The Watch - Breaking Down the Premiere of ‘The Last of Us’

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Chris and Andy talk about the first episode of ‘The Last of Us’ and the difficulties of video game adaptations (1:00), the major plot points of this episode (20:56), and whether or not they think this will be a typical zombie TV show (35:56). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan, And I am an editor at the wringer.com joining me on the other line. The number one podcaster from the quarantine zone of Boston. It's Andy Greenwald. We all know who the number one podcaster from the quarantine zone of Boston would be.

And he signs our checks. Yeah. Do you think Bill would be big in the Last of Us podcast universe? First of all, the only really objectionable part about that show to me was that we went from Austin, Texas, Boston. It's like enough, enough of this. Has Bill made you way more hostile about Boston as a place?

Bill? No, no, his teams. Yeah, but like Bill's naked sort of partisanship for his teams, do you think it's made you more hostile? No, I think it's just, I think it's just a natural thing. I think it's just something that we're born with. I do think he would be huge. I do think he would be huge there.

Oh, my God. I think the podcast would primarily be Parent Corner, like another one of my children got infected by the mushroom virus? What should I do? And Sal being like, they made their own choices. That's right. I don't think there's a lot of like organized sports. Obviously, Andy and I are talking about the big new show on Sunday nights on HBO. The Last of Us, it comes, it's in a video game adaptation. It comes from Craig Mason, the writer of Chernobyl. Craig is writing and directing. I at least I directed the pilot. And it's a nine-episode first season of what will probably be two seasons,

although who knows, maybe you squeeze a little more juice out of it going forward if it turns out to be a sensation. And just based on my sort of scrape of the internet this morning, we haven't seen any numbers yet for the last of us, but it does seem like a lot of people are checking it out. I mean, we've got a very big push. It's obviously the sort of crown jewel of what HBO is rolling out until succession. in the spring.

And it is, I guess, a show for the moment, even though it's adapted from an older video game where it is about a pandemic that strikes the world and putting life back together afterwards. Andy, I guess here's my question. Not whether or not you liked it, because we're obviously going to get to that,

were you, when you were watching the show, did you feel like this is something you needed? because this was something that that was like an idea that kind of, I think when Station 11 came out and Station 11 also has some similar content, you know, to it, that people were like, man, it's too soon. I can't watch Chicago fall apart, you know, like. And this is obviously coming at a time where the pandemic plays a different role in our lives. I was curious whether or not you felt a different relationship to the material.

It's tough. I feel like both the answers to the question you asked and the one that you postponed are they kind of tell on each other a little bit. Okay. Let me spoil it. I do like this show, and I'm excited to talk to you about it. That said, I can't lie to, I can't look my best friend in the eye on Martin Luther King Day and lie to him.

Sure. I would prefer an up elevator to a down elevator. You know, I would much rather, if we're going to do a pandemic show, if we're going to do a post-apocalyptic show, if we're going to do a dystopian show, I don't think it's any surprise that my taste and preferences run towards Station 11, which does. definitely also had an airplane falling out of the sky, which you need to do. That is the sign of end times. But primarily was about building up from the ashes in terms of humanity and art and life. Yeah, right. And so it's, I just, I found it tough before the pandemic. And yeah, I find it

particularly tough wherever we are in the pandemic to be just on the downward slide again towards humanity's grim post whatever this is moment. You know what I mean? Like it's just, it's, it's tough. And I had to fight my urge just not to be there for a while to lock into the show. Now, I should also say, I have not watched ahead. I know some critics have seen a bunch of the episodes, and a lot of the reviews reflected that. I know people who know the video game know what's to come. I'm feeling pretty good because Nick Garferman and Murray Bartlett are around the corner.

They're performers. There's a sense they're going to be leaving. Look, they're going to be leaving Boston, which is really important to me. It's tough. is when Bill hits unsubscribe on HBO Max. Totally. You think you're better than me, Craig? So I guess my answer is complicated.

My answer is I don't really want this again, but also we've seen one episode. So I am hopeful that it is not just this again. Where are you with it? What did it trigger in you? That aspect of it. I liked it. I think I really liked it.

I believe that it really started to click for me on its third beginning, because this is a first episode of essentially three openings. It's a strange one, yeah. And it's a nice, long, meaty episode. Like, you really get to spend a lot of time with these characters. I think that the 2003, so there's basically a prologue that's a 1960s talk show where two scientists are on a talk show with the guy who played Bighead from Silicon Valley. and not being character.

That's John Hanna from Four Weddies in a funeral. Right, that's right. I knew I knew him from somewhere. And then, you know, discussing how fungal bacteria will actually be the downfall of society and, you know, warning us about...

By the way, having attended a number of parties in Los Angeles, I would agree that mushrooms are a problem in American society right now. And it's happening right, right in front of us. I don't know if people know what they're playing with, with mushrooms. Just on as a side note? Yeah.

