TV: The Last of Us (HBO)

[Bounces R Way]

The Kathleen character just wasn't executed super well, both from an acting and writing point of view.

Like the character could have been cool if given some more airtime and background but what did she get? Maybe 20 minutes over two episodes?

The actress didn't do all that much with it but she probably wasn't supposed to if it was just a bit villian part anyway. Writing a dynamic and captivating villian is a real hard thing to accomplish. That's why the great ones are remembered so well.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Part 2 is FILLED with plot holes and stupidity that i can't get into because it will spoil the show.

But no It's not just that,in fact that has very little to do with it for me.

Please send me a PM then. I wanna hear the plot holes. Im not saying you are wrong but the game was alot better than alot of people gave it credit for.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

The Kathleen character just wasn't executed super well, both from an acting and writing point of view.

Like the character could have been cool if given some more airtime and background but what did she get? Maybe 20 minutes over two episodes?

The actress didn't do all that much with it but she probably wasn't supposed to if it was just a bit villian part anyway. Writing a dynamic and captivating villian is a real hard thing to accomplish. That's why the great ones are remembered so well.

I liked the idea more that they just killed every and anyone who stepped in their area. I swear Henry and Sam were jumped by those guys as they entered that area.
was kinda cool to see a small backstory on the hung Fedra soldiers and the pile of bones they suspected werent infected and that its Henry and Sam's people.

I didnt really like Sam being deaf, it wasnt a bad change I just liked him more in the game Henry included. felt more for them in the game. they were just gone so quickly in the show
get like 3 hours with them in the game and like 45mins in the show

 

[Hoverhand]

A lot of people seem annoyed about the shooting in the last episode and I feel that's pretty unfair.

the show has already dedicated several lines of dialogue and multiple scenes to trying to make shooting accuracy more realistic. Joel even said to Ellie "It happens more often than you think" when she asks about someone who shot at him and missed.

Him hitting a few lucky shots in the last episode is not enough to get mad about inaccuracy.

 

[Saskatoon]

Well it does imply that the infected aren't going to be violent against you if you don't resist.

Or that they can tell when someone already infected

 

[GKJ]

The Bloater should have remained in the videogame or gotten somekind of makeover for the show. While the Clickers look great, the Bloater looked like a cartoon character.

Anyone here ever seen Dogma?

I got shit demon vibes.

I do want to know how and why FEDRA pushed all the infected underground...and then just left them there.

 

[norrisnick]

Cool article on NHL.com about the actor playing Sam, Keivonn Woddard. Hopeful future NHLer.

Color of Hockey: 10-year-old deaf player lands role on 'The Last of Us' | NHL.com

Capitals grant huge help to Woodard, who appears in hit HBO series

www.nhl.com

 

[Hivemind]

I do want to know how and why FEDRA pushed all the infected underground...and then just left them there.

What do you think FEDRA would have done to root them out of all the tunnels, sewers, and cave systems underneath Kansas City? I'm surprised that they were able to "drive" them anywhere, as the fungus doesn't retreat and can't be "driven" anywhere. But I understand that to just be a line from a citizen, and FEDRA likely had to engage in a systemic (and likely long-fought) campaign to isolate and eradicate infections at the surface level. They manged to combat the infection on the surface, but then driving into dens of fungal infection in the moisture and darkness of the underground would be an entirely different matter.

 

[sdf]

Holy shit, the ending invigorated me up

 

[GKJ]

What do you think FEDRA would have done to root them out of all the tunnels, sewers, and cave systems underneath Kansas City? I'm surprised that they were able to "drive" them anywhere, as the fungus doesn't retreat and can't be "driven" anywhere. But I understand that to just be a line from a citizen, and FEDRA likely had to engage in a systemic (and likely long-fought) campaign to isolate and eradicate infections at the surface level. They manged to combat the infection on the surface, but then driving into dens of fungal infection in the moisture and darkness of the underground would be an entirely different matter.

Why didn’t they just kill them

 

[Hivemind]

Why didn’t they just kill them

Uhhhh.... the same reason the outbreak has destroyed all of society? Hundreds of thousands of swarming, vicious infected that turn their victims into yet more swarming, vicious infected.

 

[GKJ]

Uhhhh.... the same reason the outbreak has destroyed all of society? Hundreds of thousands of swarming, vicious infected that turn their victims into yet more swarming, vicious infected.

