when HBO breaks your heart

The Last of Us is a brand new story to me I've never played the game I've avoided any spoilers and I've largely ignored my idiot friends who kept saying Joel was quote the best fictional character ever written so anyway this is my first time Round And while I really like the first few apps I wanted to let my early season excitement die down a bit before anointing it the next great TV show but now there were six episodes in it's pretty clear that this will be one of the best shows of 2023. there's just too many things going right I've liked the cinematography which oscillates between sweeping Landscapes and intimate close-ups the sound design which emphasizes that often our greatest fear is what we can't see the score which I'll get to in a bit the seamless integration of CGI into the Practical sets which is a tricky balance to strike for any mon production and the zombies which are genuinely terrifying but only use sparingly all these elements deserve their own video it really has been that impressive but the best thing at least to me has been the writing specifically how quickly the writers are able to flesh out characters punj definitely intended in only a few scenes part of this is the pacing they're a frantic moment sure in the occasional high octane escape sequence but for the most part these are balanced with slower establishing shots and conversations Ellie and Joel shooting the supposed to deal with you anyways some kind of bigwig's daughter or something shooting at targets rifle just sucks okay messing around basically it never feels rushed which is wildly impressive for what I thought was going to be a frantic Survival show and this posting shows that the writers were given the creative control by HBO to include whatever they thought would make the best story and the reason we know that the writers were given this freedom is the episode length 81 minutes 53 75 45 59 59 these sporadic almost random minute totals aren't an accident it's indicative of what has made HBO so successful for so long trust in the creative people they hire to make these shows if co-creators Craig Mason and Neil druckman want a movie length pilot they're gonna get it they want a 75 minute episode to explore two completely new new characters they're gonna get it because HBO trusts their ability to adapt The Source material and they should because Mason wrote the Emmy award-winning scary movie wait no the Emmy award-winning hangover wait that's not right the Emmy award-winning Chernobyl which is a fantastic exploration of human nature during disaster but more importantly Neil druckman co-created and wrote the game so it's pretty vital that HBO gave him creative control and this trust has clearly paid off as I've never been bored every episode feels different from the last and I found myself forming strong connections with peripheral characters who are only in the show for a few scenes which is what I want to talk about today I cried at the end of episode 5 and I haven't cried since like I don't know Toy Story 3 or something and this was because a character died that I'd met only an hour earlier which sounds pretty stupid but the foundation for this started long before episode five because the show hinges on the creation of meaningful relationships of course the main relationship is Joel and Ellie it's probably the only one that really matters they're traveling across the country to find people who can make a cure she's the chosen one with a special blood and he's the powerful protector are you okay yeah you're not heard nothing I don't think so and it's the development of their accidental father-daughter relationship that anchors the show like do I really care about the end game here that they might find someone who can make a zombie cure well yeah kinda I care about their Fates but I'm way more interesting commodity Neil Joel having to deal with a sarcastic impatient Ellie why isn't here with you a long story is it longer than 25 hours because I think that's what we got this is clearly Good comic relief but it's heartwarming relatable family bickering which is so much more entertaining than a gore-filled snoozefest like you don't have to look any further than last year's Resident Evil Netflix series for how not to do this show after a combative start to their relationship Ellie slowly melts Joel's cold heart which he doesn't know how to deal with he wants to protect her he wants to make up for not being able to save Sarah but he also clearly feels guilty about potentially placing his dead daughter loss pain and love are constantly battling for Supremacy within Joel which makes him a fascinating hero and what better way to amplify this pain than kill off his love interest to only two episodes in Tess gets bitten he can't save her and Joel has to compartmentalize another heartbreaking moment in order to keep going Ellie becomes his purpose and they start drifting through the post-apocalyptic world I got it pretty early if you want to grab more sleep I'm not even tired did any of these father-daughter feel good moments are undercut by the reality that Ellie can't really tell if Joel is a good guy or not did you kill innocent people and to be honest I can't either because I've never played the game so she's basically an audience surrogate for me just like Ellie who's experiencing everything for the first time she's never been in the real world I don't trust anyone we meet a couple could be evil friendly child could be evil Joel's own brother yeah I'm not trusting you and this sort of skepticism is fun because it puts you in their shoes while the new characters Drive the story they're basically checkpoints for Joel and Ellie to learn from in what I assume is a format that mimics the game but the beauty of the writing is that each character gets such an impressive backstory that I genuinely don't know how long they're sticking around for for instance I thought this woman was going to be the big bad for the rest of the season nope these guys seem like they'd be useful allies for Joel and Ellie nope and I thought Henry and Sam would stick around for a while and oh my God no they're either killed or they leave by the end of their introduction which is an amazing template for an adventure show like I said before the episodes never feel rushed due to the amazing writing but nothing ever stagnates because the supporting character characters are replaced almost every episode which brings us to the beautifully sad ending to episode 5. for some context episode 4 ends with Joel and Ellie getting woken at gunpoint flashbacks reveal that these two baddies are Henry a collaborator and his little brother Sam they're being hunted by this woman because apparently Henry is responsible for her brother's death and so they enroll the help of Joel and Ellie to get them out of the city I'm saying they're going to help us escape and I feel sorry for Sam immediately maybe Henry a little bit too because I don't really know how guilty he is but Sam's a little kid he's deaf and most importantly he's innocent all we know is that he likes superheroes and food and I can't hate him for liking food I love food anyway everything starts great they go through some tunnels that Henry says are empty yeah it's empty the plan is good and surprisingly they are no zombie things and the kids get to hang out a bit no way I love these and this Carefree interaction gives us hope which doesn't happen very much in this show Ellie finally has another kid to hang out with and Joel is simultaneously reminded of the past and given a glimpse of the potential future which reinforces their mission to find a cure but then the bad guys show up accidentally release all the fungus people and things get really out of hand but luckily the good guys get away unscathed Joel invites Henry and Sam to come with them you know if you want to yeah and it feels like things are finally getting better some positivity in the show but then the kids sit down for a chat came from here I think the reason this scene got me so bad was the lack of dialogue Sam's deaf and so communicates by writing this is really slow and through the four minute conversation they only write 11 sentences to each other if this was a spoken conversation it'd be over in like 25 seconds but instead we have to absorb what they're saying and sit with each sentence so anyway Sam wants to confide in Ellie asking if she's scared she messes around for a bit but then confesses her greatest fear this is sad for sure like I assume it to be everyone in a post-apocalyptic world but then Sam confesses his and the sad futility of this line got me you don't have to see the bite you don't have to see him turn all you need is this innocent question from the mind of a child trying to somehow rationalize becoming a monster with this line we know that Sam is doomed and it's made even sadder when Ellie desperately tries to heal him by rubbing her blood on his wound like she said she doesn't want to end up alone and the only way to do that is she has to keep her friends alive live morning comes he's turned and they burst into the other room Henry sees that Joel's going to shoot Sam to save Ellie jumps in as the protective brother but his instincts take over and once he realizes what he's done Henry decides that he can't keep living too [Music] a brutal five minute sequence with very little dialogue in a very simple setting but it goes from Ellie and Sam reading a comic book to both Sam and Henry being dead five minutes later and this is a good microcosm of the show how quickly things can go from Hope to despair in just five minutes all the Hope from the last hour is completely snuffed out they're on their own now and Joel is the only thing standing between Ellie and her biggest fear to finish I could compare this to other sad scenes from the show so far there's been a few or even expand on the brilliant performances which are great I didn't even mention it but everyone's doing a great job in this show but for now I'll leave you with the final thing Sam wrote

Channel: Scene It Reviews

Views: 97,903

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Id: DKMldx8cnYg

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 26 2023