It's real weird. It's just like, this is cool now. No, it's like, I think it's great that people are experimenting, but like, and maybe I may be like my mushroom experiences as a teenager in Philadelphia were a little bit more, uh, unregulated, I guess, you know, like my girlfriend's ex-boyfriend just gave me a baggie of stuff. And then I was like, I guess the death star is up there in the air looking at me. How did you guys saw you that night?

Yeah, you did. That was where we met. And I just think, but the. idea of people just sprinkling like one-tenth of that into salt water on the reg to just keep all the like sliders locked? Yeah, it's a little intense. I wonder how many people when I'm driving around and they're in like a Tesla. They're just like, I can see the Death Star.

I think 80% on the east side of Los Angeles. Anyway, I got distracted there. So it starts with this prologue in the 60s. Then we get a nice long stretch of Austin, Texas, 2003, back when it was weird. you know, South by Southwest was just a rolling music festival. That was my favorite South by Southwest year. No brands. Yeah.

Got a free Fred Perry jacket at the Urban Outfitters. And the pen, the way that the outbreak happens is not unlike trying to get into vice parties at early South by Southwest. Yes, the festival closing vice parties. Yeah. We have to like scale a chain link fence. Well, there was like, I remember one time I went and there was like a, like a rumor that ZZ Top was getting back together in a field.

and like everybody had to get on buses. And then I think people went and it turned out being a ZZ Top cover band. And it was like, well, at least we have 10,000 cases of free beer. Exactly. I will always be in massive debt to my guy, Ernest, from I love you, but I've chosen darkness, for sneaking me around the fence. So I had the privilege of seeing the stills perform in an abandoned airplane hangar at three in the morning. Like, tell me, tell me you met me in the bathroom without that.

telling me you met me in the bathroom. Those guys in the stills really had it all out in front of them at that point. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing but one way. So we had 2003, we get to meet Joel. We meet his daughter, Sarah. We meet his brother Tommy.

And everything, you know, it's just like a working father, working single father with a little bit of a problem brother and a delightful, sweet, responsible teenage daughter. And they live in this. Can I pause you one more? Just to say, like, justice for the name Joel. like, you know, I don't want to break news here. I've never been a big fan of my middle name. But like nice to see it finally, finally like put, made flesh in like kind of a heroic way. Where previously what were big, some big pop culture jewels to you?

Well, there's Billy Joel, but, you know, that's not really relevant. There's, there's a Broadway legend Joel Gray. Yeah. You know. Any fictional Jules that we need to know about? I don't know. I feel like maybe, maybe, and you would be the expert of this, there could be like kind of a taciturn mute Joel

and a Cormick McCarthy novel who gets shot off his horse. But like... If all that happens to him is he gets shot off his horse, he's having a great Monday. Fine with me. Yeah, exactly. He's lucky. Anyway, go on. Happy about this. They live in Austin.

They have a lovely suburban lifestyle, although it seems a little bit like they're making ends meet. And as the show goes on one day in Texas, I believe it's Joel's birthday, Sarah starts to notice some things going off a little bit with their elderly next-door neighbors. Did you also, like the only time I bumped in the beginning, and I thought the glide path to catastrophe was really well done. And we can go more beat by beat. But when she's like, how old are you today, dad?

And Pedro Pascal is like, I am 36 years old. And I was like, he's doing a bit. He's doing a bit. Right. Like when my mom was 39 for six years. Exactly. And I thought, and I just, I got taken out of the narrative for a bit because I didn't know we were going to be jumping 20 years. I intentionally knew a little about the show.

But yeah, I thought that was like, why is he lying? Why is he lying to his child? Right. But that being said, I don't think he looks 56 in Boston. Oh, he's got some silver tips. He looks good. Anyway, things are seeming a little off with the next door neighbor. the dog is barking,

the elderly lady is staring into the middle distance, and wouldn't you know it, she turns into a flesh-eating zombie? As do seemingly, I'd say 85% of the population. What do you think is the deal with transmission? Is it just airborne? Is it, like, I'm sure we'll find out.

And I assume getting eaten by a zombie also transmits the disease, but was there any kind of, like, mask up, you know, wash your hands? It happened real quick. Yeah. Because, again, like, that was sort of nicely done. That's sort of like there's something going on in Jakarta.

And then, well, here we are. Yeah. It's very, it's very opaque. It's very opaque. And so I think that was probably a feature, not a bug that when, for example, when the family's in the car driving away panicked and she's like, I'm not sick, I'm not sick. You know, and there's a sense of like, we don't know if that's true or not. Yeah, we don't know.

