell you to make a lot of notes. I
hope I want to see everyone's test at the end
of this. At the end of our podcast, the vehicle
stops and we see people walking out ahead on the street,
walking directly towards the truck. So you can imagine if

(33:57):
you were inside, that'd be a little bit alarming. Sure,
so the serge orders all of his men to stay
behind as he goes to talk to a lot of
these people. He steps out of the vehicle, but calls
the one soldier who asked a real question, the one
about the voters, to join him, and it prompts him
to learn something. They approached the vehicle and a woman

(34:21):
comes to the forefront. We learned that he is Isaac.
She is Hanrahan. Did I say that right? That was
a tough name, Hanrahan Rahan.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, I did subtitles to get it right.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Hanrahan, and they acknowledge each other. Isaac sighs and goes
back to the armored truck quickly unpins and tosses two
live grenades and shuts the door behind them, trapping them
in inside. The driver then falls out of the vehicle,
and he was clearly affected, even though he was in
a separate part, in his separate compartment, right, and then

(34:53):
Isaac shoots that guy. Isaac shakes hands with the woman
hanrah Han and offers the young soldier a choice join
quote unquote the fight or die.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, And Jeffrey Wright, the actor that you are. We
are going to talk about him a little bit later
in his pivotal scene, but he is the strongest actor
on this show. And it's not even the only person
who comes close is Gail. Yeah, Jeffrey Wright is Catherine o'harer.
He's a god teer. Yeah, mostly not your leader. He

(35:32):
hasn't just been a leading man, which is unfortunate, but
he definitely deserves it.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
But yes he does. He played a prominent role in
HBO's Westworlds, which is probably an easy bridge to cross
right to get here. And he was in The Batman.
He's been in like tons of amazing stuff. So good
on you, Jeffrey.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
And he was Isaac in the Last of Us Part
two video game.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
You know what that was the bridge because cuz I
the girl, the one voice actress for Dina was also
on Westworld with him, and she introduced him to Neil
and then Neil got him in the game. That's the bridge.

(36:16):
So if you like Jeffrey Wright, watch West Rolls and
the list of us.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yes, the credits remain unchanged, and we are still said
that there is no goal. But moving forward eleven years
later Ellie and Dina, we are with Ellie and Dina.
So we see Dina crawl through a hole that has
been ripped apart between several walls, and it appears that

(36:45):
we are in a pharmacy of some sort. So she's
searching through some drawers, but she finds no pain meds,
no supplies that they can use.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
Or be useful.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
There's a lot of old boxes just like musty, dusty
vibes in this place. And the set deck was like
very well done. It was low light, it felt just
like you could smell it. You know, it's again sense,
so very very well done. She does find an old
some old monast at meds a box and you know,

(37:17):
it's always time for a yeast infection joke. I guess no,
it's not just you know, as a girl as a woman, no,
no thanks. But from the other room, Ellie says she
found a gallon of milk, and Dina tells her to
smell it first, And this is the second gross joke
in as many minutes. So we're on fire, folks. But

(37:41):
as Dina checks through bottles and bins and little tins
and things like that, everything is empty. But then something
grabs her attention and stops her mid sentence, actually stops
her mid joke, and she tells Ellie that she has
to pay, and she grabs something unseen from off.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Of the shelf. And that's that now.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
I think think you and I obviously knew that Dina
was pregnant from the game. However, I think that this
was a pretty obvious tell in her demeanor, in her expression,
in her reaction. I couldn't as a viewer or as
a a TV show only person, I don't know how

(38:22):
you would interpret this as anything else, or at least
the very solid suspicion of pregnancy. But I'm curious to
know what other people thought.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yeah, of course, if you're just a show watcher, you
gotta let us know. Yeah, did you know? Did you suspect? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Before you found out? Yeah, we are now outside of
Weston's pharmacy and Ellie is waiting on shimmer and it
raids Seattle day one and.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
What could this mean?

Speaker 1 (38:49):
I guess we will find out throughout the rest of
the season seasons. So Dina comes outside and is quote
good to go, but she doesn't make eye contact initially
with Ellie as she gets her backpack and everything settled
back on a shimmer, and Ellie notices this and asks
if she's all right, and a quick yeah comes before

(39:11):
all right, hit it people to kill with a forced smile,
and as Ellie turns and fads forward again, the smile
fades pretty damn quickly. So something happened with whatever she found,
which was obviously the pregnancy tests. And we see that
we are in Capitol Hill and there are Pride flags
flying and rainbow colors rainbowing, and it is just a

(39:33):
beautiful site. And Ellie and Diana chat hear about how
they thought Seattle was bombed, but they guess not, at
least not the section they're currently moving through. But Dina
actually asks what's up with all the rainbows, and Ellie
says she doesn't know. She assumes that everyone was an
optimist and this is going to be the first real
talking point of our episode thus far, because this is

(39:55):
honestly something I never considered that people born twenty five
five years were after just after the apocalypse, after the
end of the world, would likely not know what the
rainbow symbolized to the LGBTQ community and what it represented.
And this is sad to me. But I also really

(40:19):
liked Ellie's interpretation here of optimism.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
I thought it was a side of Ellie that we
haven't seen for a really long time, which is good
because I've been complaining about her being you know, too feral,
too violent, to unhinged, to that, to whatever. I don't
necessarily know if her journey to find the person who

(40:44):
murdered Jole is the place to have this switch up,
which is a bigger conversation, but I don't really want
to talk about that right now because it'll take away
from this tiny little moment, which was very genuinely heartwarming.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
I really agree. So there's two sides to this that
I think are interesting, Like, you grow up in this
world and you're gay or you're straight, and that is
of like the least amount of importance as part of
your identity, right, it's just a given be just is.

(41:21):
That's amazing. And then, as demonstrated earlier, we do have
these remnants of the old world in people like Seth
that are that are trying, but it seems like failing
to bring some of these uglier discriminations with them. But yeah,

(41:45):
you have to imagine that in a generation or two,
it's just gone, which is a really lovely thing to
think about in an otherwise apocalyptic world.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Let all the bigotry and the hatefulness fucking die out
the only reason why, Yeah, legitimately just gone. And then
all the people have left to hate is just each
other for being a part of a different faction or
a different settlement or fear. That's really all hate is
rooted in. It's all just fear based. But I agree,

(42:18):
you know, Seth and his fucking bigot sandwiches, go sit
in the corner and eat until you die, bitch and that.
And again that's me recognizing that he still did something
good for Ellie and Dina in episode three. But I
stilln't like I stin't like you.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah, So the Giant Pride Heart was just so wonderful.
I love seeing the flags, the advertisements. This is just oh,
this is a wonderful gighborhood, and it's so it's a
happy place. Let's you know what. Elliot's optimistic as fuck.
I love that, sure is. But unfortunately this vibe doesn't last.

(42:58):
Elli and Dina around the corner, and so long are
the happy, pride, good feels, and instead the street is
littered with fedros skeletons and a moss covered tank. Ellie
says that she's never seen a tank, and neither has Dina.
Although this doesn't really make sense in my brain. I
know that Ellie saw quite a few in the game,
and again it's it's not the game, it's the TVA show.

(43:22):
But I'm pretty sure Kansas City and the faction the
militia that was there had some sort of armored vehicle
that Ellie had to have seen. I can't remember directly,
and that is on me, but that was weird. So
maybe she just hasn't seen a tank up close to

(43:44):
the point of where touching feelings seeing inside one that
I could believe. But the comment caught me off guard
and I just wanted to talk about it for a second. Anyway,
Ellie stows her rifle question mark and walks over to
check to see quote if there's any AMMO just lying around.
I guess because that makes sense. But Dina and Ellie

(44:05):
discuss whether or not the WLF are responsible for the
dead Federra, but Ellie says it looks more like infighting
than anything else, and Dina replies with a huh good
I And this is where I'm gonna rip into some really,
in my opinion, stupid behave like just stupid writing. Okay,

(44:28):
because neither okay, so you're you're telling me neither of
these two have ever seen a tank. That's one, they
originally thought that Seattle was bombed, but clearly it wasn't.
That's two. That's that's the second thing. And yet Ellie's observation,
she just tosses this observation here of unfriendly fire and

(44:51):
based it on what exactly, and Dina automatically believes this
with a good eye reply, first of all, if you
look around, there's not a single fucking bullet hole in
the surrounding cars, there's nothing. So like every shot was
a perfectly aimed shot, and Fedra killed themselves or w

(45:13):
Ella like none of the this makes no fucking sense.
And the certainty that these characters are presenting with their
opinions in that moment are so baseless that I'm like,
you've never fucking seen a tank in person? And then
we're gonna talk shortly. Literally. The next comment is about
how Ellie opens the lid on the tank, which seems

(45:34):
such an easy task after metal has been sitting out
and fucking just weathering for twenty some years. Sure, and
she just drops it. There is no fucking survivability or
awareness to these two people in this moment, just completely.
They should stick their fucking head in the ground, because

(45:54):
that's how exposed they are in this moment, and their
hypothesizing is based on what please, someone tell me. Oh,
I think that they just kind of they just shot
each other. There's no bullet holes in the cars. There's
some broken out windows.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
But okay, so is this where they were talking about
the shell casings or did I add that in myself
in my brain? You did? So. Maybe it's based on
the position of the bodies where they were kind of
facing each other when they died. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
I mean, they were all just on the ground and
dead skeletons. Okay, there was nothing to base this on
at all and continuing to just that whole lid moment.
It really it's mind boggling. Like I literally said, rewatching this,
I was like, are you fucking stupid? Ellie?

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (46:48):
And Dina, in response to Ellie just dropping probably like
what is a ten to twenty pound fucking lid? Because
it's a tank and the just infinity of metal that
booms throughout the rest of the street, Dina goes on
high alert and pulls her pistol and starts fervently going
back and forth and checking all directions, but she doesn't

(47:12):
say a goddamn word to Ellie about this, like are
you stupid? I would literally beat someone's ass if they
did quietly silently, but someone would still get an ass beating.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah. I don't think it helps anybody to be yelling,
you know, but.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
I agree, I said quietly, No, I know that's what.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
Look, some people die in dumb ways, you know, and
some people get lucky, and so that's we're seeing both
sides of the coin right now.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
I think this isn't luck though. It's plot armor, that's
all this is, and it's it's just disappointing. Ellie knew better,
like this character should know better. At this point, she
crossed pretty much the entire United States from Boston to
fucking Wyoming, and you're gonna tell me that at no

(48:06):
point did she come up to some sort of like
metal sewer or just any lydd in general, a fucking
metal door of trash, cand lid whatever like. And Joel
wasn't like, be quiet.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
I would love to hear Joel say it like that.
Be quiet. I'm just be quiet.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
It's just okay, it's frustrating. It's it's very frustrating. It
is frustrating. It tells us a little bit about the world, though,
which is good. And what does it tell us about
the world. They slam this shit down. Nothing, nothing hurt it,
and so it is. It's been cleared. Wherever they are

(48:58):
has been cleared. Were the infected have moved on and
there are no patrols there. So in terms of just
a weird environmental storytelling thing, I think that that is
worth just you know, I'm again here, I am Pollyanna,
just giving them the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, they're
trying to do it. Okay, I'm going to undo it

