Based on a video game of the same name, episode one of The Last of Us is a pretty boilerplate intro into a Zombie-ridden post-apocalyptic world. After a brief teaser prologue, the show begins in 2003 and follows Joel Miller, played by Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian, Game of Thrones), a middle-class contractor and single father as he is suddenly confronted with the total breakdown of civilization as a fungal infection sweeps the nation, turning much of the populous into defacto blood-thirsty zombies.

The Last of Us (Episode 1. When You’re Lost in the Darkness)

Fast forward 20 years and Joel lives on the other side of the country in a quarantine zone. We quickly learn that his brother is in some unnamed trouble and that Joel is mounting an unsanctioned and illegal rescue operation.

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The first episode of The Last of Us isn’t revolutionary in any way but it is a competently shot and generally well-acted thriller that does a perfectly adequate job of introducing us to the post-apocalyptic world of an alternate 2023. The sets are wonderfully detailed and there are sufficient interesting unanswered, yet teased-at, questions to engage the audience and keep them plugged in for a second episode. Although, having watched several Zombie movies and multiple seasons of The Walking Dead, I feel like I more or less already know the “big twist/secret” that seems as though it has been relatively clumsily shoehorned into this episode.

What mostly keeps the audience engaged is the strong, if muted, performances of Pascal and Anna Torv (Fringe), who plays Joel’s love interest, Tess. I say “muted,” because they are soft-spoken brooding characters, which fits perfectly with the craphole world of the show. Inside the quarantine zone is a fascist police state that resembles text-book pictures of Nazi ghettos, and outside of the quarantine zone there are Zombies, slavers, and “worse.” It’s not exactly a world that would foster bubbly personalities. The two leads have an easy chemistry and make believable choices throughout the episode, helping to make them likable in spite of their personalities. Also, Pascal’s Joel is a strong, stoic, and capable man, which is a refreshing change of pace from most programs nowadays.

One minor issue with episode 1 is the use of signs as an expositional tool. It’s something that can easily be overdone and obvious, but in the director’s desire to not fall into this trap, he cuts away too quickly from signs that he seems to want us to read. It wouldn’t matter, but why focus on them at all if we aren’t supposed to read them? Just pan across them so we know that they are there. It’s a bit jarring but it’s also a total nitpick.

There are some other logical inconsistencies with the program (how is it that no scientist has figured out an anti-fungal agent in 20 years, how is it possible that jet fuel for helicopters is abundant enough for nightly patrols), but it’s early so, perhaps they will be answered later on.

Episode 1 of The Last of Us doesn’t introduce anything new to Zombie-lore, but if post-apocalyptic Zombie shows are your jam, this will give you a nice little fix.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Global warming is hinted at being the catalyst for the mutated fungus. It’s one little throwaway line but be prepared to roll your eyes and move on.

Early on, one of the neighbors is a Christian and she spouts off a cliched saying that seems like it’s meant for us to laugh at because she dares to actually believe in Jesus.

The number of women in charge and in positions that would traditionally be held by men is bordering on silly. It’s a post-apocalyptic world in which people are barely surviving. There’s virtually no infrastructure and no time for political correctness and it is very clearly a survival of the fittest. In that scenario, the likelihood of alpha males not dominating society and rebellions alike is a statistical 0. They go so far as to say that guys born after the “outbreak” don’t argue, they just swing with their fists. In a world such as that, women would not be enjoying the equality that they do today.

The Last of Us (Episode 2. Infected)

Episode 2 of The Last of Us is a significant improvement over episode 1. It’s essentially a survival episode and so it is much more focused and streamlined and avoids the political-correct baggage of its predecessor. It shows us much more of the world outside of the walls of the quarantine zone and manages to make the fungus rather ominous and frightening.

I know that, in the previous episode, I found myself smirking at the idea of fungus zombies, but those responsible for the make-up and prosthetics did an outstanding job, as did the set designers. Even in the open air, the omnipresent vegetation and fungal remains make the world feel claustrophobic.

Finally, Director Neil Druckman (The Last of Us video game franchise) did an outstanding job of building tension and delivering some truly stressful and harrowing scares.

I’m thoroughly looking forward to episode 3.

WOKE ELEMENTS

None. This is a fast-paced and focused episode with no time for silly wokeness.

