The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Premiere

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Jo and Rob are back in the spores, molds, and fungus to break down the deviations and faithfulness of the video game adaptation (10:16), how scary the new infected “stalkers” are (33:46), and how Abby’s introduction differs from the game (35:29). Then **SPOILERS** Rob’s take on the early reveal of Abby’s intentions (46:35) Email us! [e-mail] Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Prestige TV Podcast’ and so much more! Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producers: Kai Grady and Donnie Beacham Jr. Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney. And we are here to deliver to you the ninth, the Last of Us podcast episode on The Ringer, podcast feed. Hello, we're here to talk to you about season two, episode one of The Last of Us. It's titled Future Days and directed by Craig Mason and written by Craig Mason. So we talked about this a little bit on a previous pod,

of sort of like why we want to do this podcast when Mallory and I are also doing a deep dive coverage on a house of R. There's button mash episodes about it. There's Midnight Boys episodes about it. Chris and Andy talked about it. So what can Rob and Joanna bring to the table after all of that? Rob Mahoney, what do you think? What are we bringing to the table here with our late in the week sort of dive into the last

to us? Pure unbridled enthusiasm? Um, verve. Vibes? Hopefully vibes. I hope that's what our listeners have come to expect from us. And I hope we can deliver on that front. But honestly, I don't think it's that much more complicated than we both love this show.

The show is a massive deal. And so to omit it from the prestige TV podcast feels like an oversight. And for me personally, I simply demand a space to have my voice heard on a show that is, and I will say a property that is very important to me as someone who loves, loves these two games. So here's the deal. Rob has played and loves the last of us. Absolutely. I have watched a cinematic playthrough of the first game and I'm almost done with my cinematic playthrough of the second game. So we know what happens. We are not going to spoil what happens outside of a spoiler section at the end of the pod. Definitely not. Our goal for this podcast to make it feel like

something distinct from the other last of us episodes that you'll see on the ringer feed, other than our, you said, verve, I will add maybe Vim and Vigour. Sure. We're hoping to have some conversations with people who worked on the show. So that's, you know, sort of interview opportunities as they may come up, is something we were hoping to explore, which Mallory and I simply do not have time for over two and a half hours. You don't want to add another half hour to the runtime?

Why not? I think everyone's good. So we don't have an interview this week, but hopefully in episodes going forward, we will have interviews with folks who have worked on the show, checking in sort of later in the week on some of their thoughts is our plan, our hope, our dream. And I'm going to have many questions for them, Joe, because I, this is just a real experience for me as someone who, as you know, does not read a lot of fiction. When you and I cover things, I am not usually attuned to the source material at many moments watching the season premiere of The Last of Us in which I felt conflicted. I felt anger at adaptive choices. I felt frustration. I felt confusion.

It's not, again, I'm staying the course. I want to be along for the ride. This is a season that has been sort of reconfigured from the game overall. And I think overall, the creative challenge for the people who made the game now getting a second chance to kind of rewrite and retell a new version of that story with all the benefit of hindsight. It's just a fascinating experience. But for someone who loved that game, I feel a little jumbled up. You know, I feel a little turned about. I'm trying to figure.

out how to feel about it. Oh, I love that. Okay. Two things before we get into some of the things we want to talk about. And then again, we will have a spoiler section so Rob can just like fully unleash his spoilery thoughts. But 5.3 million viewers tuned in for the premiere, which is not nothing. It's up 12% from its launch in season one. So this is, we're doing well. Because Season one felt like HBO was like this is a smashola hit for us. So the fact that we're doing even better than season one, HBO has to be feeling good about that. But how many of those 5.3 million are undead?

Like how do we actually crunch the numbers on that? Can a fungus work the Macs website? It's a great question. The interface is a little funky sometimes. I have a really important question for you. This is something I just learned from perusing the subreddit the last couple days. Yeah. You know I love a subreddit. Are you Rob Mahoney, player of The Last of Us?

Sure. Are you team bottle or team brick? I'm bottle. It's just flashier. Okay. You know, they both have their place, but I am a bottle guy first and foremost. Do you want to explain A, what that is, and B, how did you then feel to see yourself represented in the premiere when Ellie went for the bottle? It's a very powerful moment for me. You know, I don't get to be represented on screen very often, Joe.

Yeah. You know, my demographics. A white guy in America. This is what I'm saying. But you pick up a bottle and you use it to distract a zombie and all of a sudden I'm just feeling, I'm feeling observed in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable, but also very flattered. So within the game, The Last of Us, obviously you're trying to dodge and manipulate all

of these zombies who have various different sensory abilities. Some can see you. Some can only hear you. And so to distract some, you might throw a bottle to create some noise. you might throw a brick to create some clattering to break a window, whatever it may be. But if I'm given the choice, I'm going to take the bottle every time. All right. Well, we will come down then as a United Front ProBottle on this podcast.

Thank God. I was so worried. I was meant to ask people to write in their thoughts or feelings. And I realize we don't have an email yet for this run. Ramon, have you come with any hopefully mushroom-based, but not necessarily mushroom-based emails to suggestive folks? to email us. I do have some. Of course, off the top,

you can always email us at prestige TV at Spotify.com. If you don't want to participate in our little game of creating a new email address for every show we cover, I have a couple, Joe. I'm conflicted on them.

For one, this first episode gives us a lot of cute little bits to work with, but we're kind of just getting into the story. And so you don't want to get ahead of over our skis, so to speak,

as far as what we're actually talking about here. Can Infected Do Math? at gmail.com. The question is out there. Many people are wondering. To quote Lily Tomlin at gmail.com. Brittany and the jugboys at gmail.com. And we can debate as to who is Brittany

and who is a jug boy on this podcast between me, you and Donnie. I'm up for debate. My personal favorite, though, this is your brain on shrooms at gmail.com. How do you feel about that one? I'm obsessed with this is your brain on shrooms. Is it available?

