The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘The Last of Us’ Episode 4 Deep Dive With Patrick Somerville

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

Joanna and Mallory are joined by ‘Station Eleven’ creator, Patrick Somerville, to dive deep into the latest episode of ‘The Last of Us.’ They break down Joel and Ellie’s evolving relationship and the introduction of Kathleen. They also discuss how the show compares to ‘Station Eleven.’ Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Guest: Patrick Somerville Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to Powerpot pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs. So you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride.

Download the State Farm app or go online at StateFarm.com. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. If you don't think there's hope for the world, why bother going on? I mean, you've got to try, right? you haven't seen 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 welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed I'm Joanna Robinson joining me today as always my most beloved

Belit it is Malie Rubin a belit is a kind of mushroom if you didn't know Hi Mal how you doing I was just gonna ask Why Did you bring the chef boy R.D? I'm ready to chow down. We're going to talk about Chef Boyardy in a second.

You might have already heard a third voice on this show because joining us today, in addition to Mallory and yours really, to break down episode four of The Last of Us, is, listen, he created Station 11. That maybe is all I need to say. But let me just run down a few other things that he's done. Okay. Made for Love.

Incredible HBO series. Maniac. Incredible, incredible Netflix series that I just absolutely adored. Writer producer on the leftovers is Patrick Somerville. Hi, Patrick. How you doing? Hi.

Thank you guys for having you so much. I feel like the best thing I've created so far on this podcast is messing up your intro to each other. I'm interjecting. I actually didn't know what that word meant. I've been trying to find more and more esoteric mushrooms to refer, you know, to refer to a real journey of discovery. I am. And here's a bad thing about a mushroom bit, I will say, is that I now get tagged into every single, like, bad mushroom news story.

Like, the Wall Street Journal put out a really scary, like, be afraid of fungus story. And I got tagged in that a million times over. People tag me on photos of Harrison Ford. So look what you've done to yourself. People tag me when they're stuck in airports. That's what I get. Can I say for whatever journey, mushroom journey you're on? Joanna, you're both on mushroom journey.

My wife is out on the show by the fucking intro credits because of fungus. And she just has she can't do it. It's a bit. She is disgusted by fungus. I described to her the end. of episode two. And it was almost like, she was like, stop, stop.

And I just like talked about the lighting, the lighter and like the one dude getting closer. And some people just can't deal with fungus as an idea. This show clearly is not having a problem with its viewership based on that. But I think there's like a significant amount of people who are terrified at fungus. Is that fair?

Absolutely. But I just, I'm trying to like face my fear. I am also terrified of fungus. I also skip past the opening credits because I cannot handle the tendrils, as we like to call them. And I'm just trying to maintain as we cover this show. And one of the ways that I've decided to conquer my fear is I've been making a lot of mushroom-based recipes. Well, they're delicious. Yeah.

That's the other confusing thing. Mushrooms are just delicious. Wonderful. Yeah. Joe will craft a new meal featuring a new variety of mushroom that nobody knew previously existed. Then she'll text the ringerverse crew a photo and say, made these mushrooms my bitch. This has been happening for four weeks now.

Well, Joanna, don't you ever get worried that one of those mushrooms will continue to grow inside your nervous system and slowly infiltrate all of your cerebral cortex and take you over like a drone? I think I'm a little more mushroom than man now. I think that's already happened. All right, let me knock out some quick business before we get into discussion of this episode of The Last of Us. Quick programming reminders here on the feed. We are doing double coverage, of course, The Last of Us. So you can hear Charles and Van on Sunday nights do their instant reaction.

And this is what we call The Deep Dive. We're going to do a little bit of a different schedule this upcoming episode because HBO and their infinite wisdom, they're dropping the episode, the episode five of the last episode on Friday to get out of the way of what is it called? Mallory, the Super Bowl. Super Bowl. Yeah. A big week for Kansas City. The Chiefs are in the Super Bowl and Kansas City is featured prominently in the last of us.

Not actually Kansas City, Calgary, but in terms of the plot, Kansas City. A plugged highway system was featured. Can I say to the Super Bowl is essentially relevant because the Packers are not in it. So they could have gone ahead with their Sunday night programming. It wouldn't have been a problem to me. Mallor, are you biting your tongue? How you feel about that? Anything to say? I just am, as you know, Joe, devoting all of my time right now when I'm not making podcasts with you and, you know, making other parts of the ringer to studying Lamar Jackson's Instagram and tweets to try to figure out the future of my beloved Baltimore Ravens.

That's how I'm spending all my time right now. It's a fool's errand, isn't it? He doesn't know what he means either, I think, is the problem with it. I just, you know, like Ellie in episode four of The Last of Us, I still have hope and no one can take it away from me. So Van and Charles will be here on Friday with their instant reactions. Then Mallory and I will be here on Monday X Monday with the deep dive. Also, Rob Mahoney and I are covering poker face every week on this feed. So that is a really fun show if you haven't checked it out yet. And then Mallory and I are hanging out over in the Ring ofverse, as always, talking about Marvel villains this week, I believe.

So, you know, there's a lot going on. Time to rank some villains. We're mere days away from a new Marvel movie. Can I get a preview of who's in the top five? We haven't decided yet. Who's your candidate for like top Marvel villain of all time? Movie, movie, movie, MCV. I am not a person you should ask this question too because I literally couldn't, the big guy in space.

Okay. Thanos. Who snaps his fingers. Yeah, yeah. Great. Kurt Russell. Kurt Russell also a bad dad award. Mel, how can folks keep track of shifting schedules and all of our coverage?

I'm so glad you asked Joe. Thank you. Follow the pod. Follow the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Follow this pod, the Prestige TV podcast. Follow the ring of verse. Follow all of them. And check out our various social feeds. You can always get the latest episode in your feeds.

You can get the updates in your feeds. And if you have thoughts, if you have mushroom recipes for Joanna Robinson, if you have thoughts on the Packers for Patrick. anything at all, send your musings to Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. That's Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. The inbox is thriving. Right, Joe? Still getting Apple emails? Apple discourse is back. Question for you, Patrick. Do you have like, A, a favorite apple varietal and B, follow-up question to that. What are your feelings on the Granny Smith apple? Go. Red delicious.

And then also Maca-Tosh is a big one for me. That can't be true. A Red Delicious? Red Delicious. Is this a bit? A perfect red delicious.

Come on. There's almost nothing better. I'm astonished. I worked in the produce sign when I was in high school. I'm a lover of all apple. I think it depends on the mood. Depends on the day.

I veer toward a red apple, I do. And you asked about my thoughts on the... The bright green, granny Smith apple. Are there comquots available? Because, like, I'll go to the Granny Smith if I need that feeling, but a cumquot really can hit me so much better than a Granny Smith.

I had to make pyramids of apples. So think of my love of the Red Delicious as it's stackability. Yeah, uniform. Yeah, yeah. More than its taste. I wasn't back there in my smock eating the produce.

As the customers went by, I was constructing pyramids. Okay, for pure stockability, I can get behind a red delicious. Wait, what are your bests? What are your favorites? No. It's just one answer.

It's all I need. It sounds like I'm stepping in. It's a point of contention on the pot, and it's fine. You know, we have a lot of shared passions, And that's the heart of this beautiful journey that we're on together as we make multiple podcasts every week. And every now and then we stumble upon something that we do not share. And fruit has been at the heart of that.

Sometimes it's because I've discovered, I, a person who loves pie, that Joanna doesn't believe warm fruit belongs in the world, which is just a sociopathic and bizarre take. But also, Joe thinks that the granny Smith apple is the best apple, which I think is disturbing. Now, there's a time and place for a granny Smith apple, but I will see your Granny Smith and raise you a hundred times out of a hundred, a pink lady or a honey crisp, two of the finest apples that there are. I just want you to know, Patrick, that you've brought. After so many Apple Wars, you brought some apple peas to this podcast because I've never felt more connected to Mallory than our shared shock of you saying Red Delicious.