The Last of Us (Episode 3. Long, Long Time)

Episode 3 is a well-written (if cliched) and exquisitely shot piece that adds nothing to the series’s overall narrative and/or lore, and only incidentally occurs within its universe. It follows two gay men who find one another shortly after the apocalypse, they fall in love, live together for some years, and that’s about it.

Hopefully, the most emotionally engaging episode so far being completely tangential and virtually irrelevant isn’t a potent of things to come. Sooner rather than later, Joel is going to have to show us some emotions other than rage and connect with Ellie.

Also, there is some really bad and unbelievable trigger discipline and teacup grip on display by an otherwise anal-retentive/borderline OCD survivalist. In a series featuring mushroom zombies, it was among the most unbelievable moments of the episode. The second most unbelievable moment also involves guns. Early in the episode, Joel, who is escorting a young teenage girl through a wilderness filled with literal monsters, gets rid of his semi-automatic rifle because “there’s not a lot of ammo out there for it, makes it mostly useless.” Um…what? First of all, a rifle with any ammo in it is FARRRRRRR more useful in virtually every situation than a handgun, it’s ridiculous to claim anything else. Secondly, if one did use all of its ammo and it became too much of a burden to carry, one could always…drop it, but at least you would have it up to that point. An experienced smuggler who has traversed the wilds for decades like Joel has would know that or would be dead. Finally, by the time he discarded the weapon, he knew that he was headed to a survivalist’s home with a huge arsenal. You’re telling me that the thought of trading something for more ammo, or trading this very valuable gun for a different gun, or trading it for any other type of supply for his JOURNEY ACROSS THE FRIGGIN NATION would never cross his mind? If he keeps making stupid choices like this, Joel is going to get the two of them killed by the next episode.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• With the exception of the bookend scenes that involve Joel and Ellie, the entire episode exists only to teach a lesson about gay love. Where do I get off making such a statement? First, the statistical likelihood that either Bill, played by Nick Offerman (Parks and Rec), or Frank, played by Murray Bartlett (a number of guest appearances on various TV shows), would be gay is about 5% (really it’s much less as the number of conservative survivalists who are gay is almost certainly less than the national average). The chances that both of them are gay is close to a statistical zero, and the likelihood that these two would randomly find one another under the conditions in which they did is in the fractions of fractions of a percent. Since the series is not in any way about homosexuals, or romantic relationships of any kind (sure they exist within the world but it’s not what the show is about), then the only conclusion that one can draw about an episode almost completely devoted to the relationship of two men who are nearly totally extraneous to the rest of the series is that the showrunners had an agenda other than furthering the series’s narrative. The title of this episode should have been “Love is Love.”
• Treating suicide like it’s romantic and beautiful, and assisted suicide like it’s anything other than murder is decidedly woke.

The Last of Us (Episode 4. Hold My Hand)

It’s back baby! Episode 4 has righted the ship and is back on track. It continues Joel and Ellie’s trek across the U.S. and is a tightly written piece of tension-building fiction. The duo has made it to Kansas City unscathed only to be set upon by a group of shoot-first ask-questions-later types, and now they have to find their way out of the city and away from the hunting parties within.

This episode shines thanks to sticking to the narrative but mostly thanks to finally showing the two protagonists beginning to bond and show emotions other than rage and snark. I found myself caring about the jump scares and the threats to the two for the first time since the series began. If the show can maintain this throughout the rest of the series, it will make it to the “Worth It” category. As it stands, it bumped our overall score pretty significantly after the irrelevant woke nothing-burger that was episode 3.

It’s not perfect though. Joel continues to make decisions that don’t make sense like needlessly leaving loaded shotguns and rifles lying around when his rifle is jammed and it would cost him nothing to pick one or both up. That’s to say nothing of not grabbing his pack before he makes a run for it. Also, the lead antagonist in this episode is completely unbelievable. She looks and sounds like a mousy mother from next door. The actress is completely out of her depth and I find it unlikely that the show will make me believe that a group of heavily armed men would follow her. One of the first decisions that she makes is to murder a physician out of anger. It appears that he knows some information that she wants and he is seemingly a traitor of some sort, but a schooled and skilled doctor would be worth their weight in gold in any post-apocalyptic world. The moment that it was found out that she offed him, her leadership would be challenged and she’d be dead. Hopefully, Joel and Ellie won’t spend more than the next episode in Kansas City and will move on to an antagonist that we can love to hate.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• Kathleen, played by Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets) is an antagonist that is original to the television series. Since she is a mousy-sounding, dumpy-looking mom-next-door-type with no visible leadership qualities who makes devastatingly stupid decisions based on emotion, the likelihood that ANYONE, let alone a group of heavily armed and armored men (in a world where “men just swing with their fists“), would follow her is less believable than the jock-itch zombies. If she was lucky, this group of murderers would be using her as a broodmare. The ONLY reason that her character exists is that someone behind the scenes said that “we need a strong independent woman to be in charge.” It has nothing to do with furthering the narrative or engaging the viewer in the fictional world.

