Exactly. It’s not hopping on some trend. It’s telling a story that it told a decade before the current “trend” even started.

This entire article is framing this as if TLoU didn’t do this story back in 2013.  Huge swaths of this episode (and the series) are straight form the game, and aside from seeing the men and women of the community, this is maybe the closest the show has hewn to the game.

I’d rate this higher than a C+, I think. The writers’ intent wasn’t to wow with something new, but just go back to these very likable characters doing their thing. The episode was a setup for the main mystery and it did its job. Given how well researched The Knick seemed to be, I wonder if the supermarket layout stuff…

I’m not sure if you’ve played the games or not, but the character work they’re doing is essential, not ‘padding’. TLOU was never a Walking Dead-style hordes of zombies game (or show), the heroes’ relationship is the reason it exists, and it’s also as much about evil humans as it is about the infected. I’m really…

Seriously, where was the padding? The author complains nothing happened in the tunnels but that’s where the characters bonded. It was absolutely essential to the story. Without it there was no point whatsoever. And it was a subversion of expectations after the scene of the bulging floor last week, you definitely…

I would say there’s a payoff. This might be subjective, but for me the Last of Us has managed to do what Game of Thrones never quite did. It manages to make the human drama feel real and important and dangerous, and then reminds you how meaningless it is in the face of something bigger.

I’m the first one to call out an episode, or a whole show for being painfully plodding (Mayfair Witches and The Watchful Eye are two shows that I’m rapidly growing impatient with), but, to me, this episode did not feel like it was ‘dawdling’.

All this talk and it still just boils down to the oldest excuse in the book: “Maybe if this minority group had shut up and never stood up for themselves, people wouldn’t hate them.” Victim blaming is so damn lazy. Do better.

I think what they’re getting at is something that has been being discussed recently, which is the Left’s lack of a “pipeline” for finding politically and socially-disengaged people, and educating them.

Counterpoint: If a trans person honestly tells you they’re a man or woman, then accept it. Accept them.

Of course the performatively centrist take still lands on the side that trans people and supporters are the problem. Weird how that always happens.

- You thought Tess and Joel’s relationship was vague? They were absolutely lovers. I felt more like they were lovers in the show than in the game. Her line before she died, “never even asked you to feel the same” (or something close) made it clear they were physically intimate, and she wanted to be emotionally…

I think we should wait until her story’s complete before coming down one way or another on her performance. It seems highly unlikely that we’re going to be seeing her for the whole season, particularly with how this episode ended it has more of the feel of “Part 1 of 2" than anything. Don’t get locked into a stance…

I think one of the themes of the episode is that when people lose everything, they still reach for the closest match for what they used to have (hence the reference in the title of the episode: “Alone and forsaken by fate and by man / Oh Lord, if you hear me, please hold to my hand”), so maybe the idea is that…

Melanie Lynskey’s career literally started with her being an unknown cast in Heavenly Creatures because she conveyed this rare quality of being unassuming on the surface and being able to convey dark thoughts and energy underneath that 

It was unambiguously an ambush in the game.

“I don’t know if Joel and Ellie were ambushed by those guys. They seemed genuinely angry that Joel was firing on them; I think he started it.”

I always think Lynskey’s power as an actor is in her ability to evoke a lot of darkness below what may seem an unassuming surface. she seems to make sense as a leader, someone with a foot in the old world of things and in the new.

“I was never afraid before you showed up.” That line delivery will go in the history books. Just fucking sublime.

Don’t forget about his first acting role, as a drunk naked guy jerking off in Deadwood!