6. The Price

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:25):
Welcome to the Last Cast, HBO's unofficial Last of Us
recap podcast. This show hosted each week by me, Jack
and Andrew.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
The Last of Us is back, Baby, let's go.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
We'll take a deeper look into the mega TV series event,
will 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 let's get on with it.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Okay, I will ah listen.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
This is just it is what it is. I don't
even know how to sum it up. It is what
it is.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
This is just.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
It's the end of season two. We're coming to the
end of season two. After this episode, there's only one left.
I can't wait. I've reached burnout with this show, not
because necessarily of the work, but because of what we
are reviewing. And it's been incredibly difficult for me. And
this week has been just terrible. I don't really know

(01:36):
if I feel like going into everything. It's just I
have a constant eye twitch from the stress. I've had
to take anxiety medication. Like I am just very much
ready for the end of this season because this is
not at all what I think any of us expected
it to be, and the disappointment is so massive on
my end, and the Internet is so loud from all

(01:57):
angles that, yeah, my brain is fucking mush.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
So we're gonna do our best with this episode.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
I'm going to try and keep it concise, tight, just
getting get out essentially. So yeah, I hate to be
I don't want to disappoint anyone, and I'm even going
to make this introduction short. I never want to disappoint
any listeners or people who are very thoroughly enjoying this show,
but it is just it's not for me anymore. I

(02:27):
don't know if we're going to cover season three at
this point. Genuinely, this is a conversation Andrew and I
have been having on and off. I might need another
two year break to get to that point. I know
that sounds dramatic, and maybe some of you are like,
get it together, Jack. I am extremely passionate about things

(02:48):
and they consume me from the inside out, and I
feel like I have just been chewed up and spit
out by everything that this show has done. Because the
people who are creating this don't have like at this point,
I really truly have zero confidence in them that they
know what they're actually doing at this point, and that's sad. So,

(03:10):
like always, we're going to get into our Spotify comments,
and I just wanted to let everyone know who is emailing.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Us, because we get every single one.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
They are filed and flagged appropriately that we are saving
all of those emails for bonus shows after the season
two conclusion, So that's not going to be that. We
would never lock them away on Patreon episodes. Email shows
will always be on the public feed, but we're just

(03:38):
waiting until the show is done because to do all
the comments and to do all the emails and then
to do the show would just be like a six
hour show every week, and that's that's I don't think
anybody wants that.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
You know, you're wrong about that, you're one hundred percent wrong.
They do want that, They've told me personally that they
want that, but probably it's actually it's more interesting to
me to do the email shows after because some people
will write in on episode one or two and then speculate,
and then we actually get to see what happened versus

(04:10):
their speculation. We get to kind of compare and contrast, right,
So that's sure, that's kind of a more interesting approach
I think and hindsight twenty twenty and all that good stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
So yeah, sure we're, you know, omnipotent by that point.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
It's true, which is good and bad. I guess we
are the writer now, you see.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Anyway, So let's dive into the comment.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
So, Andrew, you're going to go first. No, I'm not
my God, damn it, I'm not going to read this.
You're going first.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
This user name. I believe it's French. I believe it's
les mon condom. Is that correct? I guess so sure?
Who just says, very frenchly say it ain't so by Weezer,
perfect media, you can't change my mind, strong opinion, strongly held.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah, Ozzie, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
That was, of course, in reference to how I said
media is inherently flawed minus music. And you know, we
had put forth some of our favorite songs and you
went the led Zeppelin raw and I went on Zimmer.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
So yeah, I don't even know an, I don't even
that was just whatever came to my mind. I would
have to really examine that to see. But say, sounds
a good one. Yes, that's a that's a great song.
It's it's a little bit of a depressing song if
you really listen to the words, it's about someone maybe
as an alcohol problem. So but good songs.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Sure, I agree, very very good choice.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Our next comment comes from and Osha or and O
Shay and Osha and yes on Craig, we bust. The
amount of faith that I have lost in Craig over
this last season is immeasurable from having to be convinced
that Ellie needs to play at least the beginning of
Future Days. Claiming that he sees Ellie as quote, an

(06:14):
incompetent grunt and that he will always see her as
a child just makes me so. And there are four screaming,
mad cursing emojis and Andosha, I agree, I fully fully agree.
And on last week's episode, we talked a lot about
Craig's misunderstanding of the source material and confusing fact for

(06:40):
whatever the fuck his brain wants to justify when it
comes to his decision making for the show, and some
choices and comments, and the fact that the official podcast
released those actual statements from Craig Mason without editing them
out even though they were incorrect, which is just fucking
wild to me. But after we had done our podcast, Andrew.

(07:04):
That's when I had been talking with our wonderful friend
of the show Doomsday, Dave, who submitted a comment this week,
and we'll get to that towards the end, but Dave
brought it to my attention that Craig has said on
a previous podcast that he views Ellie essentially as perpetually

(07:27):
a child, so her growth being stunted on the show emotionally, No, no,
he literally means he views her as a child, and
I think that we are seeing that vividly in Ellie's reactions,
her choices, things that we're going to talk about on
this particular episode, where she acts like an insolent toddler.

(07:51):
It makes sense having that information and Craig viewing her
that way because he wrote the majority of these episodes,
so it's it's unfortunate, and we can attribute a lot
of what we've been complaining about, or a lot of
what I've been complaining about to him directly, which fucking sucks.
And on top of that, I heard an even more

(08:12):
disturbing factoid, and this was taken from the official podcast
again about how he kind of views this dynamic between
Ellie and Dina as like Dina adopts this parental vibe
with Ellie and has to like guide her and lead her.
And I'm like, stop, you need to fucking stop talking.

(08:37):
This is a now romantic relationship and you are throwing
the word parental in there.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Sick shit.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Stop And I this is not me pulling out of
my ass to further or reinforce any of my arguments.
This is literally stuff Craig Mason said on the official
podcasts that were sent to me directly to be like, here, Jack,
here's something else for you to talk about.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
So I talked about it and that's wrong. He needs
to go. He really, he needs to get off of
this show.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
If this show is going to have a third season,
he cannot be a part of it.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Okay, hey look on Craig. We bust YEP. So this
next one comes from Angus. Angus says, I will not
say much so as not to spoil upcoming events, but
I worry that the map was left behind on purpose
to make something upcoming more palatable slash believable for the

(09:32):
audience with a heart emoji.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
I don't know if we should have even read that. Yeah,
that's that's so vague. That it, Yeah, that it doesn't.
But yeah, you're right, being cursed with knowledge angus is
often a terrible thing. So there you go.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
And our next comment is from B just the letter B,
and B says Craig hater since season one, episode one.
I'm so happy I'm not crazy and others are seeing it.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
I got to ask, how have you been able to
put up with this show? Yeah, for this amount of time,
our show, I mean, alongside the last of us. Maybe
there's some commiseration, you.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Know, maybe I think we're at the commiseration point now
over the last few episodes of us just absolutely shitting
on Craig Mason. But we certainly were supportive of him for.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
A long long time.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
And encouraged by his role in this show. But that
is no longer the case. I think I became a
lot more weary faster than you did. And that's okay.
I'm not blaming you, or judging you or any of that.
I just once the rose colored glasses come off and
you see things for what they are, I think that
that should be.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Enough for all of us. Here's what I'll say.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
There are some truly bright spots of this show, So
I'm not like I'm not out yet, Like I'm not out, okay,
but I you know, I also understand that there are
some other There are some things that whether it is
because I know things or have a familiarity with the

(11:20):
source material where I'm like eh, but again, some things
I think are are not better but like better suited
for television. Like some things I'm like, I look at
that and I'm like, oh, okay, I understand why people
who play the games and have an idea of this
might be mad at it. But for a television audience

(11:40):
that doesn't have that this was the better way. Not
all the not all the things, just some of the things. Okay,
that's all. This next one comes from Vaded.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Good old Vaded Jater. I just love you.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Vaded Jader Vada says having the name Craig was great
for so long till now, so Jack said it. And
what would Joel do? People? What would Joel do? New
life mantra to live by. I think you could answer

(12:13):
all of life's questions with it. WWJD.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
You know it's right and I want to tell everyone
and I'm not kidding about this, And Vaded Vada Jader
slash Craig first of all, we just love you, but
I need you to know that you inspired me to
make friendship bracelets. Limited friendship bracelet, Good Lord, limited friendship bracelet.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Why can't I fucking say.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
This, limited friendship bracelets And like literally, I'm going to
buy a bunch of supplies. I'm going to sit down
on a rainy afternoon and binge like the Lord of
the Rings or Star Wars or Harry Potter or some shit,
and just yep and nerd the fuck out and make

(13:04):
friendship late.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
I'm done. Friendship bracelets is the thing that she's going
to me.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yes, and it's gonna say what would Joel do? Or WWJD.
I'm gonna find little mushrooms. I'm going to find little
like ferns. I'm going all in and I'm only going
to make like five versions of each bracelet and sell
them either on our coffee store or patron and when
they're gone, they're fucking gone because I I'm like, this

(13:32):
is the best idea.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Then yeah, I can't wait. It's gonna be great.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Then you go to the Taylor Swift concert use bracelets
the WWJD, which stands for Joel, that bracelet makes its
way across the universe. You know, it's through a vast
sea of Swifties. Granted, the error stour has concluded. It
concluded in December of twenty twenty four. But I think
she will be back to you. Yeah, she will be

(14:00):
a matter of time.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, and and and cash me as I how about it.
I'm gonna have.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
All the WWJD bracelets at the Taylor swift Tour in
the future.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
So I'm so excited about this idea.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
I'm going to buy the supplies this weekend and maybe
I'll even have Andrew make one, and then we can
sell Andrews as like yours will be like this special,
like this the most special item, because it's going to
be fucking chaos. Okay, so yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I'm
very excited. So thank you, Craig slash faded jater perfect Our.

(14:40):
Next comment is from jess Our. Jess I love I
love saying your name. I don't know why it turned
into pyraty, but it did. Agreed that Craig has lost
who Elie is. I love this episode so far. I've
been a hopeful watcher, but I knew things weren't going
great when my husband, who is a show watcher only
saw Joel's death and when well, can't say I blame her.

(15:02):
The butterfly effect of the small changes they made in
the first season are just are just leading to a
bunch of messy, loose ends. Not sure we could get
a third season at this rate. Gone aside comment on
Breaking Bed except for that one episode when he was
trying to catch a damn fly, the whole episode and
Jess real quick. Jess is referring to the fly episode,

(15:23):
which was actually directed by Ryan Johnson, who did a
Star Wars movie called The Last Jedi. So we know
all about Ryan Johnson up in this house. But wait
a minute. Fly was a great episode of Breaks. I
loved that episode. It was the unraveling of his psyche.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah. Oh, spoilers for Breaking Bed. Yeah, oh, I.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
Never actually said who's so that's fine. You have no
idea what I'm talking about. True, that's fine. We didn't
say any names. There are a lot of hymns on
the show, so.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, almost exclusively.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Yes, a sausage party anyway. Yeah, this is uh. I
see we have show watchers only in our family. They're
one of them. I know is listening to us right now?

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Hello? Michael, and shit, that'd you getting called out?

Speaker 3 (16:13):
You're listening to a podcast and somebody directs there a
comment directly at you.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
How cool is that? I? Yeah, I would love to
have that happen one day.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Like I'm on a podcast and I'm like, can somebody
else on another podcast to say my fucking name?

Speaker 2 (16:27):
We should?

Speaker 3 (16:27):
We should do that in the middle of an episode,
like we'll just be like going through, like if we
were going through, like have the notes in front of me,
like right now, like, yeah, here's just an example, and
you tell me what you think of this. Listeners also please,
So we're like and maybe one day when it's Joel's turn,
he hopes Joel will do a little better than him.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Did you get that, Susan? Do you want to hear
something really weird?

Speaker 1 (16:54):
I had an s name in my name in my
head too, I'm saying shameless over note shame.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
All of our doublin listeners just popped up. Was she
talking about me? Stop?

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Oh my god, you're silent. I can't wait to listen
to that when I edit this back. You're what, Oh
they're so good? How can Michael him, Michael, Susan and
Seamus how y'all know, and yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
We better see you out in the analytics of next
week's episode.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Well we'll call you out again. Shame. Oh no, that
doesn't work that well anyway.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yes, there is a bunch of messy, loose ends and
they just continue to unravel and the show is just
completely completely freed now. And it's unfortunate because I never
I knew that it was never going to be a
one for one recreation or adaptation, and it never was
supposed to be that. But I think everything is ultimately compounded,

(18:06):
and that's where we are. And now the majority of
these comments and a lot of what was said last
episode and will be said again some in some way
during this about Craig is just the failings of the show.
And it's unfortunate. It is unfortunate. And I know that
they already renewed The Last of Us for season three.

(18:26):
I don't know how that works at a place like HBO.
Can they renew it and then say yeah, never mind,
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
Well, no, that has happened before. Yeah, okay, I think
that show. What was that? I can't even I will
never be able to remember in a million billion years,
But there was that show with the Weekend, like, you know,
the artist the Weekend, and he had his show on
HBO and it got like renewed for a second season,
and then before the first season ended, they were like,

(18:56):
you know what, never mind, So it has happened.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
It has happened.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, I don't know if that would be the case
this time around, but the ratings have dropped. I think
the viewership has dropped. Things are suffering so and it's
an expensive show to make. So we will see. We
will all collectively see together.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
This one's from Zombie Tom. Zombie Tom says it's late
Sunday night, two hours removed from finishing episode six. The price.
The name evokes a lot of thoughts and feelings. I
can be frustrated and disappointed with the creative choices or
writing for the show, but it's not why I'm here
at this minute. I know this is technically the last cast,

(19:43):
but Andrew hit the goddamn button surprise. I need to
say that tonight it felt like a gift. The museum,
the guitar, the t Rex, where the watch came from,
just beautiful and tonight it's enough.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Hey, there it is. I have more to say than
just that. Tom I agreed with you initially when I
had read this comment on Spotify, and I think I
replied to you even saying something agree.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
It wasn't enough.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
I don't remember what I said verbatim, but but now,
unfortunately I'm not there anymore. There is something very odd
with this show in that the after taste for me
sours over a period of like a day or two
or three, and then when I go to sit down

(20:36):
and do the notes for the show, anything that I
might have felt is gone. It doesn't return when I'm
doing the notes and I'm rewatching the show. It doesn't
return when I'm writing in depth about my thoughts and
feelings about something.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
It's just a bad after taste.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
That's the only way that I really can talk about
this show at this point. I might have been emotional,
I might cry, I might even laugh at certain scenes,
but in a day or so, I'm like, oh, I
don't like that. That's that, that's a bad taste in
my mouth, Like yeah, and it's it's Unfortunately, it wasn't
enough for me in the end, so I had to

(21:13):
amend my feelings in my answer.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Okay, and just as a little aside, what Zombie Tom
is referring to is this sound which is the real jewel? Wow,
the real jewel. It's Joel from the Games actually in
a scene from.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
This episode rough like roundabouts, right.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
I can't remember if he actually says surprise in the show,
but actual game think so yeah, game Joel definitely says it,
and it's a it's a lovely moment. It's during this
flashback sequence in the game as well. It's one of
our more used. People have told us that when they
play that part of the game, it actually reminds them

(21:57):
of our show Wayfaring Strangers, and that's lovely.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
So I love that.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, oh yeah, I mean in my head sometimes, like
yesterday we went over to our brother in law's house
to surprise him for his birthday, and in my head
the whole time, we were just waiting in the stairwell
to jump out, and I'm.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Like sbride Sade, like the whole fucking.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Time, and I'm just taking outside and I'm like getting dark. Okay,
too much, too much overlap from another show, not enough?

Speaker 2 (22:28):
There you go. That's for Zombie Tom. Those two soundbites
for Zombie Tom. There you go. Yes.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
So next comment is from Eric H. Haven't played the game, so,
like Jack said, I probably don't care about certain things
as much as she does.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
That being said, it's getting rough. It's getting rough.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Male Survivor trope aside. A dozen stalkers are basically a
death sentence for Ellie and Dina, but Jesse just moves
them all down by himself because he has a better gun.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Question Mark, the WLF had better.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Guns too, and they decided to steer clear rather than
fuck around and find out all three should have died.
Hugs to Jack, will miss you too after this season.
Wish you covered all my shows. So Eric, thank you
so much for that comment. I mean, thank all of
you for that comment. And obviously I'm gonna say that
when we're all done. But yeah, yeah, it is certainly rough,

(23:20):
and I think Eric brings up a really compelling point
once again that everything is so overdone and overcooked on
this show, with too many infected, too many zombies, too
much of this, too much of that, and all three
of them should have died in that warehouse.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Because he's right.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
If a military outfit is not going anywhere fucking near
this building with fifty caliber mounted machine weapons, why the
fuck do you think that you're gonna survive with your
little pistols. And I knew they didn't know what was
in there. But again that goes back to you knew

(23:58):
that this building was not being touched or patrolled for
a reason, and you still went there because you're fucking idiots.
But yeah, I agree with you, Eric, they all should
have died, but the mail Savior Trope came in clutch
and Jesse with his shotgun just mowed everything down because

(24:19):
he's a man, and that's how it is.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Hell, yeah, brother, fuck out of here. Oh boy, here
we go, oh Eric? Also, let us know what are
the shows we can cover. I'd be happy to you
want to. You want us to do the pit, I'll
do the pit. Oh god, I'll do the treasure. I'll
definitely do the pit, but I will. And also we

(24:43):
will miss all of you too. But remember we have
email shows coming, so just because season two ends doesn't
mean the content and so we're going to be hanging out.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
With you all for a while still.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Yeah, and feel free to play the game right yep,
And then go back and you have sixty episodes. It
feels like of our previous show Wayfair and Strangers. Yeah,
that is not even counting Last of US Part two
sixty episodes just for the first game.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Now her first game is about thirty damn it.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, and then there's the DLC, which will be about
two to three and then the Last of US Part
two will probably be about sixty to seventy five episodes.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
It's going to be a lot.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
There you are, Eric. This one comes from es Bernard Man.
Oh Man, I am lost beyond belief. Don't understand any
of these characters or decisions. Episode six made this worse,
much worse. But episode five really just started my dislike
of many things, lack of common sense, odd forced scenes,

(25:47):
stupid decisions. I felt Ellie was a twenty one year
old in season one. Now I feel like she's five,
hopeless following another hopeless character that I don't know. Shrug
emujis game plus TV logic is not working in a
way I really don't get because I haven't played. Just
show watchers need to understand it too. Protagonist question mark, Yeah,

(26:12):
who's a protagonist?

Speaker 2 (26:13):
That's it? Yeah, Ellie. Ellie's a protagonist, right.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Ellie is supposed to be the protagonist along with Dina
and but but he's you know, I agree I mean
stupid decisions, forced scenes, awkward moments, lack of common sense.
Ellie felt older in season one and now she's basically
a fucking toddler in season two, being led around by
her romantic partner, which the creator sees as some sort

(26:37):
of parental force over Ellie. Everything is completely unraveling, and
it makes me sad, obviously in a selfish way because
of how much I love the franchise, but it makes
me sad for people who are just watching the show

(26:58):
and not experiencing the true depth and the true nature
of these characters in all of their glory, how strong
they are, how intelligent they were, how cunning and clever.
All of that is completely missing, and it lacks so
much fucking depth that even show watchers are struggling now.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
And that makes me.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Sad for y'all because you could have had a great,
soul moving experience being a part of this story.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
But it's not to be. Yep. From Michael R.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Hijack and Andrew, I hope things are going well, but
to get into it here, I think that episode five
was really good. Although as happy as I am for
them keeping Nora's death, you're telling me now that spores
are now a thing now. Craig has changed a lot
with the show, and to me, he has lost the story. Also, yeah,
what did happen to Shimmer?