Hey, sometimes you got to make a pyramid. That's all I got to say about that. All right. So we are here to talk, though, about terrible post-apocalyptic coffee and chef. F-Y-R-D, not delicious apples of any varietal. This episode, episode four, please hold to my hand, directed by Jeremy Webb, written by Craig Mason, is, you know, something of a place-setting episode, I would say. I have heard from folks who have watched more than we have that this is like kind of a two-episode

arc, so maybe when all is said and done, it will feel like a more complete story. I don't feel incomplete. I don't feel like this episode is incomplete, but I've heard from some people. who are just like, okay, what's next? And especially in the wake of episode three, which caused so many ripples through the Prestiage TV community. I've heard from several people who are not watching any other episodes. They just dipped in to episode three so they could, you know,

understand what all the hubbub was about and have no plans to go forward from there. If you're one of those people, go watch the whole show. Come on. I agree. These guys, it's a part of a matrix that they're very carefully built. And I think, I think, I think if you liked episode three, you're going to, you're going to be okay with the zombie guys too. No zombie guys this week. Very interesting.

No flashbacks and no infected. A real departure from the prior three episodes in that respect. But one that felt intentional. Yeah. The one my wife would have been able to watch. Right. Because of its lack of fungents. Fungle.

Just like bulging concrete, just bulging concrete, which I'm sure will be fine and not come back to haunt us. The concrete in and of itself was reminiscent of a fungal pattern the way that the cracks were breaking. I think that would have even grossed my wife out.

But let's just linger in episode three for a hot second because something that we've been going back to over and over again as we discuss really anything but very specifically episode three of this show, Oh, Patrick, is this Station 11 line survival is insufficient. I just want to say for folks who are listening to this podcast and haven't watched or read Station 11,

look at your life, look at your choices and go treat yourself. You're missing out. To doing that. We're going to talk about Station 11 throughout this episode, but I think in a way that if you haven't seen it, you can still relate to what we're talking about. And more pertinently, if you haven't seen it, we're not going to spoil really any of it for it. We're just talking about broad strokes. And the reason we keep bringing up Station 11 in the context of The Last of Us is it is also a story about a post-outbreak world and also the way that Patrick decided to adapt it, a story about a man and a young girl and how they find community and family and purpose in this very scary time. So this idea of survival is insufficient and this idea of surviving that stings should be.

between merely surviving and actually living, which you saw really underlined in episode three with Bill and Frank. How do you feel like the show is handling that distinction overall? Is that something you're thinking about as you're watching it? Yes, certainly. I can't not think about Station 11 as I watch The Last of Us because in many ways, you know, they have a lot in common,

but they also don't have a lot in common too, which is, is mostly my experience of watching. They're very, very, very different kinds of stories. They just happen to have a lot of overgrowth. But in terms of survival is insufficient, I think that idea, which was not my idea, nor was it Emily's idea. It was the line from Stark episode.

And I think the actual line is because survival is insufficient. I dropped it because it didn't fit on the wagon properly. I think that this show, The Last of Us, is absolutely infused with the same question. And I would even say that if they clicked episode three. I don't know if there was ever any pressure on those guys, on the creators to not do what they did, and to deviate ideologically so aggressively

from the A story they were on in episode three, but I thought it was a brilliant decision because I think it it sort of serviced a problem we never had, which was, is this right-wing propaganda? Not to put too fine a point on it, but there's a certain kind of far-right-wing, ideological fantasy

baked into all of these stories, perhaps, about survival and what that means. And I think Station 11 did all sorts of stuff that was different in the first couple of episodes to make it very clear. It was investigating something else.

But to The Last of Us's credit, it's a downhill fucking ride of intense storytelling from the get, which I love. But, you know, being good with a gun, it makes you good. Being good at running things over makes you good.

Being good at hitting humans in the head with wrenches. Makes you good. And I think there's like, you know, I think they just needed to take a breath and say, like, what are the creators believe of this show? Before we, before we really, now we're going to go the rest of the way. Like, let's take a pause and say,

like, what's the ideological centerpiece kind of, of the creators here? And I thought they did a brilliant job. of telling a story that showed that they have their eye on the same question. But even if that episode wasn't there, the reason why I thought, I still would have thought it is the way episode one was constructed. It's a very unusual shape of an episode to me, not in a bad way at all. And I recently learned, I think, was it when Casey was on the watch,

that the original ending was Joel tossed in a body into first of all, that's my kind of ending. I so would have just led with that. I love amazing for doing it. And then maybe it pans up in the video game when you see Ellie and you're meeting her, but they spent so much time

and took so much care in the first 25 minutes of episode one to establish things that mattered in this universe that had nothing to do with zombies. And when you are making a show in the streaming era, especially at this scale with the stakes this high, with the amount of metrics that now exist, there are a lot of people who are saying, what's going on by minute

two? What's going on by minute four? If we don't have them by minute 10, we've lost them. And we can flushed $300 million dollars now the drink. There is that voice always, even at HBO, I bet. And instead, what we got was this very fascinating portrait of a man and his daughter and his brother and everyday life. But another thing we got that I just loved. This is the kind of shit that we just didn't do it because it's not the genre. There was a horror beat.

That first horror beat, when the camera didn't raise, rack. Crossed amazing. I don't know. I don't know how much. Did he direct Chernobyl at all? Is this his debut? Yeah.

He did a lot of cool things. And as a writer, you know, who one day wants to direct to, I noted that lack of rack, we can call it. What does that mean for people who are listening who don't know? So when you rack, that's the racking focus. So, you know, when something's in the foreground and it's, and sharp focus, and then suddenly goes, and your iPhone can do this now.

It'll wrap to something that's deeper in the field of the lens's vision. And so that old lady was going through something, and we were focused in the foreground on Joel's daughter, and it never wrapped, even though the sound design and even out of focus, you could see, like, some badger. Something black was coming out, but like it never racked and that's super cool to me because that as much as that's about a horror beat and suspense

it's also about point of view. It didn't rack because she never looked. And so we're staying super close to what her experience was. I think like that first 25 minutes of episode one was quite brave because I bet there's a lot of pressure to get to it, you know, get to the fucking big weird fern things that run around with the angry arms or get because they have the other thing I'm sorry to go on I'm just very excited about the show that they did the thing in the bed with the time cut they did they they did a move which it's a great move the leftovers did that move at it in season two episode 10 with Kevin he happened to go to the underworld but when he came back shit was nuts and and he had only been gone a little bit I've seen that move in 24, but the walking dead opened with that move.

And I don't know how much time they spent with Rick before he went in that coma, but I know I would bet I would bet the over under his 15 minutes into the episode. He's walking through that hospital like seeing zombies. They waited. They were patient in Last of Us. And it's patience, that first episode's patience told me everything I needed to know, I think about what this show was prioritizing. It was going to horrify me.

It was going to be terrifying. It was going to put people I cared about in morally, very difficult situations. It was going to have guns. It was going to have all the stuff we didn't do or have at our disposal, or by choice we didn't do. But it was human still. It was fundamentally human. And I think that's carried through all four episodes I've seen.

And I think I think lover, of the game would say that, like, you know, because a lot of that stuff with Joel and Sarah, that's in the opening of this game. And I think a lot of people who love this game would say, you know, to your point about this idea of like might equals right, which is an often, you know, that's the whole point of a video game. How fast can you shoot something? How brutally can you beat it and stuff like that? And that's how you win the game. And that's also how you survive in The Last of Us. But there's all this story that goes with it that I, I think in the game in the first place, set it apart from just a standard sort of smash-and-grab, shoot-the-zombies kind of game, which made it super popular, interesting people in the first place.

