The Last of Us: Endure and Survive   Show Only 
February 10, 2023 9:39 PM - Season 1, Episode 5 - Subscribe

Vulture's The Last of Us Recap: Killer City. Holee shit. This fuckin show.
posted by ishmael (58 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
jesus, this fuckin show.
posted by Etrigan at 9:55 PM on February 10, 2023 [7 favorites]


I like how this episode had a moment of humor. This show should aim for that occurrence at least.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:02 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]


There is a tragedy here that I didn't foresee last week — Kathleen's brother sounds like he truly would've been a force for good, whereas his death means the power transferred to a dictator who wasn't nearly as benevolent.

We didn’t have enough space to totally unpack Kathleen here. She loves her brother, but more for his effect on her life than for his actual worldview. She wants to punish the person who took him away more than she actually wants to do what he would’ve wanted; her “where's the justice in that?” thing is a fig leaf and a thought-terminating cliché.

I liked her “Did it ever occur to you…” rant for doing several things at once. On top of being a beautifully twisted thing for a villain to say, it drives home that she can’t appreciate the moral complexity of a world without social trust. The less you can trust a friend’s friend’s friend, the more important your direct clan becomes, and of course you’d sacrifice five distant acquaintances to save even one of your siblings. But the narcissism of calling someone else an NPC to their face is what helps me diagnose Kathleen with stage-four Main Character Syndrome.

Only thing I didn't love was her very last moment — tracking down Henry again amidst the chaos, pointing a gun at him, and… failing to pull the trigger before Lil’ Clicker arrives to forcibly untangle the blood vessels in her neck. Among all her bad decisions, that’s somehow the worst — and this was a lady who saw cracked asphalt throb last week like it was boiling in a stock pot and put it second on her priority list.
posted by savetheclocktower at 1:12 AM on February 11, 2023 [9 favorites]


Is this thread Show Only? It's not marked as such and I'd like to avoid game spoilers.
posted by cozenedindigo at 1:52 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


Can this be the show only thread please? Archive link for the Vulture review.

Wow what an episode!
posted by ellieBOA at 2:22 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


Death From Below: How The Last of Us unearthed Kansas City’s infected infestation [Vulture / Archive]
Melanie Lynskey Has Never Been on a Set as Overwhelming as The Last of Us [Vulture / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA at 2:50 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


I thought it was interesting that the revolutionary patrol at the start of the episode was threatening collaborators with trials for “counter-revolutionary activity.” All revolutions or revolts have an ideology, of course, but the concept of “counter-revolutionary activity” implies that these revolutionaries are *conscious* of their ideology (and of threats to it). I’d love to know how that happened; was Kathleen’s brother a left-wing activist before the zombie plague? Have people been smuggling left-revolutionary literature into the QZ from abandoned Kansas City bookshops and libraries? Is there a samizdat press scene?

Also: I’d love to know the relationship between the FEDRA garrisons in different cities. I’m sure they’re *nominally* all part of one FEDRA, but is there any meaningful authority that coordinates the different cities, or is this more a loose confederation (at best) of autonomous local tyrannies? And what is the FEDRA ideology? Where do they believe their political legitimacy comes from, if not the consent of the governed?
posted by Mr. Excellent at 3:27 AM on February 11, 2023 [6 favorites]


Some good storytellin'
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:55 AM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]


Another masterclass in storytelling. Painting Kathleen in that way was brilliant. You go to war with the soldiers and general you have, not the ones you would like. Her ruthlessness as the shadow to her brother’s warmth being the key to beating FEDRA was perfectly on display from Lynskey. I loved the scene with the collaborators. Very much a first grade teacher admonishing her class for doing something wrong, except with the power and willingness to murder them all.

And Sam. Poor Sam, and poor Henry. Heartbreaking after seeing the love Henry has for his brother, his willingness to do anything, absolutely anything. This was highlighted on Reddit. Henry was Sam’s superhero, clearly the take, but that world is so warped and twisted he nearly automatically did the unthinkable.

