The Prestige TV Podcast - 'The Last of Us’ Series Premiere Deep Dive

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

Joanna and Mallory dive deep into the premiere of HBO’s new series ‘The Last of Us.’ They start with an overview of the franchise and their relationships with it (5:24). Then, they go through everything that happens in the episode, from the cold open set in 1968 to the introduction of Joel and eventually Tess and Ellie in 2023 (25:35). Later, they talk about some of their favorite Easter eggs from the episode (1:50:31). If you would like to email Mal and Joanna about the show, you can reach them at [e-mail]. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? It's Austin Rivers from the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's a new year and I have a new podcast here at the Ringer, Offguard, hosted by me and my guide, Pasha Higigi. Austin and I go way back and talk so much hoop already that we figure it was time to fire up the mics and let you in on all of these conversations. Every week, Pasha and I will hit on the biggest stories happening in the league.

And get Austin's perspective of someone currently hooping in the NBA. Tap into Offguard every Friday on the Ringer NBA show feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back into the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today, my very charming chanterella, pugnacious portobello herself. It's my ringer-vers goals, Mallory Rubin.

Hi, Mallory. How are you doing? What a delicious and in this context, terrifying introduction. We're here to talk to you. It's a mushroom cast. We're going to talk to you about The Last of Us. Ever heard of it? It's an HBO, too.

television series currently airing on Sunday nights on HBO. Maybe, perhaps you thought you would find this in another feed, but we are going to be here every week on the prestige TV feed with a deep dive on your latest episode. So here's what's going to happen on the prestige feed every week, right? Van Lason Jr. and Charles Holmes, two exquisite brains and human beings in general, are going to give you instant reactions to the latest episode of The Last of Us. And then a few days later, Pio Poo!

Mallory and I are going to dive deep into the episode. We will take those couple days to listen to the official podcast, read your emails, poke around Reddit, read interviews, and try to sort of bolster up all the supplemental material we can do and, you know, and sort of be inside of our own heads to give you that deep dive experience. So that is the twofer that you were getting on the Prestige TV podcast feed for the last of us.

We're really excited to do that. Programming reminders elsewhere, since we will not be covering this in the ring of verse, we're doing a lot of fun like supplemental

programming over the ringerverse and I'm really excited for what we're doing this Friday. Mal and Rubin, can you tell the folks what are going to be up to this Friday on the ring reverse feed you and me.

Joe, it is the debut of a brilliant Joanna Robinson idea and a brilliant new house of our project. As you said on a recent pod, a project of people like it, if not, a fun want-off. But I think the beginning of a new recurring rubric and a thing that we'll be doing a lot of, hopefully, which is, as you've named it, the tropes course.

It is a dive into the history, the pop culture history, the scholarly history of something that has become a tentpole of our pop culture, consumption. experience. And so the first one, what better debut for the Troops course then Lone Wolf and Cub given how central that is to not only the last of us experience. Obviously, that's the hook, but also it's Mando season. We're mere weeks away from season three of the Mandalorian. Obviously, that's a lone wolf and cub tale as well. And so what a great time to dive into the history of that type of storytelling and pop culture and why that is so present on our screens. right now and particularly with Pedro Pascal. Pedro, the loneliest wolf there is.

If you're unfamiliar with the lone wolf and cub trope, as we discussed on our hype draft podcast that we did last week, which I won, which I'm miserably lost. AKA reluctant daddies is another thing that we are calling this particular. Tropes course, by the way, not necessarily the final name. Working title, Troops course. It's always a working title here at House of Our Working Title. Steve Olman suggested Trope a dope. So this is the material we're working. This is the solid gold grade name. I like Troops course. It's got the wordplay. It has the idea like your, you know, classes in session. Yeah. Okay. I love it.

Thanks. Maybe not so working title. All right. For this potentially one-off, maybe a series podcast that we're doing. Follow us on socials to keep up to date with like whatever else is going on the Prestige TV podcast feed. What else we'll be covering on the Ringiverse for the next few weeks as we like play around with formats? It's going to be really fun. So follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all sort of places.

Subscribe to RingervorS, subscribe to RingervaS, subscribe to Prestige TV. Do both. Then you will get all of the content that Mallory and I have to offer and the other fine folks who join us on these feeds. Also, it doesn't seem like it might pertain to this. But guess what? Hobbits and Dragons,

Gmail.com, Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com is still the best place to reach us. And we actually got a lot of Last of Us emails already. So thanks for finding us, folks. I really appreciate it. And last but not least, before we get into sort of everything, I want to talk about spoiler warning and where Mal and I are meeting this particular show. our usual approach to deep dives is that Mallory and I will have like read the book or you know done read the comic or whatever you know whatever the gays may be I have not played this video game Mallory have you played this video game I started this weekend great how far did you get like far past the story of this episode no I'm going to try to take it my initial plan is to take it kind of in episode chunks so I played uh roughly the equivalent of this this premiere. Great. No, I will say it's,

I'm adjusting to the gameplay. So it's taking me, taking me a little while to learn to vault and crouch and listen and shoot people in the head, et cetera. But I, I, I, I spent a little bit of time

with the game this weekend. I'm excited to keep exploring it. I really await your input on this, on this front. I was challenged, I was going to, my plan was, because I am like allergic to not knowing

the source material. My plan was to watch. to watch like a play through, you know, because those exist. I could like sit down for 10 hours and watch someone else play the last of us. Because you got an email from a listener, Aidan, who was asking like, hey, Joanna, you're not a gamer. Do you think you're going to play the game, you know, because of the show? And maybe, maybe I will.

But our pal, friend of the pod, Allen, Zepamwal was like, challenged to you, Joanna. Don't engage with the source material and see if you have anything to say about something. I don't know. He was like, joined me on my level. I was like, okay. And Mallory and I are being really diligent about only watching one episode at a time, which has been a temptation. I will not lie to you because a lot of people have said that episode three is just to be a real banger episode. HBO sent us over a bunch of episodes, but Mallory and I have only watched the first episode and we'll be going week to week from there.

We've made a vow to each other. So that's your spoiler warning. That being said, this is a game that has existed in the culture for a while. So like, you know, will occasional things bleed in possibly? But I'm not, I don't know what happens. So as of right now, you know, we're trying to keep that a little separate. So that's sort of the spoiler level. We will be comparing and contrasting what happened to games,

adaptation changes they made for the show. That's an important, interesting thing to think about. But for example, watching this episode, you know, and spoiler alert for this premiere episode, I knew that Sarah was going to die, but I did not know how. So I was very nervous that she was going to be infected when in fact that was not the concern at all.

You know what I mean? So like that had permeated. I kind of knew something, but not the full thing. So that's what I'm going on. Like a tentacle? How dare you? Working its way into your brain, preparing to take over, much like the Ring ofverse crew has here on the Prestige TV feed, Joe. What are we doing?

Replacing the prestige feeds flesh with the spongy, spore-filled goodness. Fungi and side of an ant. Wonderful. Vivid. Get ready for a lot of mushroom repulsion from me. Okay, so. I love mushrooms. I like to eat mushrooms.

Yeah. Yeah. I've also, I've mushroom hunted. Have you ever gone mushroom hunting? No. Are you a big forager? Only of mushrooms. There were like several years in row where I would go during the rainy season up to like the Medicino Coast and forage mushrooms. And then the first year that we went, without knowing much, we took our hall to this like guy who owned a winery that we bet on our way up. And he was like, he was like, you ladies are going mushroom hunting and you know nothing about mushrooms. please bring all your mushrooms back to me before you do anything

and he took our hall and threw 85% of it over the railing of his porch and he was like, not this, not this, not this, here's what won't kill you. So anyway, I've learned a lot since then. Goodness. Sounds like a relaxing afternoon. Mushrooms are scary, okay?

This show is based on the critically acclaimed of beloved 2013 naughty dog video game of the same name. It also is a sequel, Last of Us 2. the show is created by Craig Mason, who's best known for Chernobyl and also an incredible episode of Mythic Quest, if I do say so myself.

And the creator of the original game, Neil Druckman is the co-creator, the co-epie of this show. The score by Gustavo Santa Olala. Did I say that right? Or is it a double L situation at the end? Who did the music for the video game

does the score for the show. And so a lot of people who like love playing the video game, got that nice, like, visceral, oh my God, the music's here feeling, watching the show. And according to Craig Mason, the first season will cover the events of the first game. And then they're also including some of the events

from Left Behind, which is this sort of like supplemental material that you could add to The Last of Us, which has some background for the character of Ellie. It's nine episodes long This season So we will be here Every week for nine weeks

This episode The premiere was originally supposed to be two episodes And they sort of smooshed it together So that's why it's so long And episode three is kind of long But other than that each episode Will be about 40 to 50 minutes You know sort of standard size

episodes of television Meloie how did this premiere do Like were people watching The Last of Us Was this show? on a Sunday night HBO based on an incredible popular video game, incredibly popular? Joe, in perhaps the least surprising development in recent pop culture history, HBO has a hit on its hands. We're recording early on Tuesday and mid-morning. Let's say mid-morning on Tuesday, and we're out on the West Coast, so it's not really that early. But here, mid-morning on the West Coast on Tuesday,

our Intel tells us that the last of us premiere per HBO, 4.7, million cross-linear and max. So we know from recent streaming bangers that the initial viewership number is but a fraction, but a drop in the bucket, but one single score drifting in the air. Exactly. Of what the ultimate viewership will be. So people are going to keep finding this over the next few days, especially because the reception is so effusive and so positive. This is really well-reviewed critically. Fans seem to be. to be enjoying it. Crucially, people who have come to this with a deep love for the game seem to really be appreciated it as a Ben Lindberg wrote a wonderful piece about this on

the ringer.com. What a great website. Like landscape shifting success as a video game adaptation or true rarity in what it's accomplished in that respect. And also people who are coming to this without that history with the game seems to really be enjoying it. So there's not a lot else. on right now. I think regardless of whether or not that were true, this would be penetrating deeply like a tentacle. How many times can I say like, could I keep just thinking of the podcast? I don't know. Let's find out. People are really enjoying this so far. So that's exciting. Another show to celebrate and share. People love dystopian sci-fi, Joe. I was wondering and we'll chat more about the opening scene, but whether there would be a little bit of a, oh boy,

I don't know if I'm ready for this double whammy with the COVID anxiety, the pandemic anxiety, and the climate change anxiety that is right there so central for us at the top. But doesn't seem like that's keeping many people away. Yeah. I mean, that's something we heard a lot when like Station 11 came out. Yeah. You know, there's plenty to remind us of Station 11 as we watch this. That people are like, I don't really want to watch a pandemic show right now.

but I think part of what the Last of Us is going for it is that a lot of its built-in fan base predates the COVID pandemic so people already had a relationship with this story before COVID anxieties were so intrusive

we we're covering as we mentioned C's one episode one when you're lost in the darkness written by Mason and Druckman directed by Craig Mason who does not have a ton of directing credits under his belt. Two movies that I would say are not great,

and then this episode television is, he was not supposed to be the directors, a couple different directors pulled out, and then Craig was like, fine, I'll do it myself. I think he said it with the full Thanos impression. And the title of the episode, when you're lost in the darkness,

is, of course, half of the sort of Firefly Mata that we see sort of spray painted around, the QZ in Boston. I wanted just to start by asking you your overall, we know Mallory and we love you, but we know that you are not a horror person. You're not a horror fan. And I don't know that I would call this a horror show,

but it has horror elements. It is living in the zombie genre, which is a horror genre. You seem perfectly fine to throw creepy mushroom. illusion's around. So you see you having much easier time with the spores than I do. How are you feeling about this show on the horror like degree? And also just like, as you mentioned, like the idea of engaging the post-apocalyptic show in general right now. Yeah, I'm doing great. Great. I'm having a blast. I have to say for whatever reason, the zombie or zombie adjacent genre has not ever

historically bothered me the way that other slices of the horror pie have. I'm usually pretty okay with zombie tales and actually quite enjoy them. And in general, I love dystopian fiction. I love an apocalypse. I love a cataclysm. I love the fall of man. And I should say also, we've mentioned Mason a few times, Chernobyl is one of my favorite shows of the last decade.