And then what Mazin and Druckman have done with the show is take what opportunities they can to even deepen it. The Bill and Frank, you know, of it all in episode three is a great example of that. But this episode where we get something that they've said in the official podcast in the post-show. interviews, this idea is like, if you're in the game, you're with Sarah and Joel at the beginning, Joel and his daughter in the beginning, then you're with Joel and Ellie, and you can't really leave their point of view because that's the whole point of sort of like a first-person shooter game, like you are with your players. But in a TV show, you can expand your scope so you can add a show-only character like Kathleen, played by Melanie Linsky in this episode, or you can

focus in on this kid, Brian, who Joel and Ellie killed together, and you can add a show-only. And you deepen our understanding of who's on the other side of this conflict and then morally complicate, you know, a game that is already morally complicated, but make it even more sticky as we navigate this idea of like, even without the infected men versus men or humans versus humans is a dangerous thing to navigate in the post-apocalypse. What do you think about that, Mallory? Yeah, you know, there's Joe, as you know, I'm currently reading the wonderful book tomorrow and

tomorrow and tomorrow, which is about friendship and family and creation, but also about video games. And there's a line really early in the story that's, to design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it. And I think it's worth like

remembering that and holding on to it as we talk about the original source material and then thusly the adaptation. Because like part of what the Last of Us, which I'm, Patrick, I'm currently playing for the first time. I'm playing it in tandem with the episodes. I'll watch the episode and then I'll attempt to play the equivalent stretch of the game. Are you a gamer? Is this also your introduction to gaming? I enjoy and like gaming. I do it very sporadically at this point of my life. My husband is a very passionate and fervent gamer and has been an interesting partner on my PS5 Last of Us journey as I attempt. to master how to upgrade my melee weapons and use my listening attack. No, he just sits next to me and is like, why are you crouching? You can't play last of us co-op though, one one with Ellie and one with Joel. You're Joel. You start a Sarah in the opening stretch and then you become Joel and Ellie's with you.

Yeah. But so like on the one hand, I think the game and part of the reason it is so beloved in addition to its narrative richness and this wonderful dynamic between Ellie and Joel is because there is this world that you are exploring and looking through and navigating. And I've really, really loved listening to Mazen and Druckman talk about the particular decisions that they made in the process of adapting. What were they going to keep and maintain? What were they going to choose to expand, switch entirely introduce? And this is a really interesting episode for that because some of those tweaks from game to episode are, we're in Kansas City instead of Pittsburgh, for example, right? Some of them are more like matter, of course. We need to work our- Location-based sort of thing. Yeah, work all the way,

like west toward Wyoming across the map, et cetera. Why not, why didn't they do Pittsburgh, though? The explanation in the inside the app and the official pod is that Kansas City felt like a better fit for Calgary where they were filming just in terms of the aesthetic, but also that they wanted to be considering how far the characters were moving on the map between episodes. But Kathleen, Melanie Linsky's character, is not a character in the game.

So it's two things. It's taking in our colleague, Kai Grady wrote a great piece on the ringer.com, what a great website this week, about how this episode in particular is a lens for like fleshing out and broadening the NPC, you know, the non-playable character, the obstacle, the mission that you have to get through

in a given stretch of the game, into fully realized figures in characters. But like that's what is so great and compelling about the show in general. And it made me think, I was thinking, I mean, we've, Joe and I've been talking about Station 11 very regularly across our last of us coverage and, you know, obviously adore the the show and the book alike. And like, I appreciate it. I always appreciate that. Patrick, you're a genius. We're still talking about you. Talking about you as we often talk about you. But like, I was thinking a lot of, to the monsters were the monsters with this episode.

Because we have early on right away in the Boston QZ in episode one, the sense immediately. Fedra, this is bad stuff. We understand right away that this is an oppressive regime that in the wake of chaos, this government rot and thirst for power took over. And look what happened. No one's surprised. We also then start to understand across every episode that, and this was a big theme in episode four in particular, but has been a through line with Joel and Ellie so far, the infected, sure,

that's the outbreak. That's what caused the fall of civilization. You don't want a clicker to take you down when you're exploring a given gas station to look for loot, but people are the other threat. And the thing that I loved so much about this episode is the way that it really examined, And to those people, you're the threat. And if everybody is assuming that about each other constantly, how can anybody forge trust or build something new together?

Like, how can you even take that step with somebody else if you just assume they're there to steal your stuff or kill you or that Henry called them in as Merck's? Mm-hmm. I think related to that in the episode, the same dialogue was happening between Joel and Ellie. I learned that Joel's done some bad things, probably, and not saving his daughter by hitting someone who is infected,

but tricking and innocent who needed help in robbing and killing him or them. He's not an innocent. I don't know about Ellie yet. I don't know if she was referring to that. they're not zombies? What word should I do? Infected. That guy who was stuck under all the rubble,

who she put the night. I couldn't tell if on this most recent episode that was what she was referring to or if she was referring to a deeper history. I'm sure fans of the game know the answer to that, but I'm going in blind, so I have no game and I have no, I have no idea

Why you laugh because I said I have no game I have no game. I've heard that you can stack an apple like none other. I lost all credibility on this podcast the second I said Red Delicious. No, I think what's interesting about that line and again, you know,

Honey Chris. Great answer. She says very specifically, they don't say kill, it's hurt. You know what I mean? I think a lot of people are presuming that she said she's killed before, but the word they're using there is hurt. And it felt by Bella Ramsey as Ellie, by her performance, felt to me deeper than whatever

she did in the basement of that convenience store. You know what I mean? And like she's dropped hints a couple. And again, I have no foreknow knowledge of the game or anything like that, but she's dropped hints a couple times about like there's a bigger story about how she got her bite in the first place. So I feel like that's what we're dealing with here. I think she killed her dad. Is that crazy? Or she or her mom? I mean, we don't know why she doesn't have parents. So that's interesting. She referred to herself as an orphan. Yeah. Which, okay, I'm like, all right,

there's a story. And then she's got a bite. We don't know who bitter. And I think that she's haunted. So that's my guess. And I don't have any secret inside HBO documents, I promise. No, but I mean that haunted question, I think, is really interesting. And I think something that Mazen and Druckman talked about on the official podcast, this idea, another adaptive choice they made was that in the game, Ellie is like an open book and would tell Joel anything. And here she has closely guarded secrets, stories she's not telling.

When you get that POV, you're doing great stuff for your storytelling problems also when you make a POV jump to Melanie Olensky. Because through her eyes, I got to find out about Henry. I got to find out what it looked like when Henry, the mysterious person, found a little attic in a place to stay for a while. I got to find out all this information that made one beat, the last beat right before we cut to black when we're back with our A story, Land. And you can't get that

if you get stay locked to only Joel and Ellie's POV. I would call bullshit if they were going around and they found some little attic, you know, and beans and Superman pictures. And then here's this kid. It's a much more dramatic, moment if I'm ahead of them. I know who has them at the end. And I actually, I know they're safe, probably. That's my guess. At least they're safe from Melanie Linsky, because an enemy of my enemy

is my friend for a moment. But it's just a cool episodic. There's a problem when you're locked to POV of information delivery to the audience. How do you tell your audience things that your characters didn't see without making them stupid. You know, it worked in the beat when we didn't rack because that was a horror beat and she wasn't stupid for not turning to look. But it builds up. So you need to pop out of point of view

just to make episodes work. And they're using it also to hit this kind of the monsters or the monsters, or to the monsters were the monster's idea. I like Melanie Linsky's group because they fucking hate Nazis. You know? So there, I'm kind of like,

do with the pediatrician. He's a collaborator. But then I'm like, but why are you hunting these other two seem to be good too? I'm in is what I'm saying. Like the richness that they're finding by deviating from point of view,

these are all very intentional choices they seem to me. And also in episode three, another amazing thing that happened was I didn't know that Joel was going to be the guy sitting at the table having dinner. I didn't know Joel and Tess were going to be the guests. It's sort of like crossed my mind. And I love that. Tess died. She went out a hero. She had lived a very hard life.