I did check and it was available. Let's do a little confirmation here before we give it out officially. I can't believe you did a pre-record check. This is the first time we've done that. This is incredibly efficient of you. Yeah, no. Well, we'll see if it actually paid off for us. This is your brain on shrooms. We are locked in. All right. So this is your brain on shrooms at gmail.com. We're locked in. We're locked in. Rob, what a talent you have for this.

So send us your team model or team brick thoughts. also any other thoughts you have this is something i love about the prestige feed is is interacting with the listeners and hearing from you guys and the the inbox has been a little dry between seasons yeah i don't know we still got a lot of spinal tap takes based off of our coverage of the pit we got a lot of spinal i know a lot more about spinal taps than i ever really care to but thank you all for for writing and we did ask for that information and if at some point during this season of the last of us we need to extract some spinal fluid, we're going to know exactly how to do it. And we're going to know exactly where

they may be going wrong. Do you feel like spinal fluid of like an infected would be like mushroom brothy? Would that be what it would be like? I kind of hope so. See, now we're getting somewhere. Can you eat an infected? What are the ethics of eating and infected? Sorry, as someone who just finished covering a season of yellow jackets, I will say you can definitely eat and infected. But will it make you infected? Oh, well, you just mentioned ethics. You didn't mention the science. I'm trying to practicalities and ethics. I'm trying to figure out whether this is something I should plan my weekend around.

I feel like you should, like, okay, here's a couple options. One, we go to the full yellow jackets route and just like spit roast the whole infected, right? Do love a roasted mushroom. Another option is we're shaving sort of mushroomy bits off. More of a truffly approach. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would more tempted to do the shaving part and then I would want to really cook it. Sure.

And I feel like once it's really cooked, like I would want to do like the growths things. The shelves. The plates that are kind of coming in? Yeah, the shelf plates, nothing tenderly. Like no tendrils are crossing my palate. Okay, great. Glad we decided that. And as you know, I don't know if you know this, but like when it's the last of a season,

I get into cooking mushroom recipes. Yeah. I got a really good mushroom and leak galette recipe from a listener that I'm going to try out this weekend. You do love a galette. You are a foodie. So if you want to get in on cooking some mushroom recipes, you'll list now. I don't want to step on the house of our bits. And overall, this is the problem, too.

You have your established canonical reference points of cooking all these mushroom recipes with Mallory. We, on Prestige, we're so used to a severance-type show in which we're theoretically. with and around the people who are listening. And so this is a new territory for us. We're going to have to find our way, stumble through the darkness that is, you know, this abandoned grocery store of a podcast and figure out how we are going to be communicating with each other. Okay. Let me throw a bottle and hopefully send you in the right direction, which is something that you brought up as something maybe we could talk about today that Mal and I didn't really touch on is this idea of like maybe more specifically the visuals of the first episode. And I was curious to talk to

you as someone who, well, first of all, have you played any of the remastered version of The Last of Us that just came out? I've only played the remastered first game. So I have not played. In part, the remaster of the second game came out so soon after its original release that I'm like, I'm already pretty good in terms of the graphical fidelity of The Last of Us part two. I don't know that I needed a huge update, but I'm glad it exists. The playoffs are here and you can predict the action all the way to the final with Bandul predict. Predict the spread, total points, and even the game winner. Sign up and get a $25

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Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite. Borershead committed to craft since 1905. So inside of this episode, I'm curious for you a game player if, um, something that Mal and I got slightly wrong is that the dancing that's in the first episode does exist in the game, but exists as a flashback. So we hadn't gotten there yet. We have now, but we hadn't gotten there yet when we talked about it. And my understanding is that the way that this dance scene with Ellie and Dina plays out in the show is almost shot for shot, the same as the game. So what does seeing something like that, you were talking about sort of like grumbling about fidelity to the text and something like that. When you see something that is so meticulously, and Craig Mason talked about this on the official podcast, how hard they worked to get everything the same inside of that sequence as it is in the game.

What does that do for you as a viewer and as a game player? It's honestly a pretty emotional experience for that scene in particular. That dance scene is one that I love. And I think it's placement in the game, as you're saying, it's a little. different because it is a flashback and you're you're kind of jumping through time somewhat. But it's so beautiful. And I think it captures something that's so important about the last of us, right, which is getting these shreds of actual humanity within this post-apocalyptic world, getting this actual human connection. And I always get a little nervous when you have a source text like this.

Or I think it also applies to graphic novels and comic books too and you're like trying to recreate a splash page, like a very specific visual. It usually turns out coming. pretty hollow ultimately. Like you have the emotional connection to whatever the source material is. You see it on screen and it's like, I get what you're doing, but I don't really,

it doesn't resonate with me in any meaningful way. What makes The Last of Us work as well as it does is that with these big moments, like this dance scene, like, you know, the climactic kind of like lie at the end of season one, like these huge emotional moments of the show

and of the game that it's pulling from. It doesn't feel like cosplay. It doesn't feel like you're just kind of set dressing to make it look like the game, even though you are doing that. And I think the reason it doesn't feel that way is because you've done all the emotional work to make those moments pay off. But so I see that scene and I am, I'm like pulled in. Like I see the dangling out slightly out of focus lights and I am just like locked into this moment. And I am pulled back to the experience of playing the game and kind of what it felt like unpacking this narrative in that way.

