The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘The Last of Us’ Series Premiere Recap

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Charles and Van share their instant reactions to the premiere of HBO’s new series ‘The Last of Us.’ They discuss the unforgettable opening sequence, Joel and Ellie’s character traits, what makes the show a difficult watch, and the major impact this show could have on the future of video game adaptations. Hosts: Charles Holmes and Van Lathan Producer: Kai Grady 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 guy Pasha Higigi. Austin and I go way back and talk so much hoop already that we figure those 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 to the Prestige TV podcast where the fungus is always gnarly and the Billboard hits always have a hidden meaning. I'm Charles Holmes. He's Van Lathen.

Together we're known as the Midnight Boys. And we're back on the Prestige TV podcast to give you our instant reactions on one of the most anticipated shows of 2023 HBO's Last of Us. How are you feeling, Van? Are you ready to discuss the end of civilization? for nine weeks. Yeah, man, this is a scary show. Bro, it took me a couple watches.

I was just like, all right, this is intense. This is an intense show, man. Yeah. But for the next nine weeks, like I said, Ben and I are going to give our instant reactions to The Last of Us right here on the Prestige TV podcast. If you want even deeper dives on The Last of Us, make sure you check out Joanna and Mao

will also be on this feed giving their in-depth analysis and yeah, let's dive into the show. So, The Last of Us was created for TV by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckman and is based on the 2013 video game of the same name. Craig Mazin is the

creator of the HBO limited series Chernobyl. Druckman is the co-president of Nottie Dog and the creative director of the Last of Buzz video game franchise. The show stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. as series two protagonists, Joel and Ellie.

And The Last of Us has been in development hell for years. It was first being a movie that was supposed to have Sam Ramey attached before it became an HBO show. But it's doing pretty well. It's in that 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. And before we get into our instant reactions,

I want to know from you, Van. How much did you know about The Last of Us before this show? The general premise... I knew about the general premise because, you know, just being aware of pop culture entities. But I'd never played the game. So I knew that it was a game that was heavy on the cinematics, that it was a zombie apocalypse adjacent game. I guess there are zombies, right?

There's zombies. I put them in the zombie category. Yeah. And that it was something that was really gripping and enthralling for people. but I've never played it before. I've never actually even seen it being played. But I do know that everyone loved it so much. So I've played the game very, very recently.

Interesting. But for you, like you, I had known of this game, but I'm not super big into zombie games. But I had known about the premise. And the interesting thing about the history of this is that Druckman first had this idea in college when he was at Carnegie Mellon because his professor was friends,

with George Romero. And basically for like a group project, he was like, you're all going to be in a group and you're going to pitch Romero on a zombie game, which I'm just like that sounds like a... That's fantastic. He won his class ever.

So while he was in college, he had this idea to take elements from a PS2 game called Eco, the comic books in city, and Romero's Night of the Living Dead. And through the years, this idea always had the grown-up man taking care of this year,

young woman in a post-apocalyptic world, but he wanted it to be a comic book at one point. Then it became a game. And when he's that naughty dog, it finally came to fruition. Before we kind of get into the show, what do you look for in a zombie world van? Like, I'm interested in, like, what are your preferred zombies slow, fast? What are the rules that you like to abide by? Like, let the people know. I think we've been inundated with so much zombie stuff in the last 15 or 20 years that

it's really changed. what I used to look for in a good zombie show was people versus the undead. And I think that zombie shows have evolved. Yeah. Obviously, there's something that the zombie archetype is able to do, which is to take away the creature comforts of society and, like, put human beings but back into their sort of a more primal place and ask very basic questions. questions. Can we get along? Can we cooperate? Can we, when there's no incentive, right? When the

incentive is not, you know, getting to work or being in a movie theater with someone or being in the same grocery store with someone, when the incentive is survival, can human beings coexist? And I think a lot of the zombie things that you've gotten in recent years, of course, with the Walking Dead and some of the other stuff, is just about, even to a degree, World War Zianness, whether or not humanity can survive itself. Yeah. And the zombie plague is just something that's kind of this almost like existential antagonist, something that's always lurking around the edge, but the real drama is between the people.