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Poor horse?

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Let's hope the rest of this show gets better, but
I have my doubts, to be honest. It makes me sad. Anyway,
thank you again for what you guys do, Michael, thank
you for writing in the Shimmer stands are real. They're
really out there. Justice hashtag justice for Shimmer. You can't
just leave an animal at a place no forever and

(28:13):
be like you got this, you're good people.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
Will I have found that recently. You know there's that
website What the heck? Oh it's does the Dog Die?

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Oh no, I didn't know about that. So you can
go to this website. I think it's does the Dog It's.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Basically it's something like that, but essentially, like if you
see a trailer of a movie that has a dog
in it, you go to this website and it simply
tells you, without spoiling anything else, if the dog is okay,
because it's very triggering for some people. I mean, obviously
it's a very triggering thing. If a dog, sure it's
injured or whatever, but that exists. That's a real thing,

(28:47):
and I have to assume it's probably true.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
For horses too.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
Oh god, yeah, yeah, Oh my god. I mean if
there was an otter in this show that people will
be like, where's the honor? And I would be right there,
I would be it's me people.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
So otters in Seattle.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Maybe I am not going to say they're freshwater, they're
freshwater creatures. I think, oh my god, we're just gonna
move forward. But yeah, I mean the sports thing, I
don't have to be I don't have to say anything
more about that. I think I really beat I think
I hammered it in pretty well and on our episode

(29:23):
five review. But yeah, he changed too much with the story.
He changed too much with the characters. He put them
so far out of their out of pocket essentially that
I can't there's nothing to latch onto anymore.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
So we have Michael w Up next. Whether I like
them or not, I feel like I can see the
reasoning behind the changes to the story. But then I
hear Craig explain himself, and I'm like, no, Craig, the
Cordyceps is not capable of love, Craig.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
It's a mushroom.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
Craig, I'm just reading this as it was written, and
I think that's it's so good. I think I'm doing Michael,
correct me if I'm wrong. I think I'm killing this
right now. I expected this adaptation, even with Neil involved,
to have questionable changes, but I didn't expect a streak
of Stinkers in the middle of this season, streak of

(30:20):
Stinker's new band name Excited to Hear your Thoughts on
episode six, Neil's touch was sorely missed for the majority
of this show.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
For me.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
A lot to I'm back in this one, Michael w
thank you for bringing some joy. Oh the tone, it's
the tone for me. And when you like, when you
repeat it, it's.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
A mushroom crag.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
The course are not capable, Craig, Like, oh man, we
are just laying it on Fielk. But sure it's deserved, Okay,
And Craig, I know you're listening to this. You deserve it,
and you know you deserve it anything you put on
that prompter, you know that's what it is. So yes,

(31:06):
But the streak of stinkers, Oh my god, Like this
whole comment just fucking sends me to space.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
I love it so much. I hope that you enjoy
our thoughts for episodes.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Episode sucks, whoa.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Oh man.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
I hope that you are still excited to hear our
thoughts on episode six. I I feel like I've never
made have I made this publicly known? I don't think
I have necessarily on this podcast. I probably did in
season one. I don't remember. I don't like Neil Druckman.

(31:45):
He's he has just run jail. Yeah, I don't care.
We've been in podcast jail for like five years.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
It is what it is. But I'm still gonna podcast.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
He rubs me the wrong way, and he had since
twenty twenty and everything, the fallout with the Last of
Us Part two and doubling down on things and being
adamant with things and being involved with this show and
making so many changes and allowing so many fucking changes
to be made and not correcting Craig and just you know,
everyone just kind of, like I said, getting down on

(32:19):
their knees and praising each other for fucking average work
is just ludicrous to me.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
But that's the world we live in.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
But I know that I am in the minority when
it comes to my feelings about Neil Druckman, and that's okay,
which is why I keep them usually off air. But
I have to be transparent because we are going into
an episode that Neil directed and partially wrote. So while

(32:47):
I certainly think that you can see his influence here
and it is a lot more solid and consistent than
anything Craig has done this season, I still disagree with
a lot of what happened there.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
You go, Yeah, you're out there like I gotta be me? Yes,
why did you say mean?

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Or me?

Speaker 4 (33:10):
Who knows? Wow? Oh. Our next comment is from the
wonderful Jen v Jack. I didn't play the game, but
I do get what you're saying about them dumbing Ellie down.
She went to feder Academy, so I'm sure she learned
a lot while she was there. She was one of
their best students if I remember right. I can't wait

(33:32):
to hear both your takes on episode six. It is
a lot too unpacked. Thanks for a great podcast, Thank you, Jen.
It will be a lot to unpack on this episode,
and we're going to do our best as we always
try to do. And again here we are another show
watcher who has not played the games, who's feeling similarly
about this character.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
So Pedro Academy, they are an accredited university, so it's
important this comes from Alex R. Alex R. Rights got
to start emailing curse you character limits.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
I think if I've learned anything about this season, it's
that when doing adaptations, you need people involved who care
as deeply about the source material as the creators. I
learned recently planning for the show was happening while Game
two was still in development. Craig had more time to
let Game one sink in and fall in love with
the story. So maybe that's why season one was better.

(34:34):
He feels so out of touch with older Ellie. Really
a shame.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Alex.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
I'm going to take your word for this, because I
did not know that the development of the TV show
was happening simultaneously while the game was still partially in development.
So that's news to me, and that's fucking wild that
talks about this. We're circulating that far back, because again,
the game was released in June of twenty twenty, so
we're coming up on five year anniversary, and the show

(35:02):
premiered in January of twenty twenty three, so I know
that projects take.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
A long time.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
But that seems like an inordinate amount of time. However,
I do agree that that is a lot of time
for Craig to fall in love with the Last of
Us Part one, But even saying that, I still don't
think he did justice to Part one, which is my
favorite game of all time and really the true reason
why I love The Last of Us so much. So

(35:30):
I just don't think he has a handle, like a
full two hand grip on what this story is truly about,
and he's changed too much now for it to ever
get back to that place.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
We got to see. We know we got to see
over the five seasons. It's important, Fick, get the fuck out.
I believe that this probably remember twenty twenty everyone, what
a time to almost barely be alive.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
That was a rounds.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
I think twenty nineteen was when PlayStation studios began this
foray into adapting their material to other mediums. So that's
why we got stuff like eventually the Uncharted movie, which
is also a Neil Druckman product, The Last of Us,
we got the show Twisted Metal. They started we started

(36:23):
hearing about stuff like, oh, maybe they're going to make
a Horizon zero Dawn television show. Like all these other
Sony projects, some of them have happened, some many of
them have not, and yeah it never will who knows,
but that is interesting. Things do take a long time,
but nothing takes as long as a video game.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
So there is that.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, and our last official comment comes from our wonderful
friend Doomsday Dave. I'm so happy that you wrote in, Dave.
Dave says, Hi, Jackie Andrew, longtime listener and first time commenter.
I think it goes without saying that I agree with
all you have said in previous episodes. One thing that
I wanted to add about episode four that bothered me

(37:05):
is when Ellie and Dina get to the theater, they
do not clear the theater and proceed to get busy
with one another. Talk about getting caught with your pants down?
What anyway, keep doing what you're doing. I love both
your podcasts and I wish you the best. Hashtag fore armstrong,
hashtag team Growner.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
You're damn right, You're goddamn right, Dave.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
I just Dave and I talk often on Instagram about
what is going on with this show, and we certainly
reinforce each other, but I don't think it's an echo
chamber because Dave, I'm not going to speak for him,
but I think he enjoyed the episode six a little
bit more than even I did. So it just goes

(37:51):
to show like, even though we some of us have
some deep problems with this season, we still go into
it each week with that little sliver of hope. Although
my hope is completely gone to be to be just
completely transplant parent, it's gone. I expect nothing in the finale.
But wow, yeah, I uh, I agree. There's there's so

(38:12):
many things about the theater moment with Ellie and Dina
that in hindsight, I really wish that we had talked
about and me specifically, But I again I said on
last episode, I think I was so wrapped up in
the moment myself that I just was like, I want
Elli and Dina to have this moment. I want them

(38:32):
to have this piece and this passion and this togetherness.
But when you pull back, you get into the questionable
hygiene of everything. You get into. They didn't clear the
fucking theater, which has several floors and an entire actual
theater and stage, and then behind that the backstage area,

(38:56):
like there were so many places for infected or raiders
or hunter or whatever to hide, and they basically just
went in there and just it happened. It happened, and
maybe in their brain they thought, no, there was no
thought in those brains. We talked about that it was
just the heat of the moment. But maybe they thought, well,

(39:18):
Ellie slept through most of the night and nothing jumped
out of a aud at us, So hope nothing's here,
you know.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
Look sometimes you know, there was a checkpoint right outside
the theater, so if anything happened, the farthest they'd go
back was just outside the theater.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
It's that easy. Sure, boom problem solved. Hashtag video game,
video game is shit. That'll be a bracelet vgas. Let's go.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
And the last comment, So I'm gonna take this one
because I gave myself a comment and I literally wrote
from Jack reiterate that if you disagree with this podcast,
to stop listening.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
And what does that mean?

Speaker 1 (39:57):
That means that if you listen to the show every
single week and you find yourself fundamentally at odds with
what I am saying, because I'm gonna put it all
on me because Andrew is riding the fence.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
What or what Andrew.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Says, I did a three under the bus a little
bit there, but like.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
I am flabber guest right now, your guests are flabbered.
But what is going on here?

Speaker 1 (40:32):
I just I say this in jest, but I truly
mean it. Please spare yourself. I'm just not going to
do it anymore. I'm not going to go back and
argue a point that I've already discussed in depth, that
I've given examples to explain the way that I feel.

(40:52):
I never say anything on this show without reinforcing it
with at minimum one example, but usually two or three.
So if you are still questioning what I'm saying, you're
just trying to aggravate me and egg me on, and
I'm not doing that anymore. These podcasts are way too long,

(41:14):
the editing way too long, the amount of hours that
goes into it way too long. So I appreciate you
for listening, but you don't have to. If you disagree
with what I'm saying or with what Andrew is saying,
I wish you well create your own podcast and have
the fucking time of your life. That's my only advice

(41:36):
from here on out.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
I had another podcast where someone would write in every
almost every episode, and to say that they disagreed with
us unless what we were saying was that we loved it.
I was like, I, sir or madam whoever you are,
and doesn't I don't. I actually don't know the person personally,

(41:59):
so I have no connection.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
But I'm like, if a person, it doesn't matter who
you are.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
If you make one hundred things, there is no way
that a hundred of them are good. It's at the
law of averages does not allow for that, right sure.
And so I'm with you on that. There are people
out there that believe, whether it is an actor, a writer,

(42:27):
a director, whoever, that everything they do is the best
thing ever, and they are wrong. I agree with you
that I'm simply saying that cannot be true.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Right. Yeah, it's okay.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
It's okay to say even if you like the show,
it's okay to say that, like episode five was not good.
That's like a totally you could do that. That's a
thing that you could do. Yeah, if you want.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
And I go back to a conversation that we had
on Wayfair and Strangers a while back, where someone had
emailed in basically saying, Jack, it is okay to dislike
something that you love. And I think that that still
rings so fundamentally true for me, because even though I

(43:15):
am here showing up every week and shitting on the show,
I still love the Last of Us. I just do
not like this show and this, for me is not
the Last of Us. They have changed so much that
it is a story I really don't recognize anymore. It
is being told to me through characters I do not

(43:36):
recognize anymore. And that is not on a failure of
my on my part to adapt or acquiesce to what
is presented to me.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Like I have no other fucking choice, I have a choice.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
This is not it, and I truly wish that everyone
who has not played the game, I God, I wish
that you could play the game, or at least watch
an entire playthrough from start to fucking finish of Part
one of Left Behind and of the Last of Us
Part two for you to see how the story is told,

(44:13):
because what you are seeing on this TV show is
not that story and they are not those characters.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
If you, if if that sounds like something you'd be
interested in, dear listener, you can go on YouTube and
they there it exists places of both of these games
with no talking. So it's not a streamer. You don't
have somebody in the bottom corner. It's just somebody at
a very high level playing the game. And it's actually

(44:42):
kind of cool. It is cool, Like I'm a person
that I would not do that, Like I like playing
video games, so I would I want to interact with it.
But if you're not, if you have if the last
thing you played was Madden ninety four on Sega, right,
and you know, looking at a dual sense is like

(45:04):
looking at like an alien object to you, it might
be worth a while, yeah, to do that, to search
out like a no no talking playthrough of the games,
and you could probably do it.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
What would you say, like first.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Game if you're mainlining it, like twelve hours, ten hours
something like that.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Yeah, between ten ten to twelve hours at most.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Yeah, I know that's a lot, but that's it's not
it's a season of a television show, like it's an
average television show season.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Right, So there you go. The Last of Us two
Last of Us Part two is about double that though
that's true a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
That's like an episode of a that's like a what
are we thinking?

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Like house? You know in the early aughts like season yeah,
twenty two season.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
I don't know why I went to house for whatever,
because it's an excellent show. Sure, I was just trying
to think of a show that had a lot of
episodes that were mostly an hour ish long.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
So there you go, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
But yeah, those are all of our comments for this week.
It is time for us to dive into the show.
We're gonna do it. It's going to be what it is,
and we hope you enjoy it. Thank you guys for
commenting and being with us this entire season thus far.
We appreciate you, and we look forward to hearing your
comments on this episode and talking about them next week.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
Also, keep those emails coming in too. Just yes, character
limits be damned, they don't exist in emails. We'll get
to it, we promise.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
Yes, And just to jump ahead, tlou podcast at gmail
dot com.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Boom gone.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
All right, So our comments are done, The intro is done,
The hour long intro is done.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Now it'll be sure when the editing is done.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
But Andrew, could you tell us a little bit about
the show and give us some information about this episode specifically?

Speaker 3 (46:55):
I sure Ken this one was directed by someone named
Neil Druckman. Never heard of him? Yeah, never heard of him.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
And the writers on this episode are credited as Neil Druckman,
Hallie Gross, and Craig Mason. The episode summary is Joel
surprises Ellie for her birthday. Years later, Ellie prepares to
confront Joel about her.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Past Serci struggles. John travels. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Yeah, that's basically how we're writing the HBO descriptions these days. Hey, everyone,
In case you didn't know Neil Druckman, maybe you don't
watch the post credits things for HBO. Neil Truckman was
one of the driving forces behind the game. Yes, so
the first one and then the second one where he
co wrote, co created that with Hallie Gross, writer on

(47:52):
this episode.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Yes, just worth noting this is from the source, yes,
and we're going to keep that in mind. Is that
will probably come up at some point, especially from me.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
So yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
OK, So let's get into our episode six breakdown. We
have another very strong cold open this week in We're
back in Austin, Texas in nineteen eighty three, which that
was a wonderful year because yours truly came into the world,
not in Austin, Texas, Texas, but Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It's fine

(48:28):
close enough, close, yes, right, neighbors really honestly. So we
see a teenage Joel consoling a younger Tommy. They're both
younger who has clearly found himself in some sort of trouble.
He's concerned about their father's reaction. This is Tommy afraid

(48:48):
that he is quote going to get the belt, but
Joel offers to take the heat though, and then orders
Tommy to go to his room and stay there he
will deal with Dad. And Dad shows up to the house.
He is a cop apparently, and Dad is portrayed by
none other than Tony Dalton TD, with the name plate J.

(49:09):
Miller on his uniform. And this is where the first man.
If anybody has listened to Wayfar and Strangers or season
one of the Last Cast, And you did not write
me when you saw Tony Tony Dalton in this episode,
I am remiss Okay, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Am remissed because she's actually written all of your names down, Yeah,
every single.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
One of you.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
It's fie, but this is I'm gonna give myself a giant, healthy,
heaping amount of credit for this, even though I have
nothing to do with this show on a fundamental, basic,
literal level. But I said to you two fucking plus
years ago that Tony Dalton should have been Joel. He

(49:56):
was my number one choice for Joel Miller in the
Last of Us on HBO, long even before Pedro was
cast as Joel. I was like, Tony should be Joel.
He has the child him as Lollo in Better Call Saw.
I was like, this is everything that anyone would ever

(50:19):
need to know about this man's range and what he
can bring to the screen.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
And did anybody listen to me? No? No, well they listened.
They just they just cast him as the wrong j Miller.
I think, yes, which again, Field, listen. I know y'all
are listening. We know. Okay. First of all, I see
the stats.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
The number one place that our podcast is listened to
is Los Angeles. Wait a minute, what one hundred percent?
The most amount of people that listen to this show
are in LA And that's fucking hilarious to me.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
I just needed everyone to know that I said this
years and years ago, and to see it was like,
lo and behold Tony Dalton on the show and he's
quote Jay Miller because they never give the full.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
Name now this is breaking news here, ready for breaking news.
We actually do know because I looked it up on IMDb.
Okay you ready, Yeah, it's Javier. Oh yeah, that's just
breaking news that we now know that his name was Javier. Right,

(51:27):
and look, I'll give you your flowers. You definitely did
call this back in the Better Call Saul days when
that show was live on television. You were like, for
those of you, I'm sure we have mentioned this before,
at least in season one, that Joel, the character in
the video games, was loosely based around Josh Brolin, specifically

(51:52):
in the film No Country for Old Men.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (51:55):
So if you take Josh in that movie and you
compare him to Tony Dalton, you're like, wow, very similar,
like across the board, like physicality, yep, attitude, like range,
all that kind of stuff. So it was I think
you and I both like we sprung like Marx. We

(52:16):
were like what Tony Dalton? Yeah, it was cool to see.
It was cool to see.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
And listen, I know that I am very much in
the minority when it comes to Pedro Pascal as Joel.
I still do not think that that was a good cast,
a good casting choice. I don't think that what I
don't think the depth of Joel has been portrayed on
this show, either in season one or season two. And

(52:46):
I'm not saying that I dislike Pedro. I'm not saying
that I think he's a bad actor. I just think
he was wrong for this role. And literally we didn't
even finish the cold open yet, but this is very
important to me because I felt like I have called
so many things and Tony Dalton was the biggest one,

(53:06):
so to see him show up and then you had
told me after the fact that Neil Druckman was so
impressed with Tony Dalton that he on the spot gave
him a role in the next Naughty Dog video game, Intergalactic,
And I'm like, I wish that I literally had some
sort of power or position in some room involved with

(53:30):
creating Last of Us content, because I feel like things
in my brain. I'm like, I'm not off base, I'm
never fucking outright wrong. And this just literally I made
a joke in here and I was like, thanks HBO,
Craig and co. For letting me know you listen to
this fucking podcast and that you've actually heard.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Me say things. He just has that thing. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
How do you like describe that thing that somebody has.
You either have it or you fucking don't.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
That's what That's what Hollywood casting directors have long.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
There is no word. It's just the They call it
the it factor.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Yeah, and it's not again, Pedro has the it factor
for many many people.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Not for me.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
I don't particularly. I don't think he's anything special. I
don't think that he has this un know unfound talent
that has never been seen on the silver screen before.
I think he's average, and that's fine. I think he
has a beautiful personality and that's why he's been elevated
and offered so many roles. And if that's the case,
then good for him. But like ride the wave, you

(54:39):
got I get it. You have to ride the wave.
As long as you do it is crested, you know.
But mister fantastic you're talking about there?