(49:20):
because remember this is where they stop and go into
the music store. Again, we're going to talk about this shortly.
And yes, they used binoculars to look down or up
the hill rather yeah, to where the news station was,
but it was close enough that we can assume the
subway was running somewhere nearby. So if you're telling me that, no, allthough,

(49:46):
the fucking hundreds again of infected didn't hear that tank
because they are squirreled away underground waiting for their tendril
alert system. Yeah, yeah, that's stupid too.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
They were brought were, they were alerted by the tendrils,
not by the noises. That's okay, literally just said no,
that's what I'm I'm reinforcing your point though. So I
believe you know, sound doesn't carry that far. It wouldn't
you know a bang that happens you're underground, you're up
in New York, you're in the subway. You know, a
car crash up up top, You're not going to hear

(50:19):
that fender bender I'm not talking about I'm not talking
about along car crash. You wouldn't hear a I don't know.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
I don't know because sound travels fastest through solid objects,
and if there was that much infected hiding out underground
and that tank lid slams down, there's going to be vibrations. Okay,
so it just doesn't You can't. Again, two things can
be true, but this doesn't add.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Up for me. I defer to your judgment on sound.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Anyway, Moving on, Ellie notes that there are three burnt
skeletons inside of the tank and thankfully does not enter it,
but instead she drops some random NASA knowledge regarding Apollo
one and the accident on the launch pad in which
the lives of three American astronauts were taken because of

(51:12):
fire and some sort of dor malfunction. And I'm a
big NASA nerd, love space, love all of it, so
I knew exactly what she was referencing. But my comment here,
this whole sequence was, in my opinion, good and bad.
Good because it begins to show Ellie's interests beyond puns
and playing guitar. But it's bad because it feels very

(51:35):
awkwardly out of place for me. But I to be
honest and fully transparent with you and everybody listening, I
don't know why I like it, and I dislike it
because it doesn't feel like the place for this. It
feels very disconnected. It felt forced. I think that's what
it was. It was like, oh and hey, by the way,

(51:56):
Ellie loves space. Remember that, guys. It's like they had
to get that line in this episode. This is a
setup for something that I can't talk about. And that's
why I don't like this because it was squeezed in there.
It was shoved in just as a remember remember this,

(52:17):
ell we like space.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Hey, bro, so you like space. What I'll say is
that this entire episode, everything that you've pointed out, wow,
well true in terms of this feels a little bit
ham fisted. I feel like this is our default, Ellie.
It is a little bit, a little bit clumsy, a

(52:40):
little bit nerdy, jokey. And so this is when we
have these arguments about the violence.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
I look at these examples that we're getting right here,
and I'm like, this is this is the character. Now.
I know that we are on a path to violence,
but along the way, these are the moments. And I
think these moments that we're seeing with her and Dina
are the same moments that helped bond Joel and Ellie.
They might not have been on screen, but you have
to imagine that during their travels. They did a lot

(53:12):
of stuff like this.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
No, I agree with you, but I think it's almost
to the point of no return. And that's why it's unconvincing,
because they've been beating us over the heads so much
with this one ideology or this one sentiment of who
Ellie truly is, and now they're trying to slide in
these little like eh notations essentially or like, oh, you know,

(53:35):
here's some Ellie lore just in case anyone was curious.
And while that's okay and you still can absolutely do that,
this was not the place for it. And I think
that it is to use your expression. I think this
is table setting something else that we can't talk about.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yeah, again, they've done a lot of little little things
along the way. This is a much more in your
face thing. But you know, we saw the astronaut in
her room, right, sure, sure, and probably something in the garage,
maybe as a little tiny easter egg that I just
didn't point out or noticed at the time or something

(54:11):
like that.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
So oh the astronaut toy.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Yes, right. So there's all sorts of threading that's happening,
and some of it is I think better executed than others.
There is that whole show don't tell thing, and I
think this is them telling when they've they've already shown
they don't. You don't have that. This wasn't necessary, but

(54:35):
you know, there it is.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Yeah, it's like fun facts with Ellie and then back
to you know, oh look skeletons like it.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
Just was it? Yeah it was.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
It wasn't great, but anyway, the conversation about the dead
feder or Dedra Nice concludes with these assholes were just
killed by other assholes. But Ellie, I thought they were
killed by themselves.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
They're all assholes, and so therefore she is actually correct.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Yeah, she's wrong, and she's right. It's a very strange sentence.
It technicality, it is, yes, But Tina uses her binoculars
here and looks at headways, and she spots a WLF
tag on the news station satellite dish, and Ellie tries
to high tail it back to Shimmer, excited obviously that

(55:29):
they have a lead or at least a headway, and
but Dina finally speaks up about how it's broad daylight
and anyone who paints a sign big enough to be
seen from miles away wants people to know that a
they are there. And B they're prepared. And beyond that,
they are up on a hill, which means Ellie and
Dina in broad daylight. Again, just to bring that up,

(55:52):
in broad daylight will be spotted almost immediately, And thank
you Dina for bringing logic into the fucking conversation. New
skill unlocked survival. So they agreed to wait until dark
and head out later on. So again no one is
around because of Ellie's loud ass tank drop, tank lid drop.

(56:15):
And I'm glad that Dina also not only just said, hey,
we need to wait till dark, because otherwise it'd be
stupid if we just attempted that now, So good on
Dina for that, and then good on Dina for calling
Ellie out for being just hazardous with sound, and Ellie
says Dick, and again Ellie's shut up. You were wrong,

(56:35):
you should have known better. You're just You're god, She's
continuing to know. It wasn't the moment I start. If
I was in hurt. First of all, I would never
have done that.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
I don't open a tank.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
No, I would open a tank and I would slowly
it slipped lower the wind. Mossy, didn't you see how
massy it was no that part of it somehow was
not that mossy.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
It was rusty. Didn't you see how rusty it was.
There was no rust on it either. Rust was slippery.
It's metal, metal slippery. Have you ever held a phone?
That's okay, we're in the music shop, so walk too far,
to walk too far. We're in the music shop now though,
and everything's good. Shimmer walks right in the front door.

(57:21):
This is a huge door for a music shop. It's incredible.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
It's just a double door, and I like it. It's
a pretty sizable shop though, to be perfectly honest, but
a little notation of positive notation. I love it makes
my heart happy. How they take care of Shimmer so well,
and they're always making a point to make sure she's
holed up somewhere safe, she has food, she's okay. It
just because every time usually in shows and shit, they

(57:46):
just direly on you day outside.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Yeah, the horse will figure it out. It's an animal
that will live well. They bring Shimmer in this it's awesome.
And they give Shimmer the good grass that's been growing indoors.
It's probably got all sorts of nutrients and stuff like that.
So I'd like seeing that so but in the music
shop we get drums, posters, instruments, album artwork, albums. It's

(58:12):
like a pretty stacked it's like a music store and
a musical instrument store. So it's like a sam Ash
and a Sam Goodie for anybody who was alive in
the nineties and early offts. Neither of those things exist anymore.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Christa worked, My sister worked at a Sam Goody back
in the day.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Oh yeah, she was flipping like twenty five dollars albums
to people.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Then.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. It's a crazy time we used
to live in. Sure. Ellie is scene flipping through some
vinyls as Dina plays around with a red drum set.
Is very funny, you know. They know that nobody's around,
so she's doing like a pretty rudimentary drum solo. Ellie
goes upstairs and we see it is Guitar Central on

(58:54):
the second floor. The wall is blown open in one section,
so all the wooden and electric guitars left on the
walls are basically ruined from the moisture. Yeah, but there
is a case sealed and untouched. Ellie goes to it
and clicks it open and she kisses these moisture absorbing
silica packets for doing their job for the last two

(59:15):
and a half decades. I don't know how long those
things traditionally lasts, but if it's two and a half decades,
then I'm set for my personal equipment. She picks up
a pristine acoustic guitar and begins to tune it, and
Dina is seen listening from down below, and we see
a caterpillar crawling along here as well.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
This is a weird theme with HBO's artwork, like the
official artwork has butterflies, okay, which is very confusing because
Ellie's tattoo is of a moth. Ellie draws moths constantly.
It's only ever supposed to be a moth theme, and
yet the official posters and artwork, and even the theme

(01:00:02):
on Instagram in direct message conversations for the Last of
Us is a fucking butterfly. And now we're seeing this caterpillar.
So I'm bringing it up because I'm curious to know
your thoughts, but also people listening at home.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
So it's interesting that they've chosen to flip this. I
think you take a moth and a butterfly and you
put them next to each other, and you could tell like, Okay,
it's not the same thing, but they're not different. They're
not like super different either, right, but what they mean

(01:00:36):
in literature, they're very different. It's actually the opposite, right,
Like a butterfly is like birth or rebirth, right though
a caterpillar to butterfly thing is like birth rebirth change,
and a moth means death like at a moth is
a much darker portent generally, which.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Is why I like them.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
I feel drawn to these creatures, and so it could
just be mortality. Also, moths symbolize a lot of stuff,
but all of it is it's skews darker, whereas butterflies
skew lighter. And I would just say, like one is hope,
one is despair, if you wanted to break it down

(01:01:19):
into black and white. There's that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
So I guess Ellen Ellie's other arms. She's going to
get a butterfly tattoo one day, I don't know, because.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
And beat a shit, the moth is that's the tattoo
on her arm. Part of you know, that's that's that
you're saying something very specific when you highlight a butterfly
or a caterpillar or something like that what you're saying
is that there is a transformation. That is, what we're
watching is a transformation. That's just you know, And I'll

(01:01:51):
go ahead and go pretty high level. My recollection of
the game does not include anything about butterflies or caterpillars.
I don't, it doesn't, Okay. So this is a complete
whole cloth show invention. And I can only base my
ideas off of what I have seen historically in other
pieces of literature and media, and that is, we are

(01:02:13):
witnessing a transformation happen. Now I don't quite know what
that is yet, but it is interesting to think about
that the character that is tattooed with something that symbolizes
death or decay or just general kind of mortality is

(01:02:35):
also being represented by a symbol or being reinforced by
a symbol that means the exact opposite thing. And so
it's a little confusing. I'm going to be honest. It is. Yeah,
it is.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
And I'm curious to see if this theme will persist
throughout the remaining episodes and following seasons.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
So I definitely didn't want to just not talk about that.
It was a very I mean, it was maybe a
one to two second scene of this caterpillar just crawling along,
and that was it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
I want to in case somebody also tries to. I
also want to just note that the moth, I get it,
the look for the light thing. That's what moths are
always doing with their entire the entire moth's entire life
is spent looking for the light. That is not lost
on me that that is also part of the symbolism here.

(01:03:33):
I just don't think it's relevant to Ellie, like she
didn't get a moth tattoo because she has a thing
for the fireflies or anything like that. No, I I
do see that as well, that they're a moth is
constantly searching. If you want to go, if you want
to extrapolate a less macabre theme from a moth, then

(01:03:54):
maybe looking for the light. Looking searching is also possible.
But about is pretty cut and dry, like, yeah, that's
that means what it means.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
They also have incredibly short life spans. It's true both.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
That's true of both, right, I think, Well, it's certainly butterflies,
but maybe moths live. Maybe the moths live a little
bit longer.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
I don't know, forty two to fifty six days for
a domestic silk moth.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Oh, so they're about there. They were about the same,
I would say a butterfly in the wild. Might you
know they got a lot of a.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Lot of natural butterfly is fourteen to twenty eight Oh damn,
so that's very quick. It's like two to four weeks tops, yeah,
for a butterfly. So you know, at least a moth
almost hits the three month mark.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
When you meet a moth, sad that's like fourteen days old.
He's like, that's like he's having a midlife crisis. That's crazy, right,
it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
I genuinely love moths. I mean I have the moth
and fern tattoo, and I love my iteration of the
moth very very much as opposed to the visiold design
for the Last of Us. And that's fine. I'm not,
you know, knocking it whatsoever. I just preferred to have
an original from my from our tattoo artist.