I mean, when I was growing up, that's not as much of the zombie stuff that I consumed. It was like, here are the zombies, run from them, shoot them, can we survive? Donna the Dead kind of split the baby between that. But then after Donna the Dead, you're seeing, more content that's about the human condition, because these are deeper, well, ground is zombies. I'm not talking about Zambuland and stuff like that. So for me, when I'm looking at it,

what I'm looking for now is I don't really have that many specific things that I am actually looking for when someone comes out with something that's zombified, because people seem to be doing it a lot different. I know that, I mean, I'm watching this, and this seems to be a lot closer to the Walking Dead than it is to some of the, this other stuff.

But I mean, I don't, if the zombies are fast, at the World War Z, they were fucking track stars. If the zombies, if the zombies are fast, if they're plentiful,

if they're fun guy like, it seems like these zombies are kind of fast. Fast zombies are the most terrifying thing to me. The slower zombies, it's like, hey, I run the over with my car, get the fuck out of here.

The fast, the fast zombies are terrible. I hate a fast zombie. I hate a fast zombie. Yeah. To your point, I think a foundational text for me, was actually the Walking Dead comics.

Because to your point, the whole thing about the Walking Dead is that, like, the humans are scarier than the zombies. When you think about the deaths in that series, it's not really the zombie attacks I get you. It's the, like, how depraved we get when the guardrails of society are taken off.

But talking about all this makes me want to know from you. How would you want to go in the zombie world? Would you rather be bitten by a zombie or have this fungus-like infection. Would I rather be traditional zombie or last of a zombie? You're going to be a zombie either way, but how would you like to go? How would you like to be infected?

Are you a like, bite me, it's fine, whatever? I don't want to get bit, bro. You would do the fungus? Yeah, because I don't want to get bit, right? And let me tell you, like, when they bite you, they don't just bite you like a, it's better to get bit by a vampire, right? When they don't just bite you,

they bite you and they rip off like a whole mouthful of flesh and then they're just biting at you. And then I was watching The Walking Dead in preparation for the show. It's a prior for the show. And they bite you and they eat you. And then when they finish eating you, right, whatever's the left of you become zom bifide. And so if your entrails are out, if you got it, it's like, that's how fucked up. Like, come on, man. Just take a couple of bites off the whole thigh and then let me.

prow the prairies as a whole thing. Why you so greedy, dog? So I think I would rather be a fungus zombie because at least then you got like a cool power, like Nomek from fucking Blade 2. There's stuff coming out of your mouth and all of that. That's different, though. Those other zombies, they look, they busted down, bro.

Here's the thing, I hate when a zombie takes a bite at you, it just doesn't finish the job. You're like, fuck, I got to cut off my whole arm. Like, now we've got to go over, like, do the job or don't do the job. Like, come on. Don't do it. I mean, well, sometimes they'd be running, though. sometimes they get bit by the zombie once.

It's so funny, everybody's running away and then you look over it. Go back to the same trope. Everybody's running away and then you look down at your legs. Oh my God, he's bit. Like, what are we going to do? What the, every time they have that argument in a zombie situation, I get pissed off. Every single time. What do you mean what are you going to do?

Say goodbye, man. That's it. You got two watches. Either you're going to kill him or you'll be like, all right, you've got to get lost home. Like, I'm sorry. Look, it's like, it's, it's like, it's, it's, There's nothing. And it happens in dawn of the dead.

Mekai Fifer's wife gets bit. Obviously, he can't say goodbye to her. And she's there. She has a zombie baby. It's disgusting. Like, what the hell? Hey, man. This is the new world.

New rules. The zombie rules. Just follow the zombie rules. Shout out to zombie land. Yo, so let's get into our instant reactions to the show, which for those that, don't know. We've been talking around it, but this is based on the game, and it follows

the aftermath of a mutant fungus outbreak that turns humans into these violent zombie-like creatures. Joel, his daughter, Sarah, and brother Tommy try to escape the initial wave, but Sarah is shot dead by a soldier. In the present, Joel has become a smuggler in a totalitarian society that has risen up in the

wake of the infected taking over the world. And through a series of events, Joel is tasked with transporting Ellie, a girl who potentially holds a cure to stopping the corticeps fungus, van, You put in the first episode screener. How are you feeling? Oh, man.