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Okay, easy, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
I think I actually paused the show when Tony walked
in and sat down across from his son, and I
was just like, are you fucking serious? Are you fucking serious?
Is like this could have this, this could have been
a completely different show with him at the helm for
me personally. But anyway, moving forward, our next talking topic
beyond the Tony Dalton discussion that we just had, is

(55:14):
very clearly Joel inherited his watch from his father.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
We see it initially when he's like, you know, I mean,
it's very much in passing, and then they emphasize it
as Jay Miller is leaving and he puts his hand
on his son's shoulder. But I you and I had
seen it earlier when he like grabs the beer, sets
them on the table, you know, just moving.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Around his arm. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
So this obviously is very different from the game and
has been different because Sarah had the watch fixed. She
didn't buy the watch for Joel. In the game, Sarah
had saved up money, you know, drugs us a hark
her drugs. She bought the watch for Joel, so it
was a direct linked for Joel to his daughter in
the game. But in the show, Sarah got it fixed

(56:06):
and we find out now that it was his father's watch,
so it was this heirloom essentially. But this also goes
back to some of the things that I kind of
ranted about a couple episodes ago regarding Joel's watch, because
now this is something that has passed down from Javier
Miller to Joel Miller, and that's it. Like, this is

(56:29):
clearly some sort of heirloom, and Joel should have left
it to Ellie, especially after this episode when we see
very clearly he views her as his daughter. And this
is another reason for me to reinforce how brain numbing
it was for me to see Ellie push the watch aside.

(56:50):
So again it reduces the impact and the meaning on
the show. And I feel like it's one of those
things where they just threw it in and then and
you know, violence.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Is the tether for Ellie. That's why she grabbed his God, okay, listen, listen, listen, listen. Okay.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
I also called that we get to see this watch
again and so not present day watch, but this counts.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
I think I think this counts.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
They wouldn't go through so much trouble to show that
this watch is without without some payoff in mind. So
whether it is that Tommy has it on the next episode,
or it's just like just remember that this watch is
still in play very much for a future episode. That's all.

(57:37):
That's all I wanted to say. I was like, yeah,
they again, it's one of those things where they didn't
even have to. His character design did not require him
to wear a watch. He's wearing like a Beat Cups uniform, right,
so like not necessary to be wearing a watch in
that situation or whatever.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
It is interesting though, because when you look at the
design of Joel's watch specifically on show, because it is
slightly it's almost identical to the game, but it is
slightly different. Yeah, specifically the band, and it very much
looks like a military watch. And given that Joel was
born in the late sixties, not early seventies, because I

(58:18):
would say Joel was probably like sixteen in nineteen eighty three,
so yeah, he was born in like sixty seven, and
his headstone in the show did say September twenty sixth,
nineteen sixty seven, so yeah, late sixties, and his dad
was likely in Vietnam, and that very much looks like
a military watch that he ultimately passes down to his son.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
Yeah, it's like that canvas kind of strap, like the
like a green you.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Know, Yeah, very much, it's very much military vibes.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
So I want to I just want to point out
one really great thing sound wise that that is happening
in this flashback. I know we've spent a lot of
time here, but it was like a very impactful for
me at least. Yeah, scene, there's a complete little side
tangent there was. The sound designers from twenty forty nine
did this amazing thing. There's a scene where Dave Batista's

(59:09):
character walks into a room and Ryan gosling Is has
hidden himself there. But every step this guy takes is
supposed to He's huge, right, He's a hulking man, Dave Batista,
and every step he takes into this house is so
heavy that the sound designer said, wouldn't it be awesome

(59:31):
if the plates in the cabinets rattled with every step
that this guy took? And they added this. They showed
there's a YouTube thing you could watch of this where
they did the scene and the sound designer removed the
plates just the sound of the plates and it's like, oh,
this is that's pretty impactful. And then they just added

(59:52):
this little rattle for the plates and you're like.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
Damn, this dude is nine hundred pounds, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
That's what they did with the footsteps of him coming
down the hallway towards Joel, Like they're so heavy, big,
and I it's like and again it's so it wasn't
like the plates rattling, but it was all of the
kind of equipment, like jingles, like of the you know,
of all the stuff that he's got on. And I

(01:00:21):
was like, man, what a way to set him up
as an imposing figure like he's in silhouette. He's got
these heavy footsteps. You're like, damn, this is a person
you do not want to mess with. Yes, like all
of this beautiful storytelling without really even saying a word,
I loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
I agree, I agree, and it's it's It also gives
you a lot of the background that we aren't privy
to of how he raises his children. Yeah, which I
think he realizes in the conversation with Joel that he
doesn't want to be what he might ultimately and unintentionally

(01:01:02):
started turning into, which was his own father. Sure you
know so I And let's get to that. So j
Miller tells Joel, I have thirty minutes before going back
onto patrol. So whatever has happened here, he needs the
details quickly and they need to sort it out fast,
and he wants to hear what Joel has to say.
And Joel initially lies, but then gets caught immediately because

(01:01:25):
his dad knows what happened because his dad talked to
the kid that Joel beat up over Tommy's drug exchange mess,
and Joel and Tommy, he says here that both of
you would be in juvie had you not been my
son's and Joel gets very direct here with a you're
not going to hurt him, and then Dad doesn't reply,

(01:01:48):
and instead he stands up, grabs two beers from the fridge,
sits back down, offers one to his son and cracks
it open for him, and they drink in silence for
a bit, and then it becomes story time. When Joel's
dad was a child, he had stolen a candy bar
from a store when he was ten years old, and Grandpa,

(01:02:08):
meaning Joel's grandfather, Joel's dad's dad made him return the
candy and apologize, but right before he was getting out
of the car when they had arrived home. After that moment,
his father hit him so hard that he broke his
jaw and there was blood everywhere. His grandma thought that

(01:02:29):
he was dead, and his mouth was wired shut for
two months, and everyone in the neighborhood knew why it
was humiliating. Now, Joel doesn't necessarily understand the lesson behind
this yet and still fully expects some sort of physical

(01:02:49):
lesson to be taught. So he's expecting to probably get
his ass beat by his dad. But we learned quickly
that that's not what this moment is about. He's telling
Joel this because despite him having hit his sons in
the past, he never hurt his children to the extent
that his own father did. And then he questions himself here,

(01:03:10):
but then acknowledges that he himself is doing better than
his own father did. And maybe, and this is the
lesson the opening of the book end, maybe one day
when it's Joel's turn to be a father, he hopes
Joel will do a little bit better than him. And
he says this, This is our is a little side comment,
but he says this, and he cries. And the emotion

(01:03:33):
and the the acting of Tony put into this one
singular scene that he was on out of almost two
full seasons is beyond impressive. He showed up and put
everything on the fucking line for roughly six minutes. And
I will never ever, ever forgive anyone in charge that

(01:03:56):
he was not Joel. He was the right man for
that job. He was the right man for this job.
But could you I mean seriously, like it actually puts
a pit in my stomach and like that yearning feeling
in my chest of what this show could have been
with Tony Dalton as Joel Miller. And it just sucks.
It just it fucking sucks. But it is what it is.

(01:04:18):
Figure the amount of time that the scene is. This
is maybe a day, maybe two days of filming tops, right,
So he comes in, he gets his notes and maybe
a little bit of context for how this might influence
things one way or the other, and then they're like go.
And what he does is crush it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Magic. He is magic on the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
And I think he's a severely underrated actor and I
would love to see him in more stuff. However, I
like that he's selective. He doesn't just throw himself around
willy nilly to keep acting like some people.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
But he's got it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
Wow, I'm not about Keanu Reeves. No talking about Pedro Pascal.
It's fine. He is some people may recognize him. He
is actually the swordsman in the MCU. It's a small role,
but he would have been in I believe Hawkeye and
then more recently Daredevil born again in a very minor

(01:05:16):
side character capacity that may bubble up to be something
more important, but he's also you know, he's cash and
checks over here. But then he's able to do some cooler,
smaller character not that The Last of Us is cooler,
smaller character drama, but this particular scene very meaty.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
Oh god, yeah, this was my favorite scene out of
the entire season, and it's not even close. And that's
actually my final talking point, so let's get to that.
But the scene ends with Dad Miller putting his hand
on his son's shoulder, giving us another look at the
infamous watch, and then the patrolman leaves. Then and there,

(01:05:55):
No one is hurt, no one has hit, Everything is fine,
the lesson has been learned. And this truly was my
favorite scene in the entire season. The acting was everything
that this show could have had. The casting was perfect,
even the child, the teenager who played Joel, was perfect.
The dialogue was short to the point, concise, tight, and

(01:06:16):
packed with emotion. This is the Last of Us, not
bombastic exposition, vomity, dumbification, bullshit that we've had to suffer
through all season. This opening sequence is the last of us.
The opening sequence with the WLF and Hanrahan sitting across

(01:06:36):
from a lease park talking about what happened in the
basement and her losing her son, that is the last
of us. This is what the fucking show should have been.
And it's just not enough. Like these scenes are perfect,
but they are just not enough.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
It's not enough of them.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
It's not enough of them or the simplicity and the
hard hitting nature of it. I think because now we're
getting to almost the end of the season, we're recording
this on Sunday at eleven fifty one am currently.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
And the finale'll be tonight, right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
Yes, And I think the failing of this season in particular,
and what I can probably guestimate the series will be,
is that they believed people need this explosive, bombastic, over

(01:07:36):
the top enormous amount of infected you know, a giant sized,
Jackson sized community, everybody, just everything blown out of proportion
to entertain audiences, when the Games had everything we needed
on such a smaller scale and still became a masterpiece

(01:08:00):
onto itself. And this is the failing between Hollywood and
the video game industry. This is never going to be
fixed because Hollywood executives think that you go bigger, go home,
and that's that's literally mistreating the audience and thinking that
we're fucking stupid and thinking that we can't handle a

(01:08:23):
smaller sized story with smaller amounts of infected smaller, smaller
intimate scenes of heavy dialogue like and and maybe they're
compensating because of all the people who were fucking idiots
complaining about season one, there's not enough effect, chack, we

(01:08:43):
didn't see enough fucking zobbies like. I don't know, but
if you are catering to that audience, that's not the demographic.
That's not the demographic you need to be catering to.
And it makes me sad that it don't like they
and they just fucked everything up because yesterday we went

(01:09:05):
to this is a little tid side tangent whatever, it's
what the show is. Yesterday we went to a Memorial
Day hang out, get together whatever with my sister and
she invited two couples, so we were all having a
good time in living and I had gotten to a
quick conversation with one of the husbands who was there

(01:09:26):
and how he watched season one of the Last of
Us on HBO and enjoyed.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
It, and he's like, but he's like, we don't have.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
HBO anymore, so I haven't watched season two, and he's like,
and I don't care about it enough to sign up
to get season two.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
He's like, but I have heard.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
That it's gone downhill and it's a pile of shit now.
And I'm like that that's the sentiment People who have
nothing to do with the game, people who don't even
want to re up their subscription for two months to
watch one season, don't give a fuck anymore because the
show tanked so bad over the list sixt episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
For the average viewer.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
So it's like it made me sad because I was like,
on one hand, I'm like, good, you're not missing anything.
And then on the other hand, I'm like, I can't
believe that sentence just came out of my mouth about
The Last of Us.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Sometimes it just it just it strikes me how far
from grace we have shrived or we have fallen.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
We're living in a time where there's peak video game
adaptations happening now. Yeah, and we have experienced a few
of them that are nearly transcendent, right. Fallout is pretty
high up at the top of the list in terms
of we adapted the world but not the story.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Yes, and that worked out. That worked really well for me.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):
And as far as people I know that have not
played Fallout, which is a fair amount of people, like
Fallout is not it's a huge game, but it's not
like necessarily I wouldn't even I mean, it probably might
be close to the last of us in terms of say,
I've never looked that up, but like it's more niche
for sure. And people who haven't played the games are like, wow,

(01:11:07):
that was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Is the game like that?

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
And I'm like, kind of, no, not really in its
own way, but they did a great job of like
catching a vibe and capitalizing on it. Sounding the Hedgehog.
I know you've never seen those you never will. Those
movies are great. They're a lot of fun for the
audience that they're meant to be for. Arcane on Netflix.

(01:11:32):
I watched that and never played that game. That shows incredible.
It's one of the best shows I've ever watched. Despite
a very rough second season, I was like, it doesn't matter.
They stuck the landing. So yeah, it's not like we
don't have analogs for video game to television show or
movie adaptations to as comparisons, and so it's yeah, what

(01:11:53):
you said is interesting. If that's the real sentiment. I
know a lot of people are fifty to fifty, like
a fifty to fifty split. People are like, now I
stopped watching, or they're like, yeah, it's it's good, I'm
enjoying it. Are that most people are an agreement about
with our sentiment on the last episode, episode five, where
they're like, what was happening here?

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
So yeah, episode five is very lowly reviewed. Yeah, so
there's that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
Yeah, I don't know, I just okay, Yeah, So real
quick the credits roll, Pager's name appears back in insaid credits,
and his little mushroom silhouette silhouette has returned.

Speaker 3 (01:12:32):
Patro's back picture. All right, we cut to Jackson. We're
in the Tipsy Bison. Seth is organizing and cleaning behind
the bar, and Joel shows up. He's the new guy,
so we're very clearly four years back here. Joel offers
a bag of legos as a barter for whatever it

(01:12:54):
is they're going to trade. I thought that was really
great since grandkids say that they're going to love these legos. Yeah,
Joel found them because he's a smuggler, and Seth is
and there's a pause.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
Not that yeah right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
He says like, oh, I got them from the houses
over here, and Seth's like, I searched there.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
He's like, well, you know, I thought that was pretty good.
I thought that was a pretty good you know, that
was pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:13:23):
But Seth gives a little bit of his own history,
and lord here, he wasn't always a bartender.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
He was once a cop in the Milwaukee PD.

Speaker 3 (01:13:30):
There seems to be Joel acknowledges that because again we
just saw that his dad was a cop as well,
So sure there's something there. They share a drink together,
but now it's time to trade. He says they can
make what they want, but Joel needs it by the
next day.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
So Seth's like, I can make it for you.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
I think, he says, in four days or whatever, and
Joel's like, no, I need it tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:53):
The options for said trade are either vanilla or chocolate.
Seth encourages vanilla because it's easier, and so Joel yes,
is reluctantly, but he needs one more thing, and it's sad.
He says, don't worry, it's a thing you have a
lot of.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
If I love how much Seth we've been seeing this season,
And yeah, I don't know if this is a character
that we had to spend this much time with.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
I feel like.

Speaker 3 (01:14:21):
You don't want to introduce I understand you run the
risk in now. We've made many Game of Thrones comparisons
in this from the show to that show. Sure, the
one thing I will say that Game of Thrones is like,
unless you have like really good memory or you're writing
shit down, Game of Thrones is a show that throws
a lot of names at you, and you're like a

(01:14:43):
lot of names, a lot of faces, and sometimes you're like,
who is this guy again? Right? And so I think
they're like this guy, you know, like them or hate him.
This actor has a very memorable face. Like you look
at him, you're like, wow, he's like a very distinct personality,
this guy.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
And so we're like, let's.

Speaker 3 (01:15:02):
Just take Seth and we'll graft some storybits around this
guy because he looks unique. He's like a unique looking fellow.
So sure, that was my thought there I'm like, I
guess I don't hate that. I think it would be
better than introducing yet another random Jackson resident, right, sure, So.

Speaker 2 (01:15:23):
Yeah, that's all all right, fair enough, you're just saying
that to shut me up. Yeah. Maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
But we're back to Joel's house and it is Ellie's
fifteenth birthday, so Joel's home, and he goes upstairs. He
opens Ellie's bedroom door, but she is not home, which
it looks like he was happy about. So he was
hiding a bone of some sort under his jacket, and
he takes this bone into his workshop and begins to

(01:15:54):
refine it and then builds portions of it. After it
has been stand in, smooth cut, polished all that, he
builds parts of it into the guitar, and then he
uses a drumal tool to etch the moth into the
neck of this guitar and then continues to build, polish, refine,
whatever the proper words are for this guitar. And then

(01:16:16):
he finishes crafting and working on the guitar, sits on
his bed and begins to strum, checking out his own craftsmanship,
and we hear the door open and Tommy call up
in alarm. Though at this moment which interrupts Joel and
Tommy helps Ellie up the stairs, and she sounds and
appears quite loopy and disjointed, and Tommy says it's painkillers

(01:16:38):
and she's going to be all right, but Ellie pulls
at the bandage on her arm and Tommy reprimands her
with a leave it alone. All throughout this, Joel continues
to ask what happens and Tommy, and Tommy says that
she burned her arm, but how did she do this?
And Ellie admits almost immediately that she did it on purpose,

(01:17:01):
but no one saw.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
She was on her.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
Own, and then she makes a disgusting comment about how
it smelled like pork, and then was all melty in this,
that and the other because gross. But she starts to
complain about the pain, and then this is when Joel
sits down beside her with an easy baby girl, easy
easy and just a quick little they're tossing in the
baby girl willy nilly here and okay, and I am

(01:17:27):
going to complain. This is something that we haven't talked
a lot about this season because I know there's a
lot of vitriol on the internet about Bella Ramsey in
particular and I'm not going to feed into that. I'm
not going to We're not going to feed the trolls
as it goes the acting casting choice. You know, I

(01:17:48):
complain about Pedro. It is what it is. But I
want to be very clear here that I'm not mean
about it. I'm not vindictive. I'm not cruel, because there
is no room for that on this fucking show. Just
being a petty, small, dick minded person if that's what
you are latching onto, and we don't have time for that.

(01:18:09):
I do have to mention though, that going from a
scene with Tony Dalton to this scene with Joel and Ellie,
the acting is no good.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
It's just not good in this moment.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
And I know that she was on painkillers and trying to,
you know, fight between being loopy on painkillers but also
still feeling the pain from her burn.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
It was not good. And it's tough.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
It's just tough because this is such a high production
value show on a fucking giant streaming platform with subpar acting,
and I'm just gonna whittle it down to it's very frustrating,
all right. So all of the acting complaints aside, continuing

(01:19:04):
with the scene, the doctor. Tommy says the doctor will
stop by later for another pain shot for Ellie, and
then Ellie gives the same line she gave Dina earlier
this season, with a I just wanted to wear short
sleeves again, before spiraling into a bunch of I'm sorries
while talking to Joel, and Joel just watches her here

(01:19:24):
soothes her. He hugs her and kisses her head and
he gives her comfort and then we get this mini
tour of Ellie's bedroom. We see her switchblade standing up
on her desk on her side table. It is stabbed
into it, which is very classic Ellie. We see some
cassette tapes. The only one that I could make out
was AHA, which is of course take on me. And

(01:19:46):
then her walls are covered in moth drawings, et cetera.
Love that for her, and then the scene changes. Ellie
is sleeping, but she rolls over, wakes up, and then
stares at her bandaged arm. And after this she goes
downstairs and she finds Joel standing with his back to her,
cursing seth under his breath, and she comes around and

(01:20:10):
we see the reveal on the cake, which is what
he traded the legos for says happy fifteenth birthday.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
Eli, very good, very good.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
Yeah, and Joel walks away to get a knife and
to cut the cake. But when he turns back, Ellie
is standing there with a shittating grin her hand and
face covered in cake, like the.

