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PercySledge t1_j6n500z wrote

They made a self contained love story within the confines of a fungal world calamity and made you love the 2 characters and mourn their losses all within 30 minutes of introducing you to them in the first place.

That’s pretty much as good as writing, direction, acting and pacing can get.

I certainly won’t say it’s ‘one of the best tv episodes ever’ but it was brilliant.

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AFatz t1_j6n7voz wrote

Not just for those 2 characters. It gave you a reason to give a shit about the letter. Yeah the comparison of Tess to Bills partner make us and Joel emotional. But it also helps us relate to Joel realizing he needs to protect Ellie.

They could have just had Joel find Bills letter and just move on. Instead they added emotional "filler" that shows us that even though they weren't exactly friends, Joel respected Bill so much that his (and his partner's) death still upset him.

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CrystlBluePersuasion t1_j6ngulf wrote

This episode also shows how the loss of Tess, Bill, and Frank is the loss of everything for Joel's current or now former life, he has no more connections to Boston and his world as it was. That end makes room for a new beginning with Ellie, now he can choose to become vulnerable and open up to her the same way Bill did with Frank, and that's the real power of the letter.

We still see the wounds on Joel's knuckles because he fractured his hand remembering Sarah and not being able to save her, he winced when Ellie took his hand as he helped her up the next episode in the flooded hotel because he's still burning with pain over his loss. Next episode I imagine we'll see this wound healing better.

The adaptation to TV from the game is impeccably done and how adaptations should be. The emotional aspects also resonated with my personal life, it's a message about the hope that real love can bring, rather than the grim despair of the game's version of these characters' story for this chapter. It's just good television and some article titles making claims aren't indicative of how I or anyone else feels, I feel the way I feel because I see what they're doing and enjoy it.

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PercySledge t1_j6n8zdo wrote

Really good point actually. It made his relationship w Tess matter more too so added more to previous episodes’ events. Set the scene for him protecting Ellie as you say.

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Tommaton t1_j6ngq32 wrote

100% this. That letter is objectively stronger for Joel's character arc than the equivalent events in the game. And if the context we're given to make that letter land for the audience is this brilliantly written and acted episode - well how do you complain about that? What are we here for? It's art - it's exploring the human condition - it's trying to move its audience emotionally. Did people really feel nothing watching this?

It's a GOOD change from the source material, but really I'd call it a flourish more than a deviation - it doesn't change the plot at ALL.

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Ausare911 t1_j6nwfqg wrote

I also loved how it broke the mold with these kind of shows, in general. I was constantly waiting for Bill to be betrayed. There no way Frank is a good guy, don't trust him yet. Even when Joel and Tess came I kept thinking this will be one of those horrible things they've done in the past that they keep referring to.

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LuckyPlaze t1_j6ndrfk wrote

Brilliant point. It sold the letter and provided the emotional base for Joel’s decisions moving forward, while giving Joel and the audience closure on Tess’s death.

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ffxivthrowaway03 t1_j6o8zxv wrote

I would argue that if you need an hour long segue that completely departs from the source material to prop up why the letter is important, then the letter wasn't important in the first place.

They could have done the same thing in half the time, and put better framing around the letter in the current timeline to make it just as important without watching Bill and Frank eat strawberries in the garden or have awkward sex.

We knew Joel respected Bill from literally two minutes of the whole hour long flashback, when they talked to each other directly. That could have easily been done a hundred other ways without the extended flashback.

I think the biggest condemning factor here is that yes, you could argue that the super long flashback did X and Y and Z, but the game also did all of those things for all of those characters without an hour long flashback about Bill & Frank's domestic life. When taking that into account it's hard not to frame the whole thing as "filler."

Was it bad? Aside from a handful of blatant plot holes that really stretch suspension of disbelief, no, it was not bad. The acting was solid and the characters were at least passingly interesting if romance is your thing. But it 100% felt like they just copy/pasted any random Lifetime Original movie into the middle of an episode of The Last Of Us. It was jarringly out of place and would have done better on it's own as a spinoff movie or something.

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nomorepartiezz t1_j6oecmc wrote

it wasn’t necessary to see the whole thing, but i dont really think it detracts from it either. its nice to see the show flesh the world out more. we didnt need to see sara’s entire day before the outbreak or the whole cold open from episode 2 either (i realize those take up less time but you get the idea)

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ffxivthrowaway03 t1_j6oyj8d wrote

I think the fact that it did take up so much time is explicitly why it detracts from it.

For the majority of the hour we totally lost the plot and were watching something else. Maybe if they actually inserted some apocalypse into that hour it would have detracted less, but if you photoshopped the fence out of the background maybe five minutes of the whole thing still would have had anything to do with the setting and events of the show at large.

As someone else in another thread had said, you could've swapped the setting to a cabin in the remote woods instead of the fungus apocalypse and literally nothing else would have had to been changed about the whole flashback. It's like the whole apocalypse never happened for the entire flashback, it barely impacted them at all, and the one time it directly did (the raiders) they used it as a fake out two seconds later and surprise! Bill is totally fine from that gut shot while Frank is now dying of a terminal illness and they lived happily ever after.

Like there's a compelling love story being told here, but it sure as shit didn't have a thing to do with "The Last Of Us." beyond cribbing the setting and vague ideas of a couple minor characters then doing literally nothing relevant with either.

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SweatyNomad t1_j6n62mq wrote

Agree, a lot of the more extreme love seemed to come from people who know the game and appreciated that extra level of nuance lost on those fresh to the story.

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WebHead1287 t1_j6oyplo wrote

Not only that but it took the spirit of The last of us and really highlighted it. Finding a light in the darkness. You can’t change the world, all hope for that is lost but you can find a light that makes it warmer. It was absolutely beautiful

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blumpkinmuncher t1_j6o6xua wrote

I just wish Bill would’ve lived and he got another episode or two. seems weird to have that much backstory just to never see him again.

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ackermann t1_j6pjea9 wrote

It reminded me of Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” episode, as a brilliant, standalone episode, that stands above the rest of the series, and most anything else on TV at the time.

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TNTBF t1_j6nvjqx wrote

It wasn't brilliant and it didn't make me love or mourn the losses of Bill and Frank in anyway. I was bored to death waiting for them to die.

Disappointing episode and the continual dumb trend of making everything gay so everyone is forced to agree that it's good or else.

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PercySledge t1_j6oaqj6 wrote

Yes I’m absolutely certain based on this comment that you’d have found the episode equally dull and umaffecting if it wasn’t a gay couple

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kinopiokun t1_j6pgo2w wrote

Aw is the wittle bigot feewing sad having to watch men smooch?

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carlso_aw t1_j6o4zie wrote

Dude, your entire post reads of cringe. The characters were always gay - the only thing the episode did was give them a much more cohesive, nuanced and realistically emotional backstory.

The only people who think that "everything is being made gay" are the people who aren't comfortable enough in their world view to be able to accept the fact that not everyone looks, acts or lives like them.

Spoiler alert: if you think this episode was gay, wait til you see season 2.

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ackermann t1_j6piv7y wrote

While I certainly don’t think it makes the show/game worse… having played both games, it’s not untrue that gay/queer folks are overrepresented in TLOU. Considering they are generally less than 10% of the population.

But given that historically, gays have been underrepresented in media, this might be a good thing.

In the second game especially though, there is a sense of “wait, he/she is also gay?”

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