The show just has an absolutely riveting beginning. Young actress named Nico Parker, who is actually the daughter of Fandy Newton. Really? That's Sandy Newton's little girl. I did not know that. She was killing it. Oosing with charisma. The dynamic between her and Joel, it's interesting because,

She's taking care of him. Yeah. He's a grown man. The show is brilliantly shot by giving you clues to what his station and life is, who he is. And I like a drama where you get more things that are shown to you than told to you. Very subtle things. On the back of Joel's car, combat veteran. So you know he's a little handy, he's responsible.

You also think there might be a little PTSD. There's something under the surface of violence probably that is like even Pedro's such a good actor. You can kind of even see in his eyes, you're like, there's some type of thing in him that he's trying to keep tamped out.

Right. The relationship between him and his brother, he tells his daughter he's dependent on me. Two things are different. And even in that kitchen scene at the beginning, right? they both eat breakfast, but there's not enough for him. It's not enough for the uncle.

Just little things like that. Like she cooks, they eat, it's not enough for him. There is a family within a family there, and there's a bond there between the two of them. She's consistently trying to get more from her father. Her father is trying to give to her, but to the family at the same time. They're relying on one another.

She's relying on him to be her protection. to be her provider, he's relying on her emotionally. She remembers to fix his watch. She remembers to tell him to celebrate his birthday. You can tell at the beginning of the show that there is an ecosystem there that is very meaningful. And when things begin to unravel, it's heart-wrenching. It's heart-wrenching to watch because the beginning of the show is really more through her eyes. She gets her time to shine.

It's heart-wrenching to watch the world around her question. crumble, like step after step after step, more police presence on the street, helicopters. She wakes up alone, can't find her father. And then by the time she finds him, he has all of this scope and all of this knowledge that she doesn't have about what's going on. And then it's a mad dash and he can't save her. Just absolutely four out of four stars, amazingly well done, right? Then when you get to the second part of it, the world has changed so much.

takes you a little while to get your feet into it. Like, you're meeting new characters. You're trying to understand. It's 20 years. Joel is different. Everything is different. It's a 30-year-old man versus a 50-year-old man. Versus a 50-year-old man.

Yeah. And so, you know, you get there and it's a tonal change, but the show is operating at a high level even still. If I had one critique of the first episode, it would be Ellie. And it's not because I think that the performance is whack or I, I think, I, I have any problem with Bella Ramsey. I just hate that asshole kid in the apocalypse archetype. You hate a plucky kid.

You don't like a plucky kid. Pluck. The pluck is understandable in some situations. Pluck is understandable if you get left at home by your family on Christmas. You like home alone pluck? Yeah, that might just be plucked that saves your life, right? Pluck is understandable in other situations In other cases, Richie Rich Pluck

You know, Pluck is all these different Pluck Disney Channel Pluck Wizards the Waverly Place Pluck And you gotta turn the pluck all the way down If it's fucking Fungus Zombies. Get the pluck out of here. Seriously. What about you? How did you feel about the pilot? So I think the interesting thing is

When I played the game, the game is so cinematic that, like, I was thinking like a screenwriter being like, oh shit, like, they really, they, the best way I can describe it is the first, what, half of the show where we see before the world, that's honestly like the opening 10 or 15 minutes of the game. It doesn't have that level of backstory.

Like, you do get to control Joel's daughter and she does give him the gift of the watch. She is waking up alone in the house. very, very creepy, but it all moves very, very quickly to get you to post-apocalyptic thing. You don't get her going to school, going to the watchmaker, having relationships with her neighbors. And what I think the show actually does in a very, very short amount of time is it makes you feel for Joel. When Joel loses his daughter, it's insane. You realize White hurts so much because she, like, to your point, she's taking care of her father.