Speaker 2 (01:20:33):
Toddler she is. Now wait a minute, I.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
Understand that, and this goes This is going to be
a little bit of a lengthy topic, or maybe not
at all, depending on what Andrew has to say. But
the infantilization of Ellie Williams is very odd to me.
I know, Bella Ramsay is ushering the character through multiple
years at this point throughout this episode. A fifteen year

(01:21:00):
old should know better and have more respect for the
effort that Joel went through to have this incredibly rare
dessert made, especially given the significance of flower and its
relation to the literal end of life as everyone knew
it twenty one years prior. Does but does she know

(01:21:21):
she behaves like a toddler literally in their highchair, smash
grabbing cake because they have no control over their motor
skills or the parts of their brain that tell them
what the fuck to do.

Speaker 2 (01:21:32):
This is awkward.

Speaker 1 (01:21:34):
I know, I know that it was meant to be
lighthearted and funny and this little bottle moment for Joel
and Ellie, but it struck me more as another failure
on the creator's end to recognize that Ellie is not
an actual fucking toddler but a fourteen to now fifteen
year old. And I do understand that there's a big

(01:21:55):
conversation going on in the Last of Us universe about
Craig's unwillingness or incapability to view Ellie as anything more
than a child, which we talked about earlier in our
commentary section when we started this show.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
But this is.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
Another example of that, and it is downright fucking weird
to me, and I don't understand the direction. And this
is where I'm going to blame Neil, because Neil directed
this fucking episode, and he should know Ellie well enough
to just be like, Okay, yes, you are a fifteen

(01:22:31):
year old teenager, and yes you are in a safe
space with someone who loves you and someone that you love,
but you also understand how hard and vicious and cruel
the world is. What would compel you to shove a
cake in your fucking mouth like you're two years old?

Speaker 2 (01:22:46):
Our literal child, our actual daughter.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
Bella has not done something like that since she was
two or three years old, And even then she was
tentative because she was like, nah, I want to actually
enjoy this and not be an ass hole. I just
watching the episode the first time with you. I chuckled
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
You laughed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Watching it back to do to notes, to do the notes,
I fucking cringed. I was like, this, this is weird acting,
this is strange directing.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
She's fifteen. This is so fucking weird to me.

Speaker 3 (01:23:23):
I think an alternate here's what you know. It's one
of those things like I've got notes?

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
Is this locked in?

Speaker 3 (01:23:28):
Are you still taking notes on how to maybe ap prechase?
I'm more appropriate and potentially still funny. Like if the
goal was to be funny and fun and lighthearted, I
think it would have been more character appropriate if Joel
was like, oh, let me get a knife, and he's
like looking around, and we play that beat out of

(01:23:49):
him searching for a knife just for a second or
two longer. Then when we swing the camera back to Ellie,
she has already cut a slice with her switchblade and
is eating it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
You know what I'm saying so like, that's character appropriate.

Speaker 3 (01:24:02):
It's also very It's it's not quite as funny as
like smashing cake into your face, but it feels more
age appropriate. It feels it feels more Ellie appropriate. And
I think the lightheartedness still and you know, whatever whatever
line delivery you want to give there, Like I it's
like I already had a knife, orse, you know whatever,

(01:24:23):
that could have that could have been something, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:26):
Yeah, And that's a fantastic fucking idea, incorporating a character tool,
a literal tool, a actual tool in the character's arsenal,
being used in a comedic way that doesn't demean the
age or appropriateness of the scene, but it is still lighthearted.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
And that that I just, oh my god, it was annoying.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
Like the face that Ellie makes is literally I, as
a parent, I would be like, wow, are you fucking good?

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
I don't know when the last time she had cake was,
in fairness, you.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
Know, maybe potentially never, it's yeah, and that again, okay,
that's my fucking point. The first time that people usually
present a cake to a human being is at a
first birthday party, when this tiny little human has never

(01:25:27):
ever fucking seen tasted or smelled something so unbelievably delicious,
and their instinct is to reach with their tiny, little
fat shelby hands and rip a part of that cake
or smash their face fully into it, because they do
not understand the siren call of sugar.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Yet yet they have.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
Fortunately, unfortunately, and again, our child has always been a
little civilized in that way. Like, and it's not because
we raised her to be serious or strict or anything. No,
we have a very fun, loving, humorous, lighthearted, joyful child.
But even at her first birthday party, she like basically
just dug in with one of her fingers and would

(01:26:12):
like pull out little bits and pieces instead of like,
instead of just ripping the whole.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
Hog into it like a mad man.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:26:21):
Yeah, she looked at us, she was like, I know
that I am yet incapable of it. Was like, I'm
k not even fork, but I really eat this accordingly.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
I'm just saying, you know, And she don't put an.

Speaker 3 (01:26:33):
Ice cube in my ear yesterday. Okay, that's where that's
the level we're at now, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:26:38):
Ah, oh my god, it's so man.

Speaker 3 (01:26:46):
Just in case you were like, she seems very prim
and properly. She knows she put an ice cube in
my ear yesterday. Okay, she's one of the little ice
cube ball like the little ball ones too, So it
was like it was able to remain in my ear,
It didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:26:58):
Just fall out. Yeah, doesn't see it coming.

Speaker 1 (01:27:02):
No, she is very much a sixteen year old, a
goofy sixteen year old with a wonderful sense of humor
and u and physical comedy to match it. But yeah,
I just she was. And don't get me started on
weddings and wedding couples who smash cake in each other's
faces unless that is agreed upon before the cake smashing.

(01:27:26):
Don't you ever fucking do that that? And there is
a literal statistic of divorce rates, and they are higher
for people who smash cake in each other's faces without
the other partner knowing, because it is fucking disrespectful.

Speaker 2 (01:27:42):
You and I had that conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
I was like, if you and I ever get married,
don't you fucking dare, don't you dare?

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
Fuck it, don't you try.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
I would accept like a little tiny bit on my nose.

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
That's it. That's it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:59):
But anyway, so all that to say, the acting was
fucking abhorrent and cringe and the directing was poor, so
moving forward, they laughed together for a little bit, but
Joel tells Ellie to close her eyes as he goes
off camera to get something else for her, another birthday gift,

(01:28:21):
and this is when he reveals the guitar and he
shares how he made it and how he borrowed a
drawling of one of Ellie's moths for the inspiration and
he restored it, he added the bone, he used the dremal,
and then he talks about how versatile the school is
here before catching himself as a side note.

Speaker 3 (01:28:39):
As a side note, literally, that is every dremal user
I have ever talked to. So y, I think that
they felt seen in this moment and they're.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
Like, geez right, oh yes, it's every dremal user and
specifically girl dad who works with wood and things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, my dad gave me.

Speaker 1 (01:29:01):
That speech before, trust me, and and I was probably
staring at him like.

Speaker 2 (01:29:09):
Now now I appreciate a dremmle because I'm older.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
But anyway, so he says, I did promise to teach you,
but she asks him to play and sing something for
her in the here and now because it is her birthday.
And Joel refuses initially and then ultimately gives in, sits down,
and thinks for a moment before he starts playing you

(01:29:31):
Guessed It Future Days by Pearl Jam and Pedro actually
sings this entire sequence. And while I absolutely do prefer
Toroy Baker's version, again, Troy Baker played Joel in the
video games. I'm glad that Pedro did do this because

(01:29:52):
I was a little worried. I'm like, are they just
gonna negate this scene because he's not comfortable singing or
pretending to play guitar. I don't know, and you never
really know, but I'm very glad that it was authentic,
so thank you for that. But Ellie sits and quietly
listens to him, and she looks from Joel to the

(01:30:13):
guitar and then back to Joel. And now everyone knows
how important this song was, and that was very important
to me because the placement of this song came after
the scene where Ellie was in the theater, which I
think is disjointed because it should have come first so
that people understood the importance of the song. But again,

(01:30:38):
you can six some money, Yeah, six and one half
a dozen or the other whatever. Yeah, but Ellie says
it didn't you know, well that didn't suck, which that
is a line from the game, and I love it
very much. Joel finishes his version of the song and

(01:30:58):
then hands the gifted guitar to Ellie, and then he
kind of pivots and says he understands why Ellie did
what she did in burning her arm, and she nods
appreciative to be seen by him, and then Joel finishes
and the scene concludes with Happy birthday, kiddo, and that
is Ellie's fifteenth birthday.

Speaker 3 (01:31:20):
And then one year later we get to see Ellie's
sixteenth birthday. Joel and Ellie are out and about, Ellie
trying to guess what this new birthday present is. Is
it a lotter of kittens? And Joel corrects her to
litter and they laugh. They cross a felled log and

(01:31:42):
continue through the forest. Joel found this place on patrol,
and this is when Ellie brings up how Jesse was
sixteen when he started going on patrols. She loves counting
veggies and shoveling sheepshit, but she wants to get out there,
thinks she could be more useful outside of the wall, right,
instead of just being stuck gardening.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:32:04):
Joel tells her to enjoy being a kid for now.
She claps back about how her childhood has been so
fun thus far. Joel tells her to be patient, and
Ellie ignores this and goes back to Jesse and how he.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
Offered to train her if Joel would allow it. Joel
ships gears here for a moment. He asks if.

Speaker 3 (01:32:24):
There is maybe something going on between Ellie and Jesse
and asweena. Ellie laughs at this, and I think maybe
the audience does as well.

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:32:33):
Joel very oblivious as to why she is laughing, and
continues to double down on what he suspects is happening,
and says he has a keen eye for these things,
and he does not, clearly he has nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:32:49):
He asks if anyone has told her about the birds
and the bees, to which Ellie responds, oh, you mean
Dixon vaginas?

Speaker 2 (01:32:56):
Yeah? Why is she so cruel?

Speaker 3 (01:33:00):
Dude?

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
Like, is there an actual reason why Ellie is portrayed
as this stupid, crude teenager who takes absolutely nothing?

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):
Seriously?

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
What are we basing this on Craig and Neil? Because
it's not Ellie from the game. Like we are so
far removed from Ellie from the game that I'm like,
who is this actually based on? Because this version of
Ellie is one word away from fart jokes being her
entire personality.

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
It's interesting, you know, but.

Speaker 1 (01:33:28):
I'm like, serious, I've complained so much about this that
I don't have to anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
I'm just like, what is the inspiration for this? Because
it's weird?

Speaker 3 (01:33:37):
Yeah, I think the original character was indeed foul mouthed
like a lot of Curtsey.

Speaker 2 (01:33:45):
She wasn't.

Speaker 3 (01:33:48):
When appropriate, is what I was gonna just finish it, Like,
you know, if you were like in the middle of
a fight or there was a you know, fighting off
an infected and you're like, motherfucker, like you know, just
like one of those, but not necessarily in a moment
to moment like you might get like a fuck you
or something like you know what I'm saying, like, yeah, playful, playful.

(01:34:11):
I don't know, Maybe I'm maybe I don't understand. Maybe
I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
I don't know. It's so it's just Ellie.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):
I'm gonna I'm gonna use some teenage lingo from twenty
twenty five. I think that we all know at this point,
but Ellie is like just straight up cringe on this show,
like just no cap, She's just full cringe. WHOA, I
went there, I did it. I still don't really understand that,
but I said it, okay, all right? And if I

(01:34:41):
was cringe to all y'all listening, that's my fucking point
either way.

Speaker 2 (01:34:48):
Check me.

Speaker 3 (01:34:51):
So Joel replies here with the Jesus, because what else
can you really say do that Ellie strikes a deal
here she won't get pregnant if he lets her train
for patrols.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
And this is this is the weird, all right. So,
considering that Joel does not know that Ellie is gay,
this deal is offered to him, basically leaving him with
one arm tied behind his back, because it shows that

(01:35:27):
Ellie is clever enough to manipulate him, even minor ways
like this to get what she wants. So, and this
is certainly things that Ellie did in the video game,
specifically Part two. She was manipulative to Joel in very
big ways in part two and I'm not going to

(01:35:49):
talk about them here because it's not the place for it.
But she got what she wanted by basically boxing him in,
and that shows a cleverness and like premeditated thought going
on in her brain. But on this show we go
from her being crude and stupid to then the manipulation tactics, like, oh, well,

(01:36:12):
he doesn't know that I'm gay, so the likelihood of
me getting pregnant is next to zero, is basically zero.
So because he doesn't know that, I will offer up.
I won't get pregnant if you agree to this thing
that I want. So he doesn't have the full information
I do, but I'm not going to share that with him.
And this is not me being like all Ellie needs

(01:36:33):
to out herself instead of being a manipulative Now I'm
not saying that, I'm saying she was using a tactic
against him without him having even a single fucking clue.
And the flip flop between Ellie being a fucking idiot
to this kind of clever manipulation is wild to me
in the same fucking scene, and it's all done to

(01:36:56):
just suit the story. Yeah, precise moments for the writers
and the director, and it's just man, pick a fucking lane.

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
That is interesting, It's an interesting thought.

Speaker 3 (01:37:06):
It'd be like me saying like, if you give me
one hundred dollars, I'll eat an entire sleeve of Oreos.
Spoiler alert, I was always going to eat a whole
sleeps exactly. How I also have one hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:37:19):
It's literally, what's the polls when you you know billards
like pull tactic.

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
Hustle. Yes, that's the word.

Speaker 1 (01:37:28):
Her money colored color of money to them. Yes, she
hustled them. It's literally a hustle. And it's you know,
I'm using the word manipulation, which is a much bigger
word than hustle, but that's if you want to order
it down, that's what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:37:41):
She hustled.

Speaker 3 (01:37:42):
But that might actually be contextually the better, like manipulation.
I think hustle is the right word for it because
it's more short like, it's more immediate, it's more short,
short term, right. Manipulation tends to go on for at
least in my purview, a much longer period of time,

(01:38:03):
where a hustle is like a thing that I want
it now?

Speaker 1 (01:38:05):
How do I get it now? So that's a great
word for it. Yeah, thank you, we got there. I
got there in the end. And for fans of the game,
particularly the last of the Last of Us part too.
If you were wondering what I'm talking about Ellie being
manipulative and this was not a hustle, I'm just going
to give you the scene very quickly without me telling

(01:38:26):
you why, and then you can put it together and
then eventually I will talk about it on Wayfair and Strangers.
But what Ellie ultimately does to get Joel to tell
her the truth in the game a thousand percent manipulative
that was premeditated, that was planned, and that was executed
flawlessly to basically back him into a corner where he

(01:38:49):
had no other choice but to tell her the truth
and that I will not be argued with of people
being like Ellie would never she literally did like she
literally did. And yeah, so I brought it over to
the show a little bit, but I agree hustles a
much better word.

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
She hustled Joel. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:39:11):
Yeah, So after this promise, after this hustle, Joel gives
a weal see and every parent knows what this means.

Speaker 2 (01:39:18):
Love is great, wonderful.

Speaker 3 (01:39:19):
Yeah, they finally arrive after she complains about how much
further until they're there, and Ellie's demeanor completely changes when
the t rex is revealed, and she had guessed this
earlier as a joke, but she says it is a dinosaur,
and then she takes off and begins to climb its tail, up,
its back, whatnot. Joel is very concerned, but of course

(01:39:43):
she keeps going. She stands on top of it and shouts.

Speaker 2 (01:39:47):
I'm out a motherfucking dinosaur.

Speaker 3 (01:39:50):
And spots the museum in the distance from up there,
and he says he knows and says if she doesn't
fall off, he will take her there.

Speaker 2 (01:39:57):
Yeah. And that was a very cool, very cool moment.

Speaker 1 (01:40:02):
Yes, and again an example of Ellie cursing in an
appropriate moment, appropriate for her character with that level of enthusiasm.
That was perfect. I also just like, tiny little side note.
I like how the dino moved when she was standing
on it. I don't know why, but I was just like,
that makes it feel a little bit more real.

Speaker 3 (01:40:22):
Yeah, that was definitely something she was really oh I know, yeah, yeah.
But and the fact that you know, based on the
fact that you know, decades have elapsed, so probably not
as sturdy.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):
As it once was. Yes, so like get the fuck down. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:40:37):
So now we are in the museum and they are
walking through the stars, and this is just so cinematically beautiful.
This is one of my favorite places in the game
itself for virtual photography, where I basically take pictures of
Ellie Ajel walking through the stars because it is just
you can manipulate the light.

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):
It's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
And Ellie's very clearly enjoying this, and Joel shares that
he's known about this place for a while, but he
was saving it for a special day.

Speaker 2 (01:41:07):
Patience is a lesson to.

Speaker 1 (01:41:09):
Be learned, and Ellie is not a good student, but
the solar system stops Ellie in her tracks and Joel
don's a smirk from behind, and we parents have all
worn this before when we make our kids immeasurably happy,
and it is just I don't know if there's anything
quite as fulfilling as a parent as moments like this.

(01:41:32):
I will never forget when Bella was six years old
and we took her to Disney for the first time
and she saw the castle. You had held her hand,
and I got down in front of her to take
a picture of her and her reaction because I had
been to Disney several times by that point, but it
was you and hers first time so I was like,
I don't need to see the castle again on Main Street.

(01:41:53):
I need to see what you see. And she just
lit up like a fucking firework. It was just this
six year old seeing magic in real time. And Noil,
I'm sad that she's.

Speaker 3 (01:42:07):
Sixteen and the magic and the lightest gone off from
her eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:42:13):
I just made myself a sad parent, or nostalgic parent anyway. So, yes,
it's a wonderful feeling. Everyone listening who has experienced it
completely understands. And if you haven't experienced it yet, and
that is one of the things you would like to
I hope you do. So Ellie tries the kinetic energy
wheel to spin the planet and we find out that Joel,

(01:42:35):
Sneaky Sneaky Joel had been there before and greased the
mechanism so that it would work for her. And this
is another instance, another example where there is literally nothing
Joel would not do for Ellie, and like most teenagers,
Ellie takes this for granted. But Ellie imagines what it

(01:42:57):
would be like in space looking up at the planet,
and then Joel looks to her and offers to take
her there, and she doesn't really understand what's going on
at first, but she follows him into another room where
we are greeted with the real Apollo fifteen capsule from
nineteen seventy one, and she touches it at first and

(01:43:17):
then takes a peek inside, but Joel tells her to
open the hatch, but before he lets Ellie get inside
that before she goes to space, she needs to choose
a helmet, and then he offers Ellie this this smooth,
perfect perfect for her throw rock, and Joel tells her
to pick one, meaning pick a helmet, smash the glass display,

(01:43:39):
and grab the helmet from all the official spacesuits and
gear that were hidden behind this dusty, musty glass for
all these years. So Ellie chooses one, smashes, grabs it,
puts it on, and is smiling the entire sot the
entire time, and inside she says it smells like space
and dust, and this is when Joel says that she

(01:44:02):
is ready. Ellie enters the capsule first, and then Joel
follows her inside, leaving his backpack outside and he shuts
the hatch, which I found to be a little interesting,
but not really a talking point. I just wanted to
mention it but once inside, Ellie toggles and flips the switches,
making noises and pretending that she is aborting the mission
or launching or whatever. She's just having the time of

(01:44:24):
her life. And listen, I would fucking give anything to
have that same experience.