We see a really, really, really well-done set piece, which is essentially them trying to escape Austin, Texas, as the world falls apart. So in a truck, Joel, Tommy, and Sarah are on the run. This was apparently, I did not know this, is essentially scene for scene or shot for shot from the video game, from a video game cutscene. I wouldn't know because I'm a big skip the cutscene guy,

personally, especially in 2003. so I didn't that that's cool but I didn't know that and in the process of getting out of Texas or getting out of Austin they find themselves in a field they get separated from Tommy Joel and Sarah gets separated from Tommy

and they come across a soldier who's a little trigger happy a little scared, a little violent and he winds up shooting Sarah and she dies Not trigger happy told by his superior officers to gun down to people That's right, it's policy. So he winds up shooting

Sarah and shooting at Joel but kills Sarah, which is, I guess I saw that coming. I mean, it just seemed like something would make Joel very sad, but I didn't quite expect it like that, brutal. And then essentially we get a 20 year flash forward. Let's take that first chunk.

Let's talk about that. Yeah. So running the tape back even further, this is really tricky, right? Because we are not, not us talking about it isn't tricky. It's going to be smooth sailing for everyone, I promise. But we haven't played this game, right? I am not completely ignorant of its position in the culture as both a sensation. It came along at a time when we had sort of like, I don't think we were playing a lot of video games.

No, I was watching cutscenes. Yeah. And I, but Neil Druckman, who's the founder of Nottie Dog, the studio and the writer of the game and the co, an executive producer of this and the co-writer of credited co-writer of at least this episode, if not more, with Craig Mason, is what has been for a decade now. hailed as, you know, one of the medium's true geniuses, who is doing things with storytelling that usually we only see in films or on television. And, you know, in some ways, is advancing visual storytelling past that because of the opportunities of video games. So this is beloved, canonically beloved, he's beloved.

It's a tricky wicket, right, to be like, I'm going to please the millions of hardcore fans of the game, you know. And again, I don't think our audience needs this, but I sometimes find this. to be reminded of the fact that like a successful video game outgroses movies that we think of as successful, that that's just an incredibly lucrative and devoted segment of the consumer public. So pleasing them, but also bringing in normies or, you know, borderline abnormies like us who want to watch a TV show. Yeah. And there's obviously been these huge leaps in in video game narrative storytelling that I think I wouldn't know enough.

about them to say where they started or whether Druckman originated a lot of this stuff. I'm sure that you could go back to the beginning of video games and be like, there's a story here. But I do think it's going to be interesting going forward because, you know, say take something like Game of Thrones where people obviously have a preexisting relationship with the text and have been thinking about, when Game of Thrones was coming on, people have been thinking about certain moments that they were about to see for a decade, you know, or more, and had been imagining what they would be like to see the Red Wedding or to see certain things. video games are a little bit different

because they involve you're very invested in video games because you're playing the character, right? So not only are you like, this is happening to me, but you're also engaged with the story in a way that's different than when you're reading and you're like, I am giving myself over to an author.

Like you are in some ways the author of the story that you're seeing in a video game because you can decide to look at certain things and I was reading Nick Kwa's piece in Volter today that's about, I think, the relationship between that 25-minute sequence in Texas and the video game and how it's like, you are actually Ellie or sorry, Sarah in that game, and you can look different ways so you might miss certain things

that are shown in the show, which I thought was really interesting. I mean, they did such a nice job. I will say that I thought that, like, there are parts of that that we're like pretty much just like what happens in World War Z or, you know, like it is, it is, there are certain ways you can do the evacuation of a city during a zombie apocalypse that are both very effective, but also somewhat well tried. But I didn't take away from the show at all for me. Yeah, I mean, there were moments, this was again, this was the slight dissonance that I had in the beginning where I'm admiring the presentation and the craft and the production values.

I thought that, Craig Mason directed this, I thought it was just phenomenally done. It was beautifully staged, it was really well directed, the lighting, the color palette, like all of it was just really, really well executed. In the service of, I'm like, oh, a zombie looked up from eating someone else and is now chasing. So, okay, I am not also, again, this isn't a surprise to anyone. I'm not a zombie guy, so I'm not like, oh, they're a little bit faster than they are in Romero or whatever. Like, I'm fine if I don't see zombies ever again. But the production and everything around it really was phenomenal. I think to your point, that perspective is and continues to be, and always has been, like the unique thing in my video games.

And I think the hardest thing to translate to the screen. So the possibility of that, that feeling of I could be seeing anything at this moment and I'm seeing this and I'm in this car or I have these, you know, this responsibility or actual, you know, power with my controller to look around. That really wasn't present. it was just a, for me, it was just a really well-executed sequence. Yeah. And what was interesting to me was the stuff on the margins where, again, this may be from the video game, and I apologize if it is, but I thought the decision to open with that talk show was phenomenal.

Yeah, I think that that's separate from the video game. I felt like, again, I say this, I've not played the video game, but I have watched the series Chernobyl multiple times. So I feel confident making the statement. But I really felt the presence of a elite level television writer and director in moments where I needed it. Yeah. One was the beginning.