But did that scene work for you on an emotional level, though? Like did you feel attached to, to Dina and particularly who we just met within the world of the show? Yeah, and I think that, I think of all the things that has worked for people out of this first episode of season two, Isabella Merced as Dina has been sort of like this runaway smashola hit for people. And she has been for a while a like, who is that kind of actor? Where she'll pop up in a lot of things. It's like, there's just something about her energy that really pops. Her energy is really good.

And I kind of want to get back to, I don't know, something that we talked about a bit in really. recent coverage of shows, this idea of, like, Dina is, Isabel Merset is amazing and also Dina is a much easier to like, warm two character than a Joel or an Ellie who have gone through so much, are going through so much, are defined in a lot of ways by their trauma and stuff like that. We don't know inside of the show yet, Dina's whole story. Why is her outlook so sunny? Why is she such a, you know, suck up the marrow, the bone of life sort of person. I don't know why I said it like that. Well, we ran out of fungus. We had to eat something. So, like, I think, I think I loved her. Everyone loved her. And she's quite easy to love. But that's part of the point of,

I think, of the character. And I think what worked for me, not knowing that this was a shot for remake of this section of the game. What worked for me, it's just beautifully, beautifully lit. The music is incredible and really evocative. I love a moment like this inside of a show. I immediately flashed in Dawson's Creek, but I'm sure there are more actual prestige high-tone versions of this, but just sort of like a dance shared between two characters when there's like tension and there's a really good song that goes with it. And then you wind up having that association with that song for I love a bluegrass number personally. And so I just, I think it worked really well. And I think, thinking about it a few days later, I mean, Mallory

and I recorded our up early, so like a week and a half ago. But thinking about it a few days later from Premiere, listening to Craig Mason talk about this idea of like community and how important this idea of community of Jackson was for them to establish that we're at this dance, we're inside of this functioning community. What we get that's in addition to the game is the idea of government in Jackson. That is government work in Jackson. What's the infrastructure in Jackson?

Well, they need an infrastructure package. That's for sure. The pipes are simply at a level of disrepair that is not acceptable. That's tough. It's so upsetting. But that shot we get of Ellie all alone. Ellie surrounded by life and celebration and joy and just her all alone at the bar watching

until Dina pulls, tries to pull her into, you know, an ordinary, extraordinary life experience. And what that says about Ellie as a, as someone who we watched in season one works so hard to become a unit of two. And then the fraction of the fissure that we get inside of that here in season two, where that leaves Ellie in relation to everyone else. How does that contrast between community and Ellie all alone or Joel all alone on the porch work for you? I mean, it works really well. I think this is one of those things where in terms of the visuals of The Last of Us, this is a show and the game is based on with a lot of negative space. A lot of like sprawling countryside and forests that are vacant, a lot of cities that have been overrun and overgrown. And you're used to this idea that if there's a lot of stuff happening in the scene, like,

visually speaking, if there's a lot of clutter, it's usually a very dangerous area, right? It's like it is a store that has been like ransacked and is now overrun with infected or whatever. It's a lot of a lot of clutter around is a bad thing. And so to see somewhere like Jackson that is approaching actual civilization with a sort of bustling life is so disorienting in the world of the last of us. But I think is kind of hitting at why everything for Joel and Ellie is turning on its head. Like these are two people who learned how to live out in the wilderness by themselves, codependent, basically strictly on each other. And now Ellie is trying to be a person independent of Joel.

And Joel, for a bunch of different reasons, is like holding on way, way too tight in a way that is overbearing, that is limiting to Ellie, even independent of the extraordinary circumstances that they've been to, like, for a teenage girl, this is not something that many teenage girls would want. Right. I think it's really interesting. And I think it's so interesting to just show Joel in his fatherly role, both with his nephew and with Dina, calling Dina kiddo, stuff like that. which is like a word he's only ever used for Ellie, like that Joel is many things. But one of those things is he's a good dad. Like he is a good dad. Well, debatable.

No, I think he is a good dad. I think what he did at the end of season one is on a different level than just dadding. I'm just sort of keeping that. That's not a normal dad dilemma? I mean, as far as I know, you, uh, this is your brain on shrooms at jeanil.com if you and dad have ever had to come to this crossroads. It's obviously in the dad bucket in terms of like what we wouldn't do for your kids sort of thing. But like in terms of like ordinary day and day out, if we're living in ordinary peacetime circumstances.

Yeah. For Joel, we're capable of good dadding. And we saw that with his kiddo in season one episode one. I'm curious in terms of the visual. One last thing I want to hit on the visuals. I love that point you made about sort of when we see activity. It's usually scary. There's also this other aspect of gameplay versus watching a show.

And this is a lot of what the co-creators Craig Mason and Neil Druckman talk about when they talk about adaptation is it's such a different prospect, playing a game and being that character. Yes. Versus watching a story being told to you. And something that, you know, I remember Chris Ryan talking a lot about when we were. on our respective shows covering adolescence is this idea of like, how do you engender empathy through visual storytelling? Right. Adolescence, if you didn't listen to that pot or watch that show,

a show that was told in these long one shots. But like how the act of moving your camera through space can engender point of view or give you point of view for one character or another. And so inside of this section of the game, you know, we'll talk about Abby a lot more in the spoiler section, but like, you know, this is a character you can play at the beginning of the last of not. You can. You are playing. And you don't know her and you're playing her. And that automatically puts you in this sort of relational space to that character. So did you have any thoughts about that as a game player or how the visuals in

this episode helped get us in the POV of any. specific characters. Yeah. I think it's the hardest thing to replicate. You know, as far as like video game adaptations go, there's a reason why for the longest time they just did not work. And some of that had to do with the kinds of games they were adapting. And even some of those challenges still exist.

