Episode 4 - “Please Hold To My Hand” | The Last of Us Podcast | HBO Max

foreign first time that you hurt someone like that if you uh when I'm not good at this yeah you really aren't I mean it was my fault you shouldn't have had to and I'm sorry [Music] welcome to the official podcast for HBO's The Last of Us I'm your host Troy Baker joining me now Craig Mason good to be back Troy and Neil druckman hello Troy Baker today we're going to be discussing episode 4 titled please hold to my hand so that's a lyric from uh alone and forsaken I mean that's that's a carryover from the game we get alone and forsaken yeah played in the truck yep on the tape well he's got a gun and what I loved is that we take a moment to show she's really Adept at it like she she knows how to chamber around she knows how to do a MAG reload like she's she's really good infatuated with it yeah yeah yeah she smells it what what is her fascination with guns what is that I think it's the power and I think it's just well for one again she she looks to the people that are survivors the ones that are capable in this world and they have the power to kill the questions she asked Joel are often around what was it like to kill what was it like to shoot what was it like to do these things it's almost like she's preparing herself and again she doesn't want to be in a situation where Joel's going to have to save her she wants to hold her own and she wants to demonstrate that she can hold her own this is not a device or a weapon of protection but it's a weapon of attack it's something it's an offensive weapon yeah she's not she's not obsessed with a gun or owning a gun because she's afraid for her life she was obsessed with it because she wants to walk the path of power the way somebody like Joel does when she sees Joel beating a man to death at the end of our first episode what she is experiencing inside of herself along with a kind of inevitable revulsion and fear and shock is aspiration because that's what she wants to be able to do I mean this is a man that was coming at them with a very big gun and Joel defeats him with violence and Ellie we don't yet understand how she became infected we haven't heard that full story but I think it's probably safe to say that it was violent and perhaps if she had had a gun if she had been more prepared or had more of a position of power she could have prevented it from happening there's there's two cool things that are kind of nods to the game in this first there's the siphoning of the gas which is something that in the game bill as we're leaving him throws us um a siphon and says you'd be surprised at how many cars out there still have gas and now we also have the pun book no pun intended volume two but we'll Livingston volume two look you get it two like t-o what did the mermaid where did her math class and ouchy bra like how cheap I loved it I mean I remember in the game being shocked that the game was suddenly offering me this thing that had no benefit for the game at all that's what I loved about it that it was just gratuitous and yet lovely and human it was it was sort of like saying hey you know what you don't have to be eyes in the back of your head or getting ready to run or shoot at every moment you can take the time to stop look around experience the beauty of the world that's created but what I also love about it and why it was it was essential to include in the show is that it undercuts this thing that happens when adults write kids they they either write them too young or too old and there's this stage of life uh my friend Scott Frank had the best description of it ever I was talking to him about my kids as they were going through that age and he said I call that time of life [ __ ] you tuck me in they are ready to go out on their own they want a gun they want to be in charge they think they know everything also they're still children and I love how Ellie has this joy for something so Juvenile and infantile and stupid and she knows it's stupid but she loves it it's honest joy and I always find myself connecting to characters when they show me what they love and Pedro's reaction is amazing but I think one of the things that Neil and I kind of as we were talking about including it it became a place where we thought you know given that it's not something that just emerges dynamically and goes away when you're pausing on the stick in the game what can we do with this joke book that comments on their relationship as it changes man and there's so much about it too because in her backpack she has a pun book and a weapon yes and it's so funny [ __ ] you tuck me in it's this cool opportunity that we show that these things are getting mixed up yeah you could see their relationship or they're organically connecting with each other whereas before it's like they have to be very thoughtful and like try like they've been trying and now they don't they don't have to try anymore it's just it's now it's happening this is also the first moment where Joel talks I mean obviously Joel is speaking for the first three episodes but he doesn't go on at length and they are driving in the car and she asks him about Tommy since that's where he wants to go and he talks for a really long time and I just love that notion that Joel doesn't even realize that it's happening it just is happening it's happening despite himself despite himself but also after the prompt you know it's a long story this is where I shut it down and she goes is it longer than 25 hours yeah we got what I thought was interesting about this was a he's talking a lot which in and of itself is interesting B he is giving some context that creates threads that we will be able to pull on and expand on later and also at the very end of it when Ellie is pushing him and saying how do you know you're going to find him uh