I thought that was just astoundingly expertly crafted and well-made. So I was really excited to see his fingerprints on this, coupled with, again, my history with The Last of Us video game dates back one day. I'm excited for it to build and grow from here. But the adoration that video game enthusiasts consistently incorporate into their discussion of not only the Last of Us as a property as a title of universe, but Druckman as a steward of that universe, someone who cares about it deeply,

the thwarted film adaptation, which you can hear him chat about actually on the HBO official pod where he talked about how it just didn't feel, this was a film that Sam Ramey was once connected to fascinating alternate history there, right? But it just simply did not feel like the world of this story could fit inside of a film. and something that you and I talk about a lot

on our Ringiverse pods, prestige pods, is like, what is the right length, what is the right scope? And we won't know until we finish this season of TV and maybe even beyond how well calibrated

this version is. But the fact that that's something that the people who made it took so seriously, I just very grateful for. Broadly, the horror, the scariest part of the premiere for me is the soft focus

view of Nana Adler starting to twitch behind Sarah in the 2003 timeline. That was unsettling and disturbing as her mouth starts to like the ma starts to gape. Real McGinney

is about to come out of Bethilda backshot visual parallelism there for me. But overall, I was okay on the horror front. I assume that it will get a little spookier as we head out beyond into the Boston QZ, into the Great Unknown.

Dysopian fiction, like I said, always, always interested in it. It was fascinating to see you've mentioned Station 11 a few times already. I mentioned Chernobyl, like what was listed as the more like this on HBO Max, you know, the related titles that they're pushing toward the audience. Chernobyl was there, of course, Station 11 was there, of course, the leftovers was there. None of those are surprising. And then we can think about things that are not going to be featured on HBO Max because they're not HBO properties, but have a lot of these, like,

touchstones and shared strands of DNA. the Walking Dead, of course. Children of men, I think a film that we both love. The passage, a series of books that Chris Ryan put me on to long ago that I absolutely adore. Like,

written by my sister's professor. The passage. What? Yeah, Justin Cronin. Yeah. Oh my God. I can't believe we've never talked about this. Carve out some time for me.

Okay. I need to know everything. I love those books. Love, love. this idea in a really well-made, fully rendered, dystopian saga of not just humans versus whatever has gone wrong, right? The infected, whatever form the threat takes in this particular tale. But of course, humans versus each other after society collapses, that being the real fight,

that being the real trial and the real loss in so many ways, that shared humanity. I just think is a pretty endless resource to mine. and tap, and I like seeing the ways that different creators put a particular specific spin on it. Mushrooms is a new one for me. The, um, on the horror front, like, I'm actually, I'm much, usually much braver than you are. Brave is not really the word I want to you, but like much more acclimated to the world of horror. Yeah, you're brave and I'm a coward. No, no, no, no.

Let's just say it, Joe. No, no, but like, you know, horror is not something that bothers me as much as it bothers you, I'll say. That being said, I've spoken to you at length on the, the ringerverse feed about my feeling about crevices, but like crevices have nothing on mushrooms as far as I'm concerned. There is, walk me through it. The idea of a spore, like a thing that will just go and make more of itself and you don't even necessarily see it do that.

It terrifies me. Mushrooms close association with like necrotic things, with dying things and how it spreads out of that. I mean, I think mushrooms are beautiful, but they're also like that sort of terrible beauty. And then the thing

that I experienced watching this, I mean, first of all, we'll get to the cold open, but just like the writing of the description

of what might happen was horrifying and evocative. But what they're calling the mouth tendrils, that is what is getting to me. These things that are like

emerging, yearning, reaching for, you know, some other warm body to logic. Sounds like you're describing a great romance. It's just the, are we shipping humanity plus mouth tendrils? I don't know. A yearning reaching for a warm body.

I mean, what is a mushroom up? I love a whirlwind romance. if not love persevering. So that is where we are right now. When you talk about, I do think that the richest soil to mine here for a story like this is humanity against itself.

And you see versions of this again and again in like something like The Walking Dead, which I thought got played out pretty quickly. But in some of my all-time favorite story, stories like 28 days later, a film that I absolutely love, you go through that film. Scary. Very scary. Fast

zombies. You go through that film navigating the pitfalls of zombiedom in a way that feels familiar. And then, yes, the worst villains are at the end, waiting for you at the end of the movie.

And your best friend, Maliky, Chris Freckleston, is there to show us that humanity is like the biggest monster of them all. And Malia cursed. It's just always shruging some sort of burden. And so there's a lot and there's a lot to think about in this. This show has so much of that on its mind.

You can hear Craig and Neil talk about it. They're not trying to do a, you know, in fact, Neil does not like to call this a zombie story. But they're not trying to do a zombie apocalypse story for chills and thrills, right? They're trying to do dig really deep in. into who are we once our systems collapse? And how much of our humanity can we hold on to in circumstances such as these,

in the face of such terrible loss, as Joel experiences in, you know, at the midway point of this episode. The Last of Us, meaning there's a lot going on in that title, The Last of Us, right? The Last of Us being like, if we think about Joel and Ellie or whomever, as the remaining members of the human race.

That's the one reading, right? The last of us, like, us as a concept. Craig and Neil talk a lot about this idea of tribalism, which we'll talk about again and again, but like, where do you circle your wagons? Who is us in a circumstance like this? And then the last of us, meaning like the last of our humanity

that's left inside of us as we go through all of this. So there's just so, like such rich, ground here for those kinds of examinations. And it's exactly like, you know, to your earlier point, I don't play video games. I am, I was definitely aware of this video game and it is permeated beyond like gamer culture into, especially with the very divisive sequel that came out more recently. So I was aware of it as a property.

But Craig's involvement is what got me really excited because of Chernobyl and because Because of Chernobyl, specifically, if people are listening to this and they haven't watched Chernobyl, Chernobyl's examination of the ways in which the systems fail us. So the system failure of and unlikely communities and all that sort of. Like the, on the, like you just wouldn't naturally, if you were just sitting here think, oh, last of us, Chernobyl. I can put those in the same bucket. But, you know, once you start sort of peeling away the layers, you absolutely can. And so, and we see it in this first episode. So let's write down to the utterly unmooring experience of seeing an animal in distress.

Poor mercy. We'll talk about it. And that episode of Chernobyl is still the most upsetting thing I've ever seen. Is Barry Kuhin in that episode of Chernobyl? I think he is. I mean, you're the, you're the keeper. I am a big keeper of the Kiowen. Big bear's filmography.

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It matters where you stay. Hilton for this day. All right, let's talk about the cold open. This is actually my, okay, so this is a big departure. Yes. This is a completely show-invented sequence, right? Where we start in 1968. Neil has talked about, you know, since the dawn of this game,

has talked about how this planet Earth segment that he watched was his inspiration for this idea that these fungi, fungi, taking over these ants was sort of the inspo that he was working off of and so originally their idea was that they would do something more like planet Earth

I don't know get Davy Attenborough in here to like do something you know to prepare us for this but Mason pushed for this 1960s talk show chat show cold open Dick Cavett asked as he described it

because of that Chernobyl idea of we've known this was a possibility or a problem literally for decades and did nothing about it. So when John Hannah and I, you hadn't watched the episode yet and I just texted you, I'm like, John Hannah's here talking about mushrooms. So like, I don't know.

I don't know what else anyone wants to me. But John Hannah, the mummy for when he's at a funeral and sliding doors fame, like one of my 90s, like, your holy Trinity. Total crush of all time. Billions of puppets with poison minds permanently fixed. on one unifying goal to spread the infection to every last human alive by any means necessary. And there are no treatments for this, no preventatives, no cures. They don't exist. It's not even possible to make them. How'd you feel about that, Mel? How'd you feel about this opening sequence?

Well, this was distressing for numerous reasons. And I think that this was a really neat, compact. It's only a couple minutes of very tidy, given the weight of the exposition and the roadmap, the expositional roadmap. Like, this is what is about to happen in this story. We have most of the canon for what is actually happening. What is unfolding? How is this takeover working? What is the fungi doing?

Like, most of that is contained right here. So it has to sit with us and we have to absorb this information. It is amazing. just how many words we use to describe TV just now sound like we're describing the takeover of the killer mushrooms. But I guess that is our burden to carry as deep divers here on the

prestige TV podcast. The coupling, like I already mentioned, of the COVID-era anxiety with the, like, that hits you right away, right? Oh, no, this isn't a viral infection. If it were a virus, we'd win. like to take that most harrowing comp for us as viewers in January, 2023, and say, no, it's going to be worse than that.

And just sort of like brush that aside. Yeah. The we win, we lose flip when he's describing, when he's pivoting from the other doctors, viral infection forecasting to this attack of the killer fungi was deeply, deeply harrowing. I think what you said about the Chernobyl comp and like this idea that somebody is telling you to ready for this thing, to prepare for this thing,

to work to prevent this thing, or to maybe start to cope with the fact in this case that there is no way to prevent it, that there is an inevitability to what is being described here that is like really the most helpless aspect of this, right? The part of the forecast, it's not just about that you lose your control,

they take over your mind, the very sense of self, the essence of your humanity, your ability to make your own decisions to decide where you want to go, what you want to do, how you want to behave, how you want to interact with other people. You're robbed of that. And the timeline jumping, we're in three different timelines of this premiere to be in 68 and have somebody say, yeah, sure, it can't happen now.

