The Last of Us on HBO...

[K Frame]

Anyone watch the premier last night?

It was really good, but some areas were quite confusing in trying to slot into the general overall plot.

It's based on a very well reviewed and wildly popular game for the Sony Play Station. Unfortunately it's never been ported over to Xbox, but that's neither here nor there.

In a lot of ways it reminded me strongly of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead the way some of the plot lines developed. I think it has a lot of potential so I'm going to keep watching.

[Ben]

I am just finishing a Game of Thrones rewatch binge (thanks to crappy weather and APS being down) but have this on my list for this week. I'm glad to hear that it sounds good. These days, the woke really know how to *expletive deleted*ck up good stuff, and I was afraid of that for TLOU.

[K Frame]

So far it doesn't seem to be all that woke.

Main male character is Hispanic, and his daughter looks to be Hispanic/African American (but with the last name Miller), but lots of white devils, both good and bad, in the cast.

Lots of strong female character, but no trans poster children, no birth givers with penises, no 982 genders rolled into one... so far...

[AZRedhawk44]

Can someone explain the plot of TLOU to me?  I kinda got the impression that the game was an attempt to port Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" to a game.  Is it deeper than that, or is it just another zombie game?  I'm getting a circular vibe of Liam Neeson's "The Road" to TLOU on playstation to TLOU on HBO.

[MechAg94]

So far it doesn't seem to be all that woke.

Main male character is Hispanic, and his daughter looks to be Hispanic/African American (but with the last name Miller), but lots of white devils, both good and bad, in the cast.

Lots of strong female character, but no trans poster children, no birth givers with penises, no 982 genders rolled into one... so far...

I have heard the same from some, but others just say the wokeness is more subtle.  Women in charge of everything and the dead daughter is a lesbian.  I haven't watched it.  Just seeing mixed reviews.  Some like it, others less so.  Hard to judge that until full season is out.

[K Frame]

Can someone explain the plot of TLOU to me?  I kinda got the impression that the game was an attempt to port Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" to a game.  Is it deeper than that, or is it just another zombie game?  I'm getting a circular vibe of Liam Neeson's "The Road" to TLOU on playstation to TLOU on HBO.

Fungal plague turns people into monsters.

Civilization largely collapses.

Survivors coalesce in cities. Last of us starts in Texas, IIRC, but 20 years after the start of the plague the main characters are now in Boston Quarantine Zone.

One of the characters is infected, but it doesn't kill her. She's the hope for mankind. She needs to get across the country to where another QZ is performing research on a cure.

End episode one.

[K Frame]

I have heard the same from some, but others just say the wokeness is more subtle.  Women in charge of everything and the dead daughter is a lesbian.  I haven't watched it.  Just seeing mixed reviews.  Some like it, others less so.  Hard to judge that until full season is out.

OK.... that's.... a real stretch.

Dead daughter a lesbian? How in the holy hell did they ever come up with that assessment?

[Ben]

I just watched episode 2. I was thinking I would like it while watching episode 1, but wasn't sure. Now I'm sure. Good show. If "believable" is the right word, the plotline so far is more believable than The Walking Dead. Also better infected, who seem scarier and much harder to kill.

We'll need a "What caliber for The Last of Us Infected" thread. Other than capacity, I'm almost ready to go with shotgun. It looks like you need multiple head shots with 5.56. One of them was still running around with a hatchet buried in its head.

[K Frame]

Yeah, I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm really enjoying the interplay between the characters.

[K Frame]

Hum...

Just watched the third episode.

HBO got the "loving same sex couple brought together by the adversity of the end of the world" all tied up nice and neat by devoting about 85% of the episode to it.

And it felt as if it made absolutely NOT ONE BIT OF SENSE to the flow of the story!

What next, a band of transgender/transexual raiders pursue Joel and Ellie halfway across the country because our hero didn't acknowledge their proper pronouns?

[Ben]

Yeah, that was worthless. It's not even just the gayzor stuff, but it would have been a waste with a hetero couple as well. Of course they wouldn't have done "love story" with a hetero couple.

I agree - absolutely zero to do with the story, and they made it the majority of the episode.

[K Frame]

I was talking to a friend of mine about it. He and his wife both loved it.

I was bitching about it being a complete boat anchor to the overall store -- just stopped it in its tracks.

He said that it was the show expanding to show how the outbreak affected other people.

That's very true, but it could have been easily woven into the overall story in a FAR more productive manner that allowed Bill and Frank to interact with Joel and Ellie in a manner that actually MOVED the story forward.

Yes, it was an interesting story line. Offerman is an incredible actor, but they completely screwed over his appearance by making it a dead-end vignette that did absolutely NOTHING to move the story.

He pointed out Ibu Ratna from the previous episode.

I countered that Ibu Ratna's character moved the whole story farther forward in 7 minutes than the Bill and Frank story did, and it took up 70% of the entire show.

I would have been very interested to have seen some time devoted to the black woman and her baby who got on the army truck as the town was evacuated. They're the ones whose bones Ellie saw in the ditch outside of the town.


Overall, an extremely disappointing episode, not from a content standpoint, but from a story development standpoint.