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Actually because Andrew got his first his first tattoo this Monday.
But the other day I stepped outside at like six
or seven o'clock and there was a tiny little moth
like walking, it was flying, and then it landed on
the ground and I literally just went down and picked
him up and held him until he flew away. I

(01:05:28):
genuinely like moths, like they are just they're very calm
and peaceful to me. Sure, And I mean, we don't
get any butterflies where we live, which is kind of sad.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
But I don't know a lot of birds.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
Yeah that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
Oh this is my spot. Okay, sorry, yeah I was.
I was like, yeah, I wonder if it is the birds. Okay,
here we go. Ellie begins to play a song that
might be familiar to some of you. It's a AHAs
Take on Me, and she's pretty decent. I was surprised,

(01:06:05):
do we know if this is actually? Is this Bella?

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
I'm pretty sure it is.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
We know that this is Bella Ramsey's. I was shocked.
I don't know why I was shocked, but I was.
Ellie sings and her voice, like I said, is pretty good,
very youthful. Right, it's a different arrangement on Take on Me.
Dina hears this from down below and sneaks upstairs. Because
the camera's focused on Ellie, so we don't see Dina

(01:06:30):
sneak up, but it happens. Ellie stops when she eventually
does see Dina, but Dina encourages her to continue. Ellie
resumes singing and playing, and Dina moves closer and gets
a front row seat. And from this point on the
scene is quite lovely. It's beautiful. Actually, Dina watches Ellie

(01:06:51):
with such love in her eyes, and it's a wonderful
thing to experience this moment. The lighting is great, the scenery,
the production design, it's incredible. Dina gets choked up as
Ellie sings the line slowly learning that life is okay,
and looks directly at Dina while doing it, and it's yeah,
it's very emotional, it's very charged. This scene, Dina's expression

(01:07:16):
shifts from love to sadness to love again. There is
something happening that we aren't fully aware of yet or
keyed into. As Ellie concludes, Dina wipes her eyes and
comments on how Ellie has improved and Joel taught her well.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
This is another example of Ellie talking about Joel mentioning
all the lessons that he had given her guitar lessons.
And I definitely cried during this scene. I'm getting emotional
right now thinking about it for multiple reasons. Between you know,
the budding romance between Ellie and Dina, but also bringing

(01:07:52):
Joel back between them and sharing that love that they
each had for him in their own way and past experiences,
because Dina recognizes that that was a big part of
his world, and clearly he taught Ellie well, like very well. Yeah,
so it was it was very nice to hear his

(01:08:13):
name brought up and spoken of so fondly.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Yeah, I have to imagine that's not the last time
we're going to hear that. I mean, they lived an
entire life that we weren't privy to, like five years, right,
there was an all sorts of things happened. But yeah,
it was nice. It was nice. This was a nice
version of this song too, That is it's actually kind
of a sad song, you know. Yeah, a lot of

(01:08:36):
eighties songs real sad, but they were played real happy
in the eighties. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Yeah, very poppy.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
I'm talking everybody wants.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
To Rule the World.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
I'm talking to you, mad World that one too. Yeah,
you're both series revers. Wow did they write only really
sad bangers? We'll have to do an investigation.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Everyone was just sad and high on coke.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Well. Jackie's review of the eighties. Everyone was sad and
high on coke.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
Am I wrong? I was only there for.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Half of it, and I was very young, so I
couldn't say with surety. The shared simplicity of this moment, though,
between Dina and Ellie was amazing, but ended really quickly
because they were both super duper hungry, and Dina offers
to make some jerky, which is great, that's a great
skill to have in the apocalypse. Yeah, Ellie does the

(01:09:36):
unthinkable in my eyes, and instead of paying it forward,
she just leaves the guitar out and walks away.

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):
What the hell?

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
And this was done because it's a foreshadowing for something
we can't talk about. It is also mirrors what happens
in the game in that exact moment. But you and
I looked at each other on the couch and we
were like, put the fucking guitar away, Ellie. It's a
literal relic. And her just carelessly setting it aside and

(01:10:07):
walking away so that gamers can see this future visualization
of a scene to happen much later down the line
was very frustrating.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
We did not need this. What if someone else is
going to fall in love in that shop? Because of
their guitar playing skills. Later ten years from now they
will be able to They never will, they can't. I
hate it. Put the guitar away, Let the silica do
its job.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Moving forward, we are now with Isaac and the Seraphite,
and we are introduced to an oven burner, and it
is lit by Isaac, and we are in a large
industrial restaurant kitchen of some sort. Isaac begins to talk
about his shy history with women and the way that
he would deal with that or overcome his shyness was

(01:10:56):
by cooking for them. And he was good, he says,
he was good enough to have higher quality hardware to
cook with, but unfortunately he did not have the money
for it at the time. And Williams Sonoma actually catches
some praise here in these tortuous halls. So he stares
at the Moviel cookware that's currently hanging on the rack
above the stove, and he says that moviell is the

(01:11:17):
best of the best French, of course, and of course
I googled sure, and I actually sent this to Andrew.
A set of Movil pots and pans range from twenty
eight hundred dollars to thirty four hundred dollars plus it
was like three four hundred and forty one dollars for

(01:11:39):
a set of movial pots and pans. And Andrew's reply
was goals.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
Look, I don't aspire to have giant French copper cookware.
I'm not an isaac. I wouldn't describe myself as an isaac.
But they are really nice.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
They are very very nice. Listen one day anyway, So
he continues to share more about his life, and he
says he worked out his life and wanted to own
just a single mobile saucepan with lid because that changes

(01:12:18):
the fucking price significantly. And he says that he was
right that did actually happen, but how he acquired them
not exactly what he planned. However, this is a strange
perk to the apocalypse. So he grabs said saucepan and
places it on the burner, and here we learn about
some thermodynamics and how copper is the best conductor for heat,

(01:12:42):
but it isn't the best for interrogations because it loses
his heat rather quickly. And he turns around and we
finally see who he's been talking to, or I wouldn't
even taunting in essence maybe, And no, it was not
himself this whole time, but it's a young man who
is naked, filthy, bloody, and chained to the wall behind him.

(01:13:05):
And I have to just sidebar here, and I'm not
making a joke about the nudity or anything. The realism
hits so much harder because all of his bits and
pieces are out and I know that that's a weird
thing to talk about, I guess, but this moment and

(01:13:25):
this particular scene was executed flawlessly because they chose to
literally go one hundred percent with this. Even if he
had been partially clothed down to just like a ratty
pair of white, whitey tidies or something like that, it
would have lessened the impact and our suspension of disbelief
between Isaac and this seraphite. So kudos kudos to them

(01:13:50):
for doing this the right way, because that's what a
real situation like this would look like.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Yeah, and it's horrifying, just as an aside, but anyway,
Isaac says that when you quote own Moviel, you use Moviel,
and I just a little sidebark. I wonder how movil
feels about their products being used for torture. However, you
and I again went to the website and they are

(01:14:18):
almost all sold out, so I'm guessing that they feel
quite good about it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
So look, here's the thing. They can't just they can't
just use the name, right, So they had to go
to this company and tell them what they were planning
to do, and they said yes. Do you know why,
Probably because Moviel's like, this isn't going to affect us
one way or the other. Nope, we're going to sell

(01:14:45):
the amount of pans and pots that we've always sold yep.
So if anything more, people will have heard of us now,
so they're probably just like, yeah, go ahead, here's a
set that you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
Can use for sure. Listen, we are not hoity toity people.
I never even heard of this fucking company.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
Same, So, and you went through a phase where you
loved cooking, and I think our most recent pots and
pans set was the most expensive we've ever spent, and
it's not it's not even close to Movielle. They're great
and they will last as long as we take care
of them, because that's how it is with things you

(01:15:25):
care about. But uh uh, yeah, I'm like, who buys
this shit.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
Yeah, I mean if you're doing it and you're in it,
I mean, or if you're a chef, right it's and
you have a kitchen and you're the you're the head
chef restaurants. Yeah, you're gonna buy the stuff that's going
to make your job the best and easiest. So yeah,
I completely understand for sure. I'm not trying to like
say don't buy this.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
I mean, like the lay cooker, you know what I mean,
like is probably not buying mobile.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
Yeah, you're probably good with the kitchen ad or whatever. Yes,
you know whatever, the whatever they have at Target is
going to be just fine.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
You know, it's not gonna last as long this See,
that's the thing you and I understand just because of
some of the research that we've done, because you love
Serla Toab that's like Andrew's favorite cook wearestore.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
Oh man, don't give me start.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Damage damage to damage.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
I'm thinking about sauce pans now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
But if somebody, if you and I bought a set
of mobile pots and pans for thirty four hundred dollars,
Bella would be using, our daughter would be using them,
and her fucking kids would be using them. These are
the things that last for literal generations. So I understand,
I understand. You get what you pay for.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
So anyway, so the young man talks of a she
again just like the people back in episode three did,
and how she's watching over him and says she's been
watching you get your ass kicks. He calls Isaac calls
this young man a scar and then says that some

(01:17:08):
people in this religious faction understand that she was just
a person and not just this fairy in the sky.
But the guy on the floor says, heretics. Obviously these
are non believers. The Seraphyites who say that are non believers.
And then Isaac grabs the steel handle, which remains cool.

(01:17:29):
This is so horrible. It really is just so bad.
And then he carries the pan over to this man
to do his to do his devilry, and he stands
above him and asks where the scars are attacking next.
So this whole story, this history, this introduction of mobile
for all of us, basically getting to the heart of

(01:17:49):
the matter of where are you attacking our people next?
And Seraphyites is the only reply this guy says, And
that is the official name for this group of this
religious group. The seraphights and Isaac softly tells him to
hold out his hand. He's not screaming at him, he's
not yanking his arm. He literally is commanding this man

(01:18:12):
to hold his hand out, and he does, knowing what's coming,
and Isaac burns him. But it cuts away from the
actual scene to two guards standing outside of the door,
and the one says, Jesus, this is so fucked and
I'm the irony of bringing Jesus' name into the mix

(01:18:33):
here during a moment like this where it is military
versus a religious group was an interesting, very intentioned choice.