Like the challenge of adapting Super Mario Brothers into the Super Mario Brothers movie versus the Last of Us. Like the Last of Us was written and storyboarded and designed to be cinematic. It was begging for, if not a movie, than a TV series. And so you can do that sort of shot for shot reconstruction of a lot of the things that happened. There's just nothing important that happens in the games that is not a shot of someone's face. And so how you translate that to a close up or like it's very easily applicable, I think, to the medium.

But the thing can't replicate. Yeah. Can you explain that a little bit more? There is nothing important that happens to the game that isn't a shot of someone's face. I think so there's obviously all of the connective tissue of the gameplay in which you are fighting off zombies, escaping from other people who are trying to abduct you or kill you or kind of trying to navigate from place to place. But the last of us is mostly concerned with the emotional beats between Joel and Ellie,

first and foremost, and then between the other characters that they introduce as the two games go on. And so there's so many pauses in between to take a moment with them, you know, at a little campsite, right, as they're navigating through these areas, these sorts of conversations that are happening between these two people.

And I think the show does a good job of sort of capturing that quiet pretty well. And if anything, I think it does a little bit better over all the series does in capturing the quiet and maybe not as much of capturing the noise of what it's like to play the last of us. To the extent that it needs to do that, I don't know. But it's not a straight one to one because you can't replicate the sheer amount of time that you have spent as a game player throwing bottles and shit trying to kill zombies. Like you're not going to put 30 hours of killing zombies on screen for a season of television. It would never make sense to do it. but you can capture these quiet moments. And the way that you do that is you focus on these performances,

on the emotionality of these characters, on how they're kind of pulled and pushed away from each other. You also find the camera lingering a lot on implements, right? On cleaning a gun, on, like, getting a knife ready, on pens, on thread. It's like, it's such a tactile show in that way. And some of that is because people are trying to be quiet as they're creeping around in the world. But some of it is, I think, just sort of filling that space, that like natural silence that exists between these people who are just on a long road trip effectively

together in the first game or as we get into in the second game doing all sorts of other things. But you have to fill that space in a way that feels true to those characters and feels true to the stakes of those moments. And so it is a little bit more, you know, like about the tools that you carry with you. And from that you can see, oh, this stopped watch. What does that say it tell us about Joel? You know, what does it mean about Ellie that she's always grabbing for this knife? Like you can find these attachments to items in the world as character beats themselves.

And what gets neglected? Like the, we talked about this a lot in season one, this idea of like what you carry, the things you carry. Yeah. When you're on the road like that. And in Jackson, of course, it's a little different. They planted. And they're accumulating things around them. They're filling these homes.

The cassettes are just piling up. You really got things to plug into that boom box. But the guitar is languishing on the ground and this important item, which, you know, we'll talk about more as a show goes on. But like, yeah, also something that I love that the showrunners said that hadn't occurred to me inside of this first episode is Joel's role as a builder, like how he builds things. Joel as provider is something we talked about a lot in season one, but Joel as a physical builder of things, a tinker, a fixer of things, I'll restring your guitar, I will fix this piece of machinery that has stopped working, I will build these houses, I will do all of this, and then Ellie to a certain degree, the showrunners didn't really put it this way, but this is

sort of how I'm viewing it as like a destructive force, and I don't mean that negatively necessarily, but like that she is a creature of violence, Joel also is. Yes. But like that she has this relish in it and she loves taking something apart and pulling it down. Yeah. And how those things are at odds with each other, maybe just as personality types, but also maybe time of life types. If Ellie is a 19 year old is all about sort of like pulling things apart and pulling things down. and Joel into his later middle decades is about building things up.

I think that's a really interesting way in which we can think about what outside of the big lie at the end of season one pull these characters apart. What do you think? I mean, they have a vibe of a family that just moved to the suburbs. And I say that affectionately, where it's like Joel is in nesting like little daddy homemaker mode. He's trying to get closer to Ellie. He is trying to build back what he had before. everything started. Ellie is, I think, bored. I think, seeking out trouble in a lot of the situations. Like, she wants to be on patrol. She wants to be shooting zombies. Like, she wants to

put herself in harm's way in certain situations in a way that is reckless. Like, I think what works about the Joel and Ellie dynamic is that they are both right. He is overbearing. She is reckless to the point that she's getting bit repeatedly. And like, again, granted, she doesn't have the same stakes in that as everyone else does, but really putting herself in danger. And, I think the fact that she is looking for trouble in that way is such an interesting manifestation for this character. And it's something that I love seeing on TV too, especially for like a young, a teenage girl, right? Like this sort of like self-destructive violent kid. We've seen many, many boys inhabit that role.

And what makes Ellie such a cool character to watch and to monitors the way that she's navigating distinctly being a girl in these spaces. Like people are constantly questioning her. Why are you going into that house when obviously it's okay for time? Tommy and Joel to do it, but why are you as a teenage girl doing it? Why are, why are you safe in these spaces or not safe in these spaces? And she just mostly wants to stab people, to be honest with you. And she's not terribly concerned with everything else. Maybe most of all her own personal safety. She doesn't seem too bothered with. I think that's so interesting. And I'm like, I, once again, please enjoy our coverage of yellow jackets over at House of Bar. But like, we've been talking about this a lot when we talk about teenage girls and violence or teenage girls and and and carnality and that kind of. of power. And I think that's really interesting. Inside of an apocalyptic world, what societal norms can you actively rebuild? Yeah. And you know, and we get, we get some aspects of that inside of the dance scene when we have Seth roll up with, you know, the homophobia. And it's just sort of like, really? In the mushroom apocalypse, do you still have space for homophobia? Who has the time, frankly?

