Every episode of this show delivers, but it goes way beyond that for those that played the games. So much of the show matches the story beats and character arcs from the game, and it really underscores just how masterful a job was done telling that story in the game.

Well, the show certainly raised my bloodlust sky high. If I were Ellie, I would have stabbed him a bunch more times. They kept increasing David’s pure evilness. First he’s a violent, narcissistic authoritarian, then a cannibal, then a pedophile. (Real world priests and authority figures are usually two out of three of…

So the warning of “brief nudity” in the parental guide notes was the decapitated human dead hanging upside down in the shed. Who said irony was dead?

This episode was absolutely brutal, but I really enjoyed it. I give The Last of Us a lot of credit for not sugarcoating its violence. The physical and emotional consequences of this level of brutality feel real.

As someone who worked on it... I’m happy you finally gave it a real chance and got some enjoyment out of it. :)

Ramsey and Reid (sounds like a law firm) were both great. They’ve really done a great job through the writing, directing and acting of showing teenagers as teenagers without veering into making them too dumb or annoying like so many shows do. Yes, they’re impulsive and Ellie definitely is purposefully annoying to push…

What a cynical way to look at things, lol.

I disagree with you there on the second half, there’s legitimate reasons lgbtq groups dont want people to give money to someone who is openly funding hate campaigns against them.

Yeah, what a blatant ad for a game that came out 30 years ago...

Mortal Kombat’s huge impact is far more likely to ignite some sort of emotional response from TV viewers than a fake game that is mentioned a couple times on a videogame they probably didn’t play.

this episode is for the heart my sweetie. Ellie has known a real loss. loss of a future with Riley and a loss of a past childhood she was never given. Her vulnerability towards Joel feels much deeper.

I mean, I ... get it? In translating to a visual medium, unless the game itself had them showing you what Ellie was seeing in her head as an actual video game — it’s probably cheaper to license a game and have them play it.

beautiful episode, I enjoy the post-civilization kids reminding us that there’s a lot of wonder in the world we built. two story-lines with queer characters where they get to choose how to bury themselves when death does come knocking.

In that case, the one big change is that in the game, all the arcade games are broken, and Riley has Ellie close her eyes and talks her through imagining playing it, creating much more intimacy between them. I have no idea why they changed it, as needing to get the game footage probably just made it harder to film.…

Yeah no, it was a cute scene that didn’t feel like an ad, more like nostalgic food for 90's kids.

This feels like a blatant over reaction.

This show’s production reminds me of Roger Ebert’s line about Kermit the Frog riding a bicycle: I don’t want to know how they did it, I prefer to think it’s just real.

Good grief, props to the set design. That was exceptional. No Orange Julius or Cinnabon kind of shattered the verisimilitude but hey we’ll let that go.

I will say — having not played the games, I was expecting this backstory to be muuuuuuuuch worse than what we saw. It was still rough, but really only out of a sense of angst knowing how it was going to end.

Exactly. In the context of the show, Bill and Frank had the happiest possible ending: dying on their own terms, in their own bed, at an old age, in eachother’s arms, after one last perfect day together.

“By the scenes where Frank is symptomatic they are in their late 40s”