Table Talk: The Last of Us Season 1 (2023)

Aren: The Last of Us wrapped up its first season in the spring and with summer the hot takes have come and gone. Now that the dust has settled, it’s the perfect time to examine the season as a whole. It’s pretty clear that this enormously popular TV show has done a lot to prove that video game adaptations can be successful. But is it a good show, or simply a popular one? Did it live up to the hype?

Personally, I like The Last of Us. I thought the season was good overall, but I also think the high praise for it is a bit ridiculous. The praise is also indicative of how people talk about television these days. Reviews are almost always raves or pans. Too many people on Twitter or in audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb either think something is “best ever” or a disgrace. We don’t live in a world where people have nuanced reactions to things, even something as low-stakes as a television show.

Anton: I agree that the series seems to have done wonders in proving to people in general that a video game adaptation can make a good TV show (and by extension, a good movie). Even with The Super Mario Bros. Movie back in April, I didn’t see the conversation framed with the assumption that video games make bad movies. So perhaps the massive success of The Last of Us has helped to neutralize the “video game adaptations suck” refrain, sort of like how Nolan’s Dark Knight movies finally put to rest assumptions about the innate unseriousness of superhero movies. But we’ll have to put this theory to the test with another couple video game adaptations.

In terms of my evaluation of the series as a whole, the first episode surprised me with how good it was, but my initial goodwill and very high estimation of the show steadily declined each and every episode thereafter. After the finale, I have a mixed view of the show: there are parts I enjoyed, and parts I disliked, but I don’t know if I care enough to watch Season 2.

I found myself continually disappointed and increasingly disinterested in the show, as its characters and narrative meandered about. I mean, this is a show that has, on paper, a compelling quest narrative: Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, has to defend the special girl (Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey) who possesses immunity to the infection and help her cross the post-apocalyptic country to find a set of researchers. But in effect the narrative is alternately choppy and plodding. We get long flashback episodes, but characters never have the time to wait and heal or gather strength for their journey. The characters are compelling in some ways, and infuriating and repellent in other ways.

In our April podcast discussion of John Wick: Chapter 4 and Super Mario Bros., I noted how John Wick feels more like the gameplay of a video game than either big video game adaptations (meaning The Last of Us and Mario). But now I’m wondering if the meandering, episodic nature of The Last of Us owes to its fidelity to the game. In spite of the stakes, the overarching show narrative lacks a strong drive. In that sense, does it resemble the kind of exploratory game where you get bogged down in one location for some time? What do you make of that?

Aren: I haven’t played the game, so I can’t comment on whether the pacing is a result of being too faithful an adaptation. Many friends have assured me that it has strong gameplay, so I’ll trust their opinions, but the game is also primarily a stealth game. Stealth games often require grinding and long sequences of focusing on one area of the game to be super deliberate and avoid getting killed, so perhaps that influences some of the pacing of the adaptation. Nevertheless, I agree that there’s a herky jerky nature to the show, where it speeds up and slows down at random. It seems to be that shows nowadays don’t have consistent pacing or structure anymore, even prestigious ones like The Last of Us.

Anton: To return to one of your initial points, Aren, I also agree that we live in a culture in which people’s takes are generally polarized—things are perceived as us vs. them, or something is either amazing or a disaster.

I’ve been thinking about this in regards to TV shows in particular, since I’ll notice how wildly inflated TV ratings are on IMDb, especially in comparison to movie ratings (which of course still invite polarized reactions, at times). So many shows are rated 9 out of 10 or higher, and, as you’ve pointed out to me before, your average good horror movie can barely muster a 7. How can this be? Does the time commitment that TV demands influence people’s reactions? Let’s say you’ve invested your time in watching a whole season of a show: does that inflate either your affection or disappointment?

Aren: That’s an intriguing point. I think that people view everything as “content” these days and whether or not they like the content they consume is dependent on whether they think it was worth the time invested. Which is why I think TV ratings are inflated. People don’t continue watching a TV show if they don’t like it and they probably won’t rate a show they only watched a couple episodes of, so if they watched the whole season, it’s reasonable to assume that they probably liked it.

People are also ahistorical, which I think explains the absurdity of people raving about a serious drama about a zombie apocalypse when The Walking Dead was a cable TV behemoth for half a decade. The Walking Dead was on the air not that long ago and The Last of Us is essentially prestige The Walking Dead. It has a bigger budget, better actors, and more popular source material. It is a good video game adaptation, which is super rare, but the hyperbolic praise that seems to ignore The Walking Dead ever existing is a bit baffling to me.