Seriously. Go fix the pipes. There's a lot to do, Seth. We don't have time for this. But yeah, like, gender roles or like parent versus child roles. When are you an adult inside of a mushroom apocalypse world? I think that's one area where Ellie is really chafing too, especially in this first episode, is this idea that yes, she was dependent on Joel to get to the hospital to meet the fireflies, to get across the country. That's not something she was capable of doing herself. I don't know that she ever really signed up to be his daughter. You know, like she needed his help and his protection. and they have a certain kind of connection that is really powerful

and is, I think transcends like smuggler and smuggly. Smuggler and cargo, however if you want to define it. But I think there is something about her and Joel's relationship that goes beyond whatever she may think about him telling her the truth or not, whether she believes the lie that he has told her. That's like, this is a little more than I was signing up for. And now that he is like so much trying to pull. put her like, you live in this house with me.

I am your father. Like, I'm stopping short of calling myself your dad to other people, but functionally, I'm acting like your dad. I think puts her in kind of a tricky spot. That's so interesting because like that, that wasn't my interpretation of season one in terms of like it felt like she was constantly the seeker. Yeah, I think that's true. But I think you're right that there could, you know, just become like a line that was crossed

where the position, obviously the positions have been flipped. Sure. And it's like now Joel. wants more the relationship that Nellie wants to give. On this idea of like, it's the mushroom apocalypse, do we even have time for this, Seth? What do you want to say about this approach, this particular approach to apocalyptic storytelling? I think, and this is where the last of us, again, really, really works and why it's as successful as it was as a game. And I think why the show resonates with so many people. To me, there's basically two ways to do post-apocalyptic storytelling.

Either you are telling a story about survival or you are telling a story about reflection. And it's very, very, very hard to do both. Like, it's really hard to get into like the emotional aspects of surviving the end of the world without getting really indulgent in those emotions and grind everything to a halt. Can you give me an example of like the reflective approach to apocalyptic storytelling? I think we're seeing it right now, right? Like so many aspects of this state, this first episode are reckonings for, Joel. What have you done? Right? Like, you have survived. You made it to Jackson. Like,

you got from point A to point B in terms of getting Ellie to the hospital and then some. But like, Joel is now reckoning with this lie he's told to Ellie. He's reckoning with killing Eugene and having to deal with Gail in the aftermath of that. He's dealing with this group of fireflies led by Abby that are now searching for him. Right? There is a lot of like, what did you do to get here and at what cost? Yeah. And I think for understandable reasons, a lot of like zombie oriented or pandemic oriented content are a lot more about like, can you survive to get to the place,

get to that island so that you don't have to worry about the zombies anymore. And that's a really cool and fun story to tell when it's done right. But to do it without losing track of the humanity of what it costs to get there, I think is a really difficult balancing act. And it's where a lot of things like,

for example, the Walking Dead, I think struggled with, it could only go 100 miles an hour or zero miles an hour. And when it was going one, you felt the absence of the other. I think that, yeah, you're right that this is like a lot of chickens coming home to Roos sort of thing. What is the cost of your comfort and your safety? Yeah.

Your walls in Jackson. What is the social contract? And also, like, when you mentioned, you know, Mallory and I, when we talk about the show, always inevitably wind up talking about Station 11. But that is a story, the way that they did that television adaptation, that is a story where you are in reflection rebuild mode. for half of the story and like panic survival mode for one half of the story. And so you're sort of interacting between the two. And this sort of like, how do we rebuild inside of Jackson? How to what, what is our future? What are the future days to, you know, steal from the title of

the episode for us when the apocalypse is still raging outside of the walls is, is really wild to me. You know what I mean? Like I love the safety and security. and society that they're trying to build here inside of Jackson. I love that, like, Tommy and Maria's kid is grown up inside of a relatively safe environment. But it's not over outside, out over yonder. So I think that's really interesting. I think for people like Ellie, too, it kind of can't be over. Like, there are so many characters, like, we talked about all the, you know,

Joel is a person who has lived through a lot who has done a lot of terrible shit to kind of make it this far. Ellie has done some of those things for the meat, like for survival, right? She's had to kill people to stay alive. She's had to go through this entire ordeal that we saw in season one that would be harrowing for anybody. But she's also someone who we see at this stage, now that she has been kind of put behind the city walls, there is a like ferocity to her that keeps kind of popping out of the

corners. And you see it like in this first kind of fight, fake fight she has with this like bear of a man where she gets like goes a little too far. I think you see it even more when she and Dina are sweeping the. supermarket and just like the in terms of the physical choreography of how Ellie fights, she like mounts this clicker and stabs him in the neck conservatively 80 times. Like just really go into town on this guy. I'm sorry to tell you.

Like first of all, I'm not making this far on the apocalypse at all. So like it's not, it's a moot point anyway. Yeah. But if I'm ever in a position where I have a stabbing implement and there is a clicker near me, 80 is like bare minimum number of times. I'm stabbing them in the neck. Well, I'm stabbing them zero times. Come getting the fuck out of there.

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your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. This is one of those things. I'm curious if you have the same relationship that I do, because like from playing the game, the guttural sound of the clickers, which are, look, our vocal fry kings, like, we salute you and the work that you're doing. My body has like a visceral response to hearing it because they are so intimidating for the, especially the early parts of the first game. I'm just like fucking terrified of these guys. For me, it's on a sound design front. It's the stalkers.