And then we saw this other Tess who I just loved seeing her again. And that scene, can we talk about the scene with the fucking, just the blocking, just operamen with that gun and the way they came in and didn't, they didn't do a special on it and look at it. And it was just kind of there. I'm full of praise for the show. Sorry. I'm going to excited. I mean, I wanted to follow up on what Mal was saying about, you know, to the monsters, where the monsters, the monsters. The comp that, you know, and you come from the Damon Lindelof farm team, but, like, you know,

Like the comp that I kept thinking about is this idea on the TV series Lost, where we've got this group called The Others. Like, that's what they're called The Others. And you have this, like, eventually we're switched into the POV of The Others through a character called Juliet. And, you know, we understand who are the real intruders here? Who is the real threat here? And that's what it felt like when we go into Catholic.

Lings POV when we're with Melanie Linsky, especially casting someone like Melanie Linsky, who is, you know, we've seen her have an edge to her, obviously, in like, yellow jackets or even as far back as heavenly creatures. And I think she's always done such a good job of playing that, like, soft, emotionally open quality that she has with that something stickier and darker, you know, sort of around her, watching her shoot the doctor who delivered her and you sort of understand why she did, but that's still like a thing. And then to put it in Kansas City puts us in this territory of like Midwestern Nice that I think

about a lot. Like I've got some Minnesota friends who talk about this idea of Midwestern Nice and Melanie Linsky as Kathleen, like even the name Kathleen. That's just sort of like someone who would bring, you know, like funeral potatoes to a church function. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, that's where I'm, that's where I'm from, too. You know, I'm from Wisconsin.

I'm on Midwest, nice, which means I'm not nice. Right. But at least they, props to them for not going with Karen, too. You know, that's a low-hanging fruit. Kathleen, this is Melanie, this, I didn't know she's going to be in the episode. This is the want for her, I think, you know, because I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I liked yellow jackets, but I sometimes with her drive in that show, I didn't understand it. And this is my favorite kind of story telling.

I don't need to know what the insurrection was. Just show me who's in charge. And here's the other thing about Melanie Olinsky. I buy that all those bearded, hardcore dudes follow her. I buy it. I buy it just by the way she walked up to them. and that's almost impossible. That's that is, that's an energy that a human has

because that guy with a beard, he's got some, he's got some energy too. Perry, yeah. Jeffrey Pierce, who voiced Tommy in the game. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's great.

I love it when the creators come back. But he's, he's a bad motherfucker. Yeah. I'm scared of him. And I want him on my team. I don't want him hunting me. It's,

that's really interesting about like, what we need and don't need for backstory for the characters because I think it's been these flashbacks, these moments in the first three episodes where obviously episode three, 45 minutes is spent in the past, like we're there for a life, the two people built and shared together. Some of that is five minutes of incredibly alarming. Let's take your COVID anxiety and amplify it with climate change anxiety mythology setting for what the entire universe of the show is going to be. And we, I agree. I was thinking about that, Patrick.

We didn't, part of me missed the flashback in this episode just because I've loved them so much. And I won't be surprised at all because we know we're going to be in the same place with the same people in episode five if we do get that. If we see and learn who the brother Kathleen talked about is, what exactly did Henry and Sam do? Yeah, like we, I assume we'll get those moments. find out. Whether we get them in concentrated five-minute bursts of flashback or through little lines and moments, like either would work effectively because... I think you're going to get something even better. You're going to get it in the A story in real time. You're going to get it in a way that it matters. You know, and that's coming. I trust the show now.

And one of my favorite parts of the whole show is the cold open of episode two. These are the things that we're we didn't do, couldn't do, didn't do, but also watching someone masterfully deploy a, where were they, Jakarta? Yeah, uh-huh. Jakarta, yep. The actors that they got to do that little piece, that woman, but also the directing in that period,

and that was Neil Drugman, right? Am I saying his name, right? Yeah. It got me thinking that whole episode, you know, I don't know if he's directed TV before, but he made this game. Like, he is a director. He definitely is, but I saw some things.

Just the cut to the wide, when she's examining the body where the window is past the body and everything was centered really nicely. It was just with the color, John Payneau, shout out to John Payneau production designer who did the leftovers.

It was all, it was all beautiful. The way she snapped that little air thing off and the way she waited before she said bomb. It was just sort of a beautiful cold open. We never did that. But the other reason why I think these guys are doing such a great job is it mattered in episode two to know that about the bombing because Joel and Ellie talked about it later. And I think they also talked about it in the very long opening of episode three

before we get to the Frank and Bill story. Everyone's talking about it was just like Frank and Bill. That was like 15 minutes before we got to them and another 15 on the back side too. But it makes exposition tolerable in a new way if I've seen it dramatized once before in some other way. So I think for Linsky, I just, she is going to matter. They're all going to matter.

And I think she's on a quest that's not done. And then I think we're going to get to see it properly situated in a story in real time and dramatized so the actor can play it rather than even just the bits of dialogue. They're setting up that stuff. But I think we're going to, is the brother dead that she's talking about? Yeah. I think so. She said beaten to death in the cell or something like that, right?

My prediction is we will meet his killer. Did I miss something? No, no. I mean, I think he was in Fedra custody is sort of the, so like, if there's any Fedra alive, but it seems like they've killed all of Fedra and have taken over the city. In KC. Yeah. But Fedra's still kind of roaming.

Fedra's still in Boston for sure. Miles, what are anything you want to say about? that before I grow Patrick with another question. No, I think that like in general, what Patrick's identifying has been really one of the

organic feelings, the compelling aspects of watching the, you know, because we're talking about Kathleen here and the hunters and what will learn about their motives.

And it reminded me too of like the conversations we were having during Andor about how compelling it is when you can hear a character like Luton, who's part of the Rebel Alliance, these heroes we've watched

for decades and years of our lives, say, like, I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy, right? And how, like, rich and interesting that is to have to grapple with. And that you have this group of people, Kathleen and the hunters, who are doing these, like, objectively terrible things, shooting the doctor in the head. But he's done, the doctor has done so. Well, but we don't, we don't, I think, like, yes and no. And that's why it's interesting, right?

Like, we see the, the, the little attic where Henry and Sam have been hiding out. and you're like, how can these people who are just trying to stay alive and drawing superhero pictures to hang on the wall actually be the object of this level of fury? Like, what misunderstanding? Because maybe it must have been an understanding

that's like my instinct perhaps wrongly as the viewer to assume, right? But like, I think that it connects to the, like you're saying, the A plot and Joel, because this question of like right and wrong and moral complexity, it's not a neat and tidy thing. And so you have Ellie asking, this makes me also think of Brian,

and I want to talk about Brian's death and how anguish-inducing that was at some point. But, you know, when they're walking up the stairs, the recurring bit of how hard it is to walk upstairs when you're old, one of my favorite things about this television experience so far. But when Ellie is asking, like, did you kill innocent people? And there's this look that Joel gives. And we have one episode removed. That's it.

one from not only the, you ask a lot of goddamn questions, rebuke, but the stated rule, this is our contract, this is our agreement as we sat out onto the road together. We keep our histories to ourselves. How quickly did that dissolve?