You can see Joel softening. Henry’s speech to Joel was another key moment, another viewpoint showing Joel he is the protector, and he needs to accept that role. And it will require him to be a bit softer while also maintaining that toughness to do anything. He was softening at the end at the graves of Sam and Henry, but Ellie’s toughness in continuing west was the balance in their relationship and in that world that he needed to keep going.
posted by glaucon at 4:44 AM on February 11, 2023 [4 favorites]


This episode didn't do a lot for me; felt like we got told a lot about Kathleen, not shown; what was shown didn't really make me think about her as someone who was a particularly effective revolutionary leader. She felt like a bog standard post-apocalyptic warlord with a layer of passive-aggressive kindergarten teacher to me.

The show is very effective at using the situations Joel and Ellie are in to further that relationship, and this week having Joel soften a degree or two while Ellie hardens was good! Particularly important was Ellie (and the audience) learning whatever is different about her isn't easy magic to transfer, I think.

This is the second week in a row where Joel's gun jams at a critical moment; wondering if that's going to become a thing.
posted by nubs at 8:33 AM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]


I feel like I called every beat in this episode 3-15 minutes before they happened, but I enjoyed the story anyway. And the exploding pit of zombies was very cool! One nice thing about their disinterest in having a zombie pop out of every corner is that they can really let loose in a moment like that. Fun show! (She says blithely, about an episode that ends with a darling child turned into a zombie and his dutiful brother commiting suicide. But look: I was so certain those two were going to die that it was hard to feel truly gutted. Mostly, I felt terrible for Ellie that her absurdly hopeful "my blood is magic and will cure you" gambit fell short. If you are the only person immune to zombie fungus in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, well, that's pretty lonely.)
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:42 AM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]


So it was shear luck that they didn't run into that giant horde wandering in those tunnels. Gah.
posted by ishmael at 9:19 AM on February 11, 2023


(thanks for clarifying the "show only" mods, and for the links ellieBOA!)
posted by ishmael at 9:23 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


Ellie's shocked sound when Henry committed suicide. It's like that Simpsons episode where Bart points out exactly the moment that Lisa breaks Ralph's heart. Everything will be different for Ellie after this, I suspect.
posted by kokaku at 9:42 AM on February 11, 2023 [6 favorites]


I thought it was interesting that the revolutionary patrol at the start of the episode was threatening collaborators with trials for “counter-revolutionary activity.”

If you want to signal Americans to hate a particular group of revolutionaries, just have them start yammering about “counter-revolutionary activity.”
posted by Etrigan at 10:05 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]


Etrigan - you’re right, of course, but that’s an odd quirk of our culture. After all, persecuting enemies of the Revolution is as American as folksy stories about apple pie. See, e.g., Dispossessing Loyalists and Redistributing Property in Revolutionary New York
posted by Mr. Excellent at 11:10 AM on February 11, 2023 [2 favorites]


So it was shear luck that they didn't run into that giant horde wandering in those tunnels. Gah.

I think it was different areas; there was a fair bit of walking, and a river crossing, between the tunnels and the random housing area. The zombies were bursting out of a basement or sewer I suppose.
posted by fleacircus at 1:30 PM on February 11, 2023 [5 favorites]


One of the aspects of the show that's really enjoyable is its judicial use of horror. We don't see Joel shoot the old time sniper, but we do see Joel's pained looks before and after. We don't see Henry shoot himself, but we do register the absolute horror on Ellie's face as she watches him do it and is helpless to prevent it. I don't think there was the typical splatter of blood to hit home what had happened, 'cause Ellie's face was enough.

But we do see the infected literally spring out of that collapsed tunnel, dark shapes moving at inhuman speed against a fiery background. That was absolutely thrilling and terrifying. According to the aftershow, the creators wanted to convey how it was possible for the infected to overwhelm the rest of the populace and they knocked that out of the park.

Kudos also to the show for filling in the various "holes" that were left last week. We relive the scenes from last episode, but from different vantage and it tells a better story overall.

I also like how we get a fuller picture of Kathleen and why people follow her, without getting the full story. Clearly as the sister of the resistance's leader, she was well known and had some popularity and respect in her own right. Her taking over and targeting collabraters probably helped her stay a leader. I doubt she would have lasted long term for a few weeks or months after overthrowing Fedra? Sure.