But what if the Earth got warmer? When we as New York in 2023, that that is exactly what will happen and has happened, right? So it's playing on, I think, like a almost unique combination. of real-world existential dread. So this was as, I think, deftly handled and terrifying of an opening note as we could even have

without any of the primary players in the story. And then we head into another stretch where we're also with a different point of view character from who we'll be spending the bulk of our time with. So there are a lot of really interesting

structural choices in this episode. But I think giving us this, we lose, roadmap for what's to come was just like, devastating and smart. I also thought visually

it was really like we're going to talk about some of the video game visuals as we go along and some of the ways in which this show is intentionally trying to ape the shot compositions

of a video game. But, you know, I was talking to Chris Ryan a bit about like Mason as a director. Like, what are the visuals that play here? And rewatching this episode a couple times,

I thought this opening talk show bit was some of the most visually rich stuff because you're like, you start it sort of, you see, you're sort of in the audience and you see the cameras and then you see them talking. But then as John Hanna goes on, you're suddenly like the viewer at home and you're like tight on John Hanna's face. That's the actor's name of the character's name and I apologize, but he's only John Hanna to me. Good old Dr. Newman. Dr. Newman is telling us about this horrific future and then you cut away to the audience and they're just sitting very.

They're looking like they've already been infected by the fun. You know, they look like, sorry, Neil zombies, you know. And so I just thought like, you know, the look of it, the stylish 1960 style of it. It was just something that I wasn't expecting, you know, again, to good old Ben Lindbergh's point about video game adaptations, like the bar is pretty low for what we expect from a video game adaptation. So any ways in which this can like elevate even for. beyond the visuals that are already famously cinematic, like Last of Us is a famously cinematic

video game. But any ways in which we can elevate even beyond that is makes the case that this adaptation is worth doing. How can we add to a thing that is already very good and popular? And so, yeah, I absolutely adored this opening thing. And then we get the opening credits, which if you're feeling uncomfortable with tendrils of any kind and sports, you're not going to have a great time with it. And I think in future, I shall be skipping ahead through the opening credits. But I mean, it is visually very cool. You get the mushrooms sort of sprouting up into a city.

And you get the mushrooms sprouting up into like the silhouettes of Joel and Ali. Like all, it's very beautiful. But also to me, especially on a rewatch, stomach churning. Anything you want to say about the opening credits? So this was one of the interesting things in my one day and one-ish hour of playing the game so far. That was, you know, you hear so much about, like you said, how cinematic the game is, how the term like cutscene doesn't even feel applicable given the centrality of those narrative sequences in the game. And, you know, you do have this like prologue stretch in the game and then a true opening title sequence that is very similar visually and thematically.

So I'm like, yeah, this is setting up inside of the game like a movie or like a show. I think there's also, you know, you mentioned the way that the sprouts are turning into buildings, turning into people, we're moving across, following these tendrils across this map. Like, I think it's difficult as HBO Sunday night viewers to not think about some of the famous opening credit maps we've seen and this idea of. And rivers of blood, perhaps. Yes. And the, but the idea, right, exactly. and the idea of like playing on our readiness to see some sort of structure, the visual rendering of the connections of a world and of a people and of a society. And what if instead of that it was the thing that robbed us of that?

What if it was the thing that tore all of that down that crumbled it and broke it so that it wasn't there at all? And if you wanted to forge your way forward, you had to take out an old piece of paper and trace your way with a pen. You had to try to find a car battery from someone who'd probably already sold it to somebody else. I thought that it was, again, we're just in the opening few minutes between this 68 sequence and the credits. And you have almost everything you need tonally before some of the true inciting incidents of the plot, which is just really impressive. And what's really like, in a situal age, is it burdensome to think about getting like a paper map out from underneath your floorboard storage? Yes. But what's even more so is when you have to like first, you have to move your hatchet and then you have to move your crowbar before you finally are able to find your map. It's a whole process. So we don't know how good we have it. I don't even have to have to hatch it if I want to find a brunch spot to meet you in Los Felis. All right. So we're going to go now. Speaking of excellent brunch, we go now to Austin, Texas, 2003, the middle timeline of this three timeline episode. And we are quickly, introduced to this family unit of Joel, his daughter, Sarah, and his brother Tommy on Joel's

birthday. The fact that this epidemic, pandemic, fungal infection breaks out on Joel's birthday is straight from the game, right? Like, this is direct adaptation. But what I really love about the introduction here in this rush to get out of the house and get breakfast ready and all the sort of stuff on a school day is how much it tells us about like what kind of dad Joel is and what kind of daughter Sarah is and what their dynamic is of this family, like that her room is neat and his room is messy. She has to wake him up. She's parenting him in so many ways. She's making breakfast. I mean, it's his birthday, but we imagine she probably makes breakfast most morning. She's making breakfast. He forgot to get the pancakes mix, you know, like all this sort of stuff. And so

the identity of Joel as dad, both in this phase and in the next phase of the story, is so important that I think it's really interesting to think about like what flavor of dad we're getting here right we're not getting word cleaver I don't know I tried to think of like the most stereotypical 1950s dad that's what I came up with but that's what we're getting we're getting this is like a dad in a rest of development um and a daughter who has to sort of like mother him or when we see them interacting with the adlers shout up buddy garrity uh too brief you we're in Texas for a story. We need buddy there.

Buddy should be there. But Buddy Garrity as one of the Adler's who lives next door, like their interaction with him is more like what siblings sort of, you know, teasing each other and putting each other in the way of these annoying neighbors rather than like a parent and a child. What did you think about? And it's all done really quickly, really efficiently. You don't feel like you're, you know, slogging through this sort of characterization.

just baked into, nimbly baked into the introduction of these characters. What did you think of that kind of family dynamic that they set up there? This was one of my favorite parts of the premiere, and I think all of the examples that you just cited, those little signifiers of what the nature of their relationship is like, you know, Sarah saying, hey, your t-shirts inside out, right? That's usually a thing that the parent points out to the kid. That carries over to other aspects of the plot and other aspects of the episode,

which we'll talk about more in a few minutes, but these other little like visual signifiers seeing the police cars and the fire trucks and the SWAT trucks passing by just in the back of the frame, right? Like all around us are these little clues for what is unfolding, what are we hearing on the radio, etc.

So I thought that there was like a fullness to all of the scenes in that respect in this 2003 timeline that really helped establish for us what the nature of the relationship is. Even like when Tommy calls Joel to bail him out of jail, it's very clear to us. So that's not the first time that that has happened, right?

That Tommy is a character who gets in trouble and Joel is a character who has to bail him out. So I love the way that it was structured in that respect. And I think, like, to your point about that almost like sibling-like nature of the Joel-Sara relationship and what this tells us about her, like, parental caregiver instincts for him and his relationship toward her, I thought it was important and, like, very clear to us that even though she is the one caring for him, right? It was so heartbreaking when she gives him the watch and says to him. And you can see on his face when she's like, well, you wouldn't have ever done it for yourself. I thought you could see a couple things at once there. You could see how touched he was to have somebody in his life, the most important person in his life, care about him that deeply, be able to see that this was a thing that he might need but not take the time to like a gift he might not give himself. but also almost like a beat of sadness that as a teenager,

she like had to take the time to see that and think about it and care about him in that way. And that's like a tough balancing act to strike because what we never doubt for a second, even as we're seeing Sarah care for Joel, is that Joel loves her, is that Joel protects her, that Joel provides for her, that that is the single guiding principle and most important thing in his life, right? Like I love the moment where she's making the eggs, chiding him for not getting the pancake mix. And he's like asking if she did her homework and he's got, you know, it's this great Pedro Pascal delivery fractions.

And it was like they were almost both acknowledging the farce of him needing to ask her if she had done her homework, which was just wonderful. But, but again, like mixed in that that we never question how seriously he takes being her dad. And something that we're going to talk about a bit more on Friday when we sort of dig into this lone wolf and cub trope conversation is this idea of what the cub can provide, whether or not it's like your literal child or a child that you've, you're chosen to care for, what that child can provide for the adults in that relationship, meaning all that sort of stuff. But also like what time and Lannisterly talk about legacy, right? And so, like, there's this moment, right, when Tommy, Tommy and Joel, super nice guys, but they don't know where Jakarta or, you know, or Indonesia is. And she's like, she tells them.

And I think it's Tommy says, like, there's hope for us yet, right? You know, it's sort of like our, the future of this family is Sarah, who does her homework and knows where Jakarta is. And, like, we are working hard to make a future for her. And when that is a singular focus for a character, or when you have moments like, throw away moments like in the classroom when the teacher says about a grammar rule, I swear you will use this later in life.

It's devastating. Like, you know, to lose a child in any circumstance is devastating. But when you have spent a lot of your time thinking about, well, my life isn't worth that much, you know, because like, Joel doesn't. give a shit about his job. Joel's working a job he doesn't give a shit about. You know what I mean? But he's doing it all to build a future for his daughter and have that future ripped away makes that even harder to move forward from, I would imagine. You know, absolutely. There's that

amazing little moment where, and the other thing I loved about this breakfast stretch in general, and the Sarah Joel dynamic overall, because we get this on the couch later with movie night, is like the humor, you know, the joking about you're going to have to wear diaper soon and like, you're lame, that was lame, all of that. It's just wonderful, right? You can feel kind of the rhythm of their life together. But to that point about what you're building and fostering for someone else, what you're working for,

and I think that the idea of like protection will be a through line not only of our discussion today, but of the entire season and how that can be this like true North Star and animating principle for certain characters, maybe the thing that tethers them to their humanity. And then for other figures in the story, Fedra, et cetera, it's the guys, right? It's the guys that allows you to oppress and institute some sort of tyrannical force because you're saying, oh, I'm doing this to keep you safe, right? Yeah, I'm so sorry. I just, I think we should all pay attention anytime someone says the word safe or safety.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's used really interestingly in this episode. Yes, it feels very deliberate. Yeah, I imagine going forward it will as well. Yeah, right. And so like you have a little, like when Tommy arrives and says, hey, still alive, you old fucker, which is delightful.

By the way, just fascinating that Pedro Pascal is kind of in the middle of the two ages he's playing across the timeline. I thought that was interesting. And Sarah says, oh, he loves you. And what's Joel's response to that? He's dependent on me, not the same. And Sarah says, I think it's the same. Tommy says, it's definitely the same.