This is classy. This is surprising. This is an entry point that I didn't expect. And in the service of an info dump, but in a classy, enjoyable, off-kilter way. Similarly, and I don't want to, I want to stay in this opening sequence for a minute, but the whole entry into future Boston through a young boy being lied to as he's about to be euthanized essentially. You know, I would imagine fans of the game will say that's the spirit of the game that they

have played, but that was a person who knows how to write engaging screenplays, choosing an interesting angle for entrance, you know, that I really appreciated. And I felt that throughout, which is probably what elevated my viewing experience. I think that I definitely felt like in a different way from say Tody Gilroy writing Andor or Patrick and his writers writing Station 11 or whatever in the hands of a very, very, if not a master somebody who just is incredibly competent at telling television stories. And so even things that would start off and I would be like,

I'm not so sure I'm that interested in this or something about this is not like hitting. I think that there's like a amount of trust that you should have with this show. I haven't watched forward at all. I know that I have heard like what like is coming and just in the ether. But like I think that like he does a really nice job of paying things off

even within this episode where you're like why am I even like what's with this car battery? What are we doing? And then you're like oh okay. Like as we move forward, it's just like they are in this city full of betrayal where like everybody is stabbing each other in the back all the time.

Sometimes they stab each other in the leg. They do. The Sarah thing was tough. And you know how, I mean, you know how I feel about children in peril. And if you're going to do that, I hope you know what you're doing. I hope you earn it, you know? And I don't think there's a one answer here. There's a whole series to go.

But yeah, like, I was like, that's not the young girl he's taken care of on the posters. You know, so. I like the idea of that being like a Garfield thought bubble for you. A million percent. Hmm. The case of the Mondays. Yeah.

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Hilton, for the stay. Book your spring break now. So the escape from Texas takes place largely off-screen, and I imagine we'll get... We'll get some, whether it's a flashback or whether we'll get some information about how he got out of there. A lot of people seem to have congregated in Boston where it's a... It's because there was one broadcaster, drawing them in. And Boston is run by Fedra, which is essentially a lightly disguised FEMA and highly militarized FEMA.

That seems to run... Shockingly competent FEMA. Everything from what people do for work and how they get paid to... you know, what they're like sort of hours of free movement are allowed to be. So it's like this, it's this economic engine for a city. It's also a police state, you know, and they seem to be being increasingly viewed as a kind of fascistic big brother, always telling you what to do, telling you where you need to be, telling you how much that's worth. And it seems like a fucking miserable experience.

As we meet Pedro Pascal's Joel character again in Boston 20 years later, he is, disposing of the bodies of children or of the sick and dying in burn pits and then shoveling up their ashes. So it's like when that happens, it's just like, okay, this show is definitely going to like look this in the eye, right? Yeah. And again, the part that felt most video gamey to me was the monolithic nature of the obstacles. And I mean both zombies and I imagine we have many, many iterations of them still to come that we haven't seen yet because they're always, you know, your run-of-the-mill villains to shoot in games, and then there's the mini-bosses and bosses,

et cetera, et cetera. But also in terms of like the faceless enemy. And so, again, this is good TV making, right, that Mazen humanizes one guy who we see at the beginning, you know, making deals with Joel for oxy pills or hydrocodone or whatever they are. And then I imagine they're not psilocybin. I feel like they've, I think they've moved on from psychedelics. That face is probably past. It's a pure pain killing. Yeah.

And then we see him again at the end. So the masks, the jack wooded thug mask goes up. So we see a face. I mean, this is just good TV writing. But I felt that a little bit. Yeah. It did feel very monolithic and not ramshackle ragtag. I would imagine they won't spend a lot of time talking about the specifics of governmental

collapse or entrenchment. Oh, I bet they will. I bet we'll see some stuff about like, I mean, Because the sort of the need, if you've got Fedra and then you've got these, the fireflies, which are sort of the resistance, uh, militia,

you're going to have to explain why the two are in opposition, right? Like, and how Fedra probably rose out of like, here are some, you know, some trailers for you guys to live in. And then it became something, again,

movie phone guy coming out of nowhere. I've got a trailer for you to live. Well, it's just like the video game part to me was, you know, you just, you, people generally like wake up in a scenario and they're like, well, big boss of evil city is really

cracking down again. You know, we're the fireflies. You're with us now. And you're like, okay, time to go. See, that's funny that you say that because the video game stuff to me seemed more like the little bit of the puzzle stuff. Like what song is playing on the radio and what it means or this guy in the radio tower who's like takes people's money to send messages out into the, into the vast expanse. All those details are really cool. But that struck. me the stuff that you do in video games? Well, one thing that was, the other thing that struck me is a lot of the, you know, a lot of the discourse around the show has been like the history of failed adaptations

of video games. And one of the reasons that they fail isn't just the fidelity that to the source material that becomes increasingly like unhinged or totally insane as you take it out of your Nintendo. Yeah, trust me. I played Max Payne. I know. Right.