Sidenote: I was annoyed about user description of this episode on Fanfare, i.e., "Holee shit. This fuckin show." It conveyed a too much about what would happen, but having the seen the episode, damn if I'm not feeling the same way. It feels like audience were bowling pins and the creators just rolled a strike on all our emotions, but it was incredibly well done.

Ellie putting her blood on Sam's wounds, thinking she could save him, was almost too much. And not only that, she didn't tell Joel about it, because she probably didn't want to risk Sam getting killed. Just like Henry she was willing to take various risks to save him, because she loved him and in the end it didn't matter. That'll weigh on a person.

Finally, in the after show it was revealed that the actor who played Sam, Keivonn Woodard, is deaf in real life. But everyone on the set, cast and crew, started learning ASL just to communicate with him and that heartwarming bit was what I needed after an episode like that.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:41 PM on February 11, 2023 [18 favorites]


Brutal.

The first few minutes of mob violence reminded me so much of January 6 and what the insurrectionists were hoping to achieve. I am sure the showrunners thought about that. But then, if either they or FEDRA had an ideology, it wasn't important.

I want to know a lot more about the role that bloaters play in the life cycle of the cordyceps. Fungal life cycles are complicated and strange. If I saw that thing break apart into a mass of tiny entities, I wouldn't be surprised.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:31 PM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


I feel like I called every beat in this episode 3-15 minutes before they happened, but I enjoyed the story anyway.

I was thinking along those lines, and have refrained from commenting on the episode until now because I wanted to give myself time to let it sink in and chew it over for a bit. There are some aspects of it that I sort of agree with; for all that I really wanted Sam and Henry to make it out of KC, and as much as the previews that we've seen have been very judicious in not spoiling too much, it just didn't seem like the general vibe of the show to have Joel and Ellie pick up others on their journey west. (I compared this show to Stephen King's The Stand in last episode's thread, and while that book makes much use of people meeting up during their own journeys west across America--for better and for worse--this show just doesn't feel like it wants to do that.) Likewise, Ellie curing Sam by literally just smearing her blood over his infected wound didn't quite fit the show, either. (There's another franchise that I'm much beloved of that had an installment that featured what could be one of the dumbest possible uses of magic healing blood ever.) And, as much as I was hoping that some of the revolutionaries would come to their senses at the last second--maybe realizing that someone who mocks the fugitives for believing that their sibling was worth doing bad things for was doing the exact same thing at that very second--and do to Kathleen what the French mob did to Robespierre. If her brother wasn't the right person to overthrow FEDRA, well, she wasn't exactly someone who looked willing and able to set up parallel institutions based on freedom of choice instead of paranoia and bloody vengeance. But, if anyone in the rebel mob was inclined to take that step, they didn't get a chance.

If anything, the show seems to be about the random cruelty of their situation, and how people can try to do the right things and still get curb-stomped by fate. They could have made different choices; Joel could have detoured around KC, Henry could have planned better for his and Sam's escape, Kathleen's lieutenant could have asked himself how far things would go after she shot a doctor. I didn't get the feeling that she had snipers posted on every block outside their perimeter, and the four escapees could have gone one block over. But that's not what happened.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:52 PM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]


Henry was one of the more instantly likeable and heroic characters I've seen in a minute, certainly on this show. I thought Kathleen wasn't quite as strong a character, or maybe we just didn't have enough time with her and the rebels (though I like the actor a lot) though it did put some of the previous episode in better context for me to understand these people were still living under totalitarian terror as of like last week.

(But like for instance--Henry knew Michael and knew where he was hiding, was he involved with the resistance? Kathleen only ever calls him by his first name, did she and Perry know him too, did she know his little brother whose survival she wrote off as fucking with fate? In other words, did Henry just betray Michael, or did all these people know and trust him? It seemed like yes to all of that, but I don't know that the rebel characters in particular benefited from having that dynamic feel as distant as it did here.)

I think one implication here was that the KC rebels were more successful (well, briefly) than the Fireflies because KC FEDRA was more abusive than Boston FEDRA, so KC had more ordinary people willing to risk an uprising?