And I loved that moment that like pre-breakout before everything goes to shit, not only for this family unit, but for the world, that idea of dependence and love when they're entwined, when they're the same thing, when they're a part of the same thing, when one feels like it's really trumping the other just feels like very central to what the text is examining. A dirty little trick that the Last of Us video game plays,

a very let's cast Sean Bean in season one of Game of Thrones move that it makes, for those of you haven't played the game, is that when you begin gameplay, as Mallory did, just a mere days ago on Last of Us, you play as Sarah. So the idea that she will die quickly is that much more of a surprise because you think this is your

protagonist that you're going to be with. They're going to be playing in the game. And so in the show version of the story, they've expanded out the time that we spend with Sarah a bit more than it is in the game to sort of try to replicate that POV idea. We're with her as she goes downtown to get the watch fixed, like we're with her in her classroom, we're with her, you know, waiting on the couch, et cetera, like all this sort of stuff. Not in a way that I think is trying to fool us because, you know, the marketing for the show has been very clear that it's a different young woman who is, you know, linked up with, with Hedroposkell, but to make the absence of her feel, you know, that much harder when it comes. And for me, watching it and not knowing that she would be

shot, but knowing that she was in the rest of the series, as I mentioned earlier, I was terrified every time a classmate twitched or she's downtown or she goes in the fucking Adler house. You know what I mean? It's just like, you know, and because I didn't yet know how this is transmitted. And so that's another key difference. So with the game, much has been discussed about this, but in the game, this mushroom invasion is airborne. an airborne, an airborne toxic event, right?

Spores, you know, so when Nana, like, RIRs back and opens up her mouth, I'm like, well, is that it? Like, RIP, Sarah, she's standing in the same room. But, you know, they're using the old,

the bite and the mouth tendrils instead, which we see in action from Nana. But what that means, it's a key adaptive choice because of what it means in the game, everyone but Ellie, because of her immunity is wearing a gas mask to protect themselves. And Craig and Neal, because they don't want us to suffer and not get to look at Pedro Pascale's face all the time as we have to on the Mandalorian,

we're like, how about we not put our actors in masks all the time? So they made it not airborne, which is, you know, a brilliant choice, I think. Boy, it's tough if you don't have the iconic Mandalorian helmet to justify. covering Pedro Pascal's face all the time. So support, I support this choice fully. You know, Joe, you mentioned a few really interesting things there, one of which just the Adler's house. I think we would be remiss if we went any further in the podcast without saying raisin cookies instead of chocolate chip. Was that not the true horror in the premiere?

Almost disturbing thing that happened. I just want to say, I think there's a time and a place for an oatmeal raisin cookie. And oatmeal raisin cookie, sure. I will tell you when that time and place is. Those didn't look like oatmeal cookies. You're right. I'll tell you, I'll tell you a time and cookies. I will tell you in a time and place for an oatmeal raisin cookie.

That's when you're in your house and you're like, man, I really want to make cookies. Oh, no, I don't have any chocolate chips. I guess I'll make oatmeal raisin. That's when you make oatmeal raisin cookies. And no other time. It's like, whoa, boy. But can I, the real shiver down my spine? Can we talk about baking for a second?

it. Okay, we got an email from listener Kaylee. I was talking to Neil and Dave on Childlike content a little while ago this morning. And I was talking to them about theories around the show. Neil Miller, not Neil Druck. Yes, that's true. Dave Gonzalez, Neil Miller. Thanks so much. You have two Neal's in your life for the next nine weeks. Oh, would it? We're only two. I don't know what I'm talking about it. Anyway, the Dave and Neal started making fun of me because they're like, how can you have theories about a show where, like, we know what happens. The video game exists. And I was like, well, let me give you an example, which is what Kaylee emailed us.

Because this is not an airborne event, Kaley writes in that she read on Reddit that theorizing that the outbreak originally came from infected flower, old lady neighbor is being fed biscuits by Puddy Garrity and gets infected. Sarah and Joel both make a point to miss out on eating pancakes, cookies, and a cake. The largest flour mill in the world? Oh, that's in Jakarta, the place that's on the TV reports while they're eating breakfast. Well, it doesn't change the story beats or arc. I think it's a great explanation of how the virus spread all over.

I just really hope they don't make Ellie's immunity related to her being gluten intolerant or something like that. But I love the Atkins diet moment that Joel mentions. It's such a fun moment because it really places us firmly in 2003. but if this flower theory, which is really fun, is true, like, yeah, like, the fact that he doesn't get the pancake mix, he forgets to get the cake,

like, all these moments where, like, it could have gotten them, but didn't because of these, you know, because of Joel's forgetfulness, actually. I don't know, what do you think about this, Mallory?

Yeah, so, I don't think this is a spoiler, because again, I've played barely any of the game, but I will say one thing from the game, game that gives me a thought on this. So if you don't want to hear this, just hit the fast forward button literally once, maybe twice. In the earliest minutes, Sarah picks up, she's looking at it, there's a news report, she's looking at the paper, and there are these items in the paper about

these, all of these things that are happening, these mysterious occurrences, and that there's this, like, mold in the food supply that people think might be causing it. And I'm not far enough to know if that's actually what happened or the case, but I think that was just like a enough of it. And you have to actually stop and hit a button to read the paper and pick it up. So maybe it's like another little, just a potential wink or maybe it ends up being like central. I have no idea at this point. But I really like this. And I think that the heavy reliance or focus in the premiere on flower-based food substances, you're right, that that that seems deliberate. And even like on the one hand, I think that a co-show runner or co-creator saying things that we did in this episode will end up being really important is like not so novel. But I do think that if you listen to the HBO pod, the moment when Mazin chooses to say that careful watchers will be rewarded is right after talking about, like, how Nana won't eat what the Adlers are trying to feed her, how there's this like food-centric stretch to what is unfolding, that there's a focus on the food there.

So I like this theory a lot. Speaking of other things that are like, yeah, because she's like, he has to like, buddy Gary has to like shove the biscuits and. Her mouth. Speaking of things that might be attuned to something that's going wrong, do you want to talk about Mercy the Dog and Mercy's whole arc in all of this? So this is one of my least favorite things to watch, which is an upset animal, an animal in distress, an animal in peril. But I do love the acknowledgement that animals are deeply attuned to what is happening around them

in a way that human beings simply are not. And obviously we have this like larger central text with the 68 setup of people ignoring these warnings. But then you have all of these like, okay, wow, there's this like even having a discussion of, oh, we're hearing this report about Jakarta on the radio. I wonder what's up. And like Sarah is throughout the day her anxiety is mounting, right? We have this sequence where the repair shop closes early. And, you know, the wife coming out to say to her husband, like, we need. to, you need to go. Like, we need to close up shop. And even just like the visual of, you have the

ticking of the, of the clocks, which really heightens our anxiety as viewers. And then pulling down the shades to give us that visual of the clock on the, on the, on the, in the storefront and the window, like all of these visual and, um, auditory, uh, reminders that we are, we are moving towards something. It's like the clock and draft day, my favorite movie full time show. When you're on the clock, you know something's about to happen. But like, all of those little little, signs and Mercy's fear, both like when Sarah is leaving the Adler home and Mercy is sitting there kind of watching Nana growling at Nana. We've already seen the spooky movement, right, but we can feel the tension building. And then the, I thought one of the scariest moments was

Mercy like hurling against the slider. And Carlos, Carlos is chiming in in the Zoom chat today wasn't expecting a draft day reference. Listen, I'll never miss the opportunity to make a draft day reference. Always expect the draft day reference from how I remember this. And in the game, it's a different character, a different neighbor who stumbles into the slider. And Joel has to shoot this person in front of Sarah. This becomes the wrench to the head for Nana Adler. But having the pup, having mercy there, you know, it just plays on our emotional strings as viewers. Like something is really, really wrong.

And we want to protect that puppy. But also we know that it's out of hand. Like when Mercy breaks free of the collar and runs away, like Sarah don't go into Don't go with a house. Why don't. This is a very precocious, bright teen, who is wonderful and great performance from Nico Parker. But I'm like, don't go into the house. Don't go into the house that the dog just fled from in terror.

What we get really quickly as this outbreak happens, as the neighborhood descends into chaos, and we get it as early as the repair shop sequence, is the introduction of this concept of, of who is us, tribalism, us versus them, these like survival math choices and stuff like that. So like when in the repair shop, when this woman pushes Sarah out the door, she does say like you should go home, but she's not giving her all the information

because she's like, we are circling our wagons right now. We are closing the door and we are making our plans and we are not responsible for this girl. She is not us. Go home, but you are not us, so we're not taking care of you, right? another character might say, let's get her home or let's get her to her dad or something like that.

That is not what these people are doing. And that's what we're going to see again and again. When Tommy and Joel are driving away and driving, you know, driving out of the neighborhood, passing people, you know, Tommy's like, they got a kid. Joel says, so do we keep driving. Tommy says there's people everywhere. And Joel says, roll the fuck over them because like us in this truck,

this is us. not to be confused with the NBC series, this is us. But like this is our little tribe. And we are making the survival math choice that anyone who is not in this truck, Sarsi talks about this on Game of Thrones. Everyone who isn't us.

Right. It's our enemy. It's our enemy. Yeah. And I think that that is a larger thematic glimpse into the shows, the story's interest, that I, as someone who's newer to this world,

found really eye-opening, as you know, Joe, I'm, like, inclined as a viewer to fall into the, like, love can conquer all. Like, I love one of those stories, but I also love the stories that subvert our expectations, that that's what we're about to get. And what seems clear is that this is a story that's going to try to do both of those things.

Like, that moment when they passed the other family in need is so interesting because it's, like, on the one hand, that us versus them mentality that you're identifying, but also the preservation of your family and this idea of fellowship and tribalism, can they work in harmony? Or does one always have to come at the expense of the other? Like, we talked about this a lot in obviously a different context, in our Rings of PowerPod and like the idea of fellowship being so central to how we think about the stories in Middle

Earth. But like so many of the different factions that we were watching in Rings of Power don't trust to somebody else or don't want to put the needs of another above themselves. And so how does that delay or complicate your path to fellowship? And like, again, you mentioned like, we see the posters, we see the trailers. We understand that this is a show, ultimately a story about Joel and Ellie and their journey and that idea of found fellowship and found family. But like, that doesn't mean that everyone's a part of that family.

It maybe means protecting that family at the expense of everything else. And one of the things that Mason said on the on the HBO pod was if you scratch the surface of tribalism, racism, xenophobia, you will find love. Love is not always good. And so we watch this premiere and as viewers, I think there's an inclination, a natural one to say, this is a story about a guy who suffered an unspeakable tragedy and hardship. And everybody did who went through this. But he's had a personal and like deeply devastating and debilitating face to it. based on what happened to Sarah. Like you said earlier,

it actually, like, she's in the truck so worried about whether they're sick, and there's something so devastating about the fact that, like, that's not the thing that gets her, as you said, right? It's this other thing,

this human shape, but also, like, this larger presence of the tomorrow. Like, the idea of tomorrow is very, very, very present. You mentioned, like, the teacher talking about how you'll use this material later in life.