Speaker 2 (01:18:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
Yeah, I know a lot of us will just be like,
oh Jesus, you know, throwing it around, but this it
felt significant.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
Yeah, I don't want to stay anything. Yeah, so that's all. Yeah,
but I agree, I agree. Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
So the other guy tells him to shut up and
that Isaac knows what he's doing. But the man being
tortured screams the blood and begins to repeat a prayer
and the burn is so horrible to look at, so
just turn away, and his prayer is she watches over me,
she fills my soul, she watches over me, she feels
my soul, and Isaac comments on what this Seraphyite did

(01:19:22):
that he put an arrow through a little boys a
little boy's skull. Was she filling his soul? Then does
she tell him to kill children? And the Seraphite replies
with you kill our children? And Isaac says, never by choice?
You train them to shoot at us, and the saraphight says,
because you broke the truth. And so it goes round
and round and back and forth here before Isaac stops

(01:19:42):
the chicken and egg game because he just wants to
know where the next attack is. And the man looks
up and says that Isaac and the WLF are going
to lose. But Isaac kind of kneels down and he says,
we have automatic weapons, hospitals, you have action rifles, bows
and arrows, and superstitions. How could we possibly ever lose?

(01:20:04):
And the young guy says here that every day a
wolf seeks the truth and takes her into their heart,
they take the holy mortification and become a seraphyte, whereas
not a single Seraphite ever leaves to become part of
the WLF. And this pisses Isaac off so much so

(01:20:25):
that he gets like he stands up, goes and gets
the pan and begins to scream at the man that
he will burn every single part of him until he
tells him what he wants to know, and the seraphit
calmly holds his other hand out as an offering. And
I think Isaac has this understanding, as we all do,
that there is no information to be had here. So

(01:20:46):
he tosses the pan back into the oven, pulls his
pistol out, and shoots the man dead. But it cuts
back to the two guards and the one man says, good,
the scar got what he deserved, and then his stupid
fucking clown asks comes into focus and he just says
fucking animal before, which is the final word or final

(01:21:08):
sentence of this particular scene. And this is where we're
going to give Jeffrey Wright his flowers, just kind of
like what we did with Gabriel Luna in our last episode,
because Jeffrey Wright has been in two scenes thus far, yep,
and he steals the entire episode, not only every scene,
but I was thinking about him the entire show. He

(01:21:32):
is a absolute masterclass in acting, and I truly wish
that other people on this show wow would fucking study
what he's doing.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
Okay, I have a couple observations. You might not like this,
but I'm gonna go ahead. You'll like the first. I
think you'll like the first one as it relates to
the show, and then you may not like the second observation,
but I'm going to say it anyway, just get it
out of the ether. Number one is it's interesting that

(01:22:09):
from what we know of Isaac, which is just a
little bit of hearsay early on, and then these two
scenes in this episode, right yeah, yeah, a lot of
similarities between him and Kathleen Kansas City, where the revolutionary,
like the person who starts something eventually becomes drunk with power. Sure, right,

(01:22:35):
And so I found that to be interesting. That was
kind of the first thing I thought when I watched this.
I was like, I wonder if they're trying to draw
a parallel here between Oh absolutely, yeah, just between these
two people, like, oh, there's no world in which you
rise to be this level and not be a dickhead.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
Oh one hundred And it really is like meet the
new boss, same as the old boss.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
Right yeah, yeah, that's observation one. Observation two is that
he's he's he I mean there are similarities between him.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
And Joel as well, torturing for information. Joel did that
scene with the knife and the guy that he had
tied up and killed them both.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
Yeah, I do. I think.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):
Again, it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):
I'm just saying, I'm just saying shades there. They are
just little yeah. Just it's not I'm not saying this
guy is Joel. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying, no,
there are shades of people that we have seen in
just you know, everyone in this show, I believe, I
believe is completely three dimensional. Like I love how multifaceted.

(01:23:49):
And it's like we look at this and we're like, man,
this is a true active aggression. That guy was helpless
and whatever. It's like, but we've seen someone that we
you know, quote unquote like do something very similar, right, Yeah,
And it's just worth like they're both I have to
imagine that Isaac. If you were to put Isaac and

(01:24:09):
Joel next to each other, they're probably within a year
of each other age wise. Right. This is just me guessing.
I don't know for sure, but I'm like, they're probably
about the same age, right, So they're from the before
times they've had to make their way in this world. Joel,
you know, kind of on the Firefly side obviously, Isaac

(01:24:31):
kind of on the feder side. Right then they both
broke away from their respective groups and just kind of
lone wolfed it, as it were. There's just like some cool,
cool parallels. You know. Again, I'm not calling one the other.
I'm just saying a lot in common.

Speaker 1 (01:24:47):
Yeah, And I would never refute that. I mean, going
back to tests like we're pieces of shit, Joel. Yeah,
everyone there is no good. There's no all good to someone,
there's no all bad to someone. My bias opinions towards
certain people are what they are. But that doesn't mean

(01:25:07):
that I think that Joel was as fucking saint like
and maybe are.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
If people think that I think that, then good lord. No,
I don't think that's yeah, and I don't think that.
You know, that was not my assertion either, is that.
You know, it's just interesting that I guess we assume
that Isaac, you know, just based on what we heard
from Abby and her crew in episode one, that he's
a leader and that he seems to be in some

(01:25:32):
position of power, right, this is how he is exerting
it versus we saw a little bit of in episode
one Joel as a not a leader, but kind of
a figurehead, I guess in Jackson, much more seemingly approachable,
much more just like head down, do the work, not

(01:25:52):
running around being a tremendous asshole.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
Yeah, so sure, kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
Kind of interesting. Mm hmm. We get to nightfall and
we're going to go to this news station. We're going
to go there, you know, when it's that thing in movies,
don't go there, but here it is. We're going there.
So we're going to go inside this WLF labeled building
and a thunderstorm is imminent, which is not ominous at all.

(01:26:20):
Ellie notes that there is no patrol and this isn't
always a good sign, so just throw that out there.
They see a camera above the door, so they need
an alternate entrance, and they note a shattered window up
high the second floor. It's up, it's busted out, and

(01:26:40):
seemingly someone hurt themselves trying to enter. There's a little
bit of blood on the shattered glass.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
Yeah, I mean they said, oh, someone must have cut
themselves getting up there, which cut seems like an underwhelming
word here because it is blood over several parts of
broken glass, and I'm like, that's like a wound. What
the fuck are you cut?

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
Yeah, and visible from forty fifty feet away. You're like
that's a lot of bluss. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):
Yes, And then of course the video game has shit
about how you know they need to climb onto this
one thing, jump onto another, hop up there, and I
just do you love to see it?

Speaker 2 (01:27:19):
Yeah? The only thing that would have made it more
like a video game is if it was somehow painted
yellow to indicate that this is a climbable element. So
Dina ask, what's the verdict if they run into wolves,
into the wolves that were in Jackson. Ellie just stares
at Dina, and Dina agrees. There's no words exchanged. We
know exactly what's going to happen here.

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
Yeah, Bella Ramsey does quite a bit of staring in
this season thus far, which is a weird thing to note.
But there's also this lack of outward anger since Joel's death,
and I'm starting to feel like this revenge quest feels

(01:28:02):
much more tame than it ought to be, which is
very odd considering considering.

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
Yeah, I agree that they're seemingly trying to keep it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:13):
Light, but which is weird. That's weird to me.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):
Yeah, and I mean not in a way of like
they just at this point in their journey, they don't
even really know anything yet. I don't even think they're
aware of the size of the force that they're up against, right,
I guess that's true. They know that, like it's more
than like six or seven wolves, but they don't know

(01:28:38):
that they're basically what we saw on that patrol in
the last episode as a militia. That's a lot of people.
So I think it will get more serious as the
stakes begin to raise, potentially, that's all. But yeah, I
do agree that it's like, oh, we're just kind of
we're just kind of winging it here and see how

(01:28:59):
it goes. We're just kind of vibing. Yeah. They enter
the broken window and creep along, but notice the place
has power, there are lights on. They open a door
and are greeted by a dead wolf with five arrows
in his chest. So there's that. It wasn't, however, one

(01:29:20):
of the wolfs from Jackson, but they are clearly in
the right place because they noted the patch that Tina
so beautifully drew. Entering through a set of double doors,
we now see five men hung and disemboweled with their
wrists bound by barbed wire. It is a shot. It

(01:29:41):
is a tableau, if you will, it's crazy to see Dina.
I was going to go immediately for someone just putting
two words together. Dina immediately throws up again, and Ellie
tells her to go leave, leaves her alone. Ellie moves

(01:30:02):
into assess these aren't any of the people either that
are currently strung up from the ceiling. Turning away, though,
Ellie follows a trail of blood drops on the floor
to a wall that says, seemingly written in blood, feel
her Love, with the sigil beneath it, the one we

(01:30:23):
noted earlier in a previous episode. Dana then asks the question,
I think that's on all of our minds. What the
fuck is wrong with Seattle?

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
And you're and see you're laughing here and this this
was my next talking point. The little quips are a
normal thing, but they are starting to get old for
me because it lessens the impact of what we are
seeing in a moment where we should absolutely not be laughing,
Like all twenty five feet of fucking intestines are hanging

(01:30:56):
out of one dude, Like five feet away from where
they are standing, and they're making jokes that are that
aren't funny to them, but are funny to us sitting
at home on our fucking couch. And it's so it
takes me out of it, Like I'm supposed to be horrified, disgusted,
and like very put off, but instead I'm like, yeah,

(01:31:19):
what is happening in Seattle?

Speaker 2 (01:31:20):
Well, I feel like the question was asked in earnest.
I laughed at it because I laugh at things that
are uncomfortable, you know, like too, if something makes me uncomfortable,
then I'm laughing about it. But I think the way
that Dina asked the question, since they've gotten to Seattle,
all they've seen is just death essentially, right, Like they

(01:31:44):
saw all those dead Fedra soldiers out there, and now
they're here and they're seeing this crazy shit and then
five the guy with five arrows in his chest. It's
pretty messed up, right, So I think she was being earnest,
But I did. I did. It did get a laugh
out of me, whether that was the intent or not,
And that could just be just how delightful Isabellahmer said,

(01:32:06):
is so maybe that's it. Sure there's another dead wolf
on the floor and her walkie talkie begins to chirp
with static, so Dina grabs this radio. It's the same
ones they use.

Speaker 1 (01:32:20):
Which okay, like why point that out?

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):
No, no, no, it's I guess it's worth noting, right
because if you know, it's just maybe we can spy,
or maybe they've been spying, or maybe we don't know.
But the wolves use the same exact radios that the
people in Jackson do. Okay, the dead wolf woman did
call for backup, which arrives exactly now, right now, Ellie

(01:32:48):
and Dina hide behind some large crates, boxes, desks, you know,
all this stuff that just happens to be around in
the news the newsroom. More wolves arrive to find their
friends dead, and they note that the scars got all
of them. One orders the others to cut them down,
and the rest are told to fan out and make
sure there aren't any other scars present. He is disobeying

(01:33:12):
Isaac's orders here that Isaac isn't here, and they've got
intestines all over the fucking place. So the guy doesn't
give a shit. He's just like, kill them all if
we find them, kill them all. Ellie and Dina creep
around here. This is kind of cool. This is like
the video game, you know, This almost exact scene happens.
It's pretty neat. The rooms are cleared one by one

(01:33:34):
by these wolves who are not actually they're not that
great at their jobs, if I'm being perfectly honest. They
just miss these two people sneaking around. Ellie notes stairs
and quietly takes them up, leaving Dina downstairs under a desk.
The one shouting orders, here's a sound by the stairs
and initially clears them, but then goes up there anyway.

