• Fairly slow start, but also intense. Watching Ellie take care of Joel, spoon water into his mouth, leave him food… ugh, it was so heartbreaking. Her sleeping next to him while he moved his head against hers gave me a lump.

I liked how they kept the creepy pedophile aspect of David just simmering beneath the surface until it finally comes out at the end before Ellie kills him. It’s the best kind of reveal - the one that reframes everything you’ve seen him do up to that point, from his behavior towards the girl whose father died, to his…

Ellie doesn’t need an incredible sense of direction not to get lost. She had footprints in the snow. The same way the group managed to track her down so easily.

That first scene of Ellie jogging in the gym was VERY Jodie Foster in the opening titles of Silence of the Lambs.

The obsession with advancing the story is really weird for those of us who grew up in an era when most TV shows just hit the reset button every episode. You can enjoy things besides plotlines!

They did such a good job building a sense of dread in this episode. We already know what’s going to happen so I spent half the episode looking in the background for any sign of movement from that Clicker.

Was it just me, or did the masked man with the dog in the posse that surrounded them look like Troy Baker?

It’s cool and all, but why would bloaters want to kill people? Isn’t the whole point of the fungus people to spread the fungus? What good does killing people do for this goal? They aren’t really zombies, so dead people are useless to them.

There’s one theme I’m missing in all the reviews this week: “What is a child worth?” and of course the different answers of Henry (everything) and Kathleen (nothing, because everybody dies). And after losing one child already, it’s of course a big deal for Joel, too.

With Kathleen’s old childhood room and the…

Easily B+ or A- for me, I didn’t think there was any padding whatsoever. Loved it.

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…

I liked how Ellie’s attempt at healing Sam was very much along the lines of kid thinking. The people trying to smuggle must have kept telling her that her blood was the key to a cure and she naively extended that smearing her blood on Sam’s wound.

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’.

Wasn’t the implication that the infected focus on areas where people are? If people started bunching up in rural areas, seems like the infected would follow them there eventually.

No point in reviewing a show that just going to get cancelled after 2-60 seasons anyway.

Seriously. I just noted that above. I love and know the games well, but there’s literally millions of viewers who don’t even know it’s based on a game, let alone the games’ plots. This is all new for the vast majority of viewers and dropping spoilers like that is bullshit.

For the most part, I enjoyed this recap/review. But what is it about the writers on this site and their desire to review a different show than the one that aired?

Am I an outlier for wishing we got actual episode reviews instead of just beat for beat recaps?

Excellent plot blow-by-blow plot summary, as with last week. Where is the review?

This recap is a step-up from last week, especially the first third. But by the middle it gets too bogged down in a beat-by-beat retell. I think you’re at your best when you summarize instead of recount every step, and do so within the context of analysis, instead of offering up the analysis at the end of a sequence.