Oh, sure. Their sound is so much more human. Very mony, waily. But it's like you can like almost hear the lingering human inside of them in pain. You know what I mean? That is like so uncomfortable. Also something that a few people have pointed out that I thought was so interesting is this idea like this the fact that the the city council if that's what we're calling it like that

no one there has heard of a stalker no one there knows about the stockers means that the stockers have probably killed every single person they've ever encountered and something that Craig mason was pointing out is that the stalker won the encounter with Ellie Ellie lost oh she big time she just happens to be immune but like the stockers have an 100% success rate yeah with what they've encountered. And that is, I don't know, Rob, very scary. It's not great. Well, it's not great, especially when, like, as Ellie and the counselor are sort of discussing, all of their preconceived notions about what these infected are capable of are kind of thrown out the window when you start introducing, like, rational thought or like even the ability to lure someone in or do basic,

mathematics, you know, to pass an algebra one test. Okay. Before we get into the spoiler section, I want to ask you about Abby played by our mutual fave, Caitlin Dever. Absolutely. You know, Abby is such an important presence in the second game. Yeah. There has been so much chatter from the game players about Abby and how she's introduced here. Anything you can say in a spoiler-free way about that, or do we have to shove all of that behind the spoiler wall? It's tricky just because we've seen so little so far, right?

Like just the kind of outset of her journey. And I think clearly she is an important character in the way that they have. framed it here to establishing the emotional and physical cost of everything that Joel has done to this point. And this is like one group of people that Joel ran through at the end of the day. Our guy has killed many, many folks out there in the wilderness. Many under more nefarious pretences, you know, other people trying to attack him or raiders or whatever. But like, this was a group of people in the fireflies that if you're going to have like a face for that sort of trauma, Caitlin Dever has it, and I think is a very empathizing force already as far as like helping us understand, like, this is a sort of double parallel for Joel and Ellie, right?

Like you can see elements of Ellie's story in Abby. Even so far, you can see elements of Joel's loss of his daughter in, in Abby's story so far. And so creating a counterpoint when we are naturally tethered to Joel and Ellie's perspective, as you said. And that that is an area that transcends the game into the show. It's like you are natural. going to be understanding of what they have gone through and the decisions that they've made above any other character they're going to be introduced to. And so how do we transport some of that empathy to somebody else? How do we zoom out and figure out like what, how do these people we love and care about fit into a story about humanity? Somebody else and somebody else whose agenda as it's stated inside of this episode is counter to our desire. Absolutely. Our desire is for Joel and Ellie to live happily ever after in Jackson together. United

father and daughter I don't want I presume people may want different things some people out there may just want to like grow a weed farm

in the post-apocalypse you know like everyone wants something a little different there are no Eugene though so what are you going to do that's true that green thumb

really something else anything else you want to say before we do some spoilers a one little shout out again this is not spoiler but maybe more of a treat

for the game players as opposed to the people who are just watching the show but the composer of both the music for the game and the show, Gustavo Centiolaia appears as a member of the dance band, was delighted to see. As somebody who, like, if we're talking about the visual language of the show, the Last of Us is

not the Last of Us without this like sparse, gorgeous guitar forward soundtrack. And so I'm thrilled to see him pop up and get a little cameo moment. One of the Jug Boys. One of the Jugbole. Or I mean, maybe he could be Britney. Brittany himself. Canonically, I cannot dispute that Santo is Brittany. All right. So we are going to do a little spoiler section, you know, just just touching on a few things here or there that happened in the game. Really encourage people to peace out if they if they don't want to hear what happens. You know, Mallory and I were very firm about this on House of Ar. But this is this story that you're really going to want to experience how you want to experience it. And we would like to protect you in that and all ways possible. So that's this very lengthy preamble was your excuse to press stop on the pod and leave. Are you ready? Did you?

You are the Joel to their Ellie. You know, you're just trying to boost them over various ledges. Keep them safe from being bitten here and there. I respect the work that you do, Joe. I do my best. All right. Spoilers. I actually want to start more esoterically.

Rather than talk about the massive thing that everyone is trying to talk about. That not just elephant in the room, but like elephant with a bomb shoved up its ass in the room that's about to explode at any moment. I want to talk to you about Gail and something that I don't, Mallory and I did not really get into is. Gail, the therapist, who is an addition to the show is not in the game. Yes. But who represents this idea of forgiveness in a way that, you know, the show is careening towards.

And if you're listening to this and haven't played the game, but you want the spoilers anyway. That's fine. careening towards Joel's death at the hands of Abby and Abby's like unquenchable vengeance. Yeah. And the dissatisfaction she gets in that act because it doesn't heal the hurt inside of her. And Ellie's

unrelenting then, you know, seeking vengeance. Tommy and he is a vengeance that he goes after. And so Gail is someone who is like angry. and heartbroken that her husband is dead, but is nonetheless talking to Joel about it and trying to work through it as this sort of counterbalance. What does that do for the larger story as far as you're concerned? I'm honestly fascinated to find out just because, as you said, Gail is such a new function within the story, like not only having somebody who is actively trying to forgive Joel in her own way.

But in the moment, very much despises him. And it is the sort of counterpoint where, as you and Mal talked about, like, this is a fascinating spin on the idea of in-show therapy, having someone who's this adversarial, who is like this sharp in her own way and this wounded in her own way, like, this is not the role that these kinds of characters usually play. And there's nothing like it in the game whatsoever. And so having, like, Joel's been working out things for a long time on people's faces, on various infected that he meets out in the world,

snapping at Ellie when she does very little to deserve it. This is a long history of this stuff. And so getting him in therapy makes sense in a lot of ways. I think it also just gives Pedro Pascal something to do at this stage in the season where he is feeling so isolated, right? That character is being shut off from the most meaningful connection in his life. And he's trying to figure out, he thinks he's trying to figure out why. He mostly knows why, I suspect.