(01:33:58):
While upstairs, Elle sees a window and has to bust
out of it on the second floor, but hides. As
the man is now upstairs and coming in the door
of the room she's in, She tackles in with a
low hit, then wraps her arms around his neck. He screams,
we've got one another wolf runds up at that, and
just as he is about to shoot, he is killed

(01:34:19):
from behind by Dina.

Speaker 1 (01:34:22):
How did she get out of her sticky situation? And
it really all comes down to video game sidekicks have
all the luck.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
Look, they are smart, they're capable, strong.

Speaker 1 (01:34:33):
Never heard, Okay, they're never seen.

Speaker 2 (01:34:36):
Yeah, yeah, even right out in the open. Just what
what the hide? She's invisible? She's got the she she
took an invisibility potion for a secure that's the world
we're in. Yep, it's worth noting here. And I called
this out to you and we've just brought it back
that when that guy yells we've got one, there is

(01:34:59):
a musical hit that happens that is almost identical to
the one that happens in the game when you are discovered.
It's like a like a kind of a hollow ring.
I was like, I love this so much, so good.

Speaker 1 (01:35:13):
Yeah, you actually pointed that out to me, and I
forgot to put it on our notes. So thank you
for remembering, yeah, because I just I'm very much not
pay I listen for music, but not intensely on my
first watch, and then I forgot about it my second,
So I apologize, So thank you for bringing that up.

Speaker 2 (01:35:29):
No, that's okay. Please if you have if you are
a person that is not tuned into the music and
you're a game player, just go back and listen to
that one part because it's really really cool. It's just
a little throwaway sound for the gamers. Ellie screams for
Dina to shoot that window that she was trying to open,
and Dina does as Ellie stabs the soldier she's currently

(01:35:51):
holding in the throat. They exit and take the emergency
stairs down. Ellie slips and falls down the list a
few rungs of a ladder to ground below. The wolves
begin to shoot from the stairs, but of course they
hit nothing. They race out onto the street with a
thunderstorm in full swing, and try and locked entrance, but
it is a no go. Another door nearby does open,

(01:36:14):
but the majority of it is blocked at first. However,
there's enough room at the bottom for the girls to
squeeze through, but the soldiers would not be able to
they were too big and bulky. Yeah, the soldiers are
not far behind, still shooting, still hitting nothing. One shines
his light through the pathway. Ellie and Dina were able
to fit through the kind of like crawl on their
bellies get through, but he is too large, and so

(01:36:37):
he radios that they're in the transit tunnel circle the
south entrance. Oh boy, oh boy.

Speaker 1 (01:36:43):
Yeah, and now we are in said transit tunnel, and
Elli and Dina make it through the collapsed rubble and
enter a decimated train station, not station, but the train
track area, and Ellie finds the exit sign and immediately
SiGe with relief because they have an out. But Dina asks,
at this moment, if this place is going to fall

(01:37:05):
down on them, my initial fear would come through crawling
through actual fucking rubble that has already collapsed and can
shift and turn on you at any goddamn moment. But
you know what, let's be concerned of wide open spaces too.
I get it, I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):
I'd be concerned anywhere where there's something above, even in
a building. I'd be like, this whole building's coming down.
It has to be in any minute now.

Speaker 1 (01:37:29):
Yeah, I just I would not be alright in structures
in the apocalypse, I would not be okay.

Speaker 2 (01:37:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
Anyway, neither want to find out if it's going to
collapse on them, so it's time to get the hell
out of here. Unfortunately, though, a loud bang emanates from
the opposite end and the WLF enter from the south,
and the whole area gets lit fairly well and very

(01:37:57):
quickly by all these red flares that at the WLF
are throwing in abundance, and one of these flares, of course,
lands by some tendrils, which stokes them to life and
signals to the infected that it's go time dinner, and
we yeah, it's dinner. This is it's literally a fucking

(01:38:19):
dinner bell at this point, and we begin to hear
infected sounds from somewhere in the distance, and Dina does
her listen mode with counting each as it comes, and
the wolf, one of the wolves, whisper here of how
they thought it was supposed to be empty. They're talking
to each other, so not just one multiple And this

(01:38:41):
is one of those moments again where I'm like, this
is so fucking stupid because y'all thought it was empty.
I really truly am starting to think that Tessenjol were
the only two fucking people left on earth to understand
how the tendril system worked. I really truly am.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
It's possible.

Speaker 1 (01:38:58):
It's actually possible because nobody grasps this concept, and this
has now been blamed for so many.

Speaker 4 (01:39:07):
Deaths, so many deaths.

Speaker 2 (01:39:13):
Isaac, I don't know that for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
I'm sure he does. Anyway, Panic begins to set in
as din you as you continue immediately, Dina, we love you.
Panic starts to set in as Dina continues to count,
and now we are up to five before she ultimately
stops counting, and fear shows plainly that shit is going

(01:39:41):
to hit the fan and gunfire reins out as yet
another horde. Yes you heard me, everyone at home. Another
in possible, unbelievable horde descends upon the WLF and, by
proxyes Dina and Ellie. The soldiers are taking care and
disposed of rather quickly, which we're fine with that, but

(01:40:04):
Diana and Ellie a little faster on their feet, and
they enter a subway car and the zombies bang and
slam their bodies against the outside as they race as
fast as they can through the skeletons and other dead
shit inside of this subway car. And they get to
the point where it's like the junction between one subway

(01:40:25):
car and another that that very thick rubber substance meet.
I don't even know what it could be made of.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):
To be perfectly honesty, like a heavy, heavy canvas or something.
It's hard to know, but.

Speaker 1 (01:40:38):
Yeah, yeah, but it's it's that foldable tether between the
two cars and the infected and just descend upon it
and start scratching it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:48):
And it is an unsettling experience.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
Yeah, yeah, and you and I looked at each other
again second moment on the couch on Sunday night where
we said it reminds us of when we walk through
the haunted asylums that we do every Halloween together as
a family and with friends and such, because there are
like they inflate these giant leather bags and you have

(01:41:14):
to squeeze your body through them. So again, I'm five
foot one, so these bags are like up to my
fucking hips, and there will be moments where people are
hidden between like the gaps and grab your fucking legs.
So when we watch this on the show, I was.

Speaker 2 (01:41:29):
Like, I like that trauma. Trauma flashbacks, Yeah, trauma.

Speaker 1 (01:41:33):
So but it is good and it was the sound.
The sound was mixed wonderfully. But they make it through
the next area and they slam the metal door shut
right before a clicker breaks through and almost got to them,
and the zombies begin to break through the train windows
as Ellie and Dina fall to the ground because there's

(01:41:54):
so many of them pushing the train that it knocks
them to their feet, and even so much so that
Ellie loses her grip on her on her gone and
because of that, Dina saves Ellie and gets her up
off of the floor and notes that there's a hatch
up top, and Dina works on getting it opened, and
then once she does, Ellie shoots and kills quite a

(01:42:15):
few of these just the madness around her, and boosts
Dina up before Ellie jumps grabs Dina's hand and is
pulled up and out of the subway car. So they
make it, and they run along top of another train car.
They jump down, and they continue and run some more.
But this grabs the attention of the Zombie Horde, because

(01:42:37):
of course it does. And yes, if you're wondering if
I'm not going to call them infected anymore, you'd be
correct because this is just zombies.

Speaker 2 (01:42:45):
That's all.

Speaker 1 (01:42:46):
These are the infected. The specialness of what the infected
were is gone. HBO has just completely committed to the
fact that we're done. We're done with the few and
the far in between. They are just zombies.

Speaker 2 (01:43:01):
So they got you specifically because you don't watch zombie things,
but now you are.

Speaker 1 (01:43:06):
Forced to, and I fucking hate it. I don't like this.
This is my main complaint with this episode is they
just keep doing this with the infected and it sucks anyway.
They run to the metal barrier, which is this metal
grate of some sort, and they climb up and over

(01:43:26):
top of it, and Dina watches a moment before she
turns around, and they both run up the escalator into
these rusty carousel turnstile gates and downstairs a loan zombie
breaks through the gate and races right behind them, and
the gate begins to give here but not quite fast enough.
And Ellie is halfway through, with Dina still on the outside,

(01:43:47):
so closer to the horde. And this one, this woman,
and this infected woman comes right at Dina, but Ellie
throws her arm out and takes the bite so that
Dina does not get bitten.

Speaker 2 (01:44:01):
And this is one of those magically in.

Speaker 1 (01:44:04):
Movies or TV shows. Ellie's jacket sleeve is pulled almost
halfway up her arm enough so that we can see
the teeth really sink into the bite and into the
fern portion of Ellie's tattoo as the zombie bombs on her. Yeah,
and you can tell me, oh, well, you know it
pushed up because she put her hand through the grate. Now,

(01:44:24):
I watched it. It was just it was already up
when she put her arm through, so shut up anyway,
Ellie screams, as this would undoubtedly still hurt someone being
bitten by human teeth anywhere, and Dina finally frees her pistol,
which had gotten kind of locked or jammed up in
the turnstile, shoots the zombie, the female zombie, and kills her,

(01:44:46):
and just then the rest of the horde breaks through
and clambers up the escalator and they slam themselves into
the turnstile that Ellie and Dina are now free from,
ultimately trapping themselves into a nasty pile of just mo
and Dina and Ellie are able to get out of
the subway, so they stand outside and they stare at
the theater across the street, or at least Ellie is

(01:45:08):
staring at the theater across the street and decides that
maybe there would be good and immediately goes for it,
but Dina hesitates and remains behind with her gun at
her side, and she's holding off as she processes that
Ellie was just bitten by a fucking zombie and I
had a note to talk more about how I can't
stand what they're doing with the zombie versus blah blah blah.

(01:45:31):
I don't need to say it anymore. I don't like it.
It's too many. It's completely overdone and overcooked, and it
takes away the high tension of what these scenes could
be with far fewer infected that are still fast, still menacing,
still deadly.

Speaker 2 (01:45:50):
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna say something about this, this particular scene,
and maybe we'll call this a compliment. Say much. Okay,
So the director here, Kate is in my estimation, absolutely
crushing it with the action. So the technical part of this,

(01:46:18):
the staging, the red from the flares, all of the
visual stuff that's happening. The sheer volume of infected is
really really well done. So like, if we just take
that stuff and put it over here, that's a that's
a positive for me. However, I never really felt too

(01:46:45):
tense during this scene because two to how many times now,
well at least once before, but you know, you could
count it maybe a handful of times. I've seen people
escape from far more infected, you know what I'm saying, Like, oh,
Abby got away from a million of them. You know,

(01:47:06):
Tommy survived, you know, a lot worse, you know than
Tommy was walking, right, through them and it was fine.
So here is this situation where you've established some stakes
and people getting out of it earlier. And so when
I see this, and let's be clear that it's probably
like one hundred down here, maybe more, but like let's

(01:47:26):
call it a hundred to be conservative. Never at any
point was I like either one of these two people
are going to be in trouble. Of course, the bad
guys are going to get it, but our two leads
here are going to be fine at the end of this. Yeah,
and so the scene doesn't help us learn. The only

(01:47:51):
thing that the scene does now is be a catalyst
for this bite, which, in your defense I agree with,
could have been just as effective with five infected like
one clicker and five runners or something like that. It
did not have to be one hundred. And so if

(01:48:14):
the end goal was like, oh, we just need to
see Dina c Ellie get bit, then it doesn't matter
if there's a million or just one yep yep. And
so emotionally there's it's it undercuts itself a little bit
just because like what what are we what are we
doing here? And yeah, so there I'm torn because like

(01:48:37):
on if again, like I said, taking it just like
a technical level and visually and how it's all staged
and how it works. It's awesome like going through the
train and all that. You know, the set is awesome,
but it doesn't serve anything at all. So yeah, that's
that's it. We we've they've lost a couple of wolves

(01:48:59):
what where they're sick eight However, many of the bad
guys are down there. We're down eight wolves. And oh
and now we know that Dina saw Ellie get bit,
which causes tension, which is good. But again, yeah, again,
it could have happened at any point at any time.
So that's all. That's all I'll say there.