This is more than just a father-daughter relationship. This is someone who is filling a void in his life. You don't know where his partner is. She is the person who is taking care of him, really, whether it is waking up feeding him, making sure that, like, hey, like, there's more to life. You should fix your watch. You should take care of yourself. Like, she's telling him, like, get yourself a cake.

It's not just because she wants a cake. She wants him to celebrate this moment in his life. And I found that fantastic. And what I really liked about the series is that it does something that's different from other video game series, which is most other video game movies and TV shows are like, we want to replicate what it is to play a video game. Instead, what this does is it uses the video game mechanics to show you what's important about this world. And what I mean by, do you remember when Joel is basically selling the soldier drugs? and he's like, yo, I need that bag back. That's such a little thing.

But in the game, one of the big mechanics is, is like you need to search for shit. You need to search for bullets and guns and knives and the things that are going to keep you alive. Everything in this post-apocalyptic world, there's not much of it. Things aren't being created, so you have to hoard what you can.

And that's just such a little thing where it shows you the world that, Okay, even a Ziploc bag is important. Like, nah, you need to give me everything. I need everything back from you. I just thought that that was beautiful. But I will say, if I'm going to be honest, it was a tough watch, not from a quality perspective,

but from a feeling like we've lived through this. Like when the world starts, like, shutting down, obviously our world during the pandemic, there wasn't like big explosions and zombies everywhere. But that claustrophobic feeling of like, oh, this, we don't know what's happening, was really hard to watch. It was just kind of like, like, I still remember holing up in my house, not knowing when the world would go back to normal, being scared to get groceries, being scared of the people next to me. Seeing that on screen was very visceral in a way that made me uncomfortable. Am I being a punk about it?

Absolutely not. those things were sort of, those things were things we had to imagine before a couple of years ago, right? Yeah. So think about being in the store and then the store closes and says everybody goes home. Like that was happening, you know, like the comic shop near where I used to live. It was like, hey, we're going there. Hey, just let you know we're closing that one today. I was like, this thing is that serious?

Like, that's how it felt. We didn't know if there were going to be zombies or not. I didn't know what was going to happen. It was like... It's like the zombie bite. We were joking about the zombie bite. We had that. When somebody like would cough in public,

like, everybody would turn and be like, what is wrong with you? You would like distance yourself. And seeing that, so in this first episode, they did it so well because I was transported back to those very traumatic first months where you were distrustful of your neighbor. People were hoarding toys.

toilet paper and antiseptic shit. That was the world we're living in. I do think that by this pilot really taking a lot of time to set up what the world was like before, it gave you

a better understanding of like how beaten down Joel is. Because when one of the most arresting things you first see is this kid were brought into the world with Joel's Joel's kid in the beginning of the series and then we're brought into the post-apocalyptic world

by this little boy. Fantastic point, yeah. And he walks to the quarantine zone and you're like, okay, this kid finally he's found some type of refuge, we don't know what's happened to his family, but he walks in and they like use this little gun to beep him to see if he's infected.

And they're saying like, hey, everything's all right now. You're safe, you're safe. You're seeing the poster. about if you've gotten bitten, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it beeps red. And at this point, we don't know what green or red means. I'm just like, all right, what is red mean? Right.

I knew what it meant from the game, but still, I was just like, all right, what's... I didn't know what was going to happen to him. I didn't know if there was going to be a team of doctors that rushed out. I didn't know if there was going to be some way to save him. I didn't know what was going to happen to him. Seriously. And I think what's genius is in the next scene we see Pedro, literally throwing people's infected bodies

into the fire and we see the kids wearing these shoes and we know that it's him. We don't see his face and Pedro literally has to pick up the body of a kid. And I think wasn't there a coworker next to him being like, yo, I can't do this.