I've seen a TV show before and was aware the underground zombies were going to show up at some dramatic and inopportune moment, but the progression of Oh no there's a truck chasing Ellie, phew Joel stopped it, hey now it's on fire, oh now it's being swallowed by the earth was still a nice warm-up for the zombie swarm. Maybe this is a non-gamer thing but I'm not sure the mushroom megazombie totally landed the way it was meant to. Maybe they'll be important later or just a game easter egg, but the thousands of screeching fungus monsters were getting the job done scare-wise (the kid flailing around in the car!), it didn't really feel like him showing up in that particular moment changed or mattered to the story at all, but happy Mushroom Zombie Rips A Guy's Head Clean Off Day to all who celebrate.

Maybe everyone's just overwhelmed and exhausted, but people on this show seem surprisingly chill about checking for wounds after cordyceps encounters. Between Tess and Sam it seems pretty easy to get bitten in the chaos without anyone noticing, and I get there's a different calculus when step two is a bullet to the head, but I know people who are more cautious about checking each other for ticks after they've been in the woods out back.

For some reason knowing that Henry never hurt anyone before, and even brought an unloaded gun to take Joel hostage a few hours after watching him kill the last guys who snuck up on him, reeeeally twists the knife that the only people he ever directly harms are Sam and himself. I'm not gonna do a great job of articulating this but Henry's last scene in particular was short and required him to pass through a bunch of emotional states really fast, and Lamar Johnson did a good job of making it feel like a real person being destroyed in a matter of seconds rather than just a series of actions required to wrap up the episode. (I had a second earlier of "aw maybe we'll get a few episodes with Henry and Sam" which seems very silly saying it now.)

When they were in the shelter school I was looking for signs of violence or panic and didn't see much, which makes the question of what happened to all those people like ten times creepier.
posted by jameaterblues at 11:20 PM on February 11, 2023 [10 favorites]


This tweet is only tangentially related to TLoU but it made me laugh!
posted by ellieBOA at 3:50 AM on February 12, 2023 [5 favorites]


I think one implication here was that the KC rebels were more successful (well, briefly) than the Fireflies because KC FEDRA was more abusive than Boston FEDRA, so KC had more ordinary people willing to risk an uprising?

Maybe. We really don't know that much about the structure or function of FEDRA, whether they've got any real degree of central control or are basically quasi-independent fiefdoms. The fall of the Baltimore QZ would seem to imply that they're mostly on their own, and in the first episode the FEDRA soldier buys pills from Joel, which makes me think that even FEDRA is running on very limited resources.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:02 AM on February 12, 2023


For that matter, we don't seem to know that much about the Fireflies, whether they're also working toward the overthrow of FEDRA or just acting as an organized underground to work around them.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:03 AM on February 12, 2023


Well I take back my criticism that the last episode was a bit too hackneyed, a zombie story retread with "the charismatic but flawed leader of the hard-scrabble survivor town". I really liked what they did with Kathleen this episode. So much ambiguity. She's still awful, doing awful things, but she knows she is. And with some reasonable revenge motive and shame at how she's failing the moral example of the brother she is avenging. How her lieutenant is like "yes, we loved him, but we follow you. you made things happen" (by which he means the revolution against FEDRA.) Henry's messy role in this, being a collaborator, getting the noble brother killed. It was all a lot more subtle than I expected and I thought the writing and Melanie Lynskey made it all quite interesting.

There's a lot going on in this episode. We get three characters here fully living and dying: Kathleen, Sam, Henry. And all three excellently characterized and then quickly ended. No getting used to anyone's presence in this story. First Tess, then Bill & Frank, now Kathleen & Sam & Henry. Get fully invested in the supporting characters but don't stay with them too long.

I appreciated that they write Sam as a Deaf person. Good child actor! I particularly liked how they showed us how he overcame some of the challenges of not being able to hear in zombie world. Like the gunfire he can't see or hear; he knows something horrible is happening, can tell from Henry's reactions, but has to ask Henry what's happening and then sits there unable to perceive it, has to wait for Henry to tell him more. The little writing slate was nice too, I like to think he doodles superhero comics for himself when he's not using it to write things like "I got bit by a zombie and I'm afraid I'm about to die".

Oof, poor Sam. Poor Henry. What an awful end.
posted by Nelson at 7:09 AM on February 12, 2023 [4 favorites]


Another thing about that little writing slate: I know from childhood experience that those things wear out and stop working, and by the looks of it, that one had seen better days. Intentionally or otherwise, it seems like foreshadowing.