The Last of Us (Episode 5. Endure and Survive)

Episode 5 of The Last of Us was a winner. It picks up immediately after Episode 4, and gives us the back story of why Kathleen is hellbent on finding Henry. I’ve got to admit, that it’s a fairly good reason. Regrettably, thanks to the woke casting of Melanie Lynskey, every moment spent with the resistance will drag you out of the episode. She is completely unbelievable as a leader of men, and most certainly a leader of armed insurrectionists with questionable ethics (as is demonstrated when they accept orders to murder a room full of unarmed collaborators without flinching). It’s more proof that the writers of this show don’t understand men at all and seem to only accidentally write Joel in a way that makes him identifiable as one. My fear is that, once Joel gets some breathing room and no longer needs to be in “protector mode,” they’ll start screwing him up.

However, everything else about the episode is tight and on point. There’s a nice level of tension throughout, just enough emotional interplay to deepen Joel and Ellie’s relationship, serving to give the audience more to root for, and a moment that will challenge you not to get misty. The episode also introduces Henry and his brother Sam, the two that Kathleen has been hunting since the previous episode. Sam gives Ellie a rare chance to remind us that she too is a child, and it makes her more likeable than she’s been so far. while Henry is a mirror for Joel and gives us an inkling of the heart that he’s hidden away for the last 20 years.

This episode is absolutely Worth It. It has (mostly) interesting and engaging characters, great pacing, and real and relatable consequences.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• I already dinged last week’s episode for Kathleen, so I’m not going to do it again for this one. However, it did affect my calculus on how much to raise the rating, because, otherwise, this episode doesn’t have much time for silly wokeness. So let’s talk more about Kathleen. I was holding out hope that my prediction for her from last week would turn out wrong. It did not. The actress, she’s not a bad one, is completely wrong for the role. She looks motherly and sounds mousy, and is too well-fed. I mean, this is a post-apocalyptic world with very few resources, it makes no sense for any character to be dumpy. It’s more evidence that the character was created for one purpose, to give someone behind the scenes an excuse to pat themselves on the back.
• Men, especially groups of men, especially groups of near-feral men, especially groups of well-armed near-feral men do not follow someone whom they don’t respect, and they don’t respect leaders who don’t threaten them. Also, Gandhi-like figures (Kathleen’s brother) don’t lead violent insurrections or violent insurrectionists.

The Last of Us (Episode 6. Kin)

There’s so little that actually happens in this episode that to mention any of it would be a spoiler. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t much of an entry. Many, especially those on the Left will no doubt laude it as brave and poignant because Joel cries, but I disagree (more details in the Woke Elements section below).  While it wasn’t terrible, it was rather boring. We’ve spent the entire season on a journey with these two and the payoff was nothing. I’m in for a penny, in for a pound now that I’ve committed to reviewing the series but, knowing what I know now, I would have skipped the whole thing.