But I love that we get that from. from Pedro specifically, and it's all the more funny that he's also on Mando where they like put him in a helmet and never show his face in any capacity whatsoever. I assume so he doesn't have to show up on location for work, but who's to say? Just like you can't, I don't know of another space in this show where you would get the moment of him sort of wrestling, walking all the way up to the edge of like, do I need to say this thing that I'm scared of out loud? And then pulling back in such a guarded way. That's, those are the kinds of moments from Joel that I think are really powerful. And I are hard to replicate with other characters because he doesn't trust anybody other than Tommy. I guess Tommy is the one exception to that rule. Right. Inside of the game, we have him have a conversation with Tommy where he tells him what happens. But I don't know. I'm just really interested to see, you know, what Gail can, I don't know how active she will be in the show going forward. Yeah. I don't know how active Jackson is going to be in the show going forward, all of that.

But yeah, as this sort of like, it can have, you don't have to like not feel your feelings in order to try to find, make peace with someone. You can feel all of that rage, anger, resentment, fear, all of those things and not let it consume you necessarily. Hopefully that's Gail's future. Okay. As far as that, like, how much are we going to see of Gail and of Jackson in the show? what is your sense of the pacing of this big reveal? Like we are we are careening toward Joel's death. We have seven episodes this season.

Again, we're in full spoilers now. There is a significant portion of the game after Joel's death, but before the kind of story changeover to more of Abby's perspective full time. And so it's like I'm going back and forth on when I think they're going to drop that particular bomb. But I get the sense from this early going that they might be trying to stretch it out a little. little bit more. So how how how late can you do you think they can get away with doing it? I think they could get away with it. It would feel rushed, but you could potentially move it to like the very end of episode four. I think is about as late as you can push it. There's a lot to do

after the after that fact. But I think that's about as far as it could go. You're saying Joel surviving. Joel's death, I think, would the furthest I think it could go would be the end of episode four. Yeah. I mean, certainly everyone on the show and everyone at HBO wants Pedro Pesel to be active in the show for as long as possible. But there are, and this feeds nicely into the next thing I want to ask you about because there are flashbacks galore. Yes. He will be back. Yeah.

And one moment we get in this episode that again, since Mallory and I had not finished our, you know, homework, didn't realize the significance of is the porch sequence that happens at the end of this episode. So at the end of episode one, season two, episode one, we see Joel on the porch with a guitar and Ellie walking up and seemingly like sort of walking past him. And that's all we see. Yeah. In the game, towards the end, it is revealed that she comes out and talks to him. Right.

And it has this moment of maybe we can figure out a path forward through this, which, which is not something you as a gameplay or know until the very end. So is this something like when you saw this moment, were you worried that they were going to like give you the full scene right here inside of this episode? And if not or whatever, do you want that to be like the last scene of the show? Like where do you want that to show up?

I mean, I'm glad that they held it. You kind of have to, right? I think it's very important for this stage of the story that you're holding some of that back because you want the audience feeling that pull of, I need Joel and Ellie to have a conversation. And you can do enough to manipulate the timeline and in particular to show these like absences of time that you later are coming back to fill in.

As for where, I'm open-minded about that, to be honest with you. I think there's a like, they clearly have taken this season as an opportunity to move a lot of things around from the original place in the game. And I think there's plenty of good reason to do it. I think some of it inevitably will be, more successful than others.

I have a lot of faith based on season one, not just because they move stuff around, but because the things that they introduced and expanded, I found so rewarding in terms of the world building of The Last of Us. And so I'm excited to see kind of what they do along those lines. That said, like the way Abby is introduced, it makes me a little nervous. Okay.

All right. So let's get to it. Is this the thing, did it make you nervous? Did it make you cranky? The thing that she says that seems to have pissed most of, the people who are mad about it. Not everyone's mad about it, but the people who are mad about it seem to really think that her, specifically her saying, killing him slowly.

Because in their interpretation of the game, her decision to draw out his death and torment him is something that is not necessarily pre-planned and something that reveals a lot about her in that moment. and reveals about something about her to her compatriots in that moment. So what are your thoughts of that? I think that's fair game to move around just because you can have some of the same benefit even introducing that idea early. Right? Like her compatriots are learning this about her now, even though they wouldn't learn it about

her later. And they seem uncomfortable. As one should be under the circumstances. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think my bugaboo is less about that element, like that line, specific. doesn't bother me so much, just the idea of laying her intentions out so clearly when we're first meeting the character. And this is where, like, this conversation is just inextricable from the reaction to Abby in real time and the reaction to Joel's death in real time,

how you respond to that moment in the game and your experience of seeing this character you've spent so much time with and you've invested in die in such a brutal way, imprints on you as a gamer and now a viewer. And so, like, for me, not, like, to clear, For people who haven't played the game who are just like full speed head on spoilers anyway, power to you. Abby has introduced as someone who is looking for someone in Jackson. We don't know who. Jackson is a huge place. It could be conceivably anybody.

But she and her group are like on a mission to find someone. You don't really know why. And so this idea that you're introduced so early to the idea that it is Joel she's looking for, who she is, what her background is, what her intentions are. To me, Saps one of the like really powerful, jarring moments of the game, which is. which is when Abby and Joel inevitably bump into each other. And so you take some of the, like some of the electricity out of that moment when you already know what you're doing. And so like there's two reasons you're doing that. One, some of the audience backlash against Abby's character and the disapproval of her role in the story and killing Joel in the way all that went down.

There's many things to unpack in that. But creating a more, like forming a more empathetic bond with that character from Jump, I think is an attempt to stem. some of that. Yeah. And you're trading some of the mystery that I found really impactful and really valuable. And I think to me, the mystery of not knowing what Abby is up to and then suddenly having to realize it all at once and it culminating in such like irrevocable violence serves the, like the themes of The Last of Us Part 2 in this season and the future seasons of the show so

well. You're trading that off for like the tension of we know what she's after. And so now when they do bump into each other, you had that sort of building suspense in a way that's going to be new. I just don't know if that's what I want. And now I'm left thinking, like, are you just doing this all the time? Every time you watch an adaptation of a novel?