Speaker 2 (01:44:28):
Just FYI.

Speaker 1 (01:44:30):
But Joel offers her a cassette tape then with another
happy Birthday, kiddo, and we learn that it took a
quote mighty effort to find and I just sidebar. Many
lines of dialogue in this episode are verbatim taken from
the game, but again, just like in season one, a
lot of them fall short for me because Troy Baker

(01:44:52):
is my Joel and the softness with which he approached
these scenes, the subtlety in his voice, the quiet confidence,
all of that was present in Tory Baker's voice and performance,
and it's just not there for me with Pedro, and
I know that I'm searching for it instead of seeing
it for its own thing, and that is my own fault.

(01:45:16):
But it just makes me sad because the birthday gift,
this particular chapter in the game is my favorite of anything,
especially out of all of the Last of Us Part two,
which I particularly do not really love this scene, it's
called the Birthday Gift, is the best and the most
emotional connection. And I'm pretty sure that was another instance

(01:45:37):
where I had to put my controller down and just
cry and weep and weep and weep and.

Speaker 2 (01:45:41):
Weep because I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):
I was like, I can't breathe, Like this is so emotional,
and tell me alohol, you know. And they cut a
lot out of this scene, even though they had built
the sets and everything, which is unfortunate.

Speaker 3 (01:45:51):
But whatever, Okay, I mean, I you know it worked
on me. I'll say that it worked on me.

Speaker 2 (01:45:57):
Well, I'm glad it worked on you did not, you know, anyway,
that's right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:46:03):
But Ellie takes the tape and puts it into her
Walkman places the earbuds into her ears and then lays
back and Joel tells her to close her eyes, that
it will be worth it, and she does this, and
we hear that it is a launch t minus twenty
five seconds to lift off, and the entire scene shifts.

(01:46:24):
The lighting changes, the sound changes, the capsule begins to vibrate,
and it appears that a literal launch is underway. She
is in that moment, experiencing a shuttle launch and Ellie
imagines all of this and we imagine it right along
with her as she listens to the countdown and the

(01:46:45):
launch sequence from so so long ago, and we experience
this journey through light and music, and it is beautiful.
I already talked about how it's my favorite scene in
the List of Us Part two. I did like how
they put the smoke and the fire and the movement
and all of that. They emphasized it a little bit
more in the show than they did in the game,

(01:47:07):
but it still was just so special. And then of
course when she's in outer space, the moonlight and the
white light because sunlight is white, it's only yellow because
of our atmosphere and all that. But what.

Speaker 2 (01:47:23):
But do you imagine.

Speaker 1 (01:47:26):
I feel like, oh no, we have to stop recording
and talk about space.

Speaker 2 (01:47:30):
So oh no.

Speaker 1 (01:47:32):
So yes, it was just so beautiful and the transition
and the lighting was wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:47:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:47:37):
But Joel asks after this scene concludes if he did. Okay,
and Ellie, are you kidding me? And Joel cries in
this moment with a single tear sliding down his cheek,
And we are going to talk about Joel's emotional range
coming up shortly at the end of this show. But
I do not want to gloss over it. I don't
want people to think that I'm going to bypass it.

(01:47:58):
No no, no, no no. We are going to talk
about him but later. So they leave after this, walking
through the forest again, and Joel says that this was
nice and they should do more of this. But Ellie
suddenly stops and looks over to her left, and this
also prompts Joel to stop walking, asking if she is okay,
And we see what Ellie saw, fireflies floating peacefully in

(01:48:20):
a shaded grove. And once second, this was so so
less impactful for me than what was given in the game,
which were not fireflies. It wasn't a literal fun again,
it's so much fucking hand holding Andrew. She sees fireflies

(01:48:41):
and oh triggered. I think Joel killed them all and
I'm going to start being weary around him.

Speaker 2 (01:48:48):
Oh you know.

Speaker 1 (01:48:49):
But in the game, it was the firefly symbol spray
painted on the wall in a part of the museum
that Joel and Ellie did not meander two in the show,
and beneath that was the word liars. And Joel stands
next to Ellie he walks over and stands that. I'm
trying to give this visual because it's important. Ellie is

(01:49:11):
standing and the entire spray paint graffiti is revealed. Joel
walks over to see what she's looking at, and he
stands in the perfect position to cover the letter S.
So the word that is written between Joel and Ellie
is liar, and that.

Speaker 2 (01:49:30):
Is It's perfect. Why couldn't they fucking do that?

Speaker 1 (01:49:36):
Why did they have to change it to these little, fucking, flittering,
fucking fireflies?

Speaker 2 (01:49:41):
Like what are we doing?

Speaker 1 (01:49:44):
God, I'm so sick and tired of asking this question.
I can't wait to be done the show, Andrew, I
really can't.

Speaker 3 (01:49:50):
I can tell us how you really feel. Okay, all right,
I'm Doug. I just wanted to make sure. I just
wanted to make sure you at all of her chest. No.

Speaker 2 (01:50:01):
Never, this is your therapy session. I am your Gail. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:50:07):
One year later, we have Ellie's seventeenth birthday. So we're
just hitting the birthday rolodex.

Speaker 2 (01:50:14):
Here. It's one of those switch flipboard thing in the doodles.
Here we go.

Speaker 3 (01:50:19):
Joel comes home with another birthday cake, this time chocolate,
and this time Ellie's name is spelled correctly, so already
off to a great start.

Speaker 2 (01:50:29):
He planned earlier.

Speaker 3 (01:50:31):
So the chocolate was a thing, and he got seth
to learn how to spell so perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:50:37):
Two wins.

Speaker 3 (01:50:38):
He walks upstairs, rain pouring down, and as he gets
near Ellie's room, he hears laughter. He pounds on the
door and barges in. Ellie and Kat are on her bed,
and Ellie Joel, what the fuck? Joel repeats the same
question as Kat scrambles to get dressed and get gone.
I think she was just in her bra that maybe right,

(01:51:01):
I think, so, yeah, something like that. Ellie does the same.
Joel apparently came home early from patrol to give Ellie
her birthday cake to surprise her. Joel makes a point
to say seventeen, by the way, to which Kat chimes
in with a well, I'm nineteen, so it's just you.

Speaker 2 (01:51:19):
Know, not that not what you should have said, Kat,
So that.

Speaker 3 (01:51:22):
Makes Ellie underage and legal terms of yesteryear, which Joel
clearly knows and wants to uphold. But they they you know,
they don't live in a world where those things are
Maybe they're enforced in Jackson, I don't know, but you
know what I'm saying, like, Yeah, ignorance is bliss kind
of thing, sure, especially from that age. Yeah for these two, right,
they're they're only seeing a two year age difference, not

(01:51:44):
a you know, not that all that extra conversations.

Speaker 2 (01:51:49):
I got you exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:51:51):
He stares at her, and she makes to go, unplugging
her gear and grabbing her supplies to leave this cat
her tattoos. Joel notices some point she's got all this
kind of you know, tattoo gun and whatever whatever else
she has there.

Speaker 2 (01:52:04):
Inks.

Speaker 3 (01:52:05):
Joel notices and asks, fuck is that she's just good?
Ellie sighs and turns away as Joel grabs Ellie's arm.
Kat interjects, here with it. It's not done yet, but
Joel cuts her off and tells her to leave.

Speaker 2 (01:52:17):
She does.

Speaker 3 (01:52:17):
Ellie yanks her arm back, and Joel throws in all
the teenage shit at once. Huh, drugs, tattoos, and sex,
but he says experimenting with girls, and his tone is
we'll probably touch on that a little bit. Ellie tells
him it wasn't sex, and it wasn't a fucking experiment.

(01:52:38):
Joel replies with an ignorant you don't know what you're saying,
and he leaves, telling her they will discuss it later
when she's herself. He slams the door and leaves Ellie
staring at the wall.

Speaker 1 (01:52:53):
We're going to go on a tangent about my beloved. Well,
this is not my version of Joel. This is not
my Joel, but hashtag not my Jewel. This version of
Joel is so fucked, it's just fucked. And he was
never a bigoted asshole. He never once displayed anything towards
Ellie that would indicate even a whiff of homophobia. And
I won't sit here and listen to people talk about

(01:53:15):
his age or his place of birth or this and that.

Speaker 2 (01:53:18):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:53:18):
Joel was never anything but outwardly supportive of Ellie. And
in this moment in particular, the condescending line of quote
experimenting is so passively homophobic to me that it really
can go fuck itself. And it's another example of how
extremely out of character in a series of out of
character moments for Joel and Ellie in particular, that further

(01:53:42):
distances these people from the source material and makes it
almost impossible for me to like them, not even love
them anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:53:49):
At this point, but even.

Speaker 1 (01:53:50):
Like them, and I specifically said, I don't want to
hear it about his age or where he comes from,
because yes, he was born in the late sixties. And
I still know and have ants and uncles that were
born in the sixties that are bigoted losers like so, yeah,

(01:54:12):
they don't listen to this and I and even if
they did, whatever, but like who you are, yeah, you
know who you are. So it made my skin crawl
to hear him.

Speaker 2 (01:54:24):
Say that.

Speaker 1 (01:54:26):
And just you know, I'm assuming he barged in because
he probably smelled the weed. But if your kid is
seventeen years old, or if this person who you viewer
as your child is seventeen years old and you hear laughter.

Speaker 2 (01:54:43):
And you I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:54:46):
It is different between having a girl and having a boy.
We only have a girl, so we can only speak
from that experience. And how would I respond if I
smelled weed under our child's door, I don't know. But
if I was a a male parent, like I don't
know if I would just burst into a girl's room

(01:55:06):
at a seventeen year old girl's room.

Speaker 2 (01:55:09):
So that was a little off for me.

Speaker 1 (01:55:12):
And then and again, I know Ellie doesn't have a
mother figure. Joel is not with a woman who can
take up that role and do that. But I yeah,
the experimenting comment, and then Ellie's face when she realized
what he said and kind of counter with It's not
a fucking experiment because she knows she's gay. This is

(01:55:34):
not a phase. I'm not trying this out to see
if I'm gay. Like yeah, and I again, I know
that he doesn't know that. But if you walk into
a scene where something was happening and they are now
scrambling to get dressed, maybe not assume that it's an experiment.

Speaker 2 (01:55:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:55:54):
I know, I'm doubling down on this because I just
don't like it. Joel was never this way. He was
just not this. I agree like this scene could have.
It was just as effective in terms of if the
goal of the scene was to drive a wedge, which
it seems, or just or just show how distant they
have become.

Speaker 2 (01:56:15):
We didn't need this comment.

Speaker 3 (01:56:17):
No, we didn't need this offhanded experimenting with girls, right,
or that that reaction like what does that? Even that's
some seth ass shit. We talked about that in the
first You know what I'm saying, so like, yeah, why
would we put that on Joel? Also, other than like
I don't, I don't. It seems wildly out of character,

(01:56:38):
is what I'll say for a person who has otherwise
been pretty even in our experience of him.

Speaker 1 (01:56:46):
Yeah, and honestly, I'm a little disappointed that Pedro didn't
like protest that it possible. It's a little weird to me,
because yeah, I I would, and that again, I say
that it's weird for me that Paeder didn't protest that.
But therein shows everything I need to know that he

(01:57:09):
has no fucking clue who Joel was, and he's playing
this character without knowing though those intrinsic facts that Joel
would never have said something like that to Ellie never,
and if he didn't protest it, it's because he didn't
fucking know either way, and that shit.

Speaker 2 (01:57:30):
Yeah, yeah, so I agree. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57:34):
So now we are moving to the garage slash bedroom.
It is nighttime. The thunderstorm outside is still raging. Ellie
opens the garage and looks around. So she left the
house at night, snuck down went to the garage. It
is dirty and filled with all sorts of old tools
and supplies, and it is just not habitable at the moment.

(01:57:57):
But now we are back in the house and Joel
is in bed, but he's lying awake, just kind of
staring at the window as the rainfalls. But he hears
a series of bangs and loud noises coming from the
direction of Ellie's bedroom. He goes to investigate and finds
Ellie trying to wiggle her mattress through the doorway because
she is apparently moving into the garage right now at

(01:58:17):
this moment, in this time boom, I'm leaving. What's happening now? Yeah,
But Joel says, it's pissing rain outside and it's the
middle of the night, and this is not happening. There's
no running water, there's no heat. She can't stay there.
He says it's time to have the conversation then, meaning
you know, we didn't finish the argument earlier, so now

(01:58:37):
it's time to do it out essentially, and he says
that this is his house and these are his rules.
But Ellie kind of cuts him off and fires back
with this isn't your house. This was the house that
was just given to you. You don't own this and
you don't own anything, meaning hint. She's not talking about
a house here, She's talking about her. But Joel knows

(01:59:01):
that she's right, of course, though like any parent, he's
not gonna admit it. In the moment, but Ellie apologizes,
saying I'm sorry that I smoke drugs, I'm sorry I
had hot toe, and I'm sorry I had a girl.
But you know what, I'm not sorry. And this is like,
what is this dialogue? This is so fucking m acting

(01:59:22):
one way, meaning like acting sorry initially and then switching
up seconds later to hit Joel with a one two
gotcha is so fucking amateur to me, I literally do
not like Ellie.

Speaker 2 (01:59:33):
I can't stand this girl on this show.

Speaker 1 (01:59:36):
Joel was not right for what he said to her,
But she again is now seventeen years old acting like
a fucking seven year old stamping her feet trying to
move out in the middle of the night into a
place with no running water, no heat, no electricity and
it's thunderstorming.

Speaker 2 (01:59:58):
What what are we doing?

Speaker 1 (02:00:00):
This entire oh oh my god like and also also
just side note this entire moment of her wanting to
leave the house after one actual Now it was poorly done,
but one actual parenting moment from Joel is fucking hilarious

(02:00:21):
to me. It's they have been together now for three
years of their life, sharing space every single day since
they've met one another, and she has regressed so fucking
far that, oh my god, I just don't have the
words anymore. I literally don't have the words anymore. The
writing is so bad.

Speaker 3 (02:00:41):
Do we think that this is a compound effect with
her already assuming about the firefly situation as well?

Speaker 2 (02:00:50):
You know that, yes, one hundred yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:00:52):
My thought is that this was just the impetus the
point of which she decided to put more distance between them.
It wasn't because of this, but this is a very
easy thing to pin it on.

Speaker 2 (02:01:08):
It is.

Speaker 1 (02:01:08):
But she's just not going about anything the right not
that there's a necessarily a right way, but she's not
responding or reacting. I think that's the problem. She's overreacting
to such a severe immature level that anything that she

(02:01:29):
feels or suspects falls to the wayside because she's acting
like so much a child that I have no respect
for her, and I actually don't care about her motivations
at the core of this, because she's choosing to just
hold on to this information for year after year after year,

(02:01:52):
and one of the big talking points that we're going
to get to at the end of this episode, and
particularly when we discuss the porch scene, they change the
timeline of Joel and Ellie's relationship. Here. There was not
a nine month weird separation until like things just started
to get awkward between them, and then Joel went to therapy,

(02:02:15):
and no, it was when she turned seventeen. She manipulated
him to get the truth out of him by giving
him an ultimatum, and then they basically didn't fucking talk
or experience life together for two years. And none of
that exists in this show, which also makes her revenge

(02:02:37):
journey a lot less hard hitting. Again, we're going to
get to that by the end of the show. But
I just don't care about the compound effect of her
suspecting that Joel has been lying, not has been lying,
but lied to her in a very big way, and
she's just been kind of sitting on it and marinating,
and you know, and then he just throws us slight

(02:03:00):
towards her when she's getting high and hanging out with
her girlfriend and getting a tattoo, and you know, and
he does this very parenting like parent coded moment, and
her reaction to that is, well, fuck him, I'm leaving
in the middle of the night. Come on, Come on,
when you're seventeen, You're not running away in the middle

(02:03:22):
of the night, Like that's shit you do when you're twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
And then when you're seventeen, if you're planning on leaving,
you have a job by that point, you save up,
you move the fuck out, Like this is just a
moving on.

Speaker 2 (02:03:37):
Yeah, I had to sit back anyway.

Speaker 1 (02:03:42):
But Joel actually thinks a moment and then agrees, saying
it might be good for her to have her own space.
But but the caveat is that he needs time to
fix the place up for her, and Ellie does agree,
so they get the mattress back on the bed and
Ellie thanks him for the help, but he lingers a moment,
just kind of staring, and she's looking around like Tutu

(02:04:03):
dou and he asks to see her tattoo. She raises
her arm for him and he looks it over, asking
if it hurt, and she says yes, but it felt
kind of good, okay, and he says that it's not bad,
actually meaning cat's artwork and it's better than the one
that he made on her guitar. But he asks here

(02:04:23):
about what it is with her and the moths, and
she says nothing. You know, she read about them in
a book on dreams and stuff, and they're symbolic. And
Joel misinterprets moths for butterflies here and says, oh, yeah,
like they represent changing growth and you know all that.
But no, that's not that's not what a moth represents
or is associated with. But it's all right, Joel, I'll

(02:04:44):
give you some forgiveness here and he leaves. After this,
they say good night to one another, and yeah, the
look on his face is definitely one of concern that
she is definitely starting to slip away from him, and
it is hard to see because Sarah grew to the
age where Joel could experience these things with her. Yeah,

(02:05:05):
and so it is the brand new part of parenting
for him, and I think even he realizes that he's
not doing too well. But Ellie also is not responding
well either, so they are it's just breaking down across
the board.

Speaker 2 (02:05:20):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (02:05:21):
Then we move on to Gail and Jewel. A fantastic
scene here.

Speaker 2 (02:05:26):
We go.

Speaker 3 (02:05:27):
Gail is sat at a table enjoying breakfast which it
looks like pancakes, eggs, and bacon, which damn Gail. Okay,
she's reading a book called Earth Abides by George Stewart.
We pulled the wiki what we call it the summary,
the wiki summary of this book. It is a nineteen

(02:05:47):
forty nine American post apocalyptic science fiction novel by George R. Stewart.
The novel tells the story of the fall of civilization
from deadly disease and the emergence of a new culture
with sim tools said in the nineteen forties in Berkeley, California.
The story is told by Isherwood Williams, who emerges from

(02:06:07):
isolation in the mountains to find almost everyone dead. It's
an interesting choice, Gale, as I understand it. This book
was actually a pretty big inspiration for the Last of Us,
and I would not be shocked if the side character
of Ish was named after the main character of Isherwood.

Speaker 2 (02:06:28):
So love in our discord.

Speaker 3 (02:06:30):
I believe it was Mary who's actually reading this right now,
or the audiobook of it, Nice divorced, completely divorced from
it appearing on the show, like just a wild coincidence.

Speaker 2 (02:06:45):
So that is holy shit, I believe that's how it went.

Speaker 3 (02:06:49):
Yeah, yeah, so pretty neat. That seems like a pretty
compelling read it summary. Yeah, it could be good. Joel
approaches Gail Hey and sits down across from her. He
immediately goes into what's bothering him? Asking if you guys
study dreams and stuff?