Also, the only thing dumber than people in their late 30s still wearing noserings is people in their late 30s still wearing noserings after the apocalyptics.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• Ellie and Joel discuss astronauts, mentioning Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Jim Lovell. Guess who Ellie’s favorite astronaut is. Yup, it’s Sally Ride. Let me preface this by stating unequivocally that I’m not denigrating any of her accomplishments, or those of modern astronauts. I am saying that Armstrong, Aldrin, and Lovell are giants and that no modern astronauts of either gender are in the same universe as those guys. The only reason that Ellie loves her, and the only reason that Joel was able to guess that Ride was Ellie’s favorite is that the show’s writers have a boner for Ride because she was the first American to take a vagina into space. That’s it. Ride wasn’t even the first woman in space, it was Valentina Tereshkova.
• They make sure to awkwardly insert that the local worship house is mult-faith.
• This show absolutely loves girl bosses. I’m not going to rehash my thoughts on how unlikely female leaders would be in a post-apocalyptic world. You can read them in the other Woke Elements on this page. Suffice it to say that it would be rare in the extreme, but this show introduces a new one in nearly every episode.
• Of course, the utopian settlement is a communistic one. While it makes sense that a settlement of 300 people would all have to participate to survive, that’s not the same thing as Communism. Just like the random and awkward insertion of the multi-faith house of worship, the writers dropped this arbitrary bit of unsolicited info into its exposition dump, doing nothing to further the narrative.
• The show makes sure to highlight how the main 14-year-old girl character handles her menses. Why do we care about this? How does this further the plot in any way? Will the next episode be about Joel’s annual prostate exam?
• Joel is turned into a complete b!t@h in this episode and has to be schooled by the always calm and collected 14-year-old girl. Yes, he’s a broken man. He’s done things that haunt him, and the last few months have been stressful. However, his sudden cowardice does not fit the man that we’ve seen in this show so far. It’s one thing to experience some self-doubt and another to completely abdicate your responsibility because you are scared. The showrunners wouldn’t know a real man if one turned into fungus and bit them on the @$$.

The Last of Us (Episode 7. Left Behind)

As the season progresses, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the showrunners want Joel to take a secondary role in the series. He continues to wilt into the background, show weaknesses, and make boneheaded mistakes, while Ellie grows as a character, gets all of the good lines, and draws more focus with every episode.

Episode 7 is primarily one long flashback and, in what seems to be becoming a trend, is one that has more to do with showrunners’, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, desire to romanticize their sociopolitical beliefs and show that Ellie is gay, rather than further their show’s narrative, but at least (unlike the series’s last divergence) it has to do with one of the two leads.

The episode begins not long after the events of the previous one, and Ellie has managed to get the critically injured Joel to the basement of an abandoned house. Not long after, she begins to think back to the night that she was first bit.

Much like the Bill and Frank episode, this one is superbly acted, mostly by Bella Ramsey (Ellie), and is among the most emotionally fleshed-out episodes of the series. Also like Bill and Frank’s, this entry has virtually nothing to do with the series’ overall narrative. The entire series is predicated on us knowing that she’s been bitten by a shroom, so showing us the details of it doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t show us why she’s so determined to keep going, it adds nothing to the character or the mythos. It is meaningless unless you think that finding out the origin of her puns book is super important.

Unlike the Bill and Frank episode, Episode 7 is riddled with small but distracting contrivances, conveniences, and a lackluster and careless attention to detail. First, why does no one in a show in which all of humanity’s survival relies on guns know how to handle guns? They’re constantly flagging one another, handing loaded weapons to one another when there’s no immediate danger, and exhibiting painfully bad trigger discipline. Could HBO not spring for an expert to train and teach the actors how to properly handle firearms?

Next, there is no way that the uber-fascistic Fedra is going to provide Ellie, who is portrayed as a troublemaker on the verge of ruining her future with her lack of discipline, a functioning Walkman with tapes to use. If she already had it and was allowed to keep it, then there’s no way that she could find batteries for it. Alkaline batteries have a maximum shelf life of 10 years. That would mean that Fedra is manufacturing and providing her with batteries for recreational use, not happening.

Then there’s the fact that Ellie, who’s been raised in Fedra care and has been groomed daily for the entirety of her life to become a soldier for Fedra, doesn’t know how to shoot or properly handle a weapon. I was a 10-and-a-half-year-old boy who’d belonged to the Boy Scouts for a week when I went to a function at which we were taught, among other things, how to shoot rifles. But sure, Fedra is going to wait at least 14.5 years before going over even the basics with one of their cadets.

Toward the beginning of the episode, Ellie and her friend are sneaking around in the middle of the night inside Ellie’s closely monitored room, and they are incredibly loud. Then they sneak out of her room, make sure to mention how they need to watch out for patrols, and then proceed to nearly yell the entire time that they stomp down alleyways.

The second episode, the first one to take place in the show’s present makes a point to show the audience that surveillance helicopters fly over the QZ at all times of the day and night. Yet, now that these two need to be able to “sneak” over the tops of buildings and light up an entire glass-roofed mega-mall without being caught, there’s not one in the night sky.