And as we watch, on Joel's side. Yes. He wants to talk. He wants to talk. He starts to open up. He's starting to share. And the Tommy thing is,

that's what I was going to just mention, Joe, because like, we have seen, to Patrick's point, We've seen the Desert Storm bumper sticker. We've seen Tommy in action. We've seen their life together. Crucially, it feels like now, I think one of the really key exchanges from episode one, more so than we realized at the time, was the conversation that Joel, Tommy, and Sarah had,

just a kind of, you know, matter of fact, ribbing with your family and the people you spend your life with about, like, dependence and love and whether or not those are the same thing. And how crucial we see now that is to how Joel thinks about when does your mission become your purpose? And like, can he allow himself to be in a position again where what he is, you're not family, your cargo, you're a mission, you're a task, you're a thing I said I do. I didn't buy it for a second. No. But he can feel it happening, but he can't, he's afraid to let himself feel that again because the great failures in his life from his perspective, not being able to protect and save his daughter, not being able to protect and save tests. And so when he's

talking about Tommy and he's saying these things like, Tommy's what we used to call a joiner. That tells us something about Tommy, but more so, it tells us something about Joel. He doesn't want to be a joiner. He doesn't think it's a good thing to be a joiner. He thinks it's safer and easier to live your life apart from other people. And that's like a really tragic thing. And so when Ellie asked him, you know, if you don't think there's hope for the world, why bother going on? I mean, you've got to try, right? His reply was, you haven't seen the world so you don't know. And that's like... Biggest, biggest cop-out answer of any adult ever to give it to any fucking kid.

You'll see. Give me a fucking break. Oh, man. I hate it. I hate it when my dad gave it to it. I was like, I do see now, motherfucker. You don't see anymore, is the point. Yeah.

But just backing up, as you were talking, Mallory, I, I feel that one way station 11 and the last of us are very similar is they're in conversation with fascism. And I don't mean to sound political by bringing that up, but I think that it's a question that's in our zeitgeist right now. Thing one, you know, I made a comment before about, you know, MAGA right wing as dismissive. But I come from a purple state. I come, I had guns growing up. I shot things. You know, my dad's friends were Republicans. My mom's friends were Democrats, but it was a complicated space that I, as much as I want to kind of make it binary, it's just not.

I just know good people who are right-wing people. I'm sorry to everyone who that is upsetting to. And I know assholes who are left-wing people. And it's, I think I love watching the last of us. us explore the value of power at times. Because what did Tommy do? What did Tommy do? He saved his brother.

And he almost saved his niece. He tried to. And I think there's something to that. So when Joel says he was a joiner, in my head immediately goes like, you know who the biggest joiners are? Nazis. Nazis are joiners.

That's when they don't have an identity of their own, and they join into a group of power in order to violently kill anyone who is unique and individual. But Joel's a joiner. He's a family guy. He wants to be around people he cares about and loves, and he wants to protect them. Bill's a joiner.

He let Frank out of the hole. He got the ladder. everyone's a joiner if they're not scared. And I think this show is doing a great job of not being full of shit about the dangers of what would be out there, but still carving out its survival's insufficient space. And props to the lead of The Last of Us, by the way.

I've listened to two of your episodes, but I don't think I caught them all. Pedro Pascal is amazing. He's not just great on Saturday Night Live. So crucially, great on Saturday Night Live, and not everyone can do that. He had to grow his identity and a relationship with his real daughter

in the first episode, then grow a new identity and a new relationship with a new young woman all in the same episode. And he did it. I bought it. Not to mention Tess. And he is a different.

person after that 20-year lacuna. I keep seeing cuts. This is maybe if I have one critique of The Last of Us, and it's not even a critique. I know why they have to do it. Last night, I watched it last night, this episode, when they're telling the jokes and they're in their safe apartment, and she tells the diarrhea joke, and it gets them. And you're kind of over on his side, so he's not wanting her to see him smile. And he laughs, and he's like, oh, it's so stupid. And she's laughing more. it cut away to the Y and ended the scene. And I just was seeing Pedro about to do like four more things lying there on the bed. I wish, and since these episodes are like fucking 90 minutes long anyways,

I wish I can so see him delivering all sorts of more. I wish we could get like a little tiny bit more air on those looks that he's doing because he's carrying an impossible cargo of storytelling on his shoulders by what he's not saying. And he's never lost me, you know, not once. And I think he's kind of, it's a tough role because he's the straight man. He's stoic. He doesn't talk a lot. He's going to spill more.

But he has to do all these jobs. But his acting in this show is unbelievable. And I think it gets. lost in the shuffle because it's such a big production and Bell is amazing and Melanie Linsky and all these great actors are flying in but he is the core and center of the show and he is rocking it. He is unbelievable in this show. We're just a couple weeks away from Mandalorian. What a time for all of us to get to watch Pedro Pascal in two shows at once. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite,

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Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. I want to zoom back to something I think you guys are bowl circling, which is this idea that Mazin and Druckman are fascinated by the about like the little mini tribes you form in a situation like this and whether or not that's biological family or something else that you've invented.

But I think that or found, but I think it's very crucial that Kathleen's motivation here is pinned on the loss of a brother, right? This is her, an invasion or a disruption of her core tribe is this relationship with her and her brother taken from her. I think it's very significant that she's after a pair of brothers because whatever we find out what's going on with Henry and Sam, surely part of whatever it is that Henry did has to do with protecting a kid who is drawing superhero, you know, and crayon all over the walls, right? So that's like it's one brother, you know, sibling tribe versus another little sibling tribe. And then you've got the third in Joel and Ellie, their little pod that they're forming, right? And I think that something that's fascinating that this show is exploring is this idea of like, of course, the comfort of that. And that's a lot of what, you know, the really interesting adaptive choices you made was Station 11 to create this pod family and their experience that is.

additive to the story that, you know, Emily told in the book. But also, as far as Mason and Druckman are concerned, the danger of that, the danger that comes with that fierce love that you're clinging to. And to both of your point about Joel and Tommy, I think this idea that, like, when Joel is talking about Tommy being a joiner, I think what he's saying is Tommy chose to leave our pod, our family, the unit that I formed. with him and Tess, and we did some shit we're not proud of, but it worked. And he joined the fireflies. And he opted out of my family into this other family.

And that is something that Joel has a lot of, I think, I mean, definitely bitterness around that Tommy decided to leave and join this other thing and is now driven by, well, I have to go save my brother again. My brother's out in Wyoming. And like, just like I had to bail him out of jail. And this is something that Mazin and Druckman talked about. But just like I had to bail him out of jail in episode one, this is something Joel wants, right? He wants to be the guy who saves people. But I think it's really interesting, Patrick,

as you point out, that at the end of episode one, Tommy's the one who comes in and saves Joel, you know what I mean? So it's that like sort of independence of a younger sibling that maybe Joel can't tolerate even more so than like Tommy's a joiner. Or it's not just tolerate, but like, he accepts that he's not the alpha. And the people who survive in this place are people who do away with vertical power structures. And instead don't have to be the alpha. They're members of a community together. And I think if you look at the, we don't know a ton.

I guess we learned about the government. What are they called? Fedra. Fedra. We learned about them in the first encampment, the first kids. right? And now we're learning about a resistance out here, but like vertical power structures

with military might at the top that's the problem, you know? And I think like younger siblings often, I'm a younger sibling are the voices that are saying like, hey, I know that you

used to be able to beat me up because I was smaller than you and I know that like you're like the king or the queen in my case, my sister. And I'm like, I'm like the princely, but like, what if we just didn't do that and we're horizontal and united? I think we could get a lot more out of that. So I think also, you know, Kirsten and in Station 11 is somebody who has joined a theater troupe. And, you know, I can have, I'm good natured about like, ha, ha, theater kids.