Are you just sitting here festering in your seat? Like, I'm festering. It's, it's been complicated. It's not festering. I mean, it's curiosity of like, you know, Neil and Craig have explained it a bit, the best they can without getting into the spoilers because they're not, like, giving interviews about spoilers yet.

Of course. So they've explained it a bit. I'll explain it more when we know more. Inevitably. And there are things about it I like. Obviously, I did not have your visceral sort of experience playing the game in that way. But like there are things about it I like and there are things about it that I understand why it sort of feels like it. It will just depend on how they execute it.

You're anticipating how can they possibly do the thing to me here that they did to me in the game or do the thing to people watching for the first time that they did to me in the game if they've if they've rearranged the pieces this way and we're just going to have to see what other decisions they've made in order to try to affect that um i'm just always curious because i used to get mad and sometimes i still get mad but mostly because Craig and neal are such consummate storytellers i'm like what what were you achieving here that you felt like you didn't achieve in this other way that you did it. And again, they've explained it a little bit, but like I'm eager to learn more. And it just feeds my, the thing that I love what we do

on this show, on House of Our, etc., which is just like, let's pull apart the gears of a story and see how it works and how it fits back together. I'm interested in the thing that I'm very curious about in the upcoming episodes, just based on trailer footage, is what's seems to be a like a full scale attack on Jackson. Yeah. Of the infected. I mean, we get that we get, you know, there's, there's the horde that Abby is running from.

That's its own thing. But like, how many make a horde? Oh, it's a great question. Um, I think you need like 30. 30 for a horse. What were you thinking? I don't know. So we get, again, canonical confirmation from Tommy.

Six is not enough to be a horde. No, no, no, no. That's just six guys. Maybe 20. Maybe 20 is enough for a horde. But like a baker's dozen isn't a horde? What is a baker's dozen have infected? A posse?

That's just a group. That's just a group. It's just a group hang. It's a herd. It's like a herd. Okay. A horde is like, oh, you're right. You know what I mean?

Like, dear God. Yes. I think if you had 13 infected, you could pick them off and have mushroom galettes for dinner. But I think if you've got 20 or 30. Yeah. That's if not a horde, a murmuration. You know, we're really getting somewhere. This is your brand on shrimps at gml.com.

If you have any known, I'm quite sure you would like to share with this. Tommy's really, the full-scale attack on Jackson, which has been indicated in the trailer, is really interesting to me. Yeah. And Tommy is really interesting to me. Tommy being a dad. And like the idea of like Tommy who inside of the game is so consumed by vengeance. that he loses Maria, but like Tommy as a dad who's going to lose his kid in theory because, you know, which is certainly not something that Joel would want at all,

is additionally interesting. Again, that's an adaptive change that is additionally interesting. It feels very pointed, especially as you and Mal highlighted, the fact that Tommy in the game is the most understanding of Joel's ultimate decision with Ellie and the lie that he told. Like putting himself in his shoes understands it in a way that no other character gets the opportunity to do. And so changing his circumstances to make that almost impossible feels like a very direct and deliberate choice. I think else you want to say here in the spoiler section. Just that for all of the hand-wringing I have done about Abby.

And again, like I'm genuinely minimal. Minimal. But I am coming from the perspective of someone who adores that game. And I love Abby as a character and her story. And so the idea that we are what almost feels like if you change it too much, if you soften it too much, soften the blow of who Abby is and the reveal of what she's up to, are you pulling the punch? Right. Like, are you doing exactly what Ellie does not want to happen for us as an audience? I worry about that.

But I do have incredible faith in overall the production team of this show and the writing team of this show. I also have incredible belief, as we've alluded to, in Caitlin Dever, to sort of change this first. of the story. And there are many ways in which she is not a physical representation of the Abbey in the game, but is an emotional standing in a totally different way. And I think capable of a range of performance and a different kind of rage that is going to be really fascinating to watch once she really gets uncorked. Like, our girl knows how to play pain. Like, she just does. Like, I don't love that for her in terms of the role she gets thrust into. And God knows she can be an amazing comedic actress too. But seeing this version,

version of Abby is going to be one of the great curiosities and joys for me of this season, even though I have my apprehensions about the way she was introduced. All right. So we'll all cry together and then we'll go watch Book Smart as the pallet cleanser. Please. And we'll go about our day. Romahoney. Joanna Robinson. This has been an episode of the Presti's TV podcast. It sure has.

Did we make a case for our own existence? Who is to say? We'll be back. We have plans to talk about your friends and neighbors, the John Ham Apple, show. I know we're also at least got to like at least brush up against poker face. We must. A show that started. For all the time's sake, if nothing else. A show that started our podcasting partnership in many ways. So there's a lot going on. I hope people stay tuned to the prestige feed. Thank you to Justin Sales as always for organizing everything for us to Donnie Beecham. And maybe more importantly, his sidekick Peterbread, Beecham, who we met today who's helping edit this podcast, I'm sure. And not employee of the month, but a good,

a good girl nonetheless. I mean, maybe. Our employee is to say, yeah, the photo's not up on the wall yet, but that can be fixed. Rob, you want to hit them one more time with the emails. I absolutely do. You can always get us at Prestige TV at Spotify.com. You can also email us specifically your last of us questions, concerns. I don't know. What else do we want to solicit from people, Joe? What else are in the market for. That's a great question. I mean, nomenclature is a big one.

If there's any expertise, plumbers on the pipe situation, I just like love to hear from the experts when we do these shows. Fungus in your pipes, not what you want. But please do email us at This Is Your Brain on Shrooms at gmail.com.

We'll see you soon. Bye. Ryan Reynolds here from MintMobil, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird.

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