There are several more of these examples, and they are stupid oversites that needlessly distracted from an already meaningless episode.

When it’s all said and done, this episode was thoughtful and touching, and a complete waste of time.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• While I’ve never played any of the games in the series, what I’ve read is that Ellie’s character is mostly in the way and a hindrance to Joel. However, in the series, between 4′ 10″ – 5′ 1″ 90+ pound Ellie continues to be a girl boss for reasons.
• The entire episode exists for the sole purpose of furthering a sociopolitical agenda. If the showrunners put half of the thoughtfulness and care into Joel and Ellie’s story as they do with every meaningless gay-for-gay-sake episode, this show would be mentioned in the same breath as series like The Wire and Breaking Bad. As it is, it almost seems like the rest of the series is incidental and only there to give the writers a chance to insert their true passion, gay agenda episodes.

The Last of Us (Episode 8. When We Are In Need)

There’s a lot to like in this episode. Joel is once again capable and dangerous, the season’s first frightening antagonist is introduced, and we get a single emotional moment expressed by Joel that is worth a damn.

Since the previous episode was almost entirely meaningless filler, this episode picks up within a matter of days after Joel was seriously injured. Ellie has patched him up the best that she could but he is still weak and barely conscious. With the two of them starving, Ellie takes it upon herself to go hunting for game. Unfortunately for her, she finds more than deer.

This was easily the most intense and impactful episode of the season that actually took place within the main story arc. The antagonists were realistic and frightening, the danger was palpable, and the payoff was rewarding. It’s unfortunate that there’s only one episode left, as it finally felt like the show had begun.

With that being said, it was far from a perfect episode. The showrunners are either unwilling or incapable of handling anything to do with guns accurately. Twice in this episode, large animals were hunted and shot without being field dressed. It wouldn’t be such a big oversite, except that the people who were hunting, were also starving, and there’s no way that, after 20 years of having to hunt for food, they don’t know that by not field dressing the kills, they are putting the meat in danger. Furthermore, the first of these animals was a large male deer that weighs in at an average of 200 lbs, and the second is a horse that weighs upwards of 2,000 lbs. Each one of them had to be dragged four to five miles by hand over rough terrain. Dressing them would have reduced the load significantly.

Attention to details like the aforementioned hunting faux pas are peppered throughout the series, and in this episode, we are hit with another. On two occasions, we are treated to seeing the bloated and red wound on Joel’s abdomen, and each time we can see the seam where the prosthetic meets his actual abdomen. Little things like that ruin the illusion and rip one out of the moment.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• I’ve never had a problem with Ellie being tough and flippant during hard times. In fact, I think that it makes sense given the details of her environment and upbringing. I do have a problem with the fact that even though her character was ostensibly taught nothing of value in relation to surviving in her environment, she is exactly as capable as the script calls for on any given day. They made a big deal about showing us what a lousy shot she was, but after a week of travel, she’s suddenly a crack shot. She’s never seen a horse, but after a week as a passenger on one, she can ride like the wind. It would have cost the writers nothing to have put a breadcrumb or two previous scripts that would have made it make sense for her to know these things. Instead, she’s just awesome so she has to behave awesomely.
• We get our first devout Christians in the series…and they are a cult led by a rapist pedophile who is also a psychopathic cannibal…and white with light hair and blue eyes.

The Last of Us (Episode 9. Look for The Light)

The final episode of The Last of Us (season 1), has come and gone. Rather than a full episode that brings the rest of the series home, it feels like more of an epilogue. It’s not a particularly satisfying ending and it didn’t leave me wanting more.

Virtually nothing happens in it. There was a very tense and exciting opening, which ended up being Ellie’s origin story. Joel exposits for a time, and a huge hammer is dropped. I really can’t talk about what happens in the episode’s final act without spoiling it. Suffice it to say, that the story that we spent 9 weeks watching comes to an end. If you’ve put the time in to watch the other episodes of the season, you won’t be disappointed with this one, but I doubt that you’ll be motivated to watch season 2.

WOKE ELEMENTS

None.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE LAST OF US (season 1)

The Last of Us is a spiritual journey of one man in the guise of a zombie apocalypse show. It features some wonderful set pieces and one or two touching moments. However, it is short on excitement and even shallower on narrative. Ultimately, the entire series could have made for an interesting feature-length film but was instead too little butter spread over too much toast.