Ok but none of the other QZ’s, that I know of, has them pushed into hiding underground

 

[Hivemind]

Ok but none of the other QZ’s, that I know of, has them pushed into hiding underground

And? Just because they were able to secure the surface doesn't mean they are able to kill every single infected in the area, let alone doing so in the underground (where they gather in numbers and the fungus is able to grow rampantly in the moisture and darkness). You've seen the sheer quantity of them that came rushing out of the underground when the sinkhole opened up.

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

Joel sure was a crack shot when it was needed

 

[Osprey]

The fact that they couldn't prevent that many infected from leaving that hole in the ground makes it hard to believe that FEDRA could've driven them underground in the first place and then kept them from escaping for 15 years, especially with how close to the surface they were, how unstable the ground was and how eager they were to get out. It suited the plot, but didn't make much sense.

 

[HanSolo]

Yeah I'll admit the lack of explanation as to how the infected were driven underground is a bit contrived. @Hivemind's explanation as to why they stayed there makes sense but it's a pretty f***ing tall task to take an entire metropolitan city's zombies and keep them at bay for years. So it does amount to plot convenience.

But then again, for all the explanation as to how and why the cordyceps outbreak happened, there's no logical explanation given as to how this biological infection could survive in their hosts for so long. If you really think about it, if the human body, and the fungi in that body stops getting nutrients, it would die. Hence the dead infected on the wall in Episode 1. But realistically, that should happen to pretty much any zombie that hadn't eaten anything for, let's be generous, a month. So 20 years later, there should be a lot fewer infected, if any. It's a bit different when it's reanimated corpses being driven by supernatural forces. But this kind of applies to any infection based zombie fiction so, I don't know. If I'm watching stuff like this I turn my brain off to some of the logic and let myself get surprised when there's plausible realism demonstrated.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

Post has game spoilers in spoiler tags, be warned if you want to quote

Picking the climax of the episode to have Kathleen give her personal opinion whether the ends justify the means- as in, should you serve as a rat for the totalitarian fascist regime because they have the cure for leukemia- was a strange choice.

Put that in the pointless 4 minute scene where she's in her childhood home with bearded militia man and reiterating for the nth time, "I'm mad at Henry because he sold out my brother". Bearded militia man says, hey, we checked "the records", not only did Henry not collaborate save for that one time, he did it because his brother had leukemia and he was desperate. And Kathleen is in real time rationalizing why this doesn't mean she doesn't get to have her sweet vengeance, which is what I suspect they were going for with the character. But putting that in the climax was goofy. My friends (who didn't watch their college roommate play the game in 2013) laughed out loud at that.

In fact, instead of saying that, why not have this exchange:

HENRY: And what about Sam?
KATHLEEN: We'll put him on trial.

And your attentive viewer claps his hands in anticipation. Of course! There was that earlier scene when Kathleen lied to some collaborators and promised a "trial" only to order them executed. So now Kathleen is lying and plans to kill Sam too. Your viewer pats himself on the back, feeling good he was clever enough to put two and two together.

Also Henry's obvious response should have been "Yeah. And brother's sometimes die too". Why not? He's f***ed anyway.

Game spoilers

As in serious ending spoilers

Don't say I didn't warn you

Spoiler

i know why they did that, they're setting up the ending, and it's concerning to me. In the game, Joel's choice is obviously the incorrect one, the point is by this time he's done with this crapsack world, all he wants is his surrogate daughter, and the world can go to hell for all he cares. Kathleen's reasoning is what the Fireflies will say when they explain why Ellie needs to die for a vaccine.

 

[zombie kopitar]

Yeah I'll admit the lack of explanation as to how the infected were driven underground is a bit contrived. @Hivemind's explanation as to why they stayed there makes sense but it's a pretty f***ing tall task to take an entire metropolitan city's zombies and keep them at bay for years. So it does amount to plot convenience.

But then again, for all the explanation as to how and why the cordyceps outbreak happened, there's no logical explanation given as to how this biological infection could survive in their hosts for so long. If you really think about it, if the human body, and the fungi in that body stops getting nutrients, it would die. Hence the dead infected on the wall in Episode 1. But realistically, that should happen to pretty much any zombie that hadn't eaten anything for, let's be generous, a month. So 20 years later, there should be a lot fewer infected, if any. It's a bit different when it's reanimated corpses being driven by supernatural forces. But this kind of applies to any infection based zombie fiction so, I don't know. If I'm watching stuff like this I turn my brain off to some of the logic and let myself get surprised when there's plausible realism demonstrated.

maybe there were more and the strongest were cannibalizing?