what if you don't and he says I will how do you know I'm persistent and Ellie has this little smile on her face because she loves that that's what she aspires to that's what she is that's what she is it's persistence is the thing that that connects the two of them the thing that stuck out to me most when he's discussing this whole thing about Tommy and he kind of glosses over this he says that there have been people that I attached to that I try to keep alive and I don't do a good job of it that's one side of the coin and the other side of the coin is Joel has a certain narcissism that he must go save Tommy there's almost a resentment I gotta go save him again in the first episode Tommy calls him from jail and he's like I gotta go bail him out goddamn [ __ ] idiot there's this thing of like I've got to go do my job and be the guy but Joel loves being the guy right and who am I if I'm not the guy exactly exactly it's part of his identity even as he's pretending to complain about it this the way that in our last episode bill says to Frankie or my purpose this is Joel's purpose he has to have somebody to save there is another thing that he says to Ellie in this conversation he's talking about family There's Hope for the world the world I bothered going on right seeing the world so you don't know you keep going for family that's about it I'm not family no your cargo but I made a promise to Tess and she was like family he says it dispassionately hmm but why why is wise because that's what he wants to be true yeah for whose benefit is he saying it for himself or for her for his hmm it's I mean what what is the alternative to say you you are family I actually am starting to care about you you're filling a place in my heart that I thought I had closed off completely and by filling it in my heart you are opening me up to experience the greatest pain I've ever felt a pain I swear to myself I would never feel again or he can say yeah no you're not family you're a job I was given you by Marlene I'm delivering you and I'll drop you off with the fireflies he's not gonna say I've already murdered for you yeah exactly um he's he and and I think if he had said too much Ellie would have been probably a bit shocked and put off I like that that she takes it in stride too this will happen again in later episodes we are going to see how she also is not quite ready to be like you and me buddy it's us and he's one from people that knows like he's still holding quite a bit of Secrets they're both holding like secrets from each other so as much as he's chatting he's not chatting about everything he's not talking about Sarah for example right right and and there's a lot she's omitting right which is you know that is something that I think we talked a lot about it in terms of adaptation Ellie was a bit of an open book in the game and we thought it was important for Ellie to have a couple of secrets that she was holding back that were a bit darker and a bit creepier and a bit scarier where are we Kansas City how far back do we have to go to get around this one glaring question for me would be maybe it's me being a nerd and having familiarity with the game but why Kansas City Craig hates Pittsburgh with a passion I'm so sorry Joe manganello um no I love Pittsburgh but really what it came down to is the pittsburghness of Pittsburgh wasn't necessarily important and we had certain environments we knew we could shoot in because we were shooting in Alberta largely around Calgary a little bit in Edmonton and it looked closer to Kansas City it was just literally I think came down to that it was just harder to manufacture Pittsburgh in that place there's also something um we talked about distances and where we want them to be on the journey at a certain time of the year right because where the story's going and we wanted that moment to be closer to the next beat which we won't spoil um or just like we're looking at the map in Pittsburgh it was like oh that was much further away so if this beat happened here there'd be a lot more that happens between the next beat so it's just one of those things that um I refer to as a superficial change yeah because what city you're in is not important what happened to the characters and the choices they make in that City that's what's really important so to me the thing that I liked about it being Kansas City is it made it believable that they would open up and they would talk to each other right it made it believable that they were more comfortable because what we are going to get into with this is we have this Ambush that happens which was almost one for one if you've played the game it was great help please help me hey please help seat belt on are we gonna help him no this attack happens from all these people you we realize that we are what we literally drove right into an ambush and then we meet Brian right no no no no it's okay it's okay it's over we're not fighting anymore I'm gonna go home I'll tell everyone you're good my mom isn't far if you can get me to her we can trade with you guys we could be friends I didn't know I'm Brian I'm Brian what's your name humanize the enemy yeah where did this come I mean I good god well in part I think it was getting under the skin of people that you think are just bad with a capital B and it was also a chance to ground violence because in the gaming experience violence very quickly becomes sort of just noise you're killing a gazillion people lots of monsters and here not so much and it was important I think for us tonally to make it clear that violence isn't clean and the people that you hurt are as human As You Are and Ellie who had had this excited thing with this gun and who had shown violent impulses is really struck to her core by what's happened here and Neil has put his finger on the most important thing which