Oh, no. Station 11 is the show that what, that, what, that. What would happen if theater kids took over the world? I can laugh at that, but I'm also like, you know what? That's the best power structure that humans have ever come up with in order to solve problems and be in a community. Horizontal power sharing. It's called the process. It's art making.

It's when you make things together in a group, no one has a truck card. You communicate. You humanize each other. Remember how everyone's feeling. And you solve the problem together because group genius is bigger than individual genius. and it's actually bigger than weaponry ultimately too.

So laugh all you want about the theater troupe thing. I used to make fun of theater kids in high school. I will admit it. I believe in the process and group power sharing that becomes horizontal instead of vertical. So I think the last of us is kind of doing the same thing. It's making a group. I feel like my favorite,

version of the story to come from Melanie Linsky's to find out her brother did a bad thing. And to have to realize that, like, sometimes the other is right. And I need to rebuild my group accordingly. Sometimes I have to listen to the other. I hope that's where this story is going. I love all of that. And I think, like, what feels, again, because we don't have a ton of the details in the particulars yet about Kathleen.

about her brother, about the doctor, about Henry, about Sam, about the hunters, about Kansas City, about anything that happened there. But, like, what is present and true and complex immediately is, like, even if her brother didn't do anything bad, and that doctor was an informant and did rat out his fellows and the members of his community to Fedra, does that give Kathleen, not to go all like Obi-1-Edkin,

you've become the thing you swore to destroy as like the fires of Mustafa roar around us. But does that give Kathleen the right to your like, to your point about consolidating power individually or spreading it out to decide on her own? Because there's this whole like they're luring people to harm them, right? To take their possessions. To inflict pain on them so that they can further their own ambitions. But also does she get to decide on her own to not tell other people about that rumbling inferno downstairs? Like, is that a choice she gets to make that I think we all, the viewers four deep into the last of us could say is like going to have a bearing on the plot of the next episode,

right? Like, that becomes a level of like tyranny and fascism embodied in the person who just forded that elsewhere. Heavy is the crown, I would say, leadership brings with it all. always compromise and of your own values. And I think you're lost if you're not litigating each of those again, if you're moving on inertia. But also we're talking about TV.

And so I'll say she's on an arc right now. And the best arc is to see her, to meet her at her worst. And I think we're going to see, definitely going to see consequences for her choice not to spread the information about what's going on downstairs. That's a mistake. I can see it in the eyes of the guy with the beard.

Perry's like, Kathleen and I have some notes. Yeah, do you have a suggestion box? Yeah. But I think one thing I kind of like about this show is like put me there in all, having fought what I fought or been betrayed by the people I trusted, I think there's a world where it is not objectively wrong for her to walk into that

room and open that door and shoot that dude in the head. I think sometimes that's the right thing to do. It doesn't look like it. It sure doesn't feel like it. Murder doesn't ever feel like it, but in times of war, what I like about this show is it's unblinking at the Joel does it too. And also, Joel, I believe that the body didn't seem to reflect it, but used the knife. Yeah, and stabbed him in the chest. I assume why are you stabbing in the chest, Joel, if you're doing the kill shot, A. Got to concern. I think it's quieter.

Oh, rather than you're saying, alert people. Slid his throat. This is where their voice comes from. Yeah, fair. I assumed he's saving bullets, right? Yeah. And trying to not make any sound to draw more people. Except he used that guy's own knife on him, I think.

I think there was a little bit of sadistic pleasure that was happening off camera that he also didn't want Ellie to witness. But what's the difference between what Joel did and what she did? Right. And I think that's the best kind of story. We talk about this a lot with the episode of Game of Thrones. the spoils of war. Like, it's always fun to show us a conflict where there is no right side, right? That we're meant to watch both sides do things against other characters that we care about.

You know what I mean? And I don't know that they've given us enough about Kathleen to care about necessarily, except that it's Melanie Lynch. It's except that it's Melanie Linsky, right? She gave me enough. And so, like, for me, I'm like, you're feeling for Melanie Linsky. feeling for Kathleen talking about her brother, the loss of a brother. We are, I mean, at least I am, you know, predisposed to hate informants and collaborators

and stuff like that, like all that sort of stuff. But then the reveal, not just in the crawl space, but also in the last shot of like, the target of her vengeance are these literal children. Henry and Sam, who are, I believe, I only got the first glimpse of them in the cinematic I play through that I'm watching of the game and then I stopped, but like are aged down even a bit from who Henry and Sam are in the in the game. And so to make that crusade of hers feel justified to monstrous at the same time. I don't know why. I knew it was a kid when she kept saying Henry like that. For summary, I thought they were both kids too. I didn't I didn't I thought they were

big brother, little brother, but his dad, dad's son. Is that right? brothers. Oh, they are brothers. Yeah. I don't know why there was something about the way she was saying Henry, and this is to her credit acting also. It felt like she was talking about a kid. It did when she said it.

Also, very interesting little beat there about her leadership style. When she comes out, dudes Diane said, what if I had a doctor? some fucking guy with a shaved head is like there's no chance. I'm not listening to that guy. I'm not looking to take the doctor and just double checking first. But that aside, she's like, okay, she finds out it's over. Her anger at the doctor I felt was because how sad she was at the loss of that kid.

It wasn't actually her interrogation anymore. she was shooting doctors because doctors couldn't fucking stop this from happening 20 years ago. There's a rage in there of like, you're useless. Right when you were supposed to save us, you guys were useless. And I think all the characters in this show

have like this kind of like burbling lava lake of fury down in them like we do. When our beloved presidents was gutting the CDC and gutting around the world, every kind of institution that was poised to protect the world from falling into what it fell into. We're never going to get over that.

I'm never going to get over that. That fucking happened. The pandemic didn't have to happen. Our leadership failed us horribly. And we just get to swallow that for the rest of our lives. I mean, I don't know. We haven't talked about our pandemic much,

But I would say, like, it's in the air here for both of these shows. Well, and I think I wanted to pivot to you, Mal, because I think that loss of that kid, Brian, right, where she's like, what of mine. Oh, you know, again, back to that tribalism. One of mine is now dying at my feet. And I'm the leader, and I've failed to protect another one of mine sort of thing and that leading her to go back and shooting the doctor. But Mallory, you want to talk a bit about, like, the adaptive choices of what they did with Brian. here and his death? What do you want to say? Well, I think some of it again is just of a piece with what we've already discussed about fleshing out this entire group and making these people,

people who have lives and who have mothers that they call out for it with their dying breaths. But a lot of this, I mean, it's obviously like agonizing to swing in the span of seconds from a shotgun thrust to the head. And Brian being a person who was trying to, to take out Joel, to kill Joel, to end Joel's life, into Brian being on the other side of Ellie firing that gun that we knew she was going to fire, that had been not only the object of her obsession to secure it, but like what's the opening scene of this episode?

She's in the bathroom as Joel is siphoning gas, pointing the trigger in the mirror, smelling the gun. There's like a lust almost. in the way that she looks at and considers that weapon. And so Brian, I thought, encapsulated this like, okay, I'm a soldier, I'm a killer, I'm a member of my group, who will do what I have to to protect my group,

but I'm a boy and I'm afraid. And we got a lot of that juxtaposition really effectively with Ellie in this episode. I thought it was obviously a great and important Joel Ellie episode in terms of how much progress they're making with each other in real time. But with Ellie in particular, these juxtapositions of, you know, the pun book and the role it plays across the episode, you have the opening stretch with the gas station riffing and the bits, the recurrence and return at the camp scene overnight with the scarecrow. And then the end, obviously setting up, as Patrick beautifully talked about earlier, that just like authentic and wonderful bonding moment, not only between them, but you're like, when was the last time? Joel and himself laugh and feel joy and feel joy and share that with another person, right?