 

[JohnC]

This is some of the worst part about fandom in the age of the internet. The ridiculous levels to which people dissect things.

To be fair, is there another board on this site where the regulars think higher of their own opinions than this one?

 

[HanSolo]

maybe there were more and the strongest were cannibalizing?

Right but if most people are in the QZs at this point, there's not much for the infected to feed off of. We're talking about 20 years worth of cannibalizing at that point. At some point the ratio thins out the population. My point is that in a situation like this there's certain things you have to kind of just turn the logic off to enjoy the whole story or it f***s the whole thing.

Not really a spoiler, just I've got my wall of text vomiting-all-my-thoughts habit up if you care to read

Spoiler

Like Druckmann took an interesting concept with real life "zombification" and built in a curious 'what if' that sounds plausible as set forth in the premiere episode's intro. All it could take is a change in the climate to make fungal infection in humans possible with the right mutations. I'm not gonna claim to be an expert and I'm not going to hang my hat on YouTube essays, but there's some interesting stuff out there about how fungal zombification actually works. The more terrifying reality is that infection like this would spread through airborne fungal spores, not just transfer of fluids. But even assuming that it would be that easy to spread, humans could ride it out by hiding underground or, say, at sea and live off fishing. It wouldn't be ideal or the healthiest living, but it's possible. And a biological infection like this, at least one with fungus as the base for the infection, the people would eventually die as the hosts cannot sustain the survival of the fungi. The only rational way for an infected person to persevere is 1) eat up all the livestock and wild animals, but without people to maintain the population of animals the availability would eventually thin, 2) they could start eating each other, but same shit. The availability of infected people would be finite at some point 3) the fungi could evolve to sustain the host to draw nutrients from vegetation, but at that point the infected would be a lot weaker, have less energy, and be much easier to whittle down by surviving humans. My wider point is, if you really want to think hard about the mechanics of the apocalypse that Druckmann came up with, sure it would destroy society and decimate most of us, but we'd likely survive in time. Which isn't as dread-inducing and hopeless as what we're getting. But that's where you gotta turn your brain off a bit and just let it play out. And it's more or less the same with the Kansas City zombies. If they've been underground with no food source for 20 years, the infected should be mostly dead even in the cannibalizing scenario. They already showed what should happen to an infected with no food with the one that was inside the Boston QZ in episode 1. That logic just isn't applied in a wider scope.

 

[sdf]

Why americans so much loves stories about f***ing zombies, it is not that interesting. Although this particular show are good, yet

 

[Blackhawkswincup]

IMO the drive them underground could be explained rather simply

FEDRA used human bait knowing that people were hiding in tunnels under city to lure infected horde in and then sealed them in. It does two things for FEDRA

1) Clears most of infected from city
2) Eliminates the people underground and potential of tunnels being used by resistance

FEDRA then kill off any infected left within city that didn't get trapped underground.

Call it "Driving them into tunnels" for PR purposes and to make people in QZ even more under their control thinking of them as even more powerful than they are while abusing people.

I meant the reality is fungus, etc you are supposed to suspend belief and such to begin with

 

[Blackhawkswincup]

The Bloater should have remained in the videogame or gotten somekind of makeover for the show. While the Clickers look great, the Bloater looked like a cartoon character.

The CGI was awful for bloater and several of the dead coming from hole as well as the infected that killed Kathleen

Really was only negative of episode.

CGI time and again is awful at mimicking realistic motion movement.

At times it felt like World War Z and that isn't not good thing as the CGI/Zombies of WWZ was awful

Some actual practical effects over CGI especially for bloater would have been better route for that scene IMO.

Sadly, Hollywood seems to have abandoned the use of practical effects in 95% of productions at this point

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

Why americans so much loves stories about f***ing zombies, it is not that interesting. Although this particular show are good, yet

Ignoring that there are no zombies in this show, how many zombie shows are there? 2?

 

[Unholy Diver]

Ignoring that there are no zombies in this show, how many zombie shows are there? 2?

And I don't think Zombies are strictly an American thing either, considering Train to Busan and it's sequel were pretty popular and weren't from the USA