Like he was just like, I can't do this with a kid's body. And that's such a smart choice because it shows you how much Joel has cut himself off from his humanity. This was a father, and he's like, it doesn't matter. Bodies are bodies at this point. And it very, very quickly,

it demonstrates you like, oh, this is not the loving father that was weeping over his daughter anymore. That part of him has been buried. So the Joel character is interesting. Part of it, he's interesting because of his motivations, and he's interesting because of his military background. So,

he probably thinks as life as life in terms of mission accomplishment, right? Yeah. This is what you have to do. This is what you must do. This is how you get to this point. So sometimes those little things like the cake or those little things like your birthday, they don't feel like a big enough part of the mission. The mission is keeping your family safe.

The mission is keeping your daughter safe. The mission is keeping a roof over the head, right? When we see him later on, to your point, he's had so much less of that, you wonder what is the use for a man like that? For a man like that that was had, that was so single-minded, right? That was so driven, so task-oriented, that took so little for himself in a world where there's very little for anyone. You wonder what that guy's entire purpose is going to be. And obviously we know what his purpose is going to be. That's why these narratives about broken worlds are,

they have the potential to be particularly moving because they have the potential to re-inject a character or characters with humanity they thought that they had lost. In a time where there just isn't much humanity around, like Rick's crew from the Walking Dead were a bunch of killers, and a bunch of thugs and rogues, right? They had to become really good at what they did, which was sometimes putting down threats.

But the interesting thing about them wasn't in who they are, but it was what they didn't want to be, which was out and out savages. They were doing what they had to do to survive in the specific world at a specific time, but they were not willing to totally give their humanity up for it. Yeah. And so now with his search, with finding Ellie, it's what is going to make Joel human again? Or what is going to make Joel maybe more human than he's ever been? What is it going to give him purpose? What is going to give him motivation to be a part of something again and not just to survive, but maybe to live for something. And maybe it's going to be this plucky little asshole who, could potentially save the world, you know?

And I always wonder with characters like this. I wonder if Joel had to choose between saving the world and saving his daughter. You know what I mean? Like, what would it be? Like, these are all questions that when the show is really crafted in an effective narrative way that you end up asking yourself. When the show is crafted really superbly, it makes you ask and it eventually answers all of these questions. I mean, the interesting thing, too, is that the show tells us, and the game tells us, actually, who Joel is immediately. When they're escaped him, Tommy, and his daughter escaping from the town, and there's another family.

And, like, Tommy, Sarah are like, yo, like, we got to go back for them. And Joel, to your point, he's like, no mission accomplishment. Like, they'll be fine. We have to go. So we are, to your point, it's not, like, before the outbreak, he was, like, the most. loving individual who was helping everybody. He still was very like, when everything goes down, when the world is ending, there's a, there's a almost like a light switch.

In his brain that's just like, okay, no, there's a part of me that I have to shut off. And he hasn't, he hasn't shut that person on, even with the zombie apocalypse. You could tell that from that moment where he's in the car trying to save his family, he has been that same person all of this time. And we know how these things go. Ellie is supposed to be the person that potentially makes him see a vision of the world that he probably gave up on.

And I think humanity gave up on. But my other thing, I want to ask you, too, how do we feel about Fedra? Fedra is a bunch of jackboots. As soon as I see, as soon as I see that there are armed dudes still, that there's some sort of organization, I knew that it was going to be fucked up.

I know there's no way. There's no way because there's so many things that have to be suspended. Can you still have democracy in that type of situation? Can you have equality in that type of situation when things aren't equal, right? Things aren't equal now. But imagine if all of the incentive for them to be equal was gone. Imagine if we were back in their survival matrix, you know? like what is Fedra even trying to preserve?

Is it trying to preserve freedom? Is it trying to preserve humanity? Is it trying to, what is probably trying to preserve and probably trying to protect is order. And anytime you get into a situation where order is the number one goal, kind of get oppression, man. Like, they're probably, but order,

but it would be important in that situation to have order because the world is fucking decastrated. But if you're in that situation where all of those other things that kind of make us human or make our society complex are gone, they have no choice. But they're killing kids

and they look like a bunch of stormtroopers out there, man. You know? Well, I think the interesting thing, too, is in the game, the Fedger agent that at least stabs and Joel ends up killing is like a faceless dude. They don't spend the time to, like, show you who he is.