And you have like this very childlike humor and pursuit of levity with Ellie across this episode and these moments with the pun book and other times. Why are these pages all stuck together? That was so funny. I feel pretty sure after watching that that Joel never had the sex talk with his own daughter. He was like, uh, uh, but then you have these moments where Ellie is not. not only acting with violence, but clearly thinking about violence and power in a way that is

as adult as anything in life could be. Coveting. Covening. Yeah. Yes. There's a hunger, right? And, like, it's been really interesting to hear Mazin and Druckman talk about how that, you know, the gun specifically representing power and people who are able to survive in this kind of

world. But what Joel then more broadly represents to her as a person who knows how to survive. She watched him beat a man to death with his bare hands. at the end of the first episode. This is a person who can do what's necessary. And so to invert that with Brian and have Ellie be the one who needs to save Joel, like it builds and leads toward the gun tutorial,

which is this like, for Ellie a moment of euphoria. Like, she looks happier in that moment where he tries to pull the gun out of her hand and she realizes that he can't and she's learned a new thing than she has at any point in the series. But like, there's also another moment for him where he is like, I didn't do the thing that I was supposed to do.

You had to come protect me. I couldn't protect you. Yeah, that shame, like, for him, the, you know, the comments about the knees and how hard is to climb in his hearing and he's been carrying this. What ear at the end when he doesn't hear Henry and Sam the way here? He put the glass out, but it didn't matter because he was sleeping on the wrong ear. But it's like. Well, where did they come in also, by the way? I'm not sure they came in that door.

They were on the other side of the set. Feeling. Could have been. Yeah, another one of their crawl spaces. Also, a very well-provisioned and maintained room 20 years into the outbreak. The flat screen looks great. I would happily hang out there for a few nights with my chef-boy idea. Yeah, looks great.

Comfort here. Can I just be one thought I had in there, the reason there's no cold open in this episode is because of what we needed the episode to start with, which was Ellie in the Gun. And I think it's just another great example. of sort of organic storytelling, the causality happening between that little thing that was buried, not in Frankenville section, but later when she found the same gun,

I assume the same gun that Frank found. Yeah, it's Franks gun. When she tried to go help. If you just take a step back, and this is more director point of view, what happened in three? Forget about the love and the strawberries and the beautiful performances.

What happened? Ellie got a gun. Okay? So, like, opening episode four, reminding me very clearly that Ellie has a gun, that is a great move of serialized storytelling. And on station level, we were so wide, we were so kind of orbiting in big orbits

that we rarely could generate that kind of episode-to-episode inertia. Bang, bang. But, like, I loved it that the episode opened with that because it reminded me of a really important thing that happened back in episode three that I might have forgotten about. I wanted to ask you one last thing before we have to go. I'm like at the halfway point. That's a different. That's a different fee.

But I want to ask you that, you know, as Mal points out, this, like, great comedy rule of three buildup of the pun book from like groaning to smiling to last. with Joel and the sort of thawing of him, that joy that you can find in these deeply harrowing situations, one of the most, you know, beloved and lauded scenes from Station 11 is this moment with your character, Frank, a different Frank, and a performance of excursions. And I was just wondering if you could talk a little about this idea of finding moments of joy in a post-apocalyptic story.

And, like, you know, how much levity do you need so your show doesn't feel like a drag or how, or is too much levity feel inappropriate for the circumstances they're living in? Like, what's the back and forth on that? Well, that wasn't the calculus. I don't think. How much does the show need to make it tolerable? Yeah. To watch it. It could have been.

Yeah. I think, but I think, first of all, shout out to the bond. Rizwan as always because that's Naban doing his thing and and he that would have been a silly beat if it wasn't for him if it wasn't for Lucy Terniak the direction Daniel our cinematographer that that's a oneer all there's a lot that made that work but I would say that's we always every show has like it's two or three kind of sentences that are it's North Stars. When you're stuck and you don't know what to do,

you remember your sentences. One of ours was survival is insufficient. When I pitched the show, I came upon a sentence. I just said it's a post-apocalyptic show about joy. Always remember that. And I think there was a conceptual idea in Station 11 that was kind of hip-hop. It's about remixing what we had into something good.

and this is where I really started to settle into a feeling of specialness about Station 11 that this is what trauma healing also is which is you have to revisit it you have to go through it and be in it and then hardest you have to find what was in it that was beautiful and take it back out with you. And so, you know, hip hop to me does that. Automatically, David Eisenberg, our editor, dropped in the Art Blakey piece early in the episode that is the sample from the tribe to try to underline that idea. But I think in that beat right there, that I wrote after we were all in our pandemic quarantine situation. I have three kids. I don't know about you guys. But you realize at a certain point it doesn't matter if there's zombies, COVID, nuclear bombs,

or whatever outside your door, you still got to have fun with each other. That's the bigger risk. It is to not remember that humans are better than any threat, any genre of show could have to not remember that human whim and imagination is more powerful than that, that's when you lose. That's when you lose to whatever forces outside. It always wins, I swear to God.

And so in that episode, it's not the only moment too. You know, Matilda sings, that's the episode I think where McKenzie, as adult Kirsten, sees it so many times. times, so many times of an individual looking at the group who sat and doing a thing they didn't have to do that doesn't go down on the, it's like offensive line in football. Like, it doesn't go down in the books that you saved the game with that block, but that's the reason teams win.

So I think Frank in that moment, he learned it from Matilda earlier in the episode. honestly he's like I'm going to remix this awful fucking job that I have on these tapes that don't matter anymore and I'm going to call them out here because they all think I'm crazy

and I'm going to trick him and we're all going to be dancing fuck it fuck it COVID and the flu and zombies like we're dancing and I think that that's what I think that's what I think about life

and as as harrowing You have to represent how harrowing it is. You have to show Jeevan almost jumping. You have to show the guy come in. But I don't think anyone watches Station 11 and remembers the red bandanas. And I don't think I'm going to remember the fucking guys with the plants coming out of their heads. I'm done watching this show either.

That's not why I'm in. Remember strawberries. strawberries and gross and pundas you know that one guy had the red

the red little leaves coming out of his head in one of the first one of the first infected we saw and they kind of reminded me the strawberries a little bit

I don't know I was grossed out I was worried about the strawberries too um thank you you just made me cry a little bit

I love I love station 11 so much I think about it all the time so thank you so much for coming on and talking about it Malice or anything else

Sorry, I made you cry. No, no, no, no. We love a cry. We love a cry. We do love a cry. Can I ask you guys a question? Of course. A final question.

Has any moment in The Last of Us made you cry? Yeah, we like chokes up through episode three, I'm pretty sure. Like the Linda Rundstad of it all really got a. Yeah. Like when it dropped from the diagetic and went big and they blasted out or the one that he played piano? When he played piano Strawberries also got me Strawberries

Yeah I loved when Frank out in the In the street during their argument Said paying attention to things That's how we should love That fucking shredded me That was incredible It was beautiful It was already in the ball

You were my purpose line Just It was already in the bottle Really got to me But like people keep talking about episode three Is it's like devastating And that's not the word That I would use for that episode

It's just sort of like because there is uplift and joy. It's just tremendously emotional. They didn't suffer. We didn't have to watch them suffer. And I would say, I would say, you know, Sarah's death, like the way that Pedro performed Sarah's death

and him talking to her and saying, like, it's going to be okay and Tommy knowing it's not going to be okay, like they got me there, Tess's death got, yeah, like I've gotten me a bunch of turns. turn, Pedro's turn when he walked away from her. I thought that was incredible. Yeah,

on the heels of the flinch. This episode, episode three and two and one, yeah, all had tears. This episode, I think even absent maybe the outright water works,

like, definitely had some moments that I found deeply impactful and sad, though. Like, I think the moment that in some ways showed me the most about Joel

was, why did they stop in the, in the woods? in the first place. He needed sleep. Ellie, we see in a later scene, can sleep in the car. He needs sleep. It's for him so that he can charge up and repower to keep driving. The moot line about, is it longer than 25 hours?