Speaker 1 (01:49:20):
Yeah, I you know, I agree with you.

Speaker 2 (01:49:22):
Yeah. So now we're in the theater and things are escalating.
Let's just put it that way. They break into the
lobby of the theater, where they think things will be
okay if we get in here, we get some shelter,
we'll do this, but they're not quite okay yet. Ellie
is going about securing the place as though she wasn't

(01:49:43):
just bit. She's just kind of focused on like, let's
just sure this up. Make sure they if they break out,
they don't get into us as she turns. Mid sentence,
she stops because Dina has the pistol point it right
at her, and Ellie stands kind of like an action
figure and asks, bruh, what the fuck you know? Dina,
crying shaking great acting here from Isabella, says nothing. Ellie

(01:50:10):
then realizes and looks to her covered arm and raises
her hands and surrender. Ellie tries to get Dina to
wait and listen to her. She says she would die
for Dina, but that's not what happened, and then finally
she says, I'm immune. I can't get infected. Dina lowers
the gun briefly and then raises it again, much to

(01:50:32):
Ellie's shouting for not to fucking shoot her. Okay, Ellie
understands how she doesn't believe her. She's like, I get it,
and you wouldn't believe I wouldn't believe me either, But
Ellie gives the plan. She's going to go over to
that big fucking chair, bandage her arm, go to sleep,
sit far away, and says Dina keep the gun on her,

(01:50:54):
but she promises that she will not turn. She wishes
this wasn't true. Okay, that's what Ellie says she wishes
that this wasn't true, and.

Speaker 1 (01:51:03):
I want to talk about that. Yeah, Ellie wishes that
she wasn't immune. This is new.

Speaker 2 (01:51:09):
Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to process right now what
that could mean. Yeah, I agree. My thought is that
it's brought her nothing but pain.

Speaker 1 (01:51:21):
Yes, Like, I think that that's the and I don't
I'm not dismissing you whatsoever. I think that's the very
obvious thing. Yeah, but I'm curious to know how deep
that goes.

Speaker 2 (01:51:30):
Yeah, I don't know if there's more that they're going
to let on or if it was just an offhanded
remark that was left to be interpreted. My hope is
that it's the former. I'm okay if it's just like, yeah,
every time I've been bitten or been in the presence
of someone who's found out about my immunity, people have

(01:51:51):
died terribly. Sure, and it could be that. I don't
want to dismiss that out right, but it could be more,
and that might be interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:52:01):
I agree. I do hope it is more. I hope
we get more of this throughout the seasons.

Speaker 2 (01:52:05):
Yeah, But to finish this off, Ellie is going to
go to sleep and says she's going to wake up
exactly as she is now. Dina doesn't say anything or
shoot Ellie. So Ellie takes a few deep breaths and
walks to the chair. So this reveal was different, This
was new for us.

Speaker 1 (01:52:26):
But putting all of what we knew aside, what did
you think of this reveal?

Speaker 2 (01:52:33):
I liked it. There's no other way to show this,
to prove it. So I like it insofar as what
it acts, the launch pad that it creates for what
comes almost immediately after it, sure, and the justifications for
why people act the way they do, which we'll get

(01:52:54):
to in a minute. So it's undeniable. Like Dina sees
it happen less than a foot from her face, so
it's like you were bit. And Dina is a person
who has been alive in this world, and so I'm
sure that she is aware, Like, oh, at first the
bite starts to look really weird and spindly and spidery,

(01:53:16):
and then people go crazy or whatever, And so when
she checks in later and it's still just a bite,
she must be like a million thoughts must be running
through her head, and so I really yeah, I liked
it as a character moment for these two, Ellie's only recourse.
There's no talking your way out of this, you know,

(01:53:37):
like there's no way to be like no, no, no, it's
gonna be okay. Like she literally has to tell her
deepest secret, yeah, to someone she trusts and loves also,
which is worth that's worth a lot. Yeah, And I
do agree with you.

Speaker 1 (01:53:50):
I think the reveal, even though it was different, it
was very direct. It was a direct reveal. It was
you saw meet bit, now I have to tell you
the truth otherwise you're gonna kill me, period. And I
like the simplicity of that.

Speaker 2 (01:54:08):
I also liked the turning of the tables in that
it's like you didn't kill me, I saved your life,
right like, because for anybody else that's a death sentence.
Like going to that length to protect someone just means
it means you are now dead.

Speaker 1 (01:54:26):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:54:27):
And I love that kind of reversal there, of the
protection angle of it. I thought that was really wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:54:35):
Yeah, I agree, I really, I actually really like that.
So continuing with the theater, so Ellie wakes up unchanged,
as we all knew that she would show as. And
it's not sound or anything but rainfall on her face.
That annoys Ellie and she wakes up. But Dina's flashlight
goes on immediately onto Ellie and we see that, like

(01:54:59):
I said, Ellie is still elly. She's not shaking, she's steady,
she's okay. She is immune. And she does this and
proves this by holding her arm out and showing Dina.
And Ellie stands up and asks if she can literally
show Dina, meaning show her the wound. Dina continues to
say nothing, so Ellie does what she does. She unbandages

(01:55:20):
her arm, even though the gun is still pointed at her.
We can't see Dina because the light is shining in
such a way that it puts Dina in a shadowy
and the wound is revealed here. It's not gnarly or gross.
It hasn't changed or mutated. It is just a biite.

Speaker 2 (01:55:37):
It's just a bite mok he turned in the Michael
Kaine a stressal bar.

Speaker 1 (01:55:42):
It's just a bite mark. It's still oozing blood a
little bit, which is gross. But the flashlight goes out
and Dina's face is finally revealed to us, and she
looks so tired and heartbroken and shocked and still very scared,
She walks to a heavily breathing Ellie, her gun still
out and a lantern in hand, and then Dina tells
Ellie here that she's pregnant. This is, of course, She's

(01:56:06):
not commenting on anything that Ellie has said thus far.
She just this is there the first word she says,
basically since the subway. And immediately the lantern and the
gun are dropped and forgotten about, and Dina goes directly
to Ellie, kissing her and being kissed by her in return.
And this all moves very fast, as situations often want

(01:56:28):
to do in high intensity revelations or conclusions, and Ellie
and Dina go down to the ground and begin to
make love. And I didn't want to say sex. I
didn't want to say they're going to copulate. No, I
just say yeah. It was It was a very intense
like you can tell that these people are in love already,

(01:56:50):
and that was the only expression that felt right to me.
And in that same vein this was a very realistic,
not overly sexualized mode between two women who feel a
world of emotions for one another. And this is important
to point out because a lot of times in situations
with gay or lesbian sex in particular, it is so

(01:57:13):
over the top and it is so overdone and hyper
just hyper sexualized because people have this idea in their head.
Straight excuse me, straight people have this idea in their
head that that's what reality is. No, it is just sex,
that's it. And I loved how well that they did

(01:57:36):
this in this show. It was beautiful, it was intense,
It was it was it was a revelation between them,
between learning Ellie's immune, learning Dina is pregnant, learning that
they're in love with each other, Like, how else would
you deal with this scene but to be physically attached
to one another, you know. Yeah, So kudos. I think

(01:57:59):
just as the direct just to.

Speaker 2 (01:58:00):
Yeah, just the top, just to put a finer point
on what you said. I think this is a benefit
of having a female director for this episode, specifically for this.

Speaker 1 (01:58:09):
Hundred thousand percent.

Speaker 2 (01:58:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:58:13):
So thank you HBO for doing the right thing.

Speaker 2 (01:58:16):
It's almost like they know what they're doing. Sometimes I
was waiting for the job. That's why I as a
layup for you, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:58:25):
Sure is Yeah. So the night concludes there and it's
the next day and we see that it's a sunny
beautiful morning and all the storms have blown away, and
Ellie and Dina are spooning one another, fully asleep still
or probably slowly waking up at this moment. And I
just I was like, couldn't they put a few chairs
together and sleep a little comfortably? And that's just me

(01:58:46):
being silly, because I know that would not be safe
whatsoever if they needed to do a quick, fast getaway. Yeah,
but still, there's all these comfy fucking chairs around. Just
put two together and sleep on it.

Speaker 2 (01:58:58):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:58:59):
But this is another one of those very sweet things.
I love moments, like the moment when you wake up
with someone that you're in love with. It really is
a wonderful, calming, peaceful feeling, and it really is like
the best way to start a day. I love it.
Personal side note, Andrew runs very hot, like his core

(01:59:22):
body temperature is probably like ninety nine point eight degrees
or ninety nine point six.

Speaker 2 (01:59:27):
Excuse me.

Speaker 1 (01:59:28):
And it's it's tough to be close to you sometimes
because you're a fucking furnace.

Speaker 2 (01:59:34):
But I still like it, you know. It's just it's.

Speaker 1 (01:59:36):
A very wonderful, peaceful feeling to have that, So I
wish that for everyone. I like it in bits and spurts. Yes, again,
we've been together for a really long time. Everyone gets
at so they're about to kiss here, some morning kisses,
which I love, but also I'm Dina in this situation
where it's like, do not kiss me. Morning breath is

(01:59:58):
the realist shit. And Dina and Ellie take a few,
like the smallest bite of a piece of jerky here,
and that's apparently how we solve morning breath in the
post apocalypse.

Speaker 2 (02:00:09):
That's all you need.

Speaker 1 (02:00:11):
Yes, And they're both fully dressed here again, which I
was originally going to be like, really like your first
night with someone, but again, this is not our world
that we're living in, and this is another If we
got to get away fast, we need to be prepared,
which means we need to be dressed. So I like
the realism. Dina checks on Ellie's bite from last night,

(02:00:36):
but then she moves and touches the first bite that
Ellie initially got under her tattoo, which then turned into
a chemical burn, and Dina realizes here that Ellie ultimately
burned herself. And Ellie makes a joke about how she
wanted to wear short sleeves again, and they do laugh together.
But Ellie does say it's a little thing. But when

(02:00:57):
you hide the little things, they become big things. And
that is the truest shit. Always yeah, people always like,
oh you know, no, no, no, But really, death by a
thousand cuts is the theme of Like Life. I think,
I truly, truly think. Big things of course come and
happen in horrible whatever, but it's the little, you know,

(02:01:18):
the white lies, or the misinformation or this or the that,
that just mount up and ultimately just calls Mayhem at
the end of the day. So I like that Ellie
has a wisdom enough to do that, but clearly not
enough to slowly and quietly close a tank lit anyway.
Laughter gives way to curiosity as Ellie asks Dina why now,

(02:01:41):
as in, why why are we in this place, right here,
right now together instead of starting this when I don't know,
we were at home and safe and had houses and
beds and comfortable and showers and stuff. But love, love
is going to happen when it happens, And Dina talks
here of how she thought Ellie was ultimate Lee, a goner,

(02:02:01):
and the future that she was imagining in her head
was never going to happen because Ellie would be dead,
and this future includes them being together and having a kid.
And then she kind of pauses and she's like, I
don't even know if you want that, and Ellie says,
I want that with you, and Dina apologized and says
sorry for how long it took for her to get here,

(02:02:23):
because she knew all along how Ellie felt about her,
and Ellie's like, how I was hiding it really well
and Dina, Oh, God, Isabella and that smile of yours,
like I'm in love with Isabella to be perfectly fucking transparent,
because my god, she is just stunning. And she says, no,
you're really fucking wiring, meaning Ellie, you are not Ellie.