But, like, we learn who this guy is in the beginning. This is a guy who's, like, searching for drugs. He's willing to break the own laws, if there are any, cut corners. To your point, like, without a society, there is no... We already know cops are crooked in this world. And, like, we already know, like, the federal agent. I'm like, all right, he's coming back. He ain't on shit.

So it is so interesting to see Joel. finally unleash on him because I'm like, oh, no, that Fedger agent is like a stand-in for all of them. Joel has had to like scrap by. He has had to take shit from them. And this is the moment where he can envision

a world where he is not boxed in by them anymore. And what I think is very funny is that it's not like Joel wants to join the fireflies who are this group of people who are fighting against Fedra. He's just like, no, I'm a soldier. This person is in a person

is in my way, and this entire agency has been in my way forever. And it's like, interesting, because I wanted to know from you, I would have assumed that Joel would have tried to join them at one point. Because... Fezor? Well, he was a military man, but it says something about his character where he's just like, no, that he has a distrust about them. You have to remember how his daughter died.

That is true. Yeah, you have to remember how his daughter died. another insanely effective narrative choice is to have what Joel comes from is essentially kill his family, right? Yeah, you're right, you're right. Yeah, that sense of mission accomplishment above all, that sense of I'll do anything in the name of what I believe to be the greater good is. I mean, the same reason why that guy opened fire on Joel is the same reason why Joel essentially passed that family up. There's something to protect.

In one sense, Joel's family was what Joel was trying to protect, so you're willing to do something that some people would think is unscrupulous to do it. In the other sense, that soldier probably believes that he's protecting the entire world because that's what his orders are. So he'll kill a man and his daughter

if that's what he's supposed to do. So, you know, Joel's probably had to contend with that for the last 20 years, on top of the PTSD that he might have had from being involved with the military while he was involved with them. So I, you know, it makes sense that he really is, his character is actually perfectly situated, in my opinion, because the fireflies at the same time, they seem a little wonky too.

You know, it's just an interesting in a world that, like, we still try to hold on to the same things. Like, the fireflies are regarded as terrorists. Like, we're in a situation where there's no NBA games, but still we're not willing to hear each other out. It's like, you know what I mean? It's like, we can't, you know, but once again, when we're trying, we can't agree right now on what's the best way for the world to operate when we're overflowing with abundance. Imagine how the stakes are turned up on that if there's nothing. That's what I was asking. I was like, what are y'all fighting over? There's not shit.

There's literally not shit. The way y'all are living, I'm just like, but to your point, they're fighting over the scraps where it's like even when you're not in abundance, there are still going to be people who are like, of course. What there is, I'm going to hoard for myself.

Yeah. I mean, we see that in underserved communities all over the place, right? We see that in communities all over the place that have depressed resources. That makes, that increases. In a lot of cases, the violence and the depraved it,

you see sometimes when people have less to, when there's less to go around, people fight more. I want to ask you about Ellie. Yeah. In the video game, does Ellie have a personality? She definitely does. Ellie definitely does have that type of like, plucky personality,

upstart type of thing. I guess what's difficult about this pilot is that it spends so much time setting up who Joel is that can't really serve Ellie. And we are going to get that in further episodes. But to your point, I could see why you're like annoyed by her because we don't really know enough.

Everything that we learn about her is through exposition of where, like she doesn't have parents. She was placed into this Fedra camp to basically be trained to be one of their soldiers. She escaped blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we don't necessarily get the emotional core of who she is. But we do initially get some of it when Joel brings her back to the apartment. Where something that we don't get in the game, or at least the version that I've played, is that she's nosy as hell. Where she goes to a book, she's leafing through it, she sees this code.

She's smart enough not only to break the code, but she wants to know about it. She's pushing him. Like she does in the game point to like, hey, your watch is broken. So we are meant to, and I think the show does a very good job of this. We are meant to see very early on that Ellie is almost the specter of his daughter. Hence why when he has a chance to save a young woman from a soldier, that's why, like, he's literally like all the trauma is coming back. He's beating the shit out of him. I think that he is like going through

like this is not my daughter but these are emotions that I have felt before but to answer your question she is like yeah she is plucky. She's plucky. It's okay. You know, it's like maybe I need to come around on you. Is this, is it an out and out there? Well, it depends, man.