But also, but not even Max Payne. Like a lot of the most beloved video games, you know, like just decision. making or translations, like, were not really, they weren't really thinking about big budget, mainstream stuff. So like Resident Evil movies, you know, they're like, time to get out of Raccoon City. I'm like, you know, I got a note on that. I'm going to push back. This, one of the things, and this is a simple thing that it seems like Druckman did in crafting this is that he was crafting a cinematic story that could be more easily ported. You know what I mean? Like, do you remember, in Street Fighter,

which was a phenomenon of our youth, Street Fighter 2 and all its iterations. Is there a story in Street Fighter? Just like the bad guy played by the Great Roel, Julia, in the film, the late Great, is M. Bison, right? He's the bad guy of Street Fighter Island

or whatever. But the reason that's his name is because in Japan, when Street Fighter came out first, the Black American boxing character was M. Bison because of Mike Tyson. But then they were worried about the litigiousness of that. So they just swapped the names of the bad guy. They were worried that that would be at the top of Mike Tyson's legal issues.

Yeah, they were like, exactly. This guy's got nothing on his plate. He's going to come for us at Capcom. The 90s were weird. By the way, speaking of the 90s and 3-fighter, I did just want to say, in the spirit of this game, this game adaptation, I took my children to the 80s arcade place that's in here in Echo Park, Budmash. And my older daughter asked me to play Street Fighter game. I was like, this was a big deal when we were kids. And she was like, play. And I was like, let me be clear.

I was not good at this when we were kids. So it was just such a weird thing considering what video games are now. Where I'm like, okay, I'll play this. I'll fire up to Chun Lee. I remember she's got some kicks. And then I fought did terribly. There's like 19 buttons. None of it makes sense.

I was defeated by a blonde guy named Charlie. I was like, okay, well, we had a little battle. Now we're done. And then all of a sudden Charlie, Charlie's face is on the screen looking over his shoulder. And it just says, one brick by brick, I will build this road. I'm coming for you, father. Wait, this is the video game. Not a guy standing next to you, right?

No. Okay, I thought you were playing against a guy named Charlie who then turned to you and said one brick by brick. And then he tried to sell me some psilocybin pills. Because then I would be like, dude, you have the zombie fungal. infection. Don't come here. No, I was just like these were not written for the screen, is all I was saying. That was an intense thing. Yeah. I apologize. So

how did you feel, though, about, I guess it's a two-part question, and I'm sort of still working it through. We do get, as we do in all these apocalyptic stories, a glimpse of the world that we are about to lose. And then we have a glimpse of the, and then we are transplanted into

the world that we have. Mm-hmm. Right. How did you feel about that ratio here? because did you feel, you know, it's always a question also going forward. Is this a show that's going to be about restoring that world? Is it going to be a show about finding the spark of humanity that we fear was extinguished in that world? Or is it just you got to do that to get to this?

I think it's probably the latter, if I have to guess. And we haven't even gotten to Bella Ramsey yet and her character, Ellie. But it seems like it's going to be teaching Joel to love again through this mission, you know? Not that I don't know that for a fact. but where, say, Station 11 was much more concerned with what survives, you know, like what are the things culturally or on a human level? On a human level, like, what are the things that really matter to humanity and is it storytelling or is it, you know, what is it that actually would like burn brightest

and be the things worth fighting for? So far, this is a lot more like, it's very telling to me that. that the things that seem to still flourish in this post-apocalyptic economy are guns and drugs, right? Everybody seems armed and everybody has got opioids. So that says a lot about, like, how the world would cope, right? Like, it would give in to this sort of very militaristic government agency that dictates what they can do. And to sort of live under that, they would kind of go to drugs and violence. I mean, that's a really dark vision of the world.

so you want to see like one flower grow out of that, right? And I thought they did a good job with that. You know, I think that I have to, I just want to say this. I don't think it's fair, but I just thought it would be an interesting conversation point. But obviously Station 11 was a little bit in the back of my head when I was watching the show. But Andor was too. And the level of detail and the level of, I don't know whether I would call it consideration or just. There was parts of this show where I was like, I wish there was just like a,

like 8% more, why are they wearing this stuff? Or like, how does this work? Or maybe not even an explanation of how something worked as much as something that just seemed like there's an explanation for this, but you're not even going to get it. But this is how they do this now. You know what I mean? Like, this is how they deal drugs in a post-apocalyptic society. And it's not just hand to hand.

There was something like just 2% missing. I didn't not like, I liked this show a lot. And I was just saying that we had talked. talked when Andor was on about how Andor was going to fuck up shows for the next few months because we were kind of always going to be comparing them to it. And I did that a little bit here.