Anton: That’s a good comparison! I’m disappointed that The Last of Us ends up being no better than the second season of The Walking Dead. Somewhat enjoyable, but basically character and relationship drama with some zombies and many cruel, cruel human beings. The Last of Us even lacks the visual accomplishment of the first season of The Walking Dead, which had Frank Darabont, remember. As you mentioned in conversation, there are few memorable shots in The Last of Us, especially anything to rival that great shot of Rick riding out of Atlanta on horseback from season one of The Walking Dead. 

I found The Last of Us pretty unremarkable in terms of its visual style. It takes bits and pieces from the look and feel of other post-apocalyptic and zombie movies—gritty locales, walking shots, a few vistas, some long takes—but the pieces never manage to coalesce into a distinct look and feel for The Last of Us. Compare that to the unique visual styles of the best TV shows, whether it is Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, or Game of Thrones. Heck, even the demented cousin, House of the Dragon (which I had huge problems with, mind you) looks much more impressive.

As a TV show, The Last of Us has the veneer of so-called prestige TV—which I’m not sure exists anymore—but at its heart it's a midtier weepy drama. It’s not a terrible show, but it is most definitely not as great as people are saying. 

Individual Episodes

Anton: On an individual episode basis, the series never managed to be as good as Episode 1, “When You’re Lost in the Darkness.” That one really impressed me. I was totally gripped by its storytelling and fascinated by the concept of a zombie plague caused by fungal infection. I’ve been reading and watching and teaching plague narratives the past couple years, so I found the show’s premise initially very compelling from that angle. But the show kind of loses interest in the zombies.

Aren, you had told me you thought the first episode resembled Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, and I totally agree.

Aren: It does, especially if you view The Last of Us as Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead compared to The Walking Dead as George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. This show is slicker, more global, and with fast zombies. The opening of the episode paints a portrait of normal life and then shows the rapid descent of things going to hell, much like Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead. 

Anton: It captures the sense of unleashed energy and cataclysmic chaos that propels Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead. The first episode also has probably the best camera work, with some quality long takes when they are escaping the city.

Aren: I agree that the first episode is still the best, although I really liked the third episode, “Long, Long Time” as well.

Anton: I didn’t love Episode 3. Frankly, I found its love story contrived and cheesy rather than moving. I think the comparisons to the opening sequence of Pixar’s Up are apt, as both stories try to tell the whole lifespan of a relationship, but Up is so much more poignant. I think the episode shows how the series has only the veneer of seriousness.

Aren: I think that episode is clarifying for The Last of Us, because the story is actually a very straightforward dramatic arc. The novelty of the zombies and the situation these people are living in is what makes it unique. As well, it has the increasingly-used TV convention of having a single episode being devoted to the story of a side character for almost its entire runtime, leaving behind the main characters and plot. The funny thing about such an approach is that “Long, Long Time” has a strong grasp of conventional television storytelling—it has the classic four-act TV structure, with the teaser and tag regarding Joel and Ellie and the rest being about Bill and Frank, showing the beginning, growth, and end of their relationship. So, taken individually, it has a strong structure. 

Anton: Okay, I’ll give “Long, Long Time” credit for its structure. It and Episode 1 probably tell the best complete stories in the season.

Aren: But added into the show overall, Episode 3 derails the momentum of the first two episodes, and contributes to the season having something of a haphazard narrative structure over its nine episodes. It kind of just starts and stops on a whim, which is common for television dramas these days. Even The Mandalorian has adopted such a haphazard structure in Season 3.

Anton: Episode 3 is also where the show begins to pivot towards becoming soapy primetime drama with zombies and hard times—a show that is about a few characters and their flaws and their feelings that just happens to be set during a pandemic.

For a moment, let’s compare Episode 3 or Episode 7, “Left Behind,” about Ellie and her best friend/budding romantic interest, Riley, with Episode 8, “When We Are in Need,” about a cultish community being secretly propped up by hidden cannibalism. The Last of Us is a great example of the current cultural phenomenon in storytelling, which is the combination of weepy feels with extreme cynicism. You’d think that sentimentalism and cynicism were at odds, but I find streaks of both in many popular shows and movies today. And it’s always interesting to note which things are sentimentally affirmed without much probing, and which things are revealed to be facades for the horrors of humanity. So we get episodes about people making the choice to eat other people, but we are also supposed to feel touched by following the lives of a couple, or a budding romance, or abruptly terminated friendship. The show is soapy at times, but it’s like the sheer cynicism and nihilism of other moments are supposed to scrub it into looking like “serious TV.” I don’t entirely know what to make of this phenomenon I see around me, but I think it’s there and I need to keep thinking about it.