It depends. It's like you start with the pluck but the pluck has to have, pluck has its place, put it like that. And I think in this episode, I was so caught up into it. Like, I was hanging on every single scene, so well done, every single word that was being said. They really did a fantastic job of dunking me into their universe and me just being awash with all the emotions and all the problems and everything that everyone's going with from the beginning scene, which we haven't talked about, where the professor is describing. what an effective zombie apocalypse would look like

and why the fungi version of the zombie would be so of disease, should I say, would be so hard to defeat. It's chilling and really well played, you know? There's some other characters, Tess Anatoor,

if I just want to talk about her real quick. Shout out to old school fringe watchers and a tour of his back. But, but yeah. And so like the pluck, when I'm just like, you know, I might just walk through the water, man.

You know, just walk through the water. You know, you're the cure, like you're infected, whatever. Just walk through the water, man. Walk through the water. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terse appetite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity.

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Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.

If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zep bound with a sulfonel urea or insulin may cause low. blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit setbound.lily.com. This episode is brought to you by Perfect Bistro Cat Food. Hey guys, today I'm interviewing my cat about his perfect bistro food. Percy, you seem to be a big Perfect Bistro fan. Here to comment? Totally. What do you like about it? You love the high-quality ingredients?

And the delicious flavors, of course. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Listen to Percy, guys. Visit perfect bistro.com to try it for your cat. I want to go back to the opening of the episode. Gotta be real. The fungus is freaking me out. The fungus, I'm just like, stop.

I don't want to hear anymore. When you see the body of like, the fungus overtaking dead zombie, I'm like, fuck all of this, bro. I am done. I am done with this world. I know it's going to get worse because I've seen the trailers. Zombies are bad, but I don't want to see a bunch of mushrooms and shit coming out of your head.

Like, I can't do that. Stuff. Like, rotting, rotting flesh is bad. There's something about fungus that has always freaked me out. Like, I can eat mushrooms, but have you ever, like, been out in the woods and you see, like, it's like a damp woods. You see all that shit growing on the bottom of trees. I'm like, oh, God. God, get it away.

It's nasty. And then you think about like, you know, how am I going to eat? It's like, get the mushroom. I'm not a big mushroom fan already. You're not a mushroom fan? Nah, dog, not really. Come on, bro. I can remember.

It's real quick story time. I know we got to go, but I was at an event one time. And it was at the Hard Rock Cafe. And they had sliders, right? And they, um, there's two different. You love a good slider. Sliders a fucking piece of, come on, man. Sliders a perfect piece of little.

little bite. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes you don't want a whole hamburger. Sometimes you want a little slider. I'm going to let you finish the story and then I have a slider. I have a slider question for you. Nice. So I'm there and it's like a,

you know, we're at this place and the sliders are coming out just for the, the launch of the TMZ tour back in the day. The sliders are coming out. And I keep getting like whisked around the room because I was one of the tour guys. And, everybody's talking to me. I didn't get a chance to get a slider.

I'm like, whatever. So all of a sudden, I see a whole fucking plate of sliders. And I'm like, oh, shit, they just must have re-uped on the slider. So I go over there and I grab the slider and I bite it. It's a portobella mushroom slider. Oh, with the bun? No. It was a bun with a portobella mushroom in the middle of it.

A portabella mushroom slider. I've never been so disgusting in my life. It's disgusting. First of all, if you know that you're biting into a mushroom, that's one thing. But if you think that you're about to buy into some spicy, like, tasty slider action, and you get that flat, weird chicken of the forest mushroom in your mouth. No, I'm sure there's somebody out there that loves a portobello mushroom slider. Not the kid.

Not I. That's bullshit. What are your thoughts before we get on? at a slider corner on White Castle? Never had it. You've never had White Castle? No. They don't have that in L.A.?