I also feel like having only watched one episode, it's a challenge because I don't, I want to engage with a show on its own merits and on its own intentions. And if at the end of the day or at the end of the nine episode season, this is the, the mission here is just high-level dystopian drama, you know, like to just kind of execute

a really compelling zombie story. That's one thing. And it's one thing that I can respect and engage with. If it's to do something, or at least attempt to do something a little bit deeper along the lines of what you were saying, but we both believe Station 11 did, then I'm going to want a little bit more. And I am absolutely trying to withhold that judgment and to remain you know, optimistic and neutral about it because not only is this just one episode, this was a incredibly, as you said, heavy 90-minute episode with a lot to do, a lot of world building, a lot of establishing to do. This might be the way to segue into Bell Ramsey's character because I, you know, I saw,

after watching it, I did read some of the reviews and found myself broadly agreeing with a lot of them. And one stray comment, I don't know if this was in Jim Panoiwzex's great review in the Times, great because it was really well written and observed, I thought, not just because it was positive. But basically saying that, so we meet Ellie, who is a child of this world, right? And that will be a thing going forward. There were some spoilers, I guess, in that. But not really if you understand that they're going to be going into the world and seeing things.

And that because she is a product of this world, she has a switchblade and is not afraid to use it and, you know, puts up the finger guns and it's just kind of tough. Okay. but Joel, who is not of this world, but was obviously incredibly damaged at the start of this new world, is also pretty jaded and tough and ready to stab people and punch people. And one thing that I...

Is he a vet? Like, he has the Desert Storm bumper sticker in Texas. So is that the implication that he's a vet? I don't know, but I think that would make sense. Okay. What I would love to see, and I think we had a piece of this in that amazing sequence that I was referring to

with the kid shows up and is lied to and then given the injection. of whatever world kids grow up in, kids are kids. You know, I like to see the things that maintain that aren't just pills and pistols. So I'm hopeful as we expand outward away from this like particularly, I mean, look, Boston's a tough city to play in, right? Everybody says that.

So let's take this team on the road and see what they can do. I cut you off during the expositional part of the podcast to say that it's not just Bella Ramsey who joins the show. it's Anna Torv, who I'm always happy to see. She's great on Fringe. She was better than great on Mind Hunter. Yeah. And again, this is both, this is, to me, more than anything,

this is just a sign of, like, this is HBO's version of the show. They got top-notch people playing these parts. She's giving, like, a different kind of performance, I think, than she usually does. This is somebody we meet who has, like, a swollen, her eyes swollen shut because she's been in a fight with, like, another gang in Boston over the sale of a car battery. typical southerty

they're trying to get this car battery so that they can get into truck and get out towards where they think Tommy is because there's been some sort of fallout between Tommy and Joel he alludes to the fireflies being responsible for that

like that there's maybe it's like Tommy gets swayed by like the firefly rhetoric and decides to join them and it goes out to go work somewhere else but basically Joel is like the last I've heard from Tommy he was in

Wyoming. And so we're going to go to Wyoming. And then he also gets saddled with the responsibility of getting this kid, Bella, this kid Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, out of Boston. Now, all he has to do, as far as he knows in the first episode is get her to the state house where some other fireflies are going to pick her up. But I would imagine that would make for a pretty short TV show. So I'm sure some things go and happen that involve taking her on a longer journey. But, you know, like, I really look forward to finding out a lot of the detail in, like we talked about earlier, and not only in the formation of this Boston sort of hub, but also like what happened between the two of them, did one of them get sort of not radicalized, but much more political? And the other one is just like,

I'm just going to grind it out and shovel dead bodies into a burn pit. Like, really just kind of like a fascinating, a fascinating world to be introduced to. And where are you, I mean, Bella Ramsey is a really exciting. Yeah, she's really cool. And that's essentially the entire show, as we've seen with Princess Leia in Young Princess Leia and Obi-Wan. Like the entire thing could just fall apart if you didn't get the right kid. Absolutely.

And this kid, unlike Walking Dead, this kid seems to have the potential hope for humanity because she seems to be resistant to the mushrooms and not in a straight-ed- I knew a guy like that at college. It's like, it never works on me. I'm not feeling anything. Drink a little more of this tea. Yeah.

Chad, come on, drink up. And so now we're on, so now, as we said, so now it's maybe a completely different show going forward in terms of like hitting the road, what they're going to find, what they're going to see along the way. I think it's hard to separate our response to one episode from the larger media landscape in which this is coming into, because broadly speaking, I felt this way,

we probably said this on the pod leading up to the show, and I feel it, again, having watched it, this seems very smart by HBO. Like, this just seems up and down the board very smart. These types of shows, I don't mean video game adaptations because that's fraught, but these types of shows are things, you know, worked for AMC with Walking Dead that makes sense for networks.