is that Joel is almost is angry but why would he be angry at her he's angry at her because he's angry at himself because he didn't hear that guy coming because he was losing because he had just given this big monologue about what a savior he is and once again he would have died without her Bingo it's interesting both characters we had a lot of conversations about what this moment means and how what should their reaction be and they should be comforting each other they just survived this thing and instead like Ellie is feeling like fearful and shame like that she's she's about to cry and I think it's it bothers her more she's about to cry than what this this Joel's about to do to this man you know often in this genre like a character like Ellie would symbolize the Innocence that still exists in this world and in this moment when the guy's begging for his own life Ellie would be arguing for that guy on that guy's behalf like what if we left him alone what if we what if we saved him and she does none of that she understands what needs to happen and she walks away and lets it happen and her thought process is I feel sad for him so I must be weak right hmm right how did Joel how did he kill Brian he stabs him right in the chest I was expecting to hear a gunshot and I didn't and it was it was something that I loved uh when I played the game for the first time which was how scarce ammunition was it made me scared also it's loud why why draw attention to yourself there's already been gunfire why why throw one more bullet on there someone's gonna come looking for this kid another face that we get to meet which was such a surprise is Melanie lynskey yeah this is Henry's work understand and he won't stop until we stop him find who did this find every collaborator and Kill Them All how did that come to be like this is a this is a new character this is yes we're completely infusing a new character into our story where did this come from the show affords us the ability to leave John Ellie and flesh out other characters in different ways and the best thing I think you could do in The Last of Us is flesh out your antagonism to show that there's motivation behind what they're doing they don't see themselves as villains or the bad guys we're just at odds with each other because our goals somehow overlap what we want which are different things so to leave Joel Nelly and focus on Kathleen and put a face to this resistance that has taken over the quarantine Zone from fedra um made them more interesting and made the the fact that like Joel and Ellie and this other group are barreling towards each other like you're kind of cringing just wanting to avoid this conflict between these two groups Humanity probably will not in a post-apocalyptic world descend into a Mad Max style we're just 80 people that love killing it's not what happens right what happens instead is we're 80 people who love each other because we're family we're friends we're neighbors that love means we must protect ourselves and our stuff and stay alive at any cost which means anybody that gets in that way of that needs to be uh taken out and Joel himself right was once one of those people that's how he knows that the guy saying help me is not really hurt it's um they're they're being conned it's a hustle it's a setup it's one of my favorite lines from the game which is when they're and I love that it happened kind of in the same places how did you know about that yeah this guy been on both I've been on both sides and she says did you kill innocent people and he gives her this look the we it's we I can't describe it it's guilty it's confessional but it's almost like please don't make me answer it to me is you don't want to know me the answer yeah you don't really want to know the answer and don't make me please don't make me say it and she understands in that moment what the truth is so we have this character Kathleen who we understand is suffering when we meet her She's suffering even though she's the one with the gun in her hand I wonder if this is the cell where my brother was beaten to death oh you were wronged and I'm sorry this is gone too far to stop it has to stop now you mean now that you're in the cell but before people dying was okay when you were safe and protected and ratting on your neighbor's Defender they put a gun to my head have I satisfied the necessary conditions for you to talk she's aiming it at this man's face not just any man her doctor who delivered her the man who delivered her so we have a character who must be a little bit like Madame defars from A Tale of Two Cities like this revolutionary who quietly becomes a terror and who does horrible things in service of that Revolution but also at the same time is somebody that we can empathize with and feel for because she has suffered now that's a tough thing to pull off the name that we kind of landed on pretty early was was Melanie and I've been friends with Melanie for many years but you know you can be friends with people doesn't mean they're going to do your thing so I sent her this so I was like look I'm just going to describe this character but I I need you to know please if there's even one percent of you it is like I don't want to do it I'm okay with it I don't I you know it's an awful thing to think like we won't really be very good friends anymore if you say no so I gave her every possible out I could give her and and she agreed to do it it feels like the character was created for her there's there's something I understand why she was put in charge she doesn't look comfortable with a gun in her hand until she shoots it right um and then she has this Lieutenant uh a familiar face well to you funny as familiar face as a friend a familiar voice but definitely not a familiar face because my God he went all hour speaking of course of Jeffrey