Speaker 2 (02:07:08):
Right?

Speaker 3 (02:07:10):
Gail's reply is nothing short of legendary. Might be the
best line on the show so far. Yes, she asks,
is there a doctor is in sign on me? Like
Lucy from fucking Peanuts? And anybody younger than the two
of them probably wouldn't even understand what that means, so

(02:07:30):
that makes it even funnier. Joel just stares, but she
admits that, yes, some doctors study dreams. The dumb ones
mostly love Gails so much.

Speaker 2 (02:07:41):
Same.

Speaker 3 (02:07:42):
Joel ignores that and asks about a moth and if
it means change and growth? But no, that's a butterfly.
As we all know, moths represent death. Gail says, yep,
if you believe in that shit. She finishes the page
or sentence she's reading and then with an incredible why,

(02:08:02):
just an incredible body language, asks why, but he ignores
her gets up to leave. She throws her hands out
in confusion and then resumes.

Speaker 1 (02:08:13):
Reading, Oh, Catherine O'Hara, My kingdom, My kingdom for a
Catherine O'Hara, She I just you are the best thing
in every scene that you are in.

Speaker 2 (02:08:24):
And I just an ode to Catherine.

Speaker 3 (02:08:27):
Yeah, as a just this episode, I mean the show
at large with her this season, but also this episode specifically.
When you pack your side characters with like veteran character
performers like Joey Pants, Katherine O'Hara, Tony Dalton, right, it

(02:08:49):
elevates the entire thing. Like there's no way that it can't.
Like I know that they have you can hire people
that are good in their day players and maybe whatever,
but like we always look forward to seeing Catherine O'Hara
simply because she's great. Yeah, And likewise, for Tony Dalton,
what an amazing surprise. And Joey Pants at the end
of this episode that we'll get to Yeah, incredible for

(02:09:13):
the ten minutes that he's in it. Right, Yeah, that's
all just worth noting. We go back to Ellie's room
really quick after this. Ellie is packing her belongings, close albums, posters,
and then we see sketches of her moths and the
phrase you have a greater purpose.

Speaker 1 (02:09:31):
So I don't necessarily want this as a talking point
for us. I'm just going to pose the question to
our listeners. What do you think Ellie's greater purpose is?
Does she have a greater purpose than death? Or was
death her greater purpose? But at this point, she did
not know that her death was believed to have been

(02:09:51):
the only way to create the bullshit cure? So what's
the purpose that Ellie is alluding to here? I'm curious
to know what y'all I think. So now it is
two years later and Ellie is nineteen years old. She
is sitting on her bed and practicing a conversation regarding
Salt Lake City and how she wants to understand it.

Speaker 2 (02:10:11):
And she is fully full fledged living in the garage.

Speaker 1 (02:10:15):
It is all custom tailored and still looks dirty as shit,
but she lives there. She wrote down a series of
questions and begins to ask them aloud to no one.
There is no one in that space. She's literally rehearsing this. Yeah,
number one, if the firefly spotted them a mile from
the hospital, meaning them as in Joel and Ellie, how
were they surprised? By an entire group of raiders. Number two,

(02:10:39):
if the raiders could kill everyone and Marlene and Joel
had to carry Ellie the entire time, how did they
manage to get away? A Number three, If there are
dozens of immune people, why hasn't anyone heard about them?
But at that question, she is cut off by Joel
knocking on the door, which causes her to shove the
paper inside of a side table before she haphazardly answers

(02:11:01):
the door. Joel is surprised to see Ellie because she
is already dressed and ready for the day, but she
says that she had trouble sleeping, and this ultimately works
out great for her benefit because for Ellie's birthday present,
it is time for her first patrol, and he tells
her to grab a gun along with her coat, and
she does, and now we are outside of Jackson, out

(02:11:23):
in the forest, and Ellie asks about the record number
of kill or the record number of kills on a
training run, to which Joel shoots her down with a
zero because the trail that they are on they are
on is the safest one that Jackson's got and this
again Ellie, in her obsession with violence, constantly being beaten

(02:11:44):
down our throats. Joel is trying to teach this girl
how to survive, how to properly patrol, how to move
about the world in this way. But does Ellie pay attention?
Know she does not, meaning she wasn't ready years ago
and hasn't changed one fucking bit to learn every ounce

(02:12:07):
of information that she possibly could have in the interim
years that she has wanted to go on patrol. Zero initiative,
zero fucking survival skills from this person, and I would
not I would be like, until you are going to
take this seriously, you are not going on patrol. And
the fact that she has wanted to do this for
years and still has learned nothing or pays attention to

(02:12:30):
him with like the attention span of a NAT shows
me everything I need to know.

Speaker 3 (02:12:37):
I'm wondering if this I'm wondering if this pays off later. Again,
optimists forever optimist about this, But I'm wondering if there
is some situation where she recalls a lesson that was
taught that seemingly was thrown to the wayside or something
like that that allows her to perform at a high level. Right,

(02:13:00):
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:13:02):
I mean, we should have seen that already.

Speaker 1 (02:13:05):
She's like almost into day three of her Seattle journey,
and we've seen Ellie be a badass exactly zero times
with zero awareness. Her getting into the hospital. She snuck
in through a fucking hole in the wall. She didn't
kill anyone, she didn't. She's so underwhelming. She's so underwhelming. Andrew,

(02:13:27):
let's just get through this. So they're starting out easy,
and he has to remind her to learn the ropes,
pick up the binoculars, and at least pretend to do
the damn work to prove to him that she can
fucking do it, because it is part of the rules.
Stick with your partners, scan the countryside, be ready for anything.

(02:13:48):
And Ellie yanks Joel's chain with an oh shit, and
then talks about a bank squirrel, fucking a little squirrel.
And she continues to be insufferable in all fucking ways.
And I just I'll never forgive Craig Mason and Neil
Druckman for allowing her to be written so poorly. I
just I needed to say that out loud. I will

(02:14:09):
never forgive either. Well, I'm never gonna forgive Neil for
many things but especially we're just adding this on to
his fucking tab at this point.

Speaker 2 (02:14:17):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:14:18):
But Joel gives in and says that they can skip
scanning because.

Speaker 2 (02:14:22):
Ellie gets what Ellie wants.

Speaker 1 (02:14:24):
And Joel says, this is nice, just put them together
on the trail, that it would be nice to spend
time together again, just like this, and Ellie kind of
stares in the space here just saying yeah, which prompts
Jole to turn back and asks if she's got something
on her mind, but she kind of brushes him off,
and then just at that moment, they receive a radio
alert they are on out on the Cash Creek trail

(02:14:48):
and someone on the other end of the line tells
Joel that Eugene and Adam need backup and Ellie and
Joel are the closest they've got nearby. So Joel springs
into who fight mode and tells them that they will
be there, that he will be there in ten actually
then proceeds to direct Ellie to go back to Jackson.

Speaker 2 (02:15:09):
Ellie protests, much like.

Speaker 1 (02:15:11):
A pre teen one, that she's not his fucking kid
and that she's his partner and they stick together. Joel
doesn't have time to process her extremely hurtful, direct shot
to the fucking heart. Words. So they set off and
ride together. And you know what this We've been hating

(02:15:32):
on Craig Mason for a while.

Speaker 2 (02:15:33):
I guess this.

Speaker 1 (02:15:33):
Episode is just all about the hate for Ellie at
this point. Now, the dislike for Ellie at this point.
I can't say hate for Ellie because that just hurts
my heart. But yeah, Ellie makes a point at every
chance to force down Joel's throat that she is not
his daughter. And similar to the zombie Horde complaints, similar
to the exposition vomit, the handholding, the dumbing down, the omitting,

(02:15:54):
the lumping things together to save time, this season, it
is overdone.

Speaker 2 (02:15:58):
We get it. Ellie.

Speaker 1 (02:15:59):
You are conflicted about what Joel did and you do
not have the full truth. You do not have the
full picture, and you want to distance yourself from him,
and you do not want to view him as a dad.
So you can deny Joel and you can refuse Joel
at every fucking turn to fit your own wants and needs.
And guess what, people, that sounds identically to a teenage

(02:16:23):
daughter to me. So the more that she protests and
stamps her feet, the more she fits the mold of
a standard teenage daughter, and it's hilarious to me because
she's trying to be not that, but the way she
is acting just turns her into that even more, like
the literal full scope of the teenage asshole daughter, which

(02:16:47):
we do not have, blessedly because we didn't raise her
to be a fucking asshole.

Speaker 2 (02:16:51):
But if you.

Speaker 3 (02:16:54):
Raised yours to be an asshole, no shade, no shade, throne.

Speaker 1 (02:17:00):
Shade, you're raising an asshole teenager who's eventually going to
be an asshole adult that other fucking adults have to
deal with.

Speaker 2 (02:17:08):
Don't do that. Like, got it.

Speaker 1 (02:17:11):
Everything is wrong with her character, Everything is wrong with
both the main characters of this show suck fucking suck.
The supporting characters are fantastic. That's who the show should
be about. And I'm I I will believe this until
the day that we are done this podcast, and even

(02:17:33):
beyond then, I'm still gonna bitch about it privately with Andrew.

Speaker 3 (02:17:35):
Anyway, Yep, you guys are getting it easy just these
three hour episodes.

Speaker 1 (02:17:41):
Yeah, I know, everyone's saying in Andrew like a condolence
card for having to deal with me.

Speaker 2 (02:17:48):
Anyway, thought some prayers. Oh my god. But of course
we're going to talk about this. There was another HBO mistake.

Speaker 1 (02:17:57):
As Joel and Ellie ride off in a rush, there
is a crew member, potentially Craig Mason.

Speaker 2 (02:18:03):
Actually we can't fully.

Speaker 1 (02:18:04):
Tell Scooby Doo crouching beside a tree, just hiding there
in all his glory in a blue plaid shirt, just
watching as Joel and Ellie ryde away.

Speaker 2 (02:18:19):
It's interesting.

Speaker 3 (02:18:20):
My thought is I look this up and I see
the gentleman. I didn't see it live, so but I
didn't Here's the deal. I didn't see the coffee cup,
the Starbucks cup, and Game of Thrones, I didn't notice
that live. You know, there's a couple of things that
slipped through the cracks or whatever. This might be like
the like the horse guy. You know what I'm saying.
Sure this might be the animal wrangler, just in case

(02:18:43):
something goes wrong. They need that person to be very
close by, I understand, but he should again, they could
have painted him out. He's in his position where most
people wouldn't be looking anyway. It's I don't want to
exaggerate my capabilities, but like I could do this, like
I could paint this out and make it look like

(02:19:03):
pretty natural.

Speaker 2 (02:19:04):
So and I'm sure you will be Yeah, in a month.

Speaker 3 (02:19:08):
May or a few weeks, he won't be there anymore.
It was like the crew in the first season too.
Remember we saw in the forest where Aurial shot right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
so and they're gone. Now you watch that episode. Now
they're not there. So nope, so speed speed kills everyone.

Speaker 1 (02:19:25):
Yeah, and this is I would like to blame it
as a last of us thing. HBO has a track
history of this kind of stuff, so I mean just
hashtag Starbucks Cup like for Game of Thrones.

Speaker 2 (02:19:38):
I'll just leave it there.

Speaker 1 (02:19:39):
But you know, but I did want to just throw
a quick shout out to our friend b K who
had sent a comment because I posted the reel where
it showed this guy hiding and I just did the
laugh cry emoji and I was like, I can't on
our on our Telu podcast Instagram page, and BKA replied,
it's the oh shit, Scooby Doo hide behind the tree

(02:19:59):
for me.

Speaker 2 (02:20:03):
So he's like, wait a minute, you're using a thirty
five millimeter lens, no to a line. I'm in the shop. Yeah,
but we got to talk about it, so we did.

Speaker 3 (02:20:16):
Okay, Yeah, so let's talk about the failed rescue is
what we're calling him. They ride on and we see
like a gorgeous landscape, misty mountains, hills, all that stuff.
Joel determines that they need to hike down from the
top of a cliff, essentially because it would be faster
than taking the horses down the switch back, which is
very likely true, just kind of a straight line versus

(02:20:38):
you know, back and forth.

Speaker 2 (02:20:41):
The horses are secured.

Speaker 3 (02:20:43):
They move down without ropes, wearing kind of clunky boots,
backpacks and rifles. It's a sheer, you know. I wouldn't say,
here's the thing. This looked doable, is what I would say.

Speaker 2 (02:20:56):
No it didn't. I think no, I think it could
I think it.

Speaker 1 (02:20:59):
Could have No not no, not with backpacks and fucking disms.

Speaker 2 (02:21:05):
Write us in if you could do this?

Speaker 1 (02:21:07):
So the shot stop it, the shot that they showed,
the angle that they showed it. I paused it, and
I'm like, you gotta be fucking joke. Nothing on this
show can be normal or average sized, can it. Why
couldn't it just be just a rocky semi slope. They
are literally almost at a ninety degree angle.

Speaker 2 (02:21:30):
Look it's just a really straightforward, free solo. It's super
It's fucking stupid.

Speaker 3 (02:21:39):
My thought is that they were going to kind of
like slide, like the moss would allow them to kind
of safely slide down, you know, like they'd be rocky.
But they're basically just gonna it's not like a controlled climb.
It's more of like a slide down, so which would
be faster than taking courses down a really long, windy trail.

Speaker 2 (02:21:59):
So that's that's all I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (02:22:01):
Yeah, but then what are you going to fucking climb
back up with your tims and your steel tote?

Speaker 3 (02:22:05):
Do you take the switch back back up? You know,
somebody get the horses. You know, there's no climbing back
up that it's easier. It's a controlled descent, right, it's
not a it's not something you climb.

Speaker 2 (02:22:18):
Be real, Come on, be real. Okay.

Speaker 3 (02:22:21):
So touching down, they walk with rifles at the ready,
and they're hearing screams in the distance. Joel reiterates what
he taught Ellie, I'm your back, your mine, and they
begin to slowly walk through the forest. A screech is heard,
which you know, clicker probably, and then we see a
horse racing out of the fog with a dead rider

(02:22:43):
stuck in its stirrup. So the horse is very spooked
and it's like, I'm getting the hell out of here.
They continue onward. Ellie passes a dead clicker as they go. Eventually,
Ellie spots Eugene with a oh shit Eugene and begins
to approach him without any kind of thought, and Joel
stops her with an Ellie. Eugene pushes away from the

(02:23:05):
tree and puts his hands up and then reveals the
bite wound by his ribs. Joel asks if there's any
more but other than Eugene, no, there are not. He
starts to walk towards Joel, but time is discussed here.
He wants to get back to the gate so he
could say goodbye to Gail because he has about an hour.
Eugene protests at first and then raises his pistol, but

(02:23:29):
Joel notes that he's empty. I think we all kind
of saw that the slide on top of the gun was.
He was like, no, no, he has no bullets left,
so he didn't realize, and then drops the gun. He
begins to beg Joel. He's like, all right, let's try
another tactic, please let me see my wife. He has
things to tell her, but Joel talks about the rules

(02:23:50):
and it just cannot happen. Ellie speaks up here, though,
and asks Eugene to hold out his hand, getting closer
to him as she asks. He tells him to count
from one to ten, slowly, clearly, and he does this successfully.
Ellie says that Eugene has time and asks Joel for
him to have the chance to see his fucking wife.

(02:24:11):
She begs him here with a please. Joel tells Ellie
to get the horses and bring them down the trail,
and she does, but stops a few paces beyond Joel
because she's a large Spidey sense is tingling here.

Speaker 2 (02:24:23):
I think she turns back.

Speaker 3 (02:24:26):
Joel looks at her, and without any word from Ellie,
Joel says, I promise, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:24:31):
This is the moment.

Speaker 1 (02:24:32):
Ellie knew that the look Joel gave her when he
said I swear was definitively a lie. And ultimately it's
sad to me that Eugene existed in this version of
the universe to give Ellie that final piece of the
puzzle to validate her suspicion, and the impending conversation that

(02:24:53):
she's been putting off and rehearsing now in her garage alone. Yeah,
it really is kind of sad that the whole season
we've been talking and hearing about Eugene and this is
ultimately what it turns out his scene to be was
just the vehicle for the look.

Speaker 3 (02:25:09):
I can't This is really tough for me because Joe
absolutely crushes.

Speaker 2 (02:25:17):
Yes, and he's incredible, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:25:20):
And he allows for an incredible reactive performance from Catherine
O'Hara later, and so like, I don't want to diminish
the work.

Speaker 2 (02:25:32):
Oh, I'm not diminishing the work. No, Yeah, that's what
I'm saying. Like, I.

Speaker 3 (02:25:37):
Didn't hate this as a as a mechanism to be
able to do.

Speaker 2 (02:25:40):
This on television, Like I like this.

Speaker 3 (02:25:46):
As a if you're taking it from Ellie's point of
view about her, her intuition as it relates to Joel,
a person she knows deeply, And so the thought for
me here was like she never forgot the phrase, the phrasing,
the facial expression, the moment where a big lie was

(02:26:09):
told to her, like that for her must in her
memory be clear as a clear as a bell. And
this is that moment again and her it's like this
is all that she needed. And I'm like that actually,
like for me, that really works. I'm like, and just
just the situation that they find themselves in. So I

(02:26:30):
don't know, I was like, Okay, okay, I'm in.

Speaker 2 (02:26:34):
For this, it works. I just wish more Joey.

Speaker 3 (02:26:38):
Yeah, he or Joey outside of this one story mechanism
that he functions.

Speaker 1 (02:26:43):
As Yes, I thought for that. Again, I think this
setup and the payoff were not equal to one another
because there just always felt like more to be had
with Eugene's character than just serving as the catalyst. Sure,
and I think that Joey Pants as an actor deserved

(02:27:07):
more time one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (02:27:09):
I mean, he's just so fucking good and.

Speaker 1 (02:27:11):
He's so evocative, Like I genuinely crying during that whole
sequence with him that you're going to get to now.

Speaker 3 (02:27:19):
Yeah, Ellie goes off to go get the horses too,
so they can hurry back to Jackson.

Speaker 2 (02:27:24):
Presumably.

Speaker 3 (02:27:26):
Joel directs Eugene here and they begin walking, keeping Eugene
ahead of him with his rifle ready at a moment's notice.
Eugene talks about how cordyceps makes you cold, and he
didn't expect that.

Speaker 2 (02:27:37):
It's just kind of an.

Speaker 3 (02:27:37):
Interesting We never knew really anything all the people that
we meet, you know, I have just never mentioned the
side effects of it, which is that was like a
neat little thing. Sure, Eugene asks which way. Joel tells
him to head right. He's walked him to a beautiful
view of the Titans, and Eugene notes the thing and

(02:28:00):
it is gorgeous. For the record, you're like, holy shit,
this exists.

Speaker 2 (02:28:07):
But this is just.

Speaker 3 (02:28:08):
Before realizing what Joel is about to do. Joel raises
his rifle and Eugene begs, saying, you can't do this
to me, and Joel offers to give Eugene's last words
to Gail, but Eugene says the words are for her.
He needs to hear Gail's last words for him because
he's dying and terrified.

Speaker 2 (02:28:29):
And that was the point where you're like, oh.