It's a big, big ratings play, and they're HBOing it with the budget and with the quality of the people attach, getting Craig Mason to do this as his follow-up to Chernobyl is a big win for them. So I guess I remain curious about what response the show is going to get, critically and commercially, and what matters more to them at this moment when Zazlav is slashing everything around it. So what do you mean by that last part?

I guess I'm, you know, if, let's say this is, you know, there's probably will be a press release, if not while we're recording, if not later today, or maybe they'll... Shatters records and first... Yeah, first one million viewers check it out on blah, blah, blah, and HV. And that's great for them. I'm really interested in what kind of... In five or six weeks, you know,

we're going to keep talking about the show. I think we'll probably have a sense. Are people who don't know anything about video games and don't necessarily like zombie shows talking about this? Is it Game of Thrones? Is it elevating past its core constituency? in a way that it's entering the conversation so that when it wins the Golden Globe

for Best Drama next year, nobody bats an eye. Or is it just going to continue to have press releases about its ratings? And making people who like this and are excited to see shot for shot recreations of their video game happy. No, I think it's somewhere in the middle where, you know, so are you trying to

ask like, will it have the frisson of like a conversation piece where people are like, oh, did you see? Yes, I think so. I have like a weird feeling that this is going to be huge. Not a weird feeling. I mean, I think that's like, that's the hope. But when you think about some of the stuff that we've been very excited about, but that is a little bit of like a tough sell maybe, you know?

I would say even something like the White Lotus, like takes a few minutes to kind of like explain why it's good to people. This seems like a really, really simple proposition. It's like a guy is shepherding an important. kid across a post-apocalyptic landscape. And you can be into it if you like horror and zombie and action stuff. And you can be into it if you just like meaningful, sweet, like, sweet.

I assume it's sweet. Yeah. You just described the Mandalorian, also starring Pedro Pesco. Also fucking enormous. Yes. Yeah. So it's like, I think that that's, that's almost a great way of looking at it is that not only is HBO's Walking Dead, it's HBO's Mandalorian.

How do you feel about Pedro in this? The casting, performance. I think he's quite good. Yeah, I think it's like he's doing exactly, I think he's doing exactly what the role requires. I'm sure that he's going to get to spread his wings a little bit more. I mean, right now he's being sort of asked to be an unmasked Mandalorian where nothing gets at him.

And he's just kind of like, okay, like, I have to grind it out here with tests. And I guess we're trying to go look for my brother. And he hasn't really had like a moment on either show of like, I'm just a guy having a meal or anything. And that's left to sort of the characters around him. So for Pedro Pascal's own benefit, I would love to see him and just sort of like a,

I'm having a good time. He did in the Nicholas Cage movie he made last year. But I think he's a great cowboy, which is what he's required to do. He's a good cowboy. And I find him so interesting because he's never, he's never not good. And that is unique,

I think in contemporary leading men, you know, he's just, he's solid. He will plug the whole. He'll solve the problem. He's also kind of a surprising and charismatic and charming actor, which is a side of him. I mean, when we, broadly, I think when like the general public became aware of him was, was as Oberon in Game of Thrones. And that was such a sparkling performance. You know, he was sort of pansexual and witty and fun, but also, you know,

very capable, up to a point, very capable warrior. And since then, he has successfully for his career just kind of parrot it back to gunslayer stuff, whether it's, you know, his voiceover on the television show he's appeared in twice, The Mandalorian, or whether it's like a narcos, right? Or what was the movie that he was in that I'm thinking of? Was he in Triple Frontier? Yeah. Yeah.

So really the sort of fun parts were. the unbearable weight of massive talent and Wonder Woman sequel. Sure. You know, so it's interesting to see. It's not a, this is not a news story, but it's interesting to the history of Hollywood performers who just kind of chip, chip themselves, whittle themselves down in a couple directions and then work consistently forever. I would like to see more, but I think he's a great choice for this part because he just,

it's plug and play. He can do this and we buy into it in a way that initially, when you have a 90-minute pilot, you need all the shorthand you can get. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that this will be a really big success for them. I think that there's a lot of space in the TV landscape for this to fill up. There hasn't been a Sunday show in a little while since White Lotus went off. Obviously, like, I was kind of wondering yesterday whether or not the six NFL games would sort of dampen people's, like, anticipation of this show and whether or not, like, watching football all day, but be like, oh, I'll watch Last of Us.

tomorrow or who cares, but it seems like a lot of people watched it. It seems like a lot of people were excited about it. I'm sure it'll get a lot of viewing tonight on the holiday night if it didn't last night. Do you think Chargers fans were triggered by a plane flying from flying in the sky and then suddenly plummeting to the earth and exploding? But then again, are there Chargers fans? I don't know. I'm sure half a dozen of them were like, God damn it. Anything else you want to hit about this? I feel like we're a little bit muted about it. Yeah. Well, no, I think we're enthusiastic. Like, I think that it's also very much an indication of where we are with TV,

where I'm like A-list cast, incredibly high-budget, beautiful production, and successful pilot. And we're like, interesting. Yeah. I mean, this worked. This absolutely worked. This is also, like, it made me think a lot of Game of Thrones. I was like, we are starting the journey. Like, this is.