Like, tomorrow playing on the radio at the beginning of the episode, like, the idea of homework. I'll get the cake tomorrow. I'll get the cake tomorrow. I swear. And that like that tomorrow is the thing that is ripped away from you.

And like it's ripped away not just from you, but from the person you love the most in the world. So anybody is like a threat to anyone else you might love in the future. It's just it doesn't seem like it's going to be a neat and tidy moral tale. And I think that that messiness is really compelling. And how do you decide who's us? Like we're about to do this time jump where the definition of us is radically changed. But I think that like to go back to what you said about what Mason said on the official podcast, my like jaw dropped open when he was talking about this idea of love.

He's like, this is a love story. And that's not necessarily a good thing. And I thought about Phoebe Waller Bridge and Fleabaggbag with like blood gushing down her face saying, this is a love story, right? And you never hear people say this is a love story and that's not necessarily a good thing. And we're going to talk about that a little bit more at the end of what happens here with Joel. But I just think I think that's such a stunning idea to be considering here that these moments have just like roll over them. Right.

The source of an instinct like that is love. I love you, Tommy. I love Sarah. Roll over everyone else. Like, you know, they're between myself and the safety of my loved ones, you know? Exactly. And like we get another version of that very quickly in the crowded street. where Tommy's like, I can't, you know, I can't really go anywhere.

And it's like, moam down, you know, moam down. And like, you mentioned how we know that Sarah is not going to be like a central figure in the show, but still putting us in that position where she is the protagonist for a longer and more and expanded, like you said, part of the episode compared to the opening of the game, I think it's connected really powerfully to that idea of like love protection, but also weaponizing that desire to protect and having that turn into something really like toxic and dangerous because like you set up this point of view character

who we're going to immediately lose. And it's a painful thing not only for the other characters in the world like Joel and Tommy, but for us as viewers because it's this like, it's this reminder right, don't get attached. You said the, the Sean Bean of it all. But also like do you get attached? because you have to remember what attachment is

and what is like left in the wake of that. Like you have to feel that loss so you know what fills that space. And it's kind of amazing that we get. I mean, I do think that they made the right choice to make this a mega episode instead of ending before the Boston QZ sequence and certainly before we get time with Ellie.

That would have been very strange. But I think ultimately what we got with Sarah and with Sarah and Joel here was like powerful enough to carry the bulk of this and set up so much of what's to come. So that when Joel and Ellie are together, we understand how that loss is informing him and how it changes how he thinks or shapes how he thinks about protection, family, tribalism, us versus them, all of it. That word safety comes up a lot in this sequence, in this mad dash to the river, in this encounter with a soldier, Joel keeps. he's talking to Sarah about needing to get her safe, right? Calling her baby over and over again.

I know, I know, I know, I know, like all this sort of stuff. Look at me. You don't look anywhere else. Right, right. Your safety is the most important thing. And like, I think it's so, the first time I watched through,

and we see that bumper sticker on the trunk that says like, you know, Operation Desert Storm Combat Veteran, I assumed it was Joel. Now I think it might be Tommy. I haven't found a confirmation one way or another from the showrunners. But Tommy was driving the truck.

Tommy's driving the truck. Yeah, Tommy's driving the truck. So I think it's Tommy's truck. So I think it's his bumper sticker. So I think he's the veteran. But like when I originally thought it was Joel, I was like how extra horrifying that the military that he dedicated some chunk of his life to is the thing that causes him the most,

this institution that he is given something of himself to causes the most painful thing that happens to him. But even if that's not the case, what the point is, these institutions will fail us, are ill-equipped in this moment. And as we figure out, I mean, like,

we're gonna, I'm talking a lot about, you know, as we move into the Boston QZ and Fedra and everything that they create there, we want to be thinking about this idea of like,

how do you could create a society, how, you know, like, I might wind up fucking rereading Rousseau or something, like trying to figure out, like, because it's supposed to be, a community is supposed to be

you follow these rules, we will keep you safe. That's the transaction, right? You agree to these set principles. In return, you get larger protection. The bigger, the village, the more protected you are, right? And so in something like that,

in something like this is so freshly dismantled, this democracy of America, so freshly dismantled into these like various substrathes or whatever, I think it's so natural that your society zeroes down into a society of three. Or in the case

of when we meet Joel in Boston a society of essentially two. And so we're going to go to Boston second. I just want to take one last minute to talk about how incredible Pedro is in this moment

when we lose Sarah. What do you want to say about that? No. I mean, he was exceptional. This is devastating. cradling your child in your arms as she bleeds out and dies. The stopping of the watch, you know, later we'll see Ellie call out that the watch that Sarah had repaired for him that is still on his arm 20 years later is broken. And that moment where it's frozen in time just like haunting, haunting. And, you know, we'll chat later about the showdown between Joel and Lee,

the Fedra soldier, where Joel beats him to death as, Ellie watches. And I think that Mason's commentary on that and the contrast between the responses between Ellie there and Sarah watching what happens with Nana Adler was really interesting. But like, I'm often very wary of and almost borderline allergic to like callbacks inside of an episode to something that happened earlier in the episode. Yeah. Yeah. But here I thought it was like, and again, now I'm talking about something later that calls back to this moment that we're discussing here. But I thought it was so appropriate. and potent because it's not there for our benefit.

It's like that is literally, that is Joel's flashback in that moment. That is the PTSD pulling him back to this loss here and this like defining loss in his life. Because before that flashback happens when he beats Lee to death and Ellie's like, oh, hey. So this is what you're capable of. This is what Marlene meant. There's the earlier sequence where he's taking pills and drinking and passes out. what he hears as he goes under is this moment, is Sarah's death and Tommy calling out for him and stuff like that.

Yes, and exactly. Like, we've chatted a lot about these little tiny moments and signifiers and details that prime us for something or tease something larger. Marlene mentioning Riley in the conversation with Ellie. Like, we have so much that we don't know. And I think that's the other thing I wanted to mention about this showdown between the soldier and Joel and Sarah here. It's like, there's so much.

we don't know and I like it. Like there's a lot of mystery that just heightens our terror and our fear. What do we don't, we hear the soldier, but we don't hear what's on the other side of that of that walkie. Like we can fill in the gaps, but we don't know why. Is it that the, the child is injured and the people hearing that think, well, an injury could be, it could be a illness. Yeah. It could be an infection. We can't risk it, take them down. Are they not letting anybody through, no matter how healthy they are, is it don't let a single person pass that line. Like, the fact that we don't know that just really exacerbates the sense of, like, how many people are alive 20 years later?

Like, how many quarantine zones are there? How many people are in each of them? We have so many questions that I think, like, really increase our fear. And so, like, for Joel not to simply be a character who is bulldozing through that fear, just to make it to the next day, but who is so imbued with, I mean, charm, because it's Pedro Pascal,

but compassion, right? With pathos, with this, like, real humanity and history of loss and grief and pain. That's just an incredibly sad and compelling thing. And, like, I love what you said about

the people who are supposed to protect you, not making good on that vow. like not following through on that shared understanding. And you pair that with something like another moment that I think we were probably both thinking of Station 11 was the plane falling out of the sky. And like why is that, why is that such an effective thing to show us? I mean, obviously it's scary, right? It's legitimately terrifying.

What if a plane just crashed into you? But it's not just planes falling. It's what it represents, right? It's the systems crumbling. It's the things that we trust in every day, no longer being things that we can rely upon, like the signifiers of order and predictability literally falling down on top of you, what could be more on mooring? Not just that.

Like, as we move into, like, a post-apocalypse, then, like, all the things that we took for granted, like, the fact that we could ever fly, the fact that we could ever get a giant metal thing and, like, a bunch of us, like, flew through the air becomes preposal. So, like, that is a beautiful... Museum of civilization, right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

I just want to say something about Pedro's performance here and say, like, Pedro as a performer is someone that, like, you know, you and I have been very enamored of him ever since he showed up as Oberyn on Game of Thrones. And Oberyn is such a hot-tempered, passionate character. His downfall, but, like, that is a key

part of that performance. And then Pedro has done this, that, and the other thing, which operates a lot on his charm. And then, Amanda, so much of that is stoicism. And any cracks, we see our tiny little cracks through such a stoic exterior.

So to see him become so unraveled here, it reminded me of one of my favorite moments of Stranger Things season four when Lucas is screaming for help about Max, you know what I mean? That just complete unraveling of a person. And I just, you know, it's a, it's odd to say I derive pleasure from the sequence because it's so upsetting. but I really liked seeing Pedro get to be back in that zone. You know, and he's going to go back under the stoicism crust, I think, you know, for a while going forward.

But something that Pedro said on the inside of the episode in terms of Joel and Sarah, as he says, she's the person I live for without her. I don't have a purpose, right? So as we meet him, as we go to Boston, 23, he's somewhat of a man without purpose. purpose. But there's still one more member of a person who was in that truck, who is Tommy, and Tommy provides some measure of purpose for Joel. But like what's what's really interesting here to go back to that safety idea is you go directly from, yes, a failure of Joel to keep Sarah safe, but a full, full intention, a full, every, you know, selling his body trying to protect her and

keep her safe to this sort of cold open of the Boston QZ where we meet this kid and the Fedra agents snap up this kid and you know tie this kid down test the kid say you know what if I told you that after you gave you some medicine we're going to find you your favorite food to eat would you like that and we'll get you some new clothes and toys so many you want to play with it's just a little needle it's okay, you're safe. And then we immediately find out that they have exterminated, you know, he's a horrifying word, but they have killed this kid. And Joel, once again, has to pick up a child, you know, a dead child and throw this child on the fire.

And Joel will do it when someone else can't bring themselves to do it because he is so dead inside that this is something that he can do. What did you make of this transition from into 2020? Upsetting! Oh, my Lord, this was upsetting. To follow this little shuffling child in the high tops and have the sneakers or the pop of color of the t-shirt be the thing that we can spot in the truck full of corpses because the faces are covered.

There is no humanity. There is no individuality. There's like there it is again, right? Us and them. The infected and those of us who are just trying to make it to the next day without becoming infected. And to go from, I mean, the out, like you're saying, the outright lie of the, you're safe in that moment. And I think you could talk yourself into it being like a kindness to offer a, to offer the illusion of safety in the final moment. of what is about to become like a hopeless, horrible path anyway.