Speaker 3 (02:28:31):
Yeah, Joey, he doesn't need a you. He needs Gail
to see her face for that to be the last
thing he sees. Joel lowers his rifle during this, but
then talks of how when you love someone you can
always see their face. Eugene takes off his glasses here
and he looks out beyond the water, beyond the mountains.

(02:28:52):
It's a thousand yards stair as we like to call it,
you know, it's just like and we know that he
sees her, and he's miles and says, I see her.

Speaker 2 (02:29:03):
The next shot is.

Speaker 3 (02:29:05):
Kind of an aerial view from a higher level, landscapes
and soundless, and then suddenly we see birds fly swiftly
from their trees.

Speaker 2 (02:29:13):
So Joel has shot and killed Eugene. The water glistens
and we see Joel staring off into the distance. Ellie
arrives behind him with the horses. He turns to face
her and her eyes are on Eugene. Joel walks to
Ellie and says, I'm sorry. She still has not said anything,
And in the next shot they are riding through the forest,

(02:29:34):
dragging Eugene's body behind the horses. Not unlike Joel earlier
in the season, right yep.

Speaker 3 (02:29:40):
Joel talks of radio ahead and let them know that
when they arrive, Joel will tell Gail what she needs
to know and nothing more. That's the right thing to do.
Ellie continues to stare ahead, like just completely in her
own head. My co host is written here like a
fucking psychopath, quietly crying as Joel continues to call her

(02:30:04):
name and say that he had no choice.

Speaker 1 (02:30:08):
And now we are back at Jackson and Gail walks
up to see the body of her husband on the ground.
He's under a tarp of some sort or a blanket,
and Ellie and Joel are standing beside him. Tommy walks
behind her, offering support when and where she needs it,
and she breaks down, but she's staring at Joel and

(02:30:29):
Joel lies here. He gives her last words from Eugene
that were never spoken aloud. Says that he wanted to
see her but he couldn't, that he loved her, and
that he wasn't scared. But Joel says he was brave
and he ended it himself, and Gail goes to Joel
and cries in his arms as they embrace. But Ellie

(02:30:50):
interrupts this moment and reveals what actually happened. That Eugene
begged to see Gail, that he had time, and Joel
promised to take him to see her. That Joel promised
them both before Joel shot him in the head and
killed him. Gail and Joel released from one another, and
Joel looks back to Ellie in what can only be

(02:31:11):
described as kind of a horrified look. It's a look
of betrayal because he doesn't understand why she's done this,
not fully at least, and Ellie is crying, staring at
Joel with her jaw jutting out in anger, almost challenging
him in that very moment to say anything to counter
what she's just revealed. Joel turns back to Gail to explain,

(02:31:33):
but she slaps him and tells him to get away
from her, and Tommy just watches this unfold and says nothing.
And afterwards Joel looks to Ellie and she says, you swore,
before walking off in a huff. Tommy holds Gail then,
allowing her to pour her grief and now her anger
out onto him in real time, and the scene ends

(02:31:54):
with Joel watching Ellie walk away to the sounds of
Gail sobbing. And this is for you and for anybody
listening who would like to chime in. Oh is Ellie
revealing the truth to Gail in this moment?

Speaker 2 (02:32:08):
Good for Gail?

Speaker 1 (02:32:10):
We know, based off of everything that we've been piled
like dog piling onto Ellie me everything I've been dogpiling
onto Ellie. This episode, we know that Ellie wanted to
hurt Joel and to finally reveal her cards, but in
doing so, this also probably crushed Gail. So would knowing

(02:32:31):
the truth here as Gail be worse than not knowing
the truth? And or is this another instance of Ellie's
out of characterness in a moment of self righteousness masquerading
as doing the right thing.

Speaker 3 (02:32:45):
Yeah, My thought here is that if Gail didn't seek
comfort from Joel in that moment, Ellie might not have exploded.

Speaker 2 (02:32:54):
So it was the comfort that set Ellie off, Like
how could you like Joel?

Speaker 3 (02:32:58):
Yeah, Like Joel doesn't deserve of that, Like, don't the
person who killed him should not be the one consoling
you know, exactly, Like, insofar as Ellie believes it to
be true, the person who killed him pretty callously does

(02:33:18):
not deserve the to comfort the person who he has
inflicted this great sadness on. And so, yeah, that was
just kind of a thought that I had about it, Like, Oh,
she doesn't want him to be look heroic. What he
did was not heroic. He lied, and so that's what

(02:33:39):
kind of made her blow up.

Speaker 2 (02:33:40):
I don't think that this is a moment of heroism.

Speaker 3 (02:33:43):
Though, No, no, no, well, I mean being like, that's
what he is saying, is like, this is what Gail
should have heard and known. I you know, it's very
sad any times sold when a soldier dies in war
or anything like that, they're not going to come home
home and you know, anybody people in the soldiers battalion

(02:34:04):
aren't going to talk about the times where they were
like scared shitless, you know, because there's all this gunfire
and bombs going off. They're going to be like, there
was bravery, there was valor here, we were in this together, right,
That's what Joel is trying to convey in a lie.

Speaker 2 (02:34:20):
I understand.

Speaker 1 (02:34:21):
No, I understand that was I think that that was
probably the trigger for Ellie. But I think that this
this is a very big This is a bigger conversation
between self righteousness, anger and the appropriate timing because put
yourself in gale shoes, she has no fucking clue what

(02:34:43):
Ellie has to be mad about towards Joel, right, Like
she doesn't know anything of their that conversation, and you know,
I swear and all that stuff and the salt Lake City. Whatever,
she's just being hit with. Yeah, she's literally being hit with.

(02:35:03):
My husband is dead, my partner that I've spent almost
forty years with, I think she said, or over forty
I can't remember. Like he's gone, and that is going
to take forever, the rest of her life to process.
And on top of that, she gets this story of

(02:35:24):
what people want to hear. Yeah, he loves you. He
would have given anything to see you again. But he
made the right choice in taking his own life because
it was not safe to see you. That is truly
what Eugene should have done. But Eugene was selfish and
wanted to see his wife.

Speaker 2 (02:35:45):
And I understand that as a human.

Speaker 1 (02:35:48):
And having the fear of I'm about to die, I
have minutes left. I just want to see my person,
even if I can't touch them or go near them.
I understand all sides of this, But my question is,
did Ellie do this for Gail or did Ellie do
this for Ellie?

Speaker 3 (02:36:06):
Yeah, she did it for herself to hurt Joel. Yeah, Yeah,
and that's fucked. She just wanted to inflict pain on him, Yep,
that she felt. You know, it's a betrayal, it's a betrayal.
It gets a betrayal type of situation. So and again
what you're saying, Yeah, what you said is true. Gail
just just got caught in the crossfire of these two people.

(02:36:30):
I think based on the Gail we know personality wise later, Yeah,
that we've seen, she probably appreciated Ellie's candor, right, because
while she was a little bit like snarky and sarcastic
with her in the hospital, it didn't seem like Gail
had any real ill will towards her. She has her

(02:36:51):
figured out for sure, and the same kind of goes
for Joel too, Like you know, she took him on
in therapy, right, so I think she also understands what
he was attempting to do in telling a heroic Eugene story,
but also ultimately understands how it had to go down.

(02:37:16):
I think, you know, the assumptions there, but like there
are some very cool dynamics at play, and for sure,
you know, in the town of Jackson with these characters
that we've grown to like. Yeah, So after this, we
cut to nine months later and it's the Winter Dance
again like we saw earlier in the season, but this
time is from Joel's point of view, and I always

(02:37:36):
love when we get this same thing different point of view.
This is like one of my favorite storytelling mechanisms. So
he's sitting at a table with Maria, Tommy, and their
son as he creeps on Ellie and Jesse, who were
at the bar and Dina, who is dancing. Tommy makes
to leave because bench is falling apart and it's time forbid.

(02:37:59):
Joel tells them he'll miss the countdown, but Tommy says
he'll come back afterwards. Tommy tells Ben to say good
night to Uncle Grumpy and he does, and Maria has
like the biggest, sweetest smile on her face as she
watches her husband and son leave.

Speaker 2 (02:38:15):
So it's really really heartwarming to see that.

Speaker 3 (02:38:17):
Yeah, Tommy looks at Joel and makes the haha joke
we all do on New Year's Eve, see you next year,
and Joel replies in kind. And that's actually the last
time Tommy sees his brother alive as far as we know,
so he did not see him next year, which is
very sad to think about. Yeah, Ellie and Dina are
now on the dance floor and Joel watches them. Maria

(02:38:41):
asks if Joel is okay and he responds that he's fine.
She references their earlier conversation where she called him a
refugee and instead tells Joel that she's grateful for him,
that Uncle Grumpy is family and family help each other out.
If Joel needs it, he nods, and that's that this was.

Speaker 1 (02:39:02):
I appreciated Maria for saying what she did, but Joel
has been living in the community of Jackson now for years.
Is this the first time she said something like this
to Joel or is she specifically saying it now as
an offering because we can assume that Tommy told her
what happened between Gail, Joel and Ellie nine months ago.

Speaker 3 (02:39:24):
No, I think this is as everybody has mentioned, if
we go, if we put ourselves back in the shoes
of the day, like so episode one leading up to right,
sure that was the dance right episode one?

Speaker 2 (02:39:38):
Or no? Is that episode two? I can't remember whatever,
whatever it was it was episode one? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:39:43):
Yeah, everyone is walking on eggshells around these two, and
so they I think she's just offering this now because
she knows that, for some unspoken, unknown reason, tensions are
high between these two, and she's like, look, it's just
one of those things like you, is it just as
a personal thing that you told me earlier? Today you

(02:40:04):
got the sense that someone that we know might not
be doing okay, and so you reached out. You just said, hey,
I'm just checking in making sure everything's okay. I feel
like that's exactly what Maria was doing here, Like, Hey,
seems like you're not yourself recently, You're distracted, You're more
terse than you usually are. I just want to let
you know that we're here if you need us. And

(02:40:25):
that's kind of the thing that I got from that.

Speaker 1 (02:40:29):
It's just interesting that it happened nine months after the
event with Gail, Joel and Ellie, Like, did Ellie just
go back to talking to him normally? And then within
the last like two months or so, is when she
really stopped talking to him. I feel like a conversation
like this is it just came too late and like
on a timeline sense, it doesn't really line up.

Speaker 3 (02:40:51):
Yeah, well, we don't know. Again, we only know what
the show tells us. So you can make the assumption
that Joel sees, you know, his brother and Marie and
Benji often and maybe this is a maybe this is
a recurring thing like, hey, just like you, we're here
for you if you need us, you know, anything you need,
and likewise for Ellie, they're probably also reaching out to

(02:41:12):
Ellie to say, hey, if you need us, we're here.

Speaker 2 (02:41:14):
You know. That's all.

Speaker 3 (02:41:17):
So after that, we are back in the shitty seth
moment where he used the D word. Joel rushes in
by settled bitch right to the floorboards. It's like, I
don't care if you made me cakes for four years. No, yeah,
we went through this already, so we know what happens.
What Ellie says, all that good stuff bad stuff, not

(02:41:38):
good stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:41:39):
She doesn't need him. He leaves, YadA, YadA.

Speaker 1 (02:41:43):
And I feel bad now from this comment because you
said that you really like seeing the other point of view,
But in my opinion, this entire scene was wasteful.

Speaker 2 (02:41:52):
It was a waste of time.

Speaker 1 (02:41:54):
See so, yes, it was good to see it from
Joel's point of view, but what exactly did this add
to the overall story. It was just a way, I think, truly,
for in my opinion, that's my opinion. It was just
a way for us to see Tommy make the New
Year's Eve joke, only to never see Joel again. Because

(02:42:14):
Maria's offer should have come eight to nine months prior
after the fallout, or at least relatively closer than nine
months after the fact. So what was the point of
this scene aside from see you next year and he
never does.

Speaker 3 (02:42:27):
For me, and I can only speak for myself, why
this worked for me was we have a family together,
the Millers, let's call them, right, they are I know,
I know, let's call them the Millers. And from the
Elle point of it's just from a filmmaking point of view,

(02:42:50):
from the Elli side of things, we never see Joel.
But from the Joel side of things, really all were
focused on is Ellie, and it puts these two character
he owns, these two characters in a place where they
are mentally right now, like all he wants to do
is be a part of her. And from her side
of it, she's not thinking of him, she's not looking

(02:43:11):
for him. But he is keenly aware of where she
is at this party in all times, and it's very sad.

Speaker 1 (02:43:18):
It is sad. I do agree with you. I one
hundred percent understand and agree with what you were saying. However,
in the again, it's always in the game, in the game,
in the game, we never saw Joel's point of view,
and though I had a moment where I was like, oh,
I would have liked to have seen what he was doing,
at least it wouldn't have fit. And that's kind of

(02:43:41):
how I feel with this, like it just didn't It
wasn't necessary. I guess it was nice to have it.
It wasn't necessary because it didn't add anything except for
more angst and loss on his end of this person
and who I've one hundred percent view as my daughter

(02:44:03):
has fully slipped out, has fully left me, and I
don't I don't even know if her and Dinier are together.
I don't know if she's happy. I don't know, you know,
And I, as a parent, I have no idea what
that is like to have such an a strained relationship.
And I pray and hope I never experience that, But

(02:44:25):
I don't know. I just it was good, but I
don't think it was necessary. I think I'll mend my question.
It was good, it wasn't necessary.

Speaker 2 (02:44:33):
Thank you. I appreciate your supporting these difficult times.

Speaker 1 (02:44:36):
Sure, oh my god, So let's let's get into the big,
the big porch scene, which is this is gonna just
don't don't fuck this up, preparing your sols average mess
this up. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna do with it

(02:44:56):
what I was given. So so Joel is on his
porch and he grabs Ellie's guitar and begins to shrum it.
It sounds like the first chords to Helplessly Hoping by Crosby,
Stills and Nash, which is what the song should be
that he plays in this moment, because that is what
he was playing in the last Devonspire It Dale and

(02:45:17):
anyone who is listening who does not know this song,
is not familiar with the song or it's lyrics, please
go listen to it, go read the lyrics. They are
incredibly on point for this moment in Joel's life and
his relationship with Ellie. Obviously not a one to one,
but there's a lot of moving moments in that and

(02:45:38):
this is just a kindy little, tiny, little like nitpick thing.
Why does Joel have Ellie's guitar? We know it's Ellie's guitar.
I didn't see the details of it, but we got
them as on the neck. Yeah maybe, yeah, I don't know.
The last time we saw it. I'm trying to think
of the last time we saw it. It was in
a pile of clothes in Ellie's garage. Oh was that?

Speaker 2 (02:46:00):
Hold on? He took it because he wanted to replace
the strings.

Speaker 1 (02:46:03):
That's it. So he does have it. The strings are fixed.
We solved it, got it. See that. We had to
go back to episode one for that.

Speaker 2 (02:46:11):
Yeah, that's all.

Speaker 3 (02:46:12):
He grabs it and hurries out of the Okay, okay,
fix this, I'll be back later.

Speaker 2 (02:46:16):
Goodbye. Yes, all right, good.

Speaker 1 (02:46:18):
I'm glad we figured that out because I was like,
why would he just go into her garage and take
her guitar?

Speaker 2 (02:46:23):
But now all right, look see we got there.

Speaker 3 (02:46:25):
Memory playing it. It's my guitar. Now, yeah, I drembled
the shit out of this thing.

Speaker 2 (02:46:32):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (02:46:32):
So Joel looks very sad and heartbroken throughout this entire scene.
And then, as we saw earlier, Ellie walks and then
stops and stares at him before walking past the porch.
And this is all we have seen up to this
moment before, but this time we get the full scene
because Ellie returns and she walks up the steps and

(02:46:54):
to the banister and then stands there, puts her hands
on and just kind of waits for a moment, and
this is Joel's queue to do the same, and he does,
sets the guitar side, stands up, stands next to her,
and she asks what he's drinking, and we get this
verbatim reply from the game. And I'm not going to
repeat it here. Everyone saw the scene, but I wanted

(02:47:15):
to note that he is drinking his coffee out of
the owl mug. So now people can finally get to
see this particular mug at least front and center, without
really understanding its significance, unfortunately, but it was still special
to see it. So Ellie and Joel talk about what
just happened at the dance. She says that she had

(02:47:37):
seth under control, and Joel does acknowledge this, and she
kind of just spirals off into what we do when
we're all mad at someone. We pick at the main
issue and then we spire off to shit that's been
annoying us forever, the airing of grievances.

Speaker 2 (02:47:55):
It might be called.

Speaker 1 (02:47:56):
Yeah and she and then she moves on about how
she never wants to hear Joel, to hear about Joel
taking her off patrol again. He just says okay, but
there's a lull and he asks about Dina and if
Dina is Ellie's girlfriend. Dina says it was only one kiss,
it doesn't mean anything, and she doesn't really even understand
why Dina did that. But Joel continues and pushes with

(02:48:16):
a you do like her though, and Ellie mumbles under
her breath, so stupid, And again a lot of this
is verbatim. Joel goes on to talk about intentions and
how he doesn't know what dinas are with Ellie, but
that Dina would be lucky to have Ellie, and Ellie
looks at him and calls him basically says, you're such

(02:48:37):
an asshole, and Joel just stares at her, And this
is where for me, the porch scene goes entirely off
the rails. Ellie talks now about how he lied to her,
that it was the same fucking look, the same face
that he had given to her when he swore that
what he told her about the fireflies and the hospital

(02:49:00):
was true at the end of season one, just as
a reminder. But Ellie says she thinks she thinks she knew,
already knew this entire time that he was lying, and
she basically says, I'm going to give you one last
chance that if you lie to me again, we're done
and I'm gone. So Ellie asks the question where are

(02:49:20):
there other immune people? And Joel nods know where their raiders? No, again,
could they have made a cure? Joel begins to cry
here as he looks to her and nods yes and
for the eight millionth time, no, Actually they couldn't have
made a cure, just in case anyone forgot my fucking
rants and the actual science behind all of this. But
I guess Joel bought into it finally, and again not

(02:49:44):
a thing that Joel fully did, but whatever, just.

Speaker 3 (02:49:46):
As a quick thing here, since this is our little breakpoint.
I fucking Pedro was crushing this though where no just
nods and facial expressions. I was all in on this,
and I know maybe you might have separate thoughts about that,
but I was like, this was really really good for me.

Speaker 1 (02:50:08):
So Ellie cries, but she brushes the tears away and continues.
She asks if he killed them all, if he killed Marlene,
and he nods again and then talks of how making
a cure. Joel finally speaks here, and he talks about
how making a cure would have killed her, and she
raises her voice to him and says, then I was

(02:50:30):
supposed to die. That was my purpose. My life would
have fucking mattered. But you took that from me. You
took it from everyone. And Joel just breathes and says, yes,
and I'll pay the price because you're going to turn
away from me. But Joel knows that and says it
aloud here. If he had the chance to do it
all over again, he would, and he says this directly

(02:50:51):
to her. And while this might have worked for you,
the lack of conviction in Pedro's portrayal, especially in that
in that line, I need to make it very clear
here that what Pedro did here was extraordinary for his
version of Joel. Yeah, but that is not the Joel

(02:51:12):
that I know and love. Joel had conviction the way
that Troy Baker acted this scene and the way he says,
I would do it all over again. He looks directly
at her. His hands are gripping the banister and his
jaw flexes. There are no tears in his eyes. He

(02:51:34):
is completely committed that he I would fucking murder everyone
on this earth. For you and only you, and that
is conviction. And seeing Pedro's portrayal with tears in his
eyes and no anger, no was very flat for me.
It just wasn't good enough.