I realized that although I don't want to miss any of this show, it fills me with the same genuine, non-cathartic dread that watching shows about nuclear disasters does -- and the last time I watched one, who was responsible? Craig Mazin.

I don't usually look at behind the scenes stuff, but I did watch it after the credits this time, and I was delighted to see Keivonn himself and happy, and to learn that the Deafness was a conscious new decision. A tweet says that Keivonn was scared of the bloater -- hell, at that age I was scared of somebody's mom dressed as a witch! -- but the actor, Adam Basil, was kind and took off his head to show the boy his costume.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:47 AM on February 12, 2023 [8 favorites]


Maybe this is a non-gamer thing but I'm not sure the mushroom megazombie totally landed the way it was meant to.

Having not played the game myself, the bloater (which I know the name of because of reviews like Vulture's) kind of subverted my expectations.

I was not expecting a version of infected that you can do absolutely nothing against. The fact that Perry unloaded an assault rifle on it and still got decapitated kinda filled me with despair about the overall anti-zombie effort.

Makes me wonder if they had seen a bloater before, because if they new that assault rifles would be ineffective against it, I think they would have run when that truck sank into the ground, or they would have made it a priority to prepare for when they saw the ground pulsating the last episode.
posted by ishmael at 8:16 AM on February 12, 2023


Since the fungus is an evolved version of cordyceps, the bloater could be a further evolution of the species. Not being able to kill or even just stop it with an assault rifle reminds me very much of when Alan Moore took over writing the Swamp Thing comic, and the villain du jour finds out, to his dismay, that you can't kill a plant by shooting it in the head. That doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be stopped, but it might require different tactics (explosives, fire maybe).
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:48 AM on February 12, 2023 [3 favorites]


That doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be stopped, but it might require different tactics (explosives, fire maybe).

Tough-Actin' Tinactin?
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 8:50 AM on February 12, 2023 [27 favorites]


I would love a Bloater John Madden to show up, roar, and be taken down by a massive fire extinguisher sized blaster of Tough Actin’ Tinactin.
posted by glaucon at 9:07 AM on February 12, 2023 [5 favorites]


You always cook a vegetable. ALWAYS.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:16 AM on February 12, 2023 [5 favorites]


Makes me wonder if they had seen a bloater before, because if they new that assault rifles would be ineffective against it, I think they would have run when that truck sank into the ground, or they would have made it a priority to prepare for when they saw the ground pulsating the last episode.

Yeah, I don't hugely need the question answered but it would change a little how I understand the scene if they had any idea what was down there. Henry seemed to think his belief that the zombies were all dead was not common knowledge, which makes sense; I'm sure FEDRA wanted everyone in Kansas City convinced they're the only thing between them and the bloater hordes. But I wonder if the idea that that there's nothing really down there, okay maybe one or two little ones, got in the rebels' heads and helped (1) ousting FEDRA seem like an achievable outcome and (2) downplay the "one or two" zombies boiling up out of the earth after the fact.
posted by jameaterblues at 9:31 AM on February 12, 2023 [1 favorite]


That doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be stopped, but it might require different tactics

Mushrooms? Cast iron pan, salt, butter. Maybe a couple sprigs of thyme. Done.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:40 PM on February 12, 2023 [9 favorites]


Mushrooms? Cast iron pan, salt, butter. Maybe a couple sprigs of thyme. Done.

posted by They sucked his brains out!
posted by sixswitch at 1:52 PM on February 12, 2023 [10 favorites]


OMG, these "clickers"! Because their heads look exactly like hen-of-the-woods fungi, which one finds around these parts bunched on the ground in slightly alarming sizes, and which my beloved partner claims are so delicious sauteed in butter. NO THANK YOU SIR.
posted by Short Attention Sp at 4:28 PM on February 12, 2023 [8 favorites]


... a nice Chianti?
posted by Dashy at 9:33 AM on February 13, 2023


Jokes about Tinactin and cuisine aside, Vox has a good article on why there's no real vaccine for fungal infections.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:38 AM on February 13, 2023 [1 favorite]


Good episode, although I agree that the Bloater didn't seem to have the same effect it would likely have in the video game. When you see a big bad like that show up for the first time in a video game, it feels like a big deal because you're probably going to have to fight it at some point.