Pierce Jeffrey Pierce who voiced Tommy Joel's brother in the game plays a very different character in our show Jeffrey Pierce plays Perry who is Kathleen's revolutionary right-hand man there's some tension between the two of them because I felt from him you're not doing a good job of leading us we need to tell people that there's let me show you something that's happening down here and we see this the the pavement is beginning to peel up there's something happening we don't know what it is something happening Underground we tell the others not yet let's just handle what we have to handle we can deal with this after after seal off the building for now okay yeah when there's this hesitation from Perry that's like that's the wrong move I know it's the wrong move but I'll know my place I'll stay in my Lane yeah he did such I mean Jeffrey that's a tough character to play and Jeffrey did a brilliant job because he believes in her he follows her but he is also far more moral than she is and she it's sort of this is the thing sometimes the person who's leading needs to be the person who has the least reluctance that's why they lead you to victory he's not as interested in her pursuit of vengeance which is a function of her love but he'll follow her despite it he will follow her despite it but he is she's Bill and he's Frank and we can do this all throughout the series but there's also something interesting with the two of them like like parents that have certain knowledge and decide when do we withhold information from our kids right and when do we lie to them and when do we tell them the truth right which is also a theme that will keep coming up in this show of like this idea of trust and I know better than you and right so this moment where she's like do not tell them because they're not ready to hear this right now I will decide what they should know or not know as a parent I want to know why does Perry follow Kathleen no it's important you're asking the question because it means you are correctly confused cool or at least you are correctly mystified it was important for us for the audience to wonder why why why is he following her what is so compelling there um all I can tell you is keep watching the show typically you would not cast Melanie in this role because she does have like there's a sweetness to her yes that makes this role that much more interesting yes a maternal softness yeah yeah because you you get the feeling that this person's not designed to be angry so if they are what made them like that and what are they capable of doing they're out of food Henry won't let Sam starve double the guards around our Provisions he's [ __ ] close I can feel it yeah there's somebody out there named Henry we don't know who he is right we know that they're looking for him we know that there's another that Henry has a brother named Sam we don't know why they're important we just know that Kathleen is ready to throw the entire revolutionary Army out there to find them and bring them to some sort of Justice while Joel and Ellie are hiding from all those trucks they have a moment where Ellie asks him if he's doing okay are you okay I'm all right are you all right yeah and that rattles him because that is a complete violation of who he feels he needs to be which is the guy that nobody needs to worry if he's okay I think he says I didn't hear that guy coming he realizes oh my God this child just basically killed somebody for the first time and all I've been doing is being grouchy and he tries to comfort her he's not good at it he admits that the best he can he does the best he can and then she tells him that wasn't my first time yes and so we are left wondering what was the first time but what's interesting is Joel at this moment decides I'm not going to push that instead I'm going to reward her with the gun because I trust now I am going to show her that I trust and he gives her the gun and this is the most father-daughter moment they've had finger off the trigger now who taught you that said your school figures thumb over your thumb left hand squeezes down on the right got it there you go look at it and then he wiggles it to show her that she can't get loose and they laugh which is a laugh that every parent who's taught a kid has seen this laugh of Discovery and joy like I've learned even though Joel doesn't get it we know there's no coming back once he gives her that gun and he shows her how to use it he is uh on a permanent path towards returning to fatherhood I think Joel he's giving in like the world is reminding him again and again you will fail you cannot do this by yourself and this is the first time where he's giving in to that we're now more on equal footing than we were before and I have to trust you on this journey alongside me and bad parent or good parent parent and the look on her face I mean she's crying she's trying to not cry she's failing and then he gives her this gun and she's immediately smiling not because she loves guns so much although we know she does but because she's never had she's never known right a parent she even questions if Marlene's her I mean it was pretty funny that's great do I look like your mom what am I uh he also somewhere deep down even if he doesn't have access to it in that moment and seeing her face light up is an experience he would have never had with Sarah ever hmm because this is not Sarah this is a very different person and this is one of those places where you realize that sometimes the people that you create biologically are not as similar to you as other people you may meet on your path in life well Ellie she's telling him I've already killed someone right she's already lived like a like a vastly different life than his daughter would ever know I've experienced this I'm sure other people have as well where there's a