Speaker 2 (02:51:55):
I like Joel who cries, I don't.

Speaker 1 (02:51:57):
I don't know, I don't And we're gonna we're going
to talk more about that.

Speaker 3 (02:52:02):
In the capsule earlier I liked it, and here I
liked it.

Speaker 1 (02:52:05):
I liked both in the capsule, and people have contended,
have contradicted me on this years and years ago. In
the capsule, his eyes fill with tears, but he doesn't cry,
and I think that that's enough. Less is fucking more.
How many times do I have to keep saying that
on this show? Less is more?

Speaker 2 (02:52:27):
You do not need to.

Speaker 1 (02:52:28):
Be blubbering and crying and declaring your love to get
your fucking feelings and heart across to someone. It is
not the world that they live in. This is not
the level of comfort these people, and Joel has had
to learn over the last twenty five fucking years and
his life as a whole, because in the game, he
had a child very fucking early and likely could not

(02:52:50):
have afforded to go to school, so had to work
one or two jobs, was probably tired every goddamn day
of his life. There was no time for emotion for
this man, which is why the way he was the
way he was. And they changed all of that in
this fucking show. They made him an older father, they
made him aged up, they made all of these fucking changes,

(02:53:13):
and all of it is a ripple effect leading to
Pedro crying on the fucking porch as Joel, and none
of it is who that character was at the core.
And I'm not saying that Joel was this standoffish, cold bastard.

Speaker 2 (02:53:26):
He wasn't.

Speaker 1 (02:53:27):
That was the fucking point of this scene of him
having that strong conviction of I would burn the ground
that every single person walks on to spare your life
again and again a thousand times over. You could burn
me out of fucking stake. I don't care for you.
Anything that is so much more powerful, that is so

(02:53:50):
cry I'm gonna cry. That is so much more powerful
than any moment that happened in this on this porch.
And if that is lost to people, it's because everyone
is so used to movies and TV shows giving in
and giving us the tears and the soliloquies when people
die and the oh my god, just so you know,

(02:54:13):
before I die, I loved you more than anyone, and
oh my god, that memory when we were on the
that doesn't happen in real life. There is no reality
in which this is real for Joel and Ellie in
the way and the world that we were given. And
it breaks my fucking heart because they softened it so

(02:54:35):
much that now it's just another father figure telling another
daughter figure. I love you and I would do it again,
and that's all it is. And if that's good enough
for people, then I'm glad it's good enough for you.
But it was so far removed from me that I
think I actually was crying because it wasn't. I knew
it was coming, and it wasn't. Let me finish the scene,

(02:54:58):
because there's so much more I have to talk about.
Ellie calls Joel selfish. She's still very angry and upset
and says, because I love you in a way that
you can't understand, and maybe you never will. But if
that day should come, if you should ever have one
of your own, well then I.

Speaker 2 (02:55:15):
Hope you do a little bit better than me.

Speaker 1 (02:55:17):
And this is of course a bookend to the beginning
of the show and Joel's father saying the exact same
thing to him, but along with Joel's declaration of love,
which never happened in the game, because as I said before,
less is more and some things that are spoken aloud
do not need to actually be spoken aloud. It is
just playing into the audience and to kind of I

(02:55:38):
guess put a bow on everything I just ranted on.
I don't understand why they made the choices they did
with his character to lead him here. He was so
strong and she was the only person that was able
to get through to him. In twenty fucking years. Ellie
was the only person to literally bring Joel back to life.

(02:56:00):
His brother even left him because Joel in many scenes
that we were not privy to in the twenty year gap,
Joel probably descended into a madness that was too much
for Tommy, and the only fucking person that brought him
back to life was Ellie. But he was still strong,

(02:56:22):
He was not soft, He was not compromised by this
love for her. He was built all the more for it.
So him crying and declaring his love for her was
so over the top that it cheapened that relationship. Enormously
for me, and I was so disappointed by it that

(02:56:45):
I'm literally crying because we did not fucking need that.
If you love someone and you are in a complicated
world like a post apocalyptic dystopian future, don't fucking need
to tell them you love them. That is not a
thing that needs to be said between people. Sometimes it

(02:57:10):
is an understanding. Your soul knows the truth and that
is enough. And I'm just so sad. I'm so sad
from this season, which is why it took us until
Sunday to record this fucking podcast, because it's just the

(02:57:30):
most disappointing thing. Yeah, I'm sorry, you know, I'm sorry
that didn't work for you.

Speaker 3 (02:57:34):
I know that, I know that it's a it's important
to you, and so it's a bummer that it's so
negatively affected you in this regard.

Speaker 1 (02:57:45):
So I will say Joel did well up with tears
in his one eyeball one eyeball had like he welled
up in the game, but he did not cry, because
that just wasn't him. Yeah, you know, And people have
fought me on that too, They're like, Joel wasn't fucking crying,

(02:58:08):
he wasn't getting choked up yeah, And I'm like, getting
choked up and crying are two different things.

Speaker 2 (02:58:13):
He got choked up.

Speaker 3 (02:58:15):
Yeah, I don't think that the one doesn't preclude the other,
like not crying is and again not trying to You
don't have to.

Speaker 2 (02:58:25):
Counter me, I know.

Speaker 3 (02:58:26):
Yeah, yeah, not crying does not equal strength, and strength
does not equal not crying. Right, So I just want
to make it clear in terms of where I'm coming from,
like those two things, those two things exist and can exist.

Speaker 1 (02:58:40):
We contain multitudes essentially, right, Oh, okay, give me a minute.
Not even I completely fully agree with you, because a
lot of people throughout my life have made me out
to be very weak because I cry a lot. But
I am one of the strongest people that I've ever met,
and and I am going to give myself that compliment.

(02:59:04):
It's important the people who know me, who know my heart,
know the horrors that I have been through and survived.
But I deal with that by wearing my heart on
my sleeve and crying whenever I want on this podcast,
at a commercial, during a movie in real life, if
I've overwhelmed or stressed, it does not matter. If you

(02:59:24):
see me as weak, that's your own perception. I'm not
I'm not saying it's a one to one thing. I'm
not saying that because Joel is strong he can't cry.
I'm just saying that he was not that kind of person.
He was not a crier, not because of his strength,
not because he wasn't willing to be soft. But he
did not process his world the way people who cry

(02:59:48):
the way Pedro portrayed Jold do. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (02:59:52):
It does?

Speaker 3 (02:59:52):
Yeah, And again these are all Here's what I mean.
You get on set, you're an actor, you have what
is presented to you, you in the script and some
direction from director, right, And so all we're talking about
is how the interpretation per character. So how Troy original
Joel did this versus how Pedro did it.

Speaker 2 (03:00:14):
And clearly Neil was present.

Speaker 3 (03:00:17):
Neil Truckman, the director of this episode, was present for
the original one too, where he was the director of
the game. And so he deemed both of these things.
There was no I mean maybe there were, but like
it's not like we got like five versions of it
and he chose this one. It was like, this is
what he told Pedro to do. Pedro did it. And

(03:00:38):
as the director, he is the one who says got
it next scene. And so for me, I'm like, these
are again for the character in this world that we've
seen and based on just what we have to go
off of. It was like this, this is a feels okay,
I appreciate I appreciated this, given everything that he had

(03:00:59):
to work with and his formans and everything like that.
I also think that again there's an emotionality because this
was very likely Pedro and Bella's last scene together insofar
as this show is concerned, and so that was probably
also a very emotionally charged moment for these two people
as well. So it's a goodbye. It's a goodbye in

(03:01:20):
the story, and it is a goodbye in real life
as well.

Speaker 1 (03:01:24):
And so yeah, the acting, the acting, This is the
only moment between these two characters, and particularly in this
season where both of them acted their ass off, and
it was it felt very real, which.

Speaker 2 (03:01:40):
Is why I think it was. It wasn't acting, honestly.

Speaker 1 (03:01:44):
Yeah, it's just I tried my best to separate the
show in the game, and I guess I failed. I
failed miserably. Because that's okay, you know, I can always
just go back and play the game. I understand. Anyone
listening at how again, spare me the comments, spare yourself
the time. I know I can just go and play

(03:02:05):
the game, a game that I don't even really like either,
but the show was so bad that I actually think
I'd like the game a little bit more now, So thanks,
I guess. But yeah, let's move on to the next
topic that I have in trouble with. So Ellie stares
again and says she doesn't think that she can forgive
him for this, but she would like to try. And
they look at one another, and we know that this

(03:02:26):
was likely their final words, the final words they ever
exchanged before his death the following day, And that is
gut wrenching. When I figured out that that's ultimately what
happened in the Last of Us Part two, I fucking
hated it because, you know whatever, it's not the happy
ending that I wanted, but also more reasons than that. Again,

(03:02:47):
I'll talk about that on Wayfair and Strangers in about
two years, but but I need to talk about how
they lumped together flashback sequences throughout this episode, the porch
conversation and Joel's reveal into one fucking hour worth of television.

Speaker 2 (03:03:09):
This was a choice.

Speaker 1 (03:03:11):
This was a very intentional, bold fucking choice on Neil
Hayley and Craig and I got whiplash like from just
flying through these fucking sequences of flashbacks. But the biggest,
most egregious thing for me apart from the softness of

(03:03:33):
this version of Joel, which I vehemently disagree with, but again,
I still have my video game Joel forever and always.
I understand why they did it to save time. It's
literally all it was, to save time, But the impact
of Ellie. See, I'm trying to say this without talking
too much about the game of fuck it.

Speaker 2 (03:03:53):
This is my podcast. Is what we're gonna do in
the game.

Speaker 1 (03:03:58):
I mentioned earlier there was a two your estrangement period
for Joel and Ellie, and then the night before he died,
they were at the Winter Dance. She said, I don't
need your fucking help, Joel. He replied with right, walked off.
Then you play the whole fucking game, correct, Yeah, yeah,

(03:04:18):
And then right before the end of the fucking game
you have this porch scene. But this porch scene came
two years after Ellie had found out what Joel did.
Two whole motherfucking years, so she had two years of

(03:04:39):
life essentially living apart from him, not sharing birthdays, barely
acknowledging each other, not watching movies with him, not going
on patrol unless it was like you know, I guess
they were forced to because of shortages or this.

Speaker 2 (03:04:56):
That or the other.

Speaker 1 (03:04:56):
Who knows, But in that two year time, at any moment,
she could have rekindled their relationship. She could have approached
him and talked to him, and she knows, and all
of us knew that he would one hundred percent be
there and waiting and willing, but she never did so.

(03:05:17):
When he dies the next fucking day after that was
my purpose. You took that from me. I don't know
if I can forgive you for that, but I would
like to try. The next day he's dead, Ellie starts
a revenge mission where she has two years of guilt,

(03:05:38):
two years of regret, two years of all that wasted
time that she could have spent with him, that she
blew because she was angry at the truth, and that
fuels the revenge journey a million times more than what

(03:05:58):
they portrayed on this show of her finding out the
night before he died, which is why I think the
revenge on this show is so fucking flimsy and so
hard to find, and why she's not taking anything seriously
and Dina took the lead because she didn't have two
years of regret to process along.

Speaker 2 (03:06:20):
With his death. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's.

Speaker 1 (03:06:24):
A disservice for people to not know just how truly
heartbroken she was for more than just his death, but
because she squandered her time with him. And I think
that's a great fear for many of us who lose

(03:06:45):
people or strong best friend relationships and something goes wrong
and you don't see that person again, and then one
day you get the call that they're not here anymore,
and it's like, fuck, I could at any point, at
any point, I could have picked up my phone, but
I didn't, you know, Like, and that is so much
more gut wrenching than just a couple hours of I

(03:07:10):
don't know, a couple hours for her to fucking sleep
on it, and then he's dead and then oh, I
guess I have to avenge him, Like I just I'm
so I'm so disappointed with this.

Speaker 3 (03:07:21):
Yeah, I wonder if it could I wonder if it's
a problem that could have been solved with some editing,
because the show has established a pattern of either a
thing is a flashback or it is not. It's not
like there's a we're seeing linear time and then correct
me if I'm wrong. I can't remember this. Have we

(03:07:43):
ever had an episode where we're going linearly and then
it jumps back in time for a second and then
we come back to the present.

Speaker 2 (03:07:52):
I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (03:07:53):
I think it's always like left Behind, Bill and Frank
is a flashback. Left Behind is a flashback. This episode
is a series of flashbacks.

Speaker 1 (03:08:03):
So you're saying, was there one singular episode where a
flashback didn't occur?

Speaker 2 (03:08:07):
No, or like or didn't occur.

Speaker 3 (03:08:09):
So let's separate it in terms of how they tell
the story, Like sometimes the cold open is a flashback,
but then the episode plays out in real time, never
going back. I think that's true. I don't think if
this if the showrunners were a little bit more flexible
on how they could tell these stories or how they
wanted to. Like, I think some of the things we

(03:08:30):
saw in this episode could have been seated earlier as
cold opens, Like the whole joey pants thing with Gail
feels more impactful before we meet maybe not before we
meet Gail proper but like closer to that as a
cold open.

Speaker 2 (03:08:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (03:08:51):
I feel like you could have taken this episode because
it is just a series of vignettes. Really, it's like
this this period of time to this period of time,
this period of time to this period of time, blapa
bah bah bah bah, and they work. They would work independently, smaller,
perhaps seeded in throughout the season.

Speaker 2 (03:09:09):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (03:09:09):
I kind of wrong about that, but I feel like
it's like they settled on a structure, and I get that.
I completely understand. Some shows decide we can't they don't
want to have dreams or flashbacks or whatever, and I'm like,
that's fine, and then other shows are totally fine to
kind of play with time a little bit more. So

(03:09:32):
that's I think it's just a fail, not a failing,
but like structurally, they're like, we only have episodes that
are flashbacks, or we only have cold opens that are flashbacks,
and everything that happens in this main fifty minutes has.

Speaker 2 (03:09:47):
To be a to B.

Speaker 1 (03:09:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:09:49):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (03:09:50):
I wanted to. I wanted to love this episode. I
just can't. There's too much wrong with it for me,
too much out of character, too much insolence, too much
behavioral like questionable behavior.

Speaker 2 (03:10:09):
It just I still put this up.

Speaker 3 (03:10:12):
I mean, you want me to let me close it
out real quick and then I'll say my thought. So
after all this, we see the end of the porch thing,
we cut to black. I believe when we come back,
we're outside the theater in present day. So this is
what I was just talking about. Whether this is the
opposite of a cold It's like the cold ending, as
it were. Ellie is out in the rain, returning to

(03:10:34):
the theater to meet Jesse and Dina after lake Hill
Hospital and the events that we know like unfolded where
she killed Nora in the last episode and another seattle
storm is raining down upon her cats and dogs out there.
She looks ahead, her eyes twitching, begins to walk into
the darkness towards the entrance of the theater, and we're done.

Speaker 2 (03:10:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:10:56):
So I know that you have a lot of problems
with this episode. I have fewer problems with this episode.
I'm willing to say that this is like my second
favorite episode of the entire series. Really, I still stand
by that. After Bill and Frank in season one, this
is my second favorite. Had enough imagery, enough emotionality, enough
story related interweaving here, great performances from I mean, you know,

(03:11:24):
give me an episode with Tony Dalton of anything, Oh
my God might be the best one. So there's a
lot here that fleshes out some stuff that the game
never did. We never knowd We never knew about Joel's
dad in the game. That's just a thing that they
made up. But I love it, Like that's one of
the things where I'm like, oh, we can weave the

(03:11:44):
tapestry of this world, tap into things that we never
knew about and make them interesting while not.

Speaker 2 (03:11:52):
Feeling like it's just filler.

Speaker 3 (03:11:56):
Those are important character moments for me, like that one specifically,
As is often the case, we are we're near the fence,
but we're on opposite sides.

Speaker 2 (03:12:06):
I'll still talk to you, though, thank you. Well.

Speaker 3 (03:12:11):
Once the once the microphones cut off, we're done. You know,
I'm a persona non grata. As soon as we turn
off these microphones. It's all fun and games until it's
Sunday night at nine pm on HBO, and then oh boy,
no bets, they're all I.

Speaker 2 (03:12:26):
Just wanted over with.

Speaker 1 (03:12:27):
I really just wanted over with, And we're one more
episode yep, but that is the end of our episode.
I'm sad and forlorn, I'm melancholic and crestfallen, and it's
time dejected. Yes, it's time for me, yeah, to just
get out, get some fresh air. So some places that

(03:12:48):
you can find us on the internet over on Instagram
at TLU podcast that is t l ou Podcasts, or
Blue Sky at t l ou podcast. Just go over
to YouTube and search tl ou Pie or Wayfair and
Strangers podcast or the last cast. It will give us,
it will give you us, it will give you us.
And yeah, if you'd like to follow me on the

(03:13:09):
Internet or Andrew, you can do that at either Jaded
Vader or Through Wilderness Thru Wilderness for me or Dark
Driving for Andrew or Andrew Wormley over on Blue.

Speaker 2 (03:13:19):
Sky Don't mean verified. Let's go.

Speaker 1 (03:13:21):
Yes, thank you guys so much for the Spotify reviews.

Speaker 2 (03:13:27):
We have so much fun.

Speaker 1 (03:13:28):
I know they take up a very large portion of
the show, and some people probably skip because they just
don't care. I understand, but it's important to acknowledge that
it puts a capstone on the previous episode. Anything that
I might have forgotten or we didn't talk about or
touch on.

Speaker 2 (03:13:42):
I just like it.

Speaker 1 (03:13:43):
I think it rounds out the show very well, so
keep them coming, and we are almost to the conclusion
of season two, so get them get them in quick. No,
I mean we're still read comments as people submit them
on our future email shows, which we'll start in two weeks.
But yes, our wonderful, wonderful Patreon supporters and friends, we

(03:14:08):
love you guys so much. And a lovely little shout
out to Barb Ozzie atreus late nine ten Craig s
and the ghost of mister Joel what has been a
coffee supporter and a huge just a hugely wonderful, generous,
like conversationally awesome supporter of Wayfair and Strangers since the beginning,

(03:14:34):
so we're talking years. This wonderful human has supported our
shows and now we get to read your wonderful name.
His name is Joel for real, for real, it is
really his name, and of course I obsessively love that.

Speaker 2 (03:14:48):
Even more so.

Speaker 1 (03:14:52):
If you'd like to join our Patreon and check out
what's going on over there, which is not much right
now but in the upcoming months and all that good
stuff Patreon dot com, slash t l ou podcast, we
would love to see you over there and chat and
keep the quote unquote fun going.

Speaker 2 (03:15:10):
I guess the good times question, mar.

Speaker 1 (03:15:17):
So that's it, Thank you guys, and we have one more.

Speaker 3 (03:15:24):
One more episode, one more episode more. Let's make it
the best yet. See we'll be back next week. Limping
towards a watery finish line, all the worse for the wear. Bye,

(03:15:46):
Goodbye everyone, Goodbye, goodbye.

Speaker 1 (03:16:03):
Inla in

Speaker 2 (03:16:11):
Sta

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