(02:02:45):
You're not that girl. You can't hide shit, okay, correct,
And it's a nice flirty moment, and Dina says she
wanted to, meaning she wanted to explore this relationship and
where it could lead. But we find out more about
Dina's background here, and that when she was younger, she
told her mother she likes boys and likes girls, but

(02:03:06):
her mother said, no, you like boys, and it caused
her to get stuck. That's the expression she used even
after Dina's mother died that statement. That sentiment lingered and lasted,
and so she tried to make things worth work with Jesse,
but she knew all along that he wasn't the one.
Despite her still liking him and finding him to be

(02:03:28):
a decent, good guy, she ultimately could never let herself
just be who she was be with who she wants
to be with because of these ideologies from older, fucking
people who just hold on to shit. Even if it's
her mother, I don't care, I'm talking shit on Dina's mom.

Speaker 2 (02:03:48):
How dare you? How dare you not?

Speaker 1 (02:03:52):
So Dina calls Ellie brave for being who she is,
for being out, for embracing who she is, and like,
it's not that I'm just obvious, And they laugh together
because she is, and they flirt and they kiss again
and they're happy, like this is a happy moment. But
I put an Ellipsis behind that statement, because wow, I

(02:04:18):
know I hate to say this, but like, this is
not the story where happy people exist, and I can't
really talk more about that without ruining a lot of
things for people. And I don't want you to take
this to mean that they're not going to end up
together or one of them is going to die, or

(02:04:38):
both of them is going to die, or everyone lives,
but they you know, get amnesia and they never remember
each other. I'm not saying any of that. I'm just
saying this is not the world, and it's not the
way that I was introduced to this relationship. It's not
how it started initially. So I'm having trouble with Ellie

(02:05:01):
just bursting with happiness even though she's on a revenge mission.
There's something not resonating correctly in my brain because on
one side, I very much want Ellie to be happy.
I love Ellie. I want her to be happy again.
I don't like this version of Ellie, but I love
Ellie from the last of us and I want her
to be happy. But they are literally across like several

(02:05:28):
states or whatever it is, in the eight hundred and
fifty miles or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:05:34):
To kill people.

Speaker 1 (02:05:36):
It's not it's just I'm having trouble bringing the two
halves together in my brain.

Speaker 2 (02:05:42):
I understand that, and I am curious to see how
they're going to handle it, because it seemed like, as
we're going to see pretty soon, you know, things have
changed now mm hm. In the words of the dude,

(02:06:03):
new information has come to light, you know, Yeah, And
so I don't know. Again, I'm waiting for the show
to tell me. I know what I would do, you know,
given the new information. But I guess we'll see.

Speaker 1 (02:06:19):
I guess we'll see, yeah, And it is very much
a we'll see situation. But I just feel like the focus.
I feel like Joel was an afterthought at this point.
And I'm not saying that he needs to be the
focus in this moment with Dina Anellie, because he should
not be. But I'm saying, as a whole, they are

(02:06:39):
where they are because of Joel's death, and they're doing
what they're doing because he was brutally murdered, and yet
they're waking up together and laughing and being intimate with
one another, being physically intimate with one another and emotionally
intimate with one another, and they are jarred out of
this shortly and pulled back to reality. But I'm just like,

(02:07:03):
is this the time and place? Is there really a
time and place for this anymore outside of places like Jackson?

Speaker 2 (02:07:10):
I don't fucking know. I think it's probably part of
a larger discussion about we don't have to have it
right now, but just like when you have a narrative
like this that is propulsive towards a goal that we
have established early. Yeah, everything that is not in service
of that goal feels, to put in the parlance of

(02:07:32):
a video game, feels like a side quest, right, yes,
And so I get it, but I don't know if
like the question you're asking is at its highest level
is should we be talking about relationships at all in
this world? Right? And that is like it's it's tough
because like if we don't have that, then what connection

(02:07:55):
do I have to these characters? But then when we
do go into it, I am all so thinking like, yeah,
but we still have this thing that we set out
to do, and we're already you know, it's like that thing.
It's like you know, you're in the car, Like I'm
not feeling great. It's like we're already like eighty five

(02:08:16):
percent of the way there. So can we just do
we have to do this part now? Or can we
just wrap up what we set out to do and
then we can talk later? You know? And I get it,
like everything builds on itself, Like this wouldn't have happened
if they didn't get into the tunnels and the bite
didn't happen, and the admission and this it's a it's

(02:08:37):
a culmination of all these events, sure, but it's a
that's a narrative. That's a narrative thing that we have
to think about at large. It's not just exclusive to
this show. This happens a lot. We're like in movies
and stuff. It's like, what are we doing over here?
There's a what we have to do is over that way?
Why are we going this way? You know? That's all. Yeah,

(02:08:59):
it's that's all. And it's not I'm not.

Speaker 1 (02:09:02):
I love Dina and Ellie together, yes, full stop, end
of sentence period. It was so romantic and so much happiness.
It also brings up the age old horror concept of
when people have sex, something usually bad happens afterwards, and

(02:09:23):
that that always worries me too. So it's it's it's
a lot of like, there's so many spinning plates happening
in this show right now, that's all we could talk
about this and go back and forth. We're both saying
the exact same thing.

Speaker 2 (02:09:37):
Yeah, and then and just historically in the show, nobody's happy.
Sam and Henry, Bill and Frank, Joel and tests Yeah,
Joel and Sarah. I guess Joel and Ellie, Tommy and Maria.
Maybe they're happy. Yeah, let's say, let's say we have

(02:10:00):
one example of people that are mostly happy, but many
examples of people who are not happy.

Speaker 1 (02:10:08):
Yeah, that's all all right. It was a talking point.
It was important. I didn't want to gloss over it.
But we're still in this moment and Ellie places her
hand on Dina's belly and asks how she knows for
sure that she's pregnant, and Dina shares that she started
wondering after she vomited seeing the bodies in the Forest
of the Dead seraphyites, although she doesn't know they're called seraphytes,

(02:10:28):
and she was late, her period was late, even though
she was never regular. She had found a pregnancy test
at the pharmacy that they were at earlier on in
this episode, and she did the whole routine and it
revealed that she was pregnant, and Ellie says, I mean,
these are this is pretty old. But Dina then pulls

(02:10:49):
out three more pregnancy sticks, which brings the total to four,
and all of them show a resounding I am pregnant.

Speaker 2 (02:10:58):
That line about her, you know, she I found a
pregnancy and I peed on it and then and then
it was like that's how they work. I don't just
randomly pee on things.

Speaker 1 (02:11:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:11:08):
Again, it's like it's fun, it's fun. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:11:10):
And I just this was another comment where I made
to you where I was like, oh my god, I'm
Adina because when I had gotten pregnant, when you and
I had gotten pregnant, I took like seven.

Speaker 2 (02:11:20):
Tests just to verify, just to make sure. I was
so shocked good to be sure.

Speaker 1 (02:11:24):
It was just like I was like, wait, maybe the
first one's wrong. Wait, maybe the second one's wrong, maybe
the third Maybe you were like best out.

Speaker 2 (02:11:34):
A five, massed out of ten, best out of wait,
that's not possible, best out a nine.

Speaker 1 (02:11:39):
And it was literally all seven pregnancy tests that I took,
resounding Yeah. And now look, our daughter is sixteen plus
years old. Yeah, spoiler alert. The tests were right.

Speaker 2 (02:11:57):
Yeah. Sometimes she all as positive and true too, just
to be safe. Yeah, but after two diminishing returns, yeah,
I agree.

Speaker 1 (02:12:06):
But when you're in that moment and you're completely caught
off guard, which is what I was. Again, this is
a delicate topic because you never want to say, oh,
someone was unplanned or I don't like the word accident whatsoever.
I never consider her surprise. Yes, she was a delightful surprise,
but completely caught us off guard, so like it was

(02:12:29):
just that moment I think where it was like, no,
I need to verify, I need to double I need
to verify this seven fucking times. So I get it, Dina,
I do get it. And then thus the love triangle
is born on the last of us with Ellie bringing
Jesse in and she throws a jab at Dina and

(02:12:50):
says it was Jesse right. Dina's face is just kind
of like fuck you. But Ellie talks of how they're
all having a baby here before delivering the I'm gonna
be a dad line, and I see so much fucking hatred,
so much vitriol for this moment, this line. But me,

(02:13:12):
miss tom Petty, Miss Tomatha Petty, I am asking all
of you to stop and just enjoy the fucking joke
for what it was intended to be. Yes, could we
just stop? Shut up? Like so many dudes are like.

Speaker 2 (02:13:29):
Ugh, this was so fuck is stupid? H Her delivery
was fucking.

Speaker 1 (02:13:34):
Lame, and I'm just like, I'm sorry, do you not
understand a joke is it because a woman said a joke?
Is it because a woman is overstepping a man's role
as a father, Like, what's the root cause of here?
Because there's always something but just a fragile you know,
that's all.

Speaker 2 (02:13:52):
That's exactly what it is. It's okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:13:55):
So they're immediately taken out of the moment by loud
booms in the distance and the walkie talkie suddenly go off,
and we hear the WLF panicked and saying we're bringing
wounded to Lake Hill and for Nora to get ready,
and where there's smoke, there's fire. So Dina and Ellie

(02:14:16):
deduce that if Nora is there, Abby should not be
too far behind. So Dina grabs the map and they
formulate this plan, and they decide that the best vantage
point to see what the fuck is going on to
see general distances to this quote unquote lake Hill place
is to go up to the roof and look around.

Speaker 2 (02:14:38):
That's what I do when I need to see stuff,
I go up high. Yep. So they run out and
Ellie's mouth basically falls wide open. In the distance, we
see like a ton of explosions and bombs detonating. We
hear a lot of automatic weapon fire, lots of fighting.
It's clearly this was the attack, like the next attack

(02:14:59):
that I Isaick was trying to get out of the seraphyte.

Speaker 1 (02:15:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:15:03):
So Dina holds the map to her eyeline and then
uses a finger to discern their position kind of roughly,
I guess maybe just based on landmarks, let's say, who knows.
They determined that the white building out across the city
is Lake Hill. It has a giant red cross on
the side of it, so safe to assume what that is. Sure.