sometimes the grief and the sadness is all that you have that remains of the person that you are grieving or sad over and when there is an opportunity to love again or there's an opportunity an invitation to feel Joy connection hope something there is this fear that you're swinging from one Vine to the next he doesn't realize it but it's beginning to happen and and that's why I loved using the joke book at the beginning of this episode because it feels like nothing it feels just like this frivolous bit of goofiness and when we get to the end and they've created their little safe nest and she delivers one final joke and he laughs laughs Joe hmm did you know diarrhea is hereditary what yeah it runs in your jeans you're losing a big time we haven't seen Joel even smile since the world ended much less laugh and he can't contain it it just comes out he doesn't even know he doesn't even get it people make characters too smart and Pedro gets so annoyed at me because I would always say like you know Joel's not that smart and he would be like can you please stop saying that I'm like well you know but Joel is not the most insightful man in the world let's face it yeah when it finally does hit him it's going to hit him with an almost nuclear force interestingly I I and again this is all an open interpretation that's what I love about again this this adaptation and how nuanced and subtle these things are but I believe Ellie knows Ellie sees it Ellie sees the change in him already in a way that he doesn't yeah I think that's right I buy that I think that's right because she is insightful yeah and she is in many ways smarter than him she's never had a parent never had a dad and it's fulfilling her yeah it's it's awesome she loves it and it's immediately interrupted by Ellie waking up Joel I love that he fell asleep again on his right ear but he woke up on his left meaning that the right ear that he can't hear well out of he can't he didn't hear someone stepping on the glass and we wake up and we have these two new characters that are facing us and we're staring at them down the barrel of a gun yep we don't know who it is if you haven't played the game but we have been hearing the names Henry and Sam floated about and I think that we might have just met Henry and Sam just a decent chance I don't want to give away too much but it does seem likely uh also the casting announcements that were in variety and so forth would indicate people those guys were Henry and Sam uh something that that is unique to this is normally if I've any adaptation whether it be a book or whether it be a play whether it be a game I'm like ah got it now I know where they're going with this the problem is you guys are bastards and you have completely taught me to not good yeah my expectation is like I don't know what's going to happen you don't and and that's important we because we know the game so well and because we know that story so well there was also a little bit of engineering to say look we don't want this to feel like an inevitable sort of slog for people that know the story of the game we want them to be as on the edge of their seat as possible and that means surprising them repeatedly and we do and we will continue to if you've played the game a hundred times I can assure you you're going to be startled a lot between now and the end of this series well thank you Craig for joining us my pleasure and thank you Neil for being with us as well thank you we are almost halfway through this season but if you've been looking online you may have seen that viewers can expect a second season of this incredible show and that is due entirely to all of you for tuning in every week and watching this incredible story The Last of Us this has been the official The Last of Us podcasts from HBO again I'm Troy Baker joined by Craig Mason and Neil druckman you can stream new episodes of the HBO original series The Last of Us Sundays on HBO Max the podcast episodes are available after episodes of The Last of Us air on HBO you can find this show where every listener podcasts like and follow HBO is The Last of Us on Instagram Twitter and Facebook until next week endurance survive this is the official Companion podcast for HBO's The Last of Us hosted by Troy Baker our producers are Elliot Adler Bria Marriott and Noah camuso Darby Maloney is our editor the show is mixed by hanis Brown our executive producers are Gabrielle Lewis and Barry Finkel production music is courtesy of HBL and you can watch episodes of The Last of Us on HBO Max foreign

Channel: Max

Views: 212,028

Keywords: hbo, hbo max, hbo max movie, hbo max series, hbo youtube, hbo max youtube, hbo max trailer, hbo trailer, hbo video, hbo max originals, the last of us, the last of us hbo, the last of us game, pedro pascal, bella ramsey, joel, ellie, mutated fungus, fungus, post-apocalyptic, cordyceps, the last of us series, the last of us show, the last of us live action, the last of us podcast, the last of us explained, the last of us interview, Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann, tlou podcast

Id: cPMKXNnbsfI

Length: 34min 46sec (2086 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2023

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[u/icecubegone]

I see quite a number of people questioning and curious about Kathleen as the leader of the group in Kansas City. Please please go and hear the 40 min podcast of the show made exclusively for each episode as the writer of the producer converse with voice actor of Joel's in the game.

[u/icecubegone]

God, please dont share game spoilers with me, especially the 2nd game. Havent been lucky enough to experience it

[u/tghkris]

I absolutely agree! I watch the episode, listen to the podcast, then rewatch the episode. It's such a great experience having Troy, Niel, and Craig's insight.