I was telling you. I'm going to break that out for you about one of our podcast runtimes one day. But when Ellie returning to that vulnerability that she showed in episode one when they were first together in their old, and Tess and Joel's apartment, she's like, are we going to, but we'll be okay out there. And she's saying here, like, but the. people, the people you keep talking about, they're not going to find us, right? And like, we see, despite the guns, despite everything, it's a kid. And he, he lets her sleep. And even though he's the one who needed the rest, he stands up and he spends all night with the rifle in his hand looking to make sure she's okay. And then we hear, we go right from that into the coffee. Look, it smells like burnt shit morning coffee bit, which was a nice blend, I think, of the humor and large. Please. You said,

You said it was bad coffee. And I was like, I think that was good coffee. Well, it's certainly coffee that Bill has been holding on to for two decades, I think. But I would take it. The beans. I didn't know about the beans when she was, I was worried she was going to burn herself, the dad of me. But also, I think that's just the kid smelling coffee for the first time. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Every kid thinks coffee is gross at first. I was like, man, that seems like a delicious fucking pot of coffee.

Same. Can you imagine what that would feel like to get that caffeine? into your... Well, he's not sleeping. At long last, missing it for the long. The folly of him, like, slurping that coffee out of the thermos was like, perfect. For me, I think, I think that shot of Joel of Pedro just, like, standing vigil in the forest was incredible. But also the decision, and this is a show decision, it's not in the game, of young Sam to have that superhero, like, stripe of red mask on his face as he's.

as he was holding the gun. For the episode to be bookended... Cool character. Yeah, for the episode to be bookended by children holding guns at the camera, right? First, Ellie, and then Sam. And for Sam to have that added layer of, you know, youth of a superhero mask painted on his face

in post-apocalyptic Kansas City is just like a really cool and upsetting and intriguing final beat of an episode. Oh, I was a... upset. I wasn't upset. I was like, oh, let's fucking go. I was like my group, my group is growing.

You know, my, my, my, my people have help is how I felt when I saw them. All right, anything else you want to say, Mal, about this episode, this show? Oh, my goodness. I mean, fit, like anything you want to say? It's a great fit. I love the fit. Wonderful fit. You know, we could

talk for five hours. I'm trying to think of, of any final thoughts based on what we were just talking about. I thought we've chatted about Tess a lot and have enjoyed chatting about Tess. One of the tear-jurker moments, Patrick, to your question, I think Joe and I were both deeply impacted by Tess's line to Joel in episode two.

I never asked you for anything not to feel the way I felt. And it hit me hard in this episode to hear Joel say to Ellie, Tess was like family because more than seeing him with her, like in the absence of her being in his life anymore, hearing him say, that person was family to me.

and then we know he still couldn't give that to her, like give himself to her. He's just so heartbreaking, like to think of somebody spending the last 20 years of their life. The clickers have the hard fungus on their head, but Joe has a cocoon as strong as any of that around his heart. What that makes me think is just another ingenious reason why three needed to be there. Joel is Bill, if Bill had not.

put the ladder down the hole. Yes. You know, I think it, I even think it was harder for Bill to overcome his stuff than it would be for Joel to overcome it. I don't know all Joel's stuff,

but like all we knew of Bill was he was making a wall. And I don't know, he seemed pretty happy along. I've heard, like, he didn't seem like he was missing anything But I love that whole sequence when Murray was down the hole and he was like, I'm fucked. He's going to come back. And then the ladder appears and it comes down.

That choice is sort of, that's the choice in the show. Do you put the ladder down or do you draw the gun and shoot? Because it's easier to do the ladder. It's a whole bunch of risk to do the former. And I think that, to extend the metaphor, like, since Sarah died, Joel has not put the ladder down the hole for anyone, despite the fact that Tommy and Tess were around him. And he's like, it worked the three of us.

Clearly, it didn't. Tommy left for the fireflies. Like, it wasn't, like, really working. You know what I mean? Because he was... And Tess was heartbroken. Yeah, and she was devastated by, like, his, you know, removal from her, right?

And that it takes another... It takes another child for him to open up to the possibility of putting that ladder down the hole for someone. Yeah, I mean, I found it moving to see him standing vigil there, but I also found that to be quite a hyper-masculinized kind of fantasy moment. What I would really break down in tears about is if I saw Joel wake up and see Ellie standing guard, you know, on the edge of the woods. And hopefully that's where we're going. Well, it's like that's his identity and how he sees himself, the protector, but it's also like the only thing he has allowed himself to have, right?

in that way he's much like Kirsten and I think it's the last kind of station 11 common I'll make but the shows are different because Station 11's further out of the danger but what we have we don't have monsters

but we have everybody's dealing with the inertia of what they had to become to survive and so Kirsten has the knives for too long she needed them then but now she doesn't need to be have four knives on stage to do hamlet and in fact it's making her performance suffer by having all those knives and for her she needed to stop being armed

um in order to live again and i think that's an interesting difference we we jumped this we called it the first 100 we piled it all into kind of one little kind of squashed micro narrative that we didn't do. We just said, like, what if the hyper-masconized, militarized, male fascist story was over? What then? But I think same problem still. You know, anyone who survived a thing,

they had to invent weapons for themselves to survive it. And then they have to figure out how to drop their weapons afterwards. And I think that's even hard. I love this. Thank you so much for coming and talking to us about literally, Eddie. What a treat. What a treat. Standing in, man. I'm watching out. I'm in. I'm just like, holy shit. A big HBO show with this velocity and they have everyone, that's fucking fun. And it doesn't happen enough. Like, I'm all in, all the way to the end. Kudos to those guys. What a great job of making a great show.

As I mentioned, Charles and Band will be here on Friday. Do the next episode. Malina will be back on Monday. In between, then, Someone will win the Super Bowl, one way or another. Packers. Packers by 16. Joe, are you taking the Eagles or the Chiefs? I know you've been tracking it closely. Brand loyalty means I have to go with Eagles, right? Like, loyal to the ringer at large.

I think the Eagles are the better team. Sorry, Casey. On both counts. I can't imagine what it must be like to watch AJ Brown and Devante Smith. God. I think Jalen Hertz is the truth. Agreed. I love Jailen.

Joe, this is really the part of the podcast. you were mostly before. I hate the Eagles. I just want to say that. I'm saying all of that. Fourth and 26, never forget Freddie Mitchell. You got to send that message to Chris and Andy,

you know, right before the Super Bowl. Just a reminder, guys, I fucking hate the Eagles. I asked if we could do a special watch that's just me interviewing them about the Super Bowl on Friday. It's just to really stoke their fears about it. All right. So we will watch the sea of Casey falls.

on either Friday or Sunday. And thanks, of course, always to Carlis Sheriburger for his work on this episode. And thanks to Patrick Somerville. So fun. Thanks for having me on you guys. This has been great. I'll come back whenever. Seach 11, HBO Max.

Go watch it. Last of us, HBO. And also out on Blu-ray, right? Soon. Oh, yeah. We get to have a Blu-ray release next month. Wonderful. Hard media.

It's cool. There's not many extras, but you see it in. full color time, sound, sonic glory, if you really love the show. And also just buy physical media. You know, like our landscape keeps changing. I think if sales of things like that actually matter, it has an impact on shows and kinds of shows we love sticking around.

So if you love to buy it, it helps us. I don't get any money, but someone does somewhere. Pay someone somewhere, some money and watch Stage 11. Alright, that's it for us. Bye!