I've never seen it in L.A. And I never saw in Louisiana. In Louisiana, they had like Crystal Burger. How's crystals? I've never had crystals. I never ate it. That's not the kind of slider I like. I like a nice appetizer.

So I'm a snooty slider lover. Yeah, you got an Oscar, you got money. You go in all these parties where they got the little the nice little cube sliders. A little slider. Give me a slider, man. Turkey slider. Oh, a turkey slider. What? Turkey ground turkey on the slider. Come on, man.

Don't act like a turkey burger ain't the lick. What side does go click? Come on now. If you could only have one topping on your slider before we get out of here. What would it be? I mean, besides a little cheese, little... You know what I'm saying? I love a good, like, give me a nice, like, cooked, like caramelized onion.

Oh, that's perfect. Come on. Oh, a little slider. Maybe one little pickle. Come on, Greg. So you know what they should do in Last of Us? They should have, like, imagine, like, what you could sell sliders for on the black market. If Joel was slinging some sliders, you know?

If Joel had, like, a little, if Joel's, thinking about you, you knock on Joel three time on his, on his apartment door. It's like, yo, man, I got them sliders three for five. Three for five, what you got? Give me some of them little ration cards, whatever. But I guess you don't need, you wouldn't need ration cards if you had enough materials to make sliders. We're off the rails. Well, but you're saying, how piss would you be? If, like, Joel was trying to get his car me from the bear on,

and he's slicing off the fungus from the dead people, and he's like, it's a delicacy, and he's putting it on the slider. How pissed would you be? Oh, a zombie portabello mushroom slider? Nasty. Disgusting. My last, last question for you, because I think it is the thing that everyone is talking about.

Do you think the prestige that HBO imparts on almost anything it's? touches. Can or will shift the paradigm of how video games are adapted for the screen? And what I mean by that is everybody's like, this has rave reviews. Like, it's the best adapted video game. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And obviously, Hollywood has been in IP era for decades. They want things that are proven sellers. Last of Us is one of the best selling games for all time.

After the first episode, are you like, we're going to get a lot more of these? Or is this the type of thing where you're like, Everybody's on HBO. Like, we have, we got watchmen. It's not like we got a bunch of watchmen after that. HBO is different. I think HBO has a creative machine that is very responsible when it's doing things like this. So the show will be great.

But I personally believe that these shows are coming no matter what. The video games are billion-dollar entities in, like, multibillion-dollar entities in a way, they're more successful than movies. and if you have that sort of fertile fan base and the fan base is rabbit, and you can deliver and bring in people to shows that didn't play the video game like myself in this era of economic certainty

and entertainment, like, where we have to win, we can't lose any money. I think you're going to see more of this, and I think if this show is the hit that it's probably going to be, you're going to see more of it very soon. Do you think it'll be good, though? I don't know. Probably not. Probably. I mean,

Some of them aren't going to be good. I mean, I think a lot of the other streamers, they have money, but we haven't seen that money in and of itself or high production values that they lend to compelling stories. You've got to have the brains. So it just depends.

I don't know. Because we've seen stuff like Halo, like Halo's getting another season, but critically, it didn't do gangbusters. There's nothing against the creators of that show, but it's also a lot stupider of a show. It's just like a lot, it's a lot harder to pull off.

It's a lot stupider. You know what I mean? It's like, Halo has, in my opinion, way less of a margin for error than, than Elasophis does. Elasophis is bursting with drama. It's an incredibly enriching sort of thing in terms of its humanity. So, yeah, but it's way less, way less, way less margin for error with Halo. because it can be,

something like that can just, it lends itself to being big and dumb. So we'll see. We'll see. Well, guys, that has been our instant reactions to the first episode of The Last of Us. Thank you to Kai, our wonderful, wonderful producer

for producing this episode. Make sure you check back next week because Van and I will return for the second episode of The Last of Us and make sure you check in to the House of ours. That is Mal and Joanna's. dive on the last of us here on the prestige TV feed. We'll see y'all next week. Be-boo! B'oo! Bye-bye.