Yeah, the degree of difficulty here is enormous. You know, we are taking for granted that they did the, what is generally been impoverty. which is make a video game adaptation that apparently honors the things that people loved about the video game, but also felt open to people who are not familiar with it. It's in and of itself, remarkable that we are singling out the escape from Austin sequence as being visually dynamic and beautifully directed and very compelling. And there's a whole segment of the audience that's doing frame-by-frame screen comparisons, you know, and thrilled about it. Yeah. So we are all enjoying the same thing and taking different things from it.

That's wild. That is a testament to everybody involved. I guess my question for you is just purely as a fan of potential fan of this, even, what are you interested in seeing in the remainder of the season? And there will be people and hopefully they won't add us who are like, well, you're going to be disappointed because that's not what this is. I enjoy not knowing. No, I know.

And I promise that, like I said it before, like I really want to engage with what it is, not with what I'm secretly hoping it might be after 90 minutes. I'm glad you asked, because in August of 2002, Interpol's turn on the bright lights came up. So I'm curious whether or not that stands as like the last rock classic in human history. And people just stay. Have you not heard the Stills debut album?

That came out of the year later. But you know what I mean? Like, I'm curious whether or not there will be any references to the timeline of this show, but like its relationship to reality. In 2003, in Boston, you were still only three years removed

from leaving that. Your legend still burned bright. Sure. Yeah. In the bars and clubs. You know what I mean? Like, do you think that on his way out of town, Joel stops at the moldering wreckage of TT the Bears? And people are like, there was this kid. He was so funny. He told great stories. No, but, you know, I do think that this show, it will be interesting because, like, there is some references to Bush being president.

There are some, like, that to me is kind of fascinating, the alternative history of what would have happened from 2003 to 2003 if this is a world that was recovering from a pandemic, or not even recovering, living with this pandemic rather than just ticking along. So I'm kind of, I wonder whether or not, like, he's ever going to turn to Ellie and say, like, oh, you should have seen Butch and Sundance. that was a great movie and maybe one day, like, but nothing since 2003 has been made, you know, like. Yes. And I think, but I think also building on that point, one of the things that I loved about Station 11, by the way, if you're listening to this podcast because you watch Last of Us, go watch Station 11 too. I was happy that at the end of my viewing of the show on the HBO Max platform, it said you might also like and Station 11 was there. Like, yeah, watch that, just on its own merits. It's the best show of 2021. one thing that that that show, and I imagine the book that it inspired, it did so well, was that it, in 20 years, that's enough time for some new traditions to be born.

Sure. For not just 20 years for convenience sake of entrenching this military dictatorship or, you know, just like, you know, like almost like a Chiron underneath Joel to be like has been in a world of shit for two decades. Sure. Like something else has started, whether it was good, bad, worse, better, we don't know. but some traditions probably exist, something is out there, and we're going to go find it. So I'm interested in that.

You said this last week, and I think you alluded to it again today, this publicly, Mason has said that this is probably a two-season show, which is surprising. Because when you have a kickoff like this, you're like, this could just run. So there's a different tenor to it

and to the story, into the plot. And so knowing that there's a finish line that we're going towards, I'm very, very interested in maybe like the version. of Sarah that existed in the video game. I'm interested in the moments when the joystick gets turned and we're looking out the window at different things.

You know what just occurred to me? What's that? Maybe one of the reasons why Boston seems like such a miserable place in this show is because the Red Sox never won the World Series. Oh, my God. No wonder this is the darkest time. I mean, they got the Super Bowl. They do get the one against the Rams in O'Don.

two. Yeah. But not five. Wow. Well, I would have, let me think we should stay in Boston because no Celtics championship in 08. Bill Belichick is still there, right?

Oh, yeah. Bill Belichick runs Fedra. He's just like, do your job. Can you imagine the press conferences? Shubble to ashes of that kid into the burn pit. Do your job? Are we sure Matt Patricia should be in charge of Cuerremaidus?

We should have love with this. We have a week. We have a week to workshop because I don't think, I think they are leaving Boston. So we really need to get this material in quick, quick, quick, quick. All right, well, we can wrap it up there. You know, we wanted to make sure that we talked about this show as fast as possible. So I'm really looking forward to the rest of the season and it's really nice to have a Sunday show back. Yeah, this will be fun for us.

I mean, fun. I hope it's fun. I hope so. It'll be fun for us to talk about. Thank you to Kaya for producing us today. We'll be back on Thursday with a bunch of stuff. Everybody have a great week. I'm looking forward to the bunch of stuff, Chris. Happy holiday.