But I think also certainly as we open up the Fedra slice of this premiere, like to see the, you know, when we scan past again, more of these just like details that are dotting all of the scenes, these warning posters, like what are the signs of infection that you should be watching for? What is the, like, from minutes to hours, if you're, if you have a wound on this part of your body, this is how long you have until you're one.

of those bodies in that truck. And to go from immediately that you're safe to flames to the pit, the fire pit where the bodies are disposed. And, you know, I love that detail that you mentioned of one of the other people, a woman who was working on that crew too can't do it. Sees that it's a kid and says, I can't. Who does that person turn to? It's Joel. And to have go so quickly from him cradling his dead child in his arms to holding another dead kid and then just dumping that kid into the flames and then shoveling up the ashes of the eliminated and then lining up for ration cards and a question about what other jobs there are for the next day. Like that's life. That's the thing that Fedra says they're protecting.

Walking through the square and seeing other citizens of the Boston quarantine zone hanged for daring to go in or out, right? And sure, that's a risk to public safety, but also we can see so quickly like how little there is in the minute to minute and the day to day and how the oppression and the control

of Fedra stitches this all together. Something that we're not going to stop bringing up Station 11. It's just going to be an ongoing consideration. If you have not watched Station 11 what are you doing?

Legitimately hit pause now and go. What are you doing? But this concept that Station 11 is so preoccupied with that I loved was this idea of surviving versus living. Yeah, survival is insufficient. Survival is insufficient, right? So what is Joel doing right now as we meet him? He is surviving.

But he is no longer living, right? Sarah was who he was living for. Sarah is gone. Will Ellie be someone to live for in the future? This is the question of the game. of the show, et cetera. But as we meet him here, he has a relationship with Tess.

There is like a cold comfort in Tess. And something that I love, I was reading an interview with Anatov. Great Anatov. We love Anatov. Okay. Can we just do it a 30 second aside here? Did you think it was Carrie Coon?

Sorry. No, no, no. I just want to say, like, I couldn't be more thrilled to have Anatoorff back in my life. I mean, we're going to talk a lot about Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Also two of our faves, right? Mando. Throads. Thrones. Yeah. Throads again. Hilda, etc.

All of these shows we love. Fringe. Mindhunter. Yeah. Ataturv is an icon and a legend and I've missed her and I'm thrilled that she's here. Okay. Thank you. I was watching this episode and I was like, I had a second where I was like, is Carrie Kuhn in this show and no one told me? And then I was like, oh, I know that's Anatoorv. And what's funny is like three other people texted me and was like, is Carrie Koon in this show? No one, no one told me. You know, Anatoirv is in her.

Anatov who's usually just so much more glamorous is in her Carrie Coon era. And there's nothing wrong with being in your Carrie Coon era. But like, so, but I was reading an interview with Anna Torver, she was talking about this idea that like, yes, Joel and Tess have a relationship. They're together, you know. In theory, they have sex sometimes. But like, it's a, it's a mutual survival thing. It's not a living thing. And you get that most when she comes.

home, if you want to call where they're living home, and just sort of like shoves him over and huddles up against him for like, you know, some warmth and comfort. You know what I mean? And so there's nothing, there's nothing romantic about their partnership. There's something solid about it. And there's something that feels important again in the like, our community of two feels very important for their survival, but they're not living these two people. It's a great point. And I think of like, you know, you mentioned the apartment. I think of what we focused on in the apartment, what the camera lingered on and showed us.

And it makes me think of the scan of the bed on top of the cinder blocks. And like this thing that is a part, we spend a third of our lives on it. And it's a part of our every day and a part of our reality. And like maybe you've made it as comfortable as you can. And then 20 years in the future after everything is gone, you prop it up on just whatever you can find to like try to hold on to. this vestige of this thing you used to know, but also what is a cinder block, right? It's like the sturdy thing. It's the thing that you can try to build on if you're aiming to. And so like I like the idea of thinking of their relationship that way too, where like, who knows what level of like romance

there is, but there's a trust and there's an ability to unlock something in each other, like right away when we see Tess with Robert in the interrogation sequence. Again, I'm just like, editor of, yes, just a round of applause. So thrilled that she's here. We see so quickly in that scene how she is able to take command of a situation, her aptitude in so many respects to pursue and then make her way toward the outcome that she is seeking. And the version of that that we get with Joel when she sits down at the table and lets him see her face and knows how he's going to respond. Another just incredible moment from Peter Pascal there, just the way he pops up out of his seat, right? She's working him in that conversation, right? She knows exactly what,

handling. Perfect. Perfect description. Yes. Like, she knows exactly what to say to get him to the place that she needs him to be. But that does, it's not mutually exclusive from them caring about each other or working well together or finding a way to exist together. But yeah, what is like beyond that that they can't find again? It reminded me like to go back. So in that when we meet her and she's beaten up and she's in this chair, right? Like, it reminded me a lot of the opening of ALEAS, one of my all-time favorite shows where like Jennifer Garner is all beaten up, but she's tied to a chair or let's say like Natasha and Avengers. But like this is not someone who doesn't have all the power in the room. This is someone who should be powerless, but actually has all the power in the room.

And Robert is scared of her and for in her own right, but also because of Joel, right? Because he says, what about your guy? Because when he sees you, I mean, put yourself in my shoes. And she says, look, he answers to me. And that made me think about the conversations we had about House of the Dragon. And Allison and her like attack dogs on a leash, Kristen Cole. You know, like, you know, Joel is her attack dog that she, like, feels like she has a handle on. And I, you know, for the most part, it seems like she does. She completely works them. Let me roll out the information in a way that I think will get us what we want.

And I'm going to tell you, I do want you to hurt them. But we're going to do it at the right time, okay? Like, you know, we're going to attack when I say attack. And we're going to heal when I say a heal. And that's what we're going to do. We get this info via this, you know, Abe, this guy Abe on the radio, stuff like that, this idea that Tommy is out somewhere in Wyoming and he's not answering calls. And this is the motivator for Joel and Tess to make the deal that they make with the fireflies.

This is very video game. Joel's trying to get a car test is trying to get a battery together. They can put those together and go to Wyoming and see if Tommy's okay. We get an indication from Marlene in the fireflies in her conversation with Joel that Joel and Tommy are on the outs, like that maybe Tommy has signed up with the fireflies and Joel, as we see over many moments, has no use for the fireflies, right? And blames them perhaps for the fracture with his brother.

But that this is the motivator for him. It's not a sense of duty to protect. check someone vulnerable like Ellie. He's like, I want to get back to this other member of my us, which is Tommy. My understanding is that in the games, the motivation here is like they want guns. What a great adaptation choice to change. I want guns to. Is my brother okay?

I need to get a car to get to him. Yeah. And I think it's like doubly effective because not only does it give us that Joel Tommy human relationship family unit aspect to this 20 years later dynamic, but it unlocks another element of this Fedra versus Fireflies. Dicotomy that's unfurling in front of us here where like there's not, I can't imagine that there's a single viewer watching at home who's like Fedra, those seem like my people, right?

They have it all together. There probably, right. But there probably are people who are like, okay, I'm still trying to get a read on the fireflies. Because you have, and I think we probably both thought a lot about Andor. You show that we have recently watched and loved. And particularly our guy, Luthin, in the context of everything that we quickly learn about Marlene, Kim, the Boston QZ Firefly Unit, but the larger Firefly unit, because, like, the people who are not fireflies will hurl the word terrorist, right? But then what do we hear Marlene say?

well, like, we're trying to take down this oppressive militaristic dictatorship. Well, that sounds like the empire to me, right? And so who's fighting the empire? Rebellion. The rebel alliance. And like that question that we heard from Luton of like, and that Ma'an, Mothman, other characters interrogated throughout Andor of like, what is too far?

Like, those bombings are strategy, but we saw Tess get caught up at one. We, like, we're not exactly like team. Robert and his stooges, but there are dead bodies, right? So, like, what's the collateral damage? Well, are the Firefly is going to be characters who we root for immediately? Is that going to be something that we have to work toward over time? Is there going to be complexity, or is it an easy? Yeah, of course. Well, the fact that Tommy has chosen them and chosen to sign up for them is a really handy way of making us say, because we're just meeting all of these characters.

We don't know Marlene. I mean, we don't really know any of these characters, right? But we know Marlene even less than we know Tommy. So the fact that this was a rift, though, like, Joel saying to Marlene, like, you took my brother away from me, and we're hearing, you mentioned those, like, whispers of Tommy, you know, calling out to

the Joel's hearing, you know what, Joel, like that he's hearing this before he passes out. The way that Tess is so dismissive when she sees Marlene. Oh, the Tre Guevara of Boston. Yeah. Like, she's not

saying that in a way that is heaps of praise, right? Yeah. So all of these characters who are interested and invested in have this shared history that, again, we don't understand yet and why I presume we'll learn a lot more about over time. Marlene respects Joel and Tess, cites them as capable. I love the moment where he's like, what are they capable of? And again, it's like intrigue as much as anything else, right? Like a little bit of trepidation, but mostly intrigue and excitement.

And I just like, I know Luton would be there with the fireflies, right? So we have that in our heads after just watching this. I will say, like I really liked this episode a lot. But when I was talking to our beloved pal, Chris Ryan, Chris and Chris was texting you this as well, this idea of like, how do you keep them down on the farm after they see an Andor? Like, how do you follow Andor with something like this?

And so, like, when you have this exchange between Marlene and Kim, where they're talking about rebellion, what is the nature of a rebellion, and Marlene drops his banger line, you fight for 20 years, you get nowhere, you're not a rebellion, just spray paint. Great line, but I was like, okay, but if it were luthin, every line would be, every line would be as good as a spray paint line. So I did feel a little bit of like, I'm missing some of the poetry of the Tony Gilroy, Bo Willemann, like scripts and stuff like that.

And I think it's the, it's the poetry that was present in all the lucent speeches, but it's also the context. Like, we come to a show like Andor and we can appreciate everything that enhances our understanding of a thing we've spent decades of our lives consuming. So certainly, again, like many people watching The Last of Us have played the games in full and have been doing so since 2013 and do have a larger and richer understanding of the fireflies. But I thought it was interesting that even like in the Mazen Troy Baker-Drockman conversation on the companion pod, the fireflies were cited as a thing that Mazen asked a lot of questions about, like, that he clearly considered ripe for expansion in terms of the canon. So I assume that like the motivations, but again, the assessment. of the morality, the motivation is clear, right? The assessment of the morality and which characters are opting into that. And if the morality of taking down this oppressive Fedra force seems clear to us, then why aren't more people aligned with the fireflies, right? This like evangelical,

hey, like, have you heard the good word guy who comes up to Joel in the courtyard? Like, that you feel yourself getting sucked in and repelled kind of all at once. So I'm excited to see how much more we learn about that soon and how that plays out. But like, if, I mean, I'm loath to spend too much time with, like, a real-world COVID-com. But, like, if you think about the ways in which people react to something like a pandemic, and the psychology of the people who are like, well, whatever the government says is what we, like the government always, of course, like, we are used to thinking of the government is the people who are going to protect us.