Aren: That’s an interesting point. You’re onto something here. I would almost go so far as to say it demonstrates an overall cultural nihilism that has pervaded our society. Everyone is “blackpilled,” to use the parlance of Twitter, and thinks that the world is doomed and that humanity, as a social organism, is predisposed to the worst atrocities. The Last of Us shows this with its cannibalism narrative in “When We Are in Need,” as you mentioned, and also in the episodes set in Kansas City about the anti-government resistance that becomes its own authoritarian state. But part and parcel to this cultural nihilism is also an egotism that prioritizes feelings and self-care and “good vibes” on a personal scale. The show reflects this duality. It can view humanity through such a callous lens on the one hand, but then overinflate the importance of these small scale interactions or sentimental life choices on the other.

Anton: That’s very well put. I agree.

Aren: In essence, if the entire world is hell and life is meaningless, the show seems to be saying that the only things that matter are the small moments of affection or solace that we can conjure in spite of the chaos. It’s a depressing approach to the world—perhaps especially in a post-apocalyptic narrative that showcases a potential salvation for humanity (Ellie’s immunity) baked into the very premise.

Anton: That’s a good analysis of the themes, and I think it points to the ending, which seems to affirm their individual relationship over the state of the world. But we’ll get to that ending in a bit.

As a Zombie and Pandemic Story

Anton: Since at least George A. Romero, zombie movies and television shows have been texts about, on some level, plagues or pandemics, rather than magic and voodoo. I thought the fungal plague was a novel idea, but my friend, M. L. Clark, a writer whose knowledge of science fiction is quite extensive, pointed me to an earlier instance: The Girl with All the Gifts, a 2016 sci-fi thriller from the UK.

Aren: Both The Last of Us and The Girl with All the Gifts are adaptations: the first Last of Us game and the novel of The Girl with All the Gifts both came out in 2013.

Anton: Oh, good call.

The other comparison I would make is to Cormac McCarthy’s devastating novel, The Road, which also features a child and a hardened male guardian on a cross-country journey in a post-apocalyptic world. But The Last of Us is The Road-lite. (Sadly, I have not watched the movie version of The Road; I should rectify that this summer.)

Aren: I like the movie! It’s impossible to capture everything good about McCarthy’s prose in such an non-verbal adaptation—people talk much less than in No Country for Old Men or The Sunset Limited for instance—but there’s some good stuff in it.

Anton: One of the worst things about The Last of Us is that, especially for a video game adaptation, the show and its characters have little regard for the mundane tools and activities of survival. Back when The Revenant came out, I was incensed by how the movie always had characters getting wet and trudging on through the cold, when anyone who goes canoeing knows that you can die from staying in wet clothes in the elements. You immediately try to dry off. I feel similarly about The Last of Us. My wife and I were always shouting at the screen, “Hey, just stay here a bit. Sleep. Eat. Gather your strength.” But no, Joel has to get up and leave the next day, always. It’s not believable. The Lord of the Rings showed that on a journey you need to rest up at times, and those chapters are some of the best in the novel. 

I recall this passage from Chesterton on Robinson Crusoe, which is like the ur-text for survival stories in the West:

“Robinson Crusoe”. . .  celebrates the poetry of limits, nay, even the wild romance of prudence. Crusoe is a man on a small rock with a few comforts just snatched from the sea: the best thing in the book is simply the list of things saved from the wreck. The greatest of poems is an inventory (from “The Ethics of Elfland” in Orthodoxy).

In The Road, you feel the characters’ joy when they find an edible can of soup. The Last of Us doesn’t pay attention to the small things—we rarely understand what their supplies are and how much they have left—and so we don’t really feel their struggle and adventure for survival. It just seems like the show is not interested in all this potential in its narrative.

Aren: This is one of those points where I wish I had played the game so I can compare the two. Because from the sense I get, the show is essentially a live action version of the game’s cutscenes. So if that’s the case, the adaptation has essentially cut out the gameplay elements from the story entirely, which, as you say Anton, are survival aspects that are the entire point of such a narrative.

The Ending

Anton: So what is the overall narrative of Season 1 saying?

Although my students had already told me how the video game ends, it was still crushing to witness Joel’s decision in the last episode to wipe out all the scientists in order to save Ellie.

In the end, Joel is a sad and tragic figure, like an Anakin Skywalker. He lies to Ellie—so this is another “noble lie” story—but he also kills so many people and makes the worst possible choice, in my view, to save someone he loves at the expense of the whole world. 