(02:15:26):
Ellie slouches at this and appears to be very sad.
She tells Dina that she doesn't have to go. Dina says,
fuck you, And that's basically all we need to know
about where they are, and that they're in this together. Yep.
Ellie asks her to think about it. But together is
how they're going to do this. Ellie takes one final

(02:15:48):
deep breath in an episode full of deep breaths, and
that's that.

Speaker 1 (02:15:54):
Yeah, they're just gazing out over the distance of what's
ahead of them, and and uh, I'm gonna nitpick for
our final talking point on this show that has nothing
my petty, my petty nitpick number four and seventy two.

(02:16:16):
Their clothes are way too fucking clean. They have been
traveling four weeks on a fucking horse, first of all,
caught in probably all weather conditions. And going back to
the conversation in the garage where Dina told Ellie to
bring only the clothes on her person, it is a
shock to me that Dina's tank top is pearly white

(02:16:40):
and Ellie doesn't have a single fucking smudge anywhere on
her purple tea. Their hair looks fresh, their skin basically
is fucking glowing. Give me a fucking break. Do not
show me a pharmacy with little to no supplies and
expect me to believe that these ladies are clean as
a whistle. Do not show me jerky you as a

(02:17:00):
quasi toothpaste and expect me to believe that they are clean.
Two things cannot be true in this instance. If you
are essentially brushing your fucking teeth with jerky meat, you nasty.
Your resources are limited, which means your clothes are gonna
be fucking dirty, And the realism is falling behind there

(02:17:23):
when it comes to the wardrobe designer and stuff like that. Yeah, costuming, costuming, Yeah,
the costuming is pisspoor on the show. Who's ever not
doing their job? I hope you get fired. Wow, strong words,
they're not fucking doing their job. There's no tears anywhere,
there's no rips anywhere. There's no mudstains, there's no blood stains,
there's nothing. Ellie literally was bleeding from her arm, not

(02:17:47):
a trace of that anywhere. It's called sewing and doing
the laundry. Okay, no, there are no sewing marks. There
was no time to do laundry. What in the fucking thunderstorm?
After Ellie got bit, give me a god and break,
she went to sleep, Like no. It is just very
much takes me out of the moment, especially in shots

(02:18:07):
where we're looking at these two characters. They're not talking,
They're they're staring straight ahead. All I'm looking at is
their clothes look as clean as mine. That's that's suspicious.

Speaker 2 (02:18:18):
Their clothes are cleaner than mine. Meanwhile, I'm smudging cheetah
dust across the front of my chest.

Speaker 1 (02:18:25):
Man, I want cheetohs now.

Speaker 3 (02:18:26):
Damn it.

Speaker 2 (02:18:28):
Anyway, there you go.

Speaker 1 (02:18:30):
That's that's all I got. That's the end of our episode.
We did this one quicker because I just felt like,
there wasn't as many talking points. There were more solid
scenes I felt, and then the things we did discuss,
you know, hopefully we did a good job still, But
before we go, we did receive another email from our
wonderful best friend slash supporter of our show, barb who

(02:18:55):
And I'm going to read this because she titled it
echo Chamber because she echoes quite a bit of what
I said in episode three. Oh, Barbara, I love you.
M H I loved hell Yeah by my best friend
fucking Wright.

Speaker 2 (02:19:13):
Shit.

Speaker 1 (02:19:14):
So Hey Jack, Hey Andrew, Okay, I'm gonna go off
WLF more like, WTF. Seriously, what the actual fuck? I'm
not on the podcast. So I'm just gonna say it.
If you don't get the significance of Joel's watch, then
you do not understand the essence of the Last of Us.
And I'm not just talking about the game, as much

(02:19:35):
as I'd like to compare and contrast to no end. Seriously,
how you guys managed to not bring the game into
this conversation every single second? I just applaud you because
if I was podcasting with Jack and in parentheses, barbarat
and be thankful that I'm not, because you'd probably lose
listeners l what the gloves would be off in that regard.

(02:19:58):
But let's just say for fun, we're only talking about
the HBO show. Did anyone watch Season one?

Speaker 3 (02:20:05):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (02:20:05):
I see what you did there? Watch?

Speaker 1 (02:20:08):
Yes, she's good, Barbara's just so goddamn good. The first
episode establishes the significance of the watch. Not only is
it a gift from Joel's daughter, whom he literally loses
just hours afterwards, but because of the event, which we
also assume is where the watch broke. That watch is
Joel's constant reminder of his daughter, a way for him

(02:20:31):
to keep her close, but also a constant torture of
how he couldn't protect her. It's significant period, but its
significance doesn't stop there. The watch is literally have I
used that word yet? A key feature that Ellie immediately
points out in one of Joel and Ellie's first interactions

(02:20:51):
together when they first meet. And if you don't get
the double triple quadruple on tendre of what Ellie says
to Joel about the watch quote your broken, then again
you're missing the essence of the last of us and
Joel and Ellie's relationship also Joel looks at his watch
or goes to grab it at key moments in the
development of his relationship with Ellie, signifying what she is

(02:21:15):
becoming to him and vice versa. Am I being a
little aggressive passionate I will forever be Jack's echo chamber
and she knows this. I can push back when need be,
but most of the time we are aligned. And the
way the show didn't have Ellie acknowledge the watch blows
my mind. Okay, I'm done, I'm not, but whatever. Also, Andrew,

(02:21:37):
I love you even more now for knowing how disgusted
you are.

Speaker 2 (02:21:41):
By Oatmeal, raasin god dear right.

Speaker 1 (02:21:44):
Seriously love you guys. And the show didn't even know
there was an official HBO podcast, But I know it
doesn't compare to you, guys, and everyone should listen to
this one. Your level of knowledge, understanding and love for
what you do comes across in every episode. Thank you
so so much. You guys are awesome.

Speaker 2 (02:22:02):
Who me? Nice? Barb?

Speaker 1 (02:22:09):
Oh, Barb? I love you. Okay, see, I'm excited. This
is how I am with my bestie.

Speaker 2 (02:22:15):
So I'm just gonna have just an email from Barb
at the end of every episode that potentially that just
says what you have established in the previous episode.

Speaker 1 (02:22:28):
No, but here's the thing. No, here's the thing. She
brought up stronger arguments to reinforce my own argument about
Joel's watch, because if you recall last episode, I made
it very personal about how a physical object is a
tangible link to someone we lost and that helps with grief.
Barb gave the actual examples in the last of US

(02:22:50):
TV show of your Watch is Broken and Joel touching
his watch during significant moments of his relationship as it
developed Ellie over the year that they were traveling, and
that that if you want to discount every sentimental thing
that I said in episode three, go on pop off

(02:23:10):
Kings and queens, because not everyone gives a fuck. Not
everyone has experienced that level of grief. And you know what,
I'm glad for you. I hope you never do, but
you cannot refute the actual evidence that Barb presented here
in court today, ladies.

Speaker 2 (02:23:28):
And gentlemen of the Jewury, I implore you.

Speaker 1 (02:23:32):
So insignificant period.

Speaker 2 (02:23:35):
I agree. I am agreeing, And again I've been the
person that says I believe the watch will come back.
I don't think that it's you know, like, yeah, I
just want to state that for the record that I
believe she grabbed the gun out of a blind anger,
a blind rage, whatever you want to that in the moment,

(02:23:56):
she chose what was more important to her. But that
it's not that we're going to see that watch. I'm
actually going I'll put money down. I'm gonna okay, I'm
gonna bet it's gonna be This is just gonna be
a charity bet. So if we don't see the watch again,
I'm gonna donate one hundred dollars to uh, what was
the thing, Yeah, chop, let's go chop.

Speaker 1 (02:24:16):
Yeah, for the kids, for the kids, yeah, or Saint
Jude's words, that's the one.

Speaker 2 (02:24:21):
The Saint Jud's Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:24:23):
If we now, okay, if we don't see the watch
by the ever again. Okay, So if we never see
the watch, Andrew will still donate because that's how that's
the wonderful man that he is. But if we see
the watch before the series is.

Speaker 2 (02:24:37):
Done, no, no, I'll do it. We'll see that watch
again by the end of this season. That's what I'm
That's the bet I'm gonna make, because it's cowardly to
say that we'll never see it again. That's you know,
and we all know that the people writing the show
listen to us, and so they'll they'll just say they'll
just leave it out to spite me, which is fine,
which is also fun.

Speaker 1 (02:24:58):
Here's the thing. If the people who make this show
are listening to this show. You guys got some some clams.
You guys got some chedda in your pocket. So how
about you match? How about you match Andrew's donation to
Saint you Why do they have.

Speaker 4 (02:25:16):
So much food in their buckets? They've got clams and
cheddar they got the cash money, So yeah, it's fine.
How about you how about you match our donation.

Speaker 2 (02:25:28):
You don't have to do that. All I need you
to do is just get the watch back in the show.
I'll still it's fine. Don't don't put the watch in
for this season, but then do it next season. Please,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:25:36):
You have to make the final call here.

Speaker 2 (02:25:38):
No, it's going to be I need we need to
see the watch in this by the end of this season.
So there's only three episodes left. Two yeah, three, three okay, yeah,
so we got to see it by the end of
this one or otherwise, dang it.

Speaker 1 (02:25:53):
We help the kids yeah. Even still, we're doing a
wonderful thing. So I love that. I like that we're
taking something that has been a very hot button topic
throughout this episode and last it's Timely get it.

Speaker 2 (02:26:11):
That's very funny because the director was Loki Loki and
Timely Victor Timely Interesting. We all brought it full circle
because that's what we're going more. But I had to
stretch as I tend to do. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (02:26:32):
All right, So if you would like to follow us
anywhere on the Internet or send us some messages, whatever,
we would appreciate that. You can do that over on Instagram,
at Teelu Podcasts, or Blue Sky, which is absolutely dormant
right now, at Telu podcast or our YouTube. By just
looking for Wayfair and Strangers or the last cast, you

(02:26:53):
will find us over there. And just as a reminder,
Wayfar and Strangers is our other unofficial List of Us
podcast where we cover the Last of Us Part one
and the Last of Us Part two in great depth,
just like we do on this show. If you'd like
to follow me on the Internet, and Andrew, you can
follow me at Jaded Vader or Through Wilderness which is

(02:27:14):
thhru Wilderness. And Andrew everywhere at Dark Driving or Andrew
Grimley on Blue.

Speaker 2 (02:27:19):
Sky domain verified Let's go Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:27:23):
As always, thank you guys so much for the Spotify reviews,
not the trolls. We appreciate hearing from you, getting your thoughts,
being able to see and hear different points of view
that we might not agree with, and I try my
best not to be a total bitch during those things.
Sometimes I fail, but I'm trying and still want to
hear from you and love it very much. So thank

(02:27:45):
you for yeah, just being the best fans. And that's
all I got. We'll be back next week with the
episode five review.

Speaker 2 (02:27:54):
That's it. We'll be back next week, crossing streets of
optimism and a harrowing search of the devil we know.

Speaker 1 (02:28:00):
And that's that. Goodbyeye everybody, bye now good bye bye
bye bye bye bye so you goodbye now later.

Speaker 3 (02:28:11):
Bye.

Speaker 1 (02:28:53):
Sorry. I had to sneeze.

Speaker 2 (02:28:57):
I am that, I am that, and I'm like waiting.
I'm like, well, she's gonna she's gotta give me the
props for that, and then there's fucking silence. I'm like, oh,
ship

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