So Fedra with the trappings of our federal government, you know, or like post 9-11, like thinking about Homeland Security and like the overreaches of Homeland Security, but like to a certain type of American, you're like, no, but that's the government. So why wouldn't I trust what the government is going to do for me, right? And then you've got the people who are like, why would I trust the government historically? What is the government ever done for me? So it really, you know, it makes sense to me that there would be that divide. But I love the, I mean, as with Luthin, I am like thirsty for.

complications inside of an organization like fireflies, you know? Absolutely. And I think like you look around in the Boston QZ and what do we see like barbed wire on fences, gunned patrols during curfew. Curfew 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. we see on one of the signs. You can't go in. You can't go out. You can't do anything unless they tell you it's okay. Executions. We have floodlights. We have executions. Exactly. We hear in the conversation where, Joel sells the pills, the hydro, to Lee, the Fedger Soldier, who will end up having the confrontation with at the end of the episode, the fatal confrontation, what do they make in Atlanta? Pills and bullets, bullets and bullets. And that's it.

And certainly not plastic. That's it. Not plastic baggies. No. No. Not plastic baggies. He needs that back. Just pills and bullets.

He needs that back. All right. Ellie, we meet Ellie. Yes. iconic sass mouth introduction of this character, Bella Ramsey, Leona Moore. We love you. Love motherfucker as a catchphrase. It's really just like, great.

10 out of 10 notes for me. But in terms of like what you're saying earlier about not hearing what's on the other side of the earpiece of the young military guy who shot Sarah, like we don't have all the context for Ellie or hardly any of the context for Ellie. But there are these telling us. moments like how frantically she grabs her pack, how frantically she pulls out that knife. And we get another fun one with the knife after having seen Sarah with a knife out of Joel Schroly. Sarah with a knife, Sarah with a backpack. Like, you know what I mean? Like characters

and video games. Shout out Jansport. Yeah. Charac's and video games carry backpacks all the time. Were you a Jansport backpacked? Were you an LLB backpack kid monogram? All the way. And Jansport, the one that I had that I loved was the one with like the double side pouch do you know what I'm talking about? Oh yeah. Of course I know what you're talking about. Yeah. That was...

Water bottle, like an umbrella on a rainy day. Very handy. Yes. That was the height of faction and it was like the dark raspberry cranberry colored one. Do you know what I mean? That was it. That was it. My favorite backpack I've ever owned. But yeah, characters and games always have

packs because they're always like, you know, you have to pull stuff out of it. Obviously, also, hopefully if you're wandering around a post-apocalypse lens, you have a pack. You should have a pack. You need it. You need the pack, Joe, because like you, you mentioned the radio room. Yeah. And, you know, now that we're in the QZ, we're jumping all around, but it's all connected. Yeah. And the trading of the cigarettes for information, the cutting of the line, Joel is a person who is not following the rules in so many different respects, getting to hear a snippet. And like you think everyone's scribbling their messages.

Like this is the only way that people can communicate with each other. We have later with Marlene, like this little nugget about information coming from the Salem Radio Tower. We have the Wyoming Radio Tower, like this network of people getting their intel out, but also just like communicating like what's the message that we hear before Joel sits down. It's about a birth. Like tell dad it's a girl. like this is the only way that people can share their news with each other.

That moment is so wild because she says like, tell dad it's a girl. That's what he would want to hear. He wanted a granddaughter. And like she's still pregnant. So like it's a lie, whatever it is. I know. It's very upsetting. Like it points to something potentially terrible.

I know. It's horrible. And then like when, you know, the reason that I, you're talking about the pack and heading out with a pack, maybe think of this again is because like what does the, what does Abe the radio guy say when he's trying, he's trying to convince Joel not to go, not to go look for Tommy, right? There are worse things than infected out there. I hear everything on this. There are raiders. There are slavers. And Joel's responses, but you're sure Tommy's okay. Like, again, that idea that the humans, now of course, I'm sure they'll have to face many infected,

but the idea of the human beings, like your fellow man being the great peril. That was the one moment that I was getting, I got a little like Walking Dead fatigue vibes because Walking Dead it was forever like the Revers, the this, the that. I'm just sort of like, what's the name for the next community we're going to meet on season 25 of the Walking Dead?

That's just acid flashbacks from covering that show long after I was interested in it. I'm excited for the last of us. But I want to get back to Ellie in the pack because the frantic way, and she's so she's got such like a cocky attitude. And then all of that

just like peels away she gets she gets the backpack she's frantic to dig into it grab that knife um i assume we're going to figure out find out some more information about that knife but there's a couple possibilities here there's a possibility that like this is the only way she survived at some other point in her life right and to be weaponless has been a source of great stress for her that's one interpretation but also is this a person is this someone else's knife is this someone she cared about someone she loved. Someone she loved and that's their knife and, you know, a personal item, like when Joel has that

knife under his boot and she's like trying to get it back. You know, it's like, and again, it's those little moments that tell us something about her without telling us something about her. Before we sort of close out the exchange of prisoners and poor Kim and

her lack of ear, such a funny line. You don't have a fucking ear on your fucking head, Kim. It's not going to be you, okay? Do you want to talk about the fully mushroomed figure that Tess and Joel encounter in the underground as they're working their way to Ellie? Yeah. So this was scary, first of all. Tess gets afraid.

We get afraid. Jump scare. Spooky. but also kind of like it made me think of annihilation a film that I

really enjoy though still consider one of the most disorienting viewing experiences of my life because I read the book that morning and then went to see the movie that afternoon I was literally finishing it in the seat in the theater it's still has me in a tizzy but there's something in you know annihilation in the annihilation universe and here with this

the scape like it's not a person it's not a thing it's this like art scape right and this idea that the cycle is completed that this is done right that there's no longer anything to fear here that was very creepy in terms of what it tells us about the different stages and of course in the in the 68 this sequence with our guy dr newman like we get all of these little nuggets about the the fungi replacing the ant's flesh with their own and like needing to keep your puppet live to do your bidding and work toward this one singular goal and fending off decomposition. But then clearly, as we see here, there is ultimately still this end point when you then move on to another meat puppet if you're a tentacle or spore or whatever you might be.

And, you know, Mazen said on the companion pod, this, like, this was what he was actually talking about Nana Adler in this stretch, but I think it applies more broadly to this like entwined nature of the beauty, the uncomfortable beauty and horror of what we're witnessing here. He was describing, it's fixing what's. broken inside of her, but it's taken her mind with it. And like that juxtaposition of this thing that like animates you and if you were comatose, if you could not do any of these things and then you're zipping about, what's your 40-yard dash time now that you're infected, Nana? And all these things that you could do that you couldn't before. But like, what is the cost? The cost is everything.

And it just was horrifying to see that like plastered all across the wall. Did you love it? You were like, this is beautiful. I want to print for my wall. Annihilation's really good comp. Excellent comp. I was telling you before that was horrifying to me every single time. I watched it. And I like, rewounded a couple times. And like every time, even when I knew it was coming, it scared the shit out of me. There's something about him saying like it's completed, right? And then there's something about like, did it get infected down here? Is it being down here? It wasn't here before. Like, all it was just, I'm sorry. so scared of tendrils. I can't even tell you.

And when you said the word puppet just now, I got a full-body chill. Like, it's just the concept really upsets me. And I'm so glad you're here with me and all of this journey. You mentioned, you mentioned already. Okay, so like a couple things. So you would never let me go, fan. Yes. One of my favorite books ever.

Here you say completed, made me think of it. I love that book. And I actually love that film adaptation to you. So we get more nuggets. You mentioned like, you mentioned that. we get a mention rightly, right? Which means something to Ellie. It doesn't mean anything to us yet.

We get a mention of Tess and Joler making a plan. We'll have to drop head to Bill and Frank stock of anything we may need. I've looked at the cast list, so I know who Bill and Frank are, so that's exciting. I was thrilled when I popped over to IMDB after this.

Just absolutely delighted in there also. We have a BF on the piece of paper inside of the Billboard charts book. So the Bill of Frank radio code, the mention here. Radio, yeah. Delightful. We didn't get a question about that.

Someone emailed us asking us if it was like Tommy doing the song. No, it's Bill and Frank with the music on the radio, the code of 80s. 80s is danger. 80s is trouble. You mentioned that we get this moment of Allie saying your watch is broken, which is lifted directly from the game. But yeah, like time stop for Joel when Sarah died, right? But like, so Ellie is smart. She's tough.

But there's like, there are some cracks here too. Like what felt like more vulnerable humanity breaking through for Ellie for you? I loved, this is when they're back at Joel and Tess's apartment after they've accepted Marlene's deal and have decided to smuggle Ellie to the statehouse for Marlene after this Robert versus the fireflies shitstorm that took everybody in the squadron out of commission. And Ellie is sassy. Ellie is tricking Joel into revealing the 80s means trouble code, et cetera. But there's this, like, looking out, you know, we hear that Ellie's never been beyond the wall, just that like the way that Bella Ramsey delivers the dialogue about how dark it is. It really gives us a sense of this world.

And like, what it must mean to be a kid who grew up in this time, I think that's probably something else that made us think of Station 11 a lot. the idea of the generations. Yeah. And on the one hand, the kind of gift of that of like not knowing what you lost, but on the other hand, the tragedy of not having ever had it and only knowing like this hellscape and this type of existence. And when Ellie asks Joel, like when they were last out there and he says like maybe a year, why does it matter? He's being like very gruff and very cold with her.

I mean, the first interaction between these two characters is her attacking him with a knife. and him knocking her into a wall and holding her at gunpoint, right, until it becomes clear from Marlene. Classic meet you. You keep anyone, classic me cute, anyone but that kid under the barrel of your gun, right? Not her too important. Put the gun on me, not on her. Right. And the way that Ellie says, but you know where to go, so we're going to be okay.

Like that vulnerability that reminds us as tough as Ellie seems and is, I'm sure, and as hungry as Ellie is for something, like, this is a kid. This is a 14-year-old kid who does need somebody to protect her and somebody who I'm sure in time she will want to protect too. And the moment where Joel, like, you can feel and see it's quick and quiet, but like the softening of his disposition, the way that pulls him back into fatherhood and makes him think of Sarah. How could it not, right?

And I just loved, I just loved that, that little moment there. I thought that was great. We get this confrontation between Lee and Joel and Tess and Ellie. Lee, who we previously met, again, I think just really smart storytelling to not have it be like a random guard, but one that like has a relationship with Joel. But there are limits to that relationship. And ultimately, like, the federal rules supersede that the community that we built as like, drug peddler and drug user, you know, like don't, don't extend beyond certain boundaries.