In that sense, I suppose the finale redeems aspects of Episode 3 as an outlier, because the self-absorbed love of Bill and Frank anticipates Joel and Ellie’s. Bill cannot imagine life without Frank, which is sold as a beautiful thing at the end of that episode, like a commercial for assisted suicide, but it’s really just an extension of this man who had already cut himself off from the whole world in his literal gated community.

Aren: Good point. I think some people overlooked the inherent darkness in Bill and Frank’s ending. Even if you find their story ultimately affirming about the importance of human connection, I read the episode as also showing the sadness of Bill as an individual, who was never actually able to live a real life, since he only decided to come out of the closet after the world ended. And in the end, he is too cowardly to engage with the world at all in the absence of Frank, which is why he kills himself. You can be touched that Bill and Frank die together in a kind of star-crossed death, Romeo and Juliet-style for the progressive age, but that decision also shows that despite how much Bill opened up with Frank, he ultimately is still a man who hates the world. Also, I do know that in the game Bill is depicted very differently. Their story does not end in communal, romantic suicide, but rather their relationship (presented ambiguously in the game) disintegrates and Bill dies alone.

Anton: Just as Bill’s misanthropy—recall, he says he never really liked people—leads him to make decisions only for himself and those close to him, Joel similarly doesn’t care about the world.

What are we to make of the season’s ending? Are we supposed to applaud or be horrified? Or is it ambiguous? A the end of Se7en, we get a famous use of a quotation by Morgan Freeman’s detective: 

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” I agree with the second part.

In The Last of Us, Joel essentially says, “I agree with neither.”

Aren: It’s a complicated ending. I agree that Joel is definitely morally compromised by the end, to a degree that we should doubt whether he’s a real hero anymore. His refusal to hand over Ellie to the doctor is admirable in the sense that we shouldn’t want to cheer one hero committing the other hero to death, even if it might save the species. But Ellie is never given the option to decide for herself, either. 

Anton: Yes, that’s key. Joel lies to her. He never lets her have the option of choosing to sacrifice herself. Maybe she wouldn’t. But shooting everyone up is a terrible solution.

Aren: Maybe she would volunteer to sacrifice herself for the sake of the species. Maybe Joel could discuss alternatives with the Fireflies—who are depicted without much in the way of nuance. There is clearly another shoe to drop in Season 2. The lie will be revealed.

But as it stands, this ending, with the only alternatives offered being ruthless sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the collective, or sentimental self-interest, really does capture the spirit of the age, as we outline above. The Last of Us embodies the sentimental nihilism of the 2020s better than most shows I can think of. No wonder it’s the “show of the year” for so many people.

The Last of Us and the State of Television

Aren: I think we can safely say that the Golden Age of TV is over. It ended with the final season of Game of Thrones, and Better Call Saul was the final holdover that lasted past the transition during COVID. Now that Better Call Saul is done, the age has fully passed. We’re firmly in Peak TV now, which is, I think, one of the better descriptors of this current moment in entertainment.

In Peak TV, the market is oversaturated. It’s impossible to watch everything on TV since there are too many streaming services and segmented audience options. The most popular scripted shows on television, including both premium and basic cable as well as streaming, all cater to different audiences that typically don’t overlap. In 2022, the top shows were Yellowstone, NCIS: Hawaii, NCIS, FBI, and Stranger Things. The NCIS fans are not necessarily Yellowstone fans, who are not necessarily Stranger Things fans. Now in 2023, The Last of Us is HBO’s top-rated show since Game of Thrones, and its fan base does not really overlap with those others. More and more, it seems like everyone is watching a different popular show. There is no monolithic entertainment on television.

Anton: Mass culture does not exist in the manner that it previously did. We are living in an era of popular-yet-niche content. All of us are living in bubbles. And few things break through a bunch of the bubbles.

But the show was also lucky. The Last of Us came along at the exact right moment, coming at the end of the pandemic, when your average person’s interest in a post-apocalyptic world was very strong. It also capitalized on Pedro Pascal’s success as a leading man in The Mandalorian. Finally, The Last of Us shows that enough people still think HBO means something good and serious. The brand is still strong, since I think if this show had been on Netflix, it would have gotten lost in the noise, without that sense of “This is important TV.”

But at the end of the day, I’m not sure The Last of Us will have a lasting impact or be remembered as a classic TV show, in spite of all the hyperbolic praise for both the show and its individual episodes. It seems more like a time capsule, the right show for early 2023.

The Last of Us (2023, USA)

Created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, based on the video game by Naughty Dog; starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

RELATED POSTS