In the show, it felt more like an easter egg for fans of the game. As a sort of next step in the evolution of the fungus, I guess it makes sense as a think that can rip through human defences so the more typical mushroom zombies can continue to spread the infection, but it didn't seem as scary to me as the fact of the horde erupting from the ground.

And, sure the revelation that this type of zombie exists will probably have implications down the line (no doubt, Joel or Elle will be in a one-on-one type situation with a Bloater at some point), it just didn't quite land for me. The fact that it seemed a bit more intelligent and independent than the others also seemed a little odd, but maybe that's a thing that makes more sense if you're familiar with the game.
posted by asnider at 1:16 PM on February 13, 2023 [2 favorites]


About two minutes after meeting Henry and Sam in this episode, my first thought, directed toward the writers was You fuckers. Don't you do it. Don't you dare.

Unfortunately, I was not able to send my thoughts back in time to make them change the story. Watching reaction videos, I saw so many people who started crying the instant Sam asked if it was still you inside when you became a monster; the subsequent events had people bawling. And I was among them.

I really hope we get to see more work from Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Woodard. They both just utterly nailed it. Hard to believe this is Woodard's first real role!

One thing I noticed on a second watch: after Henry shoots Sam, Joel starts asking Henry to give him the gun rather than just trying to get him to stand down, using a gentler voice than we have seen him use so far. Like he knew what Henry was thinking about doing to himself because he'd had similar thoughts in the past, and he had seen other people go down that path as well.

Sometimes I sit in awe thinking of how this show and its cast and crew are doing so many things so well. It's definitely setting a benchmark for all so-called prestige shows moving forward, not just adaptations.
posted by lord_wolf at 2:25 PM on February 13, 2023 [6 favorites]


Good episode, although I agree that the Bloater didn't seem to have the same effect it would likely have in the video game.

The problem is that the Bloater (was it ever called that in the show yet?) looked too much like it was: a man in rubber suit. The first time we saw a clicker it was otherworldly in its movements and sounds.

The Bloater moved like a big guy who could see. It seemed to function more to kill as opposed to spread the cordyceps. It's entire way of walking was very human and it growled more than clicked. There was a lot of disgusting bloat per se, but looked mostly muscled up.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:53 PM on February 13, 2023 [5 favorites]


I think you've nailed it, Brandon Blatcher, the bloater was too obviously just a guy in a suit. It wasn't inhuman or otherworldly. It looked and moved like a human, albeit a monstrous one.

And, no, it wasn't called a bloater in the show. I think, maybe, someone called it "the big one?" I just used the term because apparently that's what it's called in the games and other people were already using and familiar with the term.
posted by asnider at 3:11 PM on February 13, 2023 [1 favorite]


Oh, no worries on using the term Bloater, most of us have. I didn’t recall it being mentioned in the show and was just wondering.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:41 PM on February 13, 2023


late to the party, gutted like most everyone else, even though we knew our new friends were likely doomed... but some thoughts and speculation (from someone who hasn't played the game):

I have to imagine that Kathleen and Co. really didn't know the magnitude of what might come out of the ground back inside their zone, or they wouldn't have been quite so blithe about it. And now that we know what can happen -- and that Kathleen and presumably a lot of her best troops are gone -- that doesn't bode well for the rest of her group back in the city.

also, now I really want to know more about the zombie ecosystem. They can just live en masse underground, and erupt when they want? They're basically close to dormant, like a fungus, needing no nourishment? (Like the throng on the ground in Boston, I guess.) Are they basically everywhere (iow, why under the one house where the truck crashed)? Or do they sense something like the truck's explosion and respond and move to it? Then why the potential opening spot inside the building? And what's evolutionary rationale for the bloaters?

Anything to keep me from thinking of poor Sam. "Stay awake with me" -- damn. That broke me.
posted by martin q blank at 8:03 AM on February 14, 2023 [3 favorites]


For the tiniest split second I thought Sam was playing a prank on Ellie and only pretending to be a zombie and I was like, "Jeez, kid, read the room!"
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:24 AM on February 14, 2023 [5 favorites]


The Bloater moved like a big guy who could see.