And like, I think that as loathe as I am to like, I don't want to say I'm like sympathetic to the guy who shot Sarah. I'm not, but like that young military guy who is terrified and kills child's in his terror, Lee here jumpy on, we know he's on drugs and he is on drugs and he is. said already to Joel guys are jumpy and tired. It's easy to make a mistake in the dark. And then Joel himself is taking drugs and is drinking and stuff like that.

And so it's just sort of like perfect recipe for a disaster. He goes into his like Sarah flashback, which you were like, I'll give you one exception to this rule, Last of Us, and it's this. And beats this guy who we kind of knows to death.

And what I thought was fascinating is that Neil Druckman was saying in this moment and this goes back to what you were talking about earlier

what Craig Mason was saying every moment of tribalism, xenophobia, racism, like all this sort of stuff there's a

there's a love core at the center of it as twisted as that sounds and so like in hopping into protective love dad

protect this soft thing mode um Drachman says something takes over Joel here and he likes it to the corticeps infection but for Joel it's love. So instead of the spores, the mushrooms,

the mouth tendrils coming inside of you, it's this love thing and this love makes him as violent as Nana Adler. You know what I mean? Like this is, it turns him into this animalistic thing and as we mentioned before, Ellie likes it.

And this is you know, what Mazen has said, both on the official podcast and the behind the inside the episode was they are made for each other, but that's scary. You know what I mean?

That Sarah is someone who would hold Joel accountable in theory. You can't just kill people. You know, like there's, you know, we need to have consequences, whatever. And Ellie is perhaps someone and I don't know because I haven't played the game and I'm seeing any other episodes,

But the vibe I'm getting is that Ellie is someone who would maybe encourage his worst impulses. As Tess tries to hold him on a leash, Ellie would be someone who would be like, go, attack, bite, let's kill. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. I mean, again, the idea there that like love is an infection. Sometimes a dangerous thing. Yeah.

I think like it's, it is incredibly interesting to see that direct comp made from from Druckman to see him compare. that primal love and what that drives you to do to the Cortex infection. Like I think of all of the parallels and the ways that control is conveyed in the episode. Well, love can become a controlling force for you there. It makes you do a thing that you maybe don't want to do even if in some ways it's it's right or justified the way that Joel is like looking down at his bloody knuckles after that. Like, holy shit. Like, did I just do this? Like this is a thing that I just did. This is a thing that I'm capable of doing to another person. Like you said, a person. A person. And I know, you know, the way that Fedra and the fireflies are this like yet again, another kind of,

none of these things are exactly like the mushrooms, but they're all being presented as this, as these corollaries to these forces that take over and seek to pursue control and pursue control kind of at all costs. And the way that the tension is mounting, you have Joel's horror or you have the actual incident. you have that look on Ellie's face, that activation, as you, as you quoted Mason as saying. But like, you also have then the scream from Tess when she sees the scanner that it turned red. And like, you know, I had a- And the red glow in the darkness. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Real like the dark side of the force vibes right there. Cicolocron. Okay. Sorry.

You had like, you had these moments where, because we have so many different Ellie clues across the back, you know, 20-ish-ish, minutes of the episode, mostly in conversations with Marlene, where, you know, Marlene is handing this note to Kim. And it's like, whatever's on that paper, that's all Kim needed to see to buy back in, right? Is this real? I believe it is. Marlene asking Ellie how she's feeling and Ellie saying the same is it going to happen. And Marlene, not just saying the word no, but breathing the word no, like, no. Like, it is like the embodiment of this new possibility. Marlene's saying because you have a greater purpose than any of us could ever have imagined,

but also Marlene's saying to Ellie, what I'm about to tell you, which we don't hear, crucially, you cannot repeat to anyone, because if you do, I assure you you will die. So we're like, well, okay, we see Ellie frantically at the end here

showing the scarred forearm to test and saying, this is three weeks ago. It hasn't happened. Like, sure, the scanner's beeping red, but I didn't turn. I'm okay. We have all these moments with Marlene where, you know, Ellie is the most important.

You are all that matters. She says that in front of Joel and Tess. If I'm Joel in Tess, I say, do you mind telling us why? I'd love a little more information on why she is the only thing that matters if you're asking us to smuggle her out of the quarantine zone. But, like, if it's just immunity,

why would that information make, put Ellie at risk of death from other people? Like what else is going on here? So we have so much we don't know yet. Okay. My interpretation would be, if they know you're immune, they're going to want to experiment on you

to try to make a cure or something like that. I don't think anyone is so evil as to be invested in like keeping this fungal infection going, but maybe I'm wrong. I haven't heard of the game. That would be dark. That would be dark. Some like Martin Schrelli sort of like thing.

But like I think that the idea would be like they would, you know, put you in a cage and then like do experiments on you in a way that they wouldn't care if you died as long as they extracted whatever DNA that made for you. Whatever magic was inside of you. And then also like how does this indication that Ellie is special and that the bite did not turn her the way that it has presumably everybody else? How do we how do we like reconcile that with what we heard from Dr. Newman at the beginning? No preventative, no cures. They don't exist. It's not even possible. to make them. So if that happens, we lose. How do we reconcile those two things? I love that as a bookend, though. This idea, like, we're like, oh, he's right.

He's so right. Oh, my God. And they didn't listen to him. And he's right. And then we get this, like, thing right at the end here where it's like, oh, he's wrong. Or maybe he's wrong. And, you know, something that we've talked about a lot is this, uh, quote from good old Damon Lindeloff that he gave about the TV show Lost, which is like the greatest answer to

a mystery as a person. This idea that we've got him a guy. here. I hear people misuse McGuffin all the time. And so like, Ellie's not really a McGuffin.

I don't really want to put, but I heard someone called Tommy a McGuffin. I was like, that's not what that is at all. But like, this thing, this infinity stone,

right, that we are porting around is a person. And that's always so much more interesting that it's Desmond down in the hatch on Lost. Spoilish for season one of Lost.

And that, you know, Ellie is the thing. It's not a vial. It's Amy in the passage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not a vial of goo. It's a 14-year-old, sassy girl.

Okay, so. All right, so we wrap up with this cool, creepy shot of Destroy Boston. Very doom of Valeria stone people, because you can see one of the... On the roof. The roof is very scary. Boston. And again, that sort of beauty and the destruction thing,

it remind me a lot of Station 11. and beautiful shots in Station 11 of like nature encroaching on buildings and stuff like that like all that sort of stuff. When a gas station becomes a garden, exactly. Yes, yes.

And then we go not to Abe's radio room, but back to Toll and Tess's and we get this Depeche Mode song, which serves multiple purposes, right? Because it's never let me down again with all these lyrics

that are very clearly, this is Joel's second chance to protect a young girl, blah, blah, but also we've learned that 80s music means trouble. And this song is an 80s song. And so, like,

we're headed out into the wilderness. We're headed into trouble. You know, I hope he never lets me down again. He knows where he's taking me, taking me where I want to be. I'm taking a ride with my best friend. We're flying high.

We're watching world passes by. Mason going out of his way to note that that's a song about addiction felt Notable to me. Yes. Right. And especially is there like, like especially Ellie's face, right?

Um, when we see Joel punching the shit. These two are meant to be together, but look out is what Craig Mason said about them. All right. We're going to hit just like a few little like corners, something we like to do on Ringervorverse. We love a corner.

Yeah. We love a corner. So Easter eggs, I don't have a ton written down here, but is there any that like stuck out to you as like something that's kind of fun? I loved Sarah wearing the same outfit. in the game and the opening, but with like the year tweak moved up,

you know, shifted a decade and you get the tour stops on the back and that was really fun. And on the fashion corner, I think we would be remiss if we didn't shout out the guy in the Gore Lieberman's shirt. Oh, yeah. Gore Lieberman's my pick. The Gore Lieberman's shirt is so good. Oh my God. I loved it.

Curtis in the Viper 2 DVD is another Easter egg from the game. And also the the first audio you hear in the Last of Us game, Mal could attest this because she just played it is a ticking clock. So this idea of the ticking sounds that we hear throughout are sort of a. And also, I didn't pin down exactly where it is. But Ryan area over on Screen Crush said that at one point you hear a sound cue that's exactly from the game of like what it sounds like when you pick up a new item. So they're like integrating just like some of those like fun video game sounds like a Pavlovian response almost for a game.

game player. All right, something we're going to do every week because of my abject horror and fear and terror of the mouth tendril mushrooms in the show is in order to show dominance over mushrooms. We're going to do culinary mushroom corner or making mushroom my mushrooms my bitch corner every week on this show. I'm going to start us off, but what I would ask for you, the listener, you made it this far.

Hobbits and Dragons at Gmail.com is our email. Email me your favorite mushroom recipe and I will read it out on the show every week and we will make mushrooms and we will eat them and we will show them who is boss. It's not them, it's us. Hopefully even vegetarians and vegans feel okay about this.

I don't get this way about meat, but I feel this way about mushrooms right now. And so I will just shout out, I don't have a recipe for you, but I'll just shout out that the other night I went with friend of the pod, Kim Rumpro, to Muso and Frank here in Los Angeles.

And I had a beautiful mushroom over polenta dish that was absolutely delicious. I definitely made that. Stoen. I definitely made that mushroom, my bitch. So please, Hobbits and Dragons and Gmail.com, send me your mushroom recipes. I'll make the mushrooms. And I will report back. Let me know.

I love this. Last episode of that least, we've decided to do. And if you have other ideas for corners, let us know. But last and certainly at least, we're going to do a Darwin Award every week. Mallory, would you like to bestow our, with love and respect, our Last of Us Darwin Award this week? We already mentioned it. It's the don't go into the house that the dog just fled from in terror selection this week. Sarah was pretty lucky to make it out of the Adler homestead intact after seeing the trail, the crunched up doormat.

Yeah. The Trail of Blood. Yeah. Nod Buddy Garrity, eyes twitching into the corner where Nana's chowing down on Connie. It's a no for me, Joe. It's a no for me. And it's the Darwin Award quarter pick for this episode. You were like I was already out when you said raisin cookies.

But now that a dog is fleeing the premises, I'm really out on the adler. I got my DVD. I'm good. Yeah. That's the deleted scenes. I'm not coming back. All right, that just it for the last of us

Season 1, episode 1. We'll be back for episode 2. We're really excited. Van and Charles will beat us to that with their instant reaction, but we'll be back with a deep dive. Again, Hobbiton dragons at Gmail.com. Love your emails.

I love to make this communal effort. Please send us your mushroom recipes. Thanks as always to Carlos Chiroboga for his production work on this episode. Mallory, thanks so much for joining us. I'll see you on Friday. for Ring or Verse,

lone wolf and cub Trobes course. I can't wait. And until then, join me in making mushrooms your bitches this season on the last of us.

Bye!