I just hope that they don't decide to do that again. That would be lazy writing, the same way that The Walking Dead's writers got REALLY lazy and just resurrected the same damned plot line over and over:

10 heroes emerge
20 hero group coalesces
30 hero group finds sanctuary
40 sanctuary collapses
50 hero group scrambles for their lives
60 go to 10, rinse and repeat ad infinitum

And let's not forget the subroutine that hero group never, ever learns a goddamned thing.

Walking through the dense woods several years AFTER the apocalypse? Everyone look straight forward, have ZERO situational awareness, and make a TON of noise. Then act surprised when zombies start eating your group.

[Ben]

I just hope that they don't decide to do that again. That would be lazy writing, the same way that The Walking Dead's writers got REALLY lazy and just resurrected the same damned plot line over and over:

I was perusing review sites where things seem to be running: Individuals, 70% hated it, professional reviewers, 100% loved it.

Anyway, one of the sites that loved it said that they couldn't wait for an upcoming episode where they do in fact do it all over again, except it's a flashback with 14 year old Ellie regarding her gay love affair in school.

It's not just that they shove this crap down our throats, it's that they also do the opposite with hetero relationships. Almost all the streaming services now treat hetero relationships like they're brother and sister, or else like 1950s TV shows, where they showed the separate beds in the married couple's bedroom. All while doing completely unnecessary explicit love scenes with the gays.

Nobody wants to watch two naked old men going at it in the bed. They would never show a naked old man and woman doing it. They could have cut all that out, with another 30 minutes as well, and still told that subplot.

[K Frame]

"I was perusing review sites where things seem to be running: Individuals, 70% hated it, professional reviewers, 100% loved it."

Not surprising.

[K Frame]

I will say one choice by the episode's writer was absolutely brilliant -- choosing Linda Ronstadt's Long Long Time as the music to the episode.

One of the most incredibly heartfelt songs ever recorded. I remember hearing it for the first time in the 1970s when I was a kid and knowing it was special as hell back then.

[K Frame]

Well, LoU is certainly back on course after last week's boat anchor!

One scene was absolutely hysterical.

A couple of scenes made me thing "WTF is he being that incredibly stupid?"

[Ben]

Episode three apparently soured me enough that while episode 4 was better, I didn't like it as much as episode two. I did laugh at the comedy - that was pretty good. Also the general interaction between Joel and Ellie. I did not like the leader of the city people. She reminded me too much of the most arrogantly stupid women on the Walking Dead.

I also started doing "Walking Dead" criticisms. Like (and admittedly, it was the setup to the episode) driving through the middle of the city when there had to be another way around the interstate blockage. Also why he didn't have a bugout bag (Ellie did) and left everything behind in the truck except his stupid bolt action rifle. He left his AR behind in the last episode, stating ammo was too hard to find, but he hit the jackpot of multiple ARs and thousands of rounds of ammo at the homo hangout. Yet he left there with just the bolt gun. Also, everybody in the city was walking around with ARs.

[K Frame]

You and I are completely tracking on our critical eye of the problems with the plots in the various episodes.

And is it my imagination, or does Bella Ramsay look like an 80 year old child?

She has the weirdest features.

[Ben]

I just saw an interview snippet with Bella Ramsey where she said that us homophobes better "get use to it" because the series and game are LGQVBGFHJRTT% and trans oriented and there's gonna be a lot more of it.

I've never played the game, so I don't know if it is a "trans and queer" game, but if they are going to make the series queer and trans oriented, then I don't care how good any storylines are, I don't want their social politics shoved down my throat. I haven't watched episode 5 yet, but am already on the fence about it. If they continue turning it into a reeducation camp film, I've got no time for them.

[WLJ]

Never played the game but I remember seeing people complaining about the 2nd game getting a bit queer if you catch my drift

[MechAg94]

I never played the game either, but it was a big story among the youtubers I watch last year in 2020.  Part of the story is the plot of the game leaked a bit before the game was released and most of the leaks were true.  The Critical Drinker had a video or two about it but this may not be the right one.  Still about the same company.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6f6mmuh_04   
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Spoilers:
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Supposedly in the 2nd game a big roided up lesbian shows up and kills the main male character with a golf club and it becomes a revenge game where the girl (who is gay now) goes on a revenge spree to kill the lesbian, but decides not to in the end.  The game forces you to play from the perspective of the angry lesbian after that.  Ticked off a lot of people. 
There are game play throughs on youtube if you want to go look. 

[K Frame]

I thought episode 5 was pretty excellent.

[zxcvbob]

I just watched episode 1.  Boy, those are long episodes -- about an hour but felt like at least an hour and a half. I don't see how anyone could binge-watch it.  It's good, at least so far.  I'll watch another one tomorrow.

Fungal or parasite infection turning people into zombies is not that far-fetched.  I don't think they would be fast zombies, though.   They also didn't explain how the infection went from nothing to widespread all at once.  That's not how epidemics work, unless maybe it was a biological warfare agent that was deliberately broadcast.  Maybe they go into that in a later episode. (if so, don't spoil it)

[K Frame]

"They also didn't explain how the infection went from nothing to widespread all at once."

Keep watching. That's alluded to in several subsequent episodes.

[zxcvbob]

I guess I won't be watching it.  Only the first episode is free unless I subscribe to HBO Max.  I thought it was included with my cable subscription.