I know the clickers are but was he supposed to be blind ?
posted by Pendragon at 12:55 PM on February 14, 2023


That's a good question. I had assumed it was some later form of the clickers, who don't see, so there's no reason why sight would be regained, right? Just noting that it moved more like a burly and hangry human.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:59 PM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]


After quitting that other zombie show I am allowing myself to love this so far. The character of the week thing is interesting. Lets me know not to get too attached. I would have preferred they just go their separate ways. Hold up - did they do a zombified kid and killing a zombie kid? That was rough. I loved them immediately.

Kathleen was further proof that all revolutionaries do not make good leaders. I would like to know how she go there. Maybe grief from losing her brother. It was also comical how after all that had happened she still felt the need to pop out of where ever to kill Henry and Sam. Really lady? She was so consumed. How many soldiers and ammo did she sacrifice to get them?

I already have a fear of sinkholes. This didn't help! These people should consider some protective gear around ankles, shoulders, arms. Even cardboard would help. Ah well.
posted by mokeydraws at 9:06 AM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]


I know the clickers are but was he supposed to be blind?

I would assume no, given that we don't see any eyes and he (it?) appears to be a mass of human-shaped fungus, but that's not something we know for sure based solely on what we've seen in the show so far.

On a related note, to overthink it, with all the noise and chaos going on in that battle scene, would the clickers be able to effectively echo-locate/navigate? It sure seems to be implied, when the one gets into the car with Ellie, but is it plausible? Maybe it doesn't matter, because they're moving as a mass and just running down whatever they bump into, until they're spread out and farther away from the loud noises of gun fire and general mayhem.
posted by asnider at 9:23 AM on February 15, 2023




I had thought that the health companies that sell cordyceps stateside were going to take a big hit. But honestly, the world being what it is, being part of a powerful hivemind sounds pretty good to a lot of folks, so they will probably at least take no harm, and maybe even get a boost in sales.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:12 PM on February 15, 2023


How The Last of Us Avoided Becoming “Disaster Porn” [Inverse]
posted by ellieBOA at 1:24 PM on February 15, 2023


When the world ends, why do we all wear flannel? [GQ interview with costume designer Cynthia Ann Summers]
posted by ellieBOA at 1:40 PM on February 15, 2023


On a related note, to overthink it, with all the noise and chaos going on in that battle scene, would the clickers be able to effectively echo-locate/navigate?

You're not overthinking, I was wondering the same!

I strongly suspect that the cordyceps can identify each other or at the very least something that is not them. Pheromones, scent, auras, something like that so they know what to attack and spread their nefarious seed.

Biology wise, it's interesting to speculate how that horde under the ground still had such explosive energy. Maybe they were dormant and the collapsing roof of their dwelling woke them up? Maybe they rewrite the digestive system so that they're more efficient at extracting energy? Plenty of interesting possibilities.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:52 PM on February 15, 2023


About two minutes after meeting Henry and Sam in this episode, my first thought, directed toward the writers was You fuckers. Don't you do it. Don't you dare.

I spent the entire Schools season of The Wire with a similar thought in my mind: "Don't hurt Dukie. Don't you hurt Dukie."
posted by Paul Slade at 12:56 AM on February 16, 2023 [3 favorites]


About two minutes after meeting Henry and Sam in this episode, my first thought, directed toward the writers was You fuckers. Don't you do it. Don't you dare.

A nice thing about having never played the games is that I have no idea who will live or die or even which characters are original to the TV series (Kathleen, apparently, isn't in the games, but I only learned that after watching all the currently released episodes).
posted by asnider at 9:25 AM on February 16, 2023 [1 favorite]


A note about the fungal nature of the zombies: I assumed it was pure extrapolation from pictures of affected insects, together with various clinging fungi like turkey tails and hen of the woods. That was before I was looking up the spelling of a mold allergy and found a picture of somebody who had alternariosis in their skin. It was sprouting agh ahg gaghaha
posted by Countess Elena at 8:00 AM on February 17, 2023


The Examined Life of Melanie Lynskey [NYT / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA at 10:07 AM on March 14, 2023


I haven’t seen either of them with a compass. It’d probably come in handy.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:58 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]


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