The Last of Us - HBO *Spoilers* See warning in post #1

Have never played the game but am looking forward to the pc release. I really liked the first 2 episodes but I thought episode 3 was fantastic TV. Loved it.

But those episodes would usually be later on with established characters you would get more of. Or in the case of something like the Other Guys episode of SG1 it was later on and also it helped fill a long season.

With this we're still only getting to know Joel and Ellie after a big death of someone else we barely knew but they take a break to give a whole background and fleshed out side characters we never met before.

Again, it's a great episode and the changes don't bother me. I barely remember Bill in the game. but just feels like it should be in some sort of anthology rather than taking away 1 episode from a 9 episode season.

I will say though that Bill was a bit of an idiot and pretty much fell into a possible honey trap, as paranoid as he is. Frank gets himself invited to dinner, seduces Bill then could've cleaned him out when he went to take the shower.

It was fine, even a good episode but the hyping up of it is way OTT.

It was far too long and killed the momentum of the previous 2 episodes. I'm not against bottle episodes but it's really strange to put one in episode 3 of a show.

To me it felt like the show creators making an episode specifically to pander to critics rather than to serve the overall story - it seems to have certainly worked in that regard.

Hopefully we get back on track in episode 4 because this has the potential to be a great series.

The reason why the episode is where it is, and isn't part of a separate anthology show or whatever, is because it has deep resonance for Joel going forward.

Bill was someone who was closed off from the world even before the outbreak, and for a few years after was happy with just surviving. But by allowing himself to engage with someone else, he was able to find something special. He stopped just surviving, and started trying to live (as much as Frank was able to push him to anyway). There's also a clear comparison made in the episode between Joel/Tess and Bill/Frank, where Tess and Frank are more open to working with and trusting others, in part for mutual benefits but also because it occasionally allows them to feel some normality. But Joel and Bill remain closed off and only willing to engage with each other if and when they have to.

But there are small moments we see in Bill & Frank's backstory that are necessary to see the effect their deaths will have on Joel. With Bill's letter, and knowing that Bill chose to kill himself rather than live without Frank, Joel realises that he and Tess were never able to have what Bill and Frank had, because Bill stopped closing himself off, but Joel hasn't. Bill was able to find something worth living for rather than just surviving, but Joel didn't allow himself to have that with Tess. And now Joel has lost Tess, but also Bill & Frank. Frank tells Bill something along the lines of "Paying attention to the details is how you show love". Bill tells Joel in his death note that he never really liked or trusted Joel... but he leaves the window open in their room so the house doesn't smell bad for him. He still left all his stuff ready for Joel if he wants it. Bill, in his own way, is showing Joel the respect and friendship he ultimately did feel for him, and urging him to find something worth living for.

It's definitely a huge departure from the game to the point where comparisons can't really be made. The Bill section of the game and this episode of the show serve such vastly different purposes. Bill's death is a part of the impetus (like Tess' death) that helps push Joel forward to try and find Tommy and take Ellie with him, especially because Joel has now pretty much lost the only people he was close to in the Boston area. Now all he has left is Tommy (given that he still hasn't spent a lot of time with Ellie as of yet).

That was the first episode that didn't peak with the opening. Brilliant throughout.

I think the praise for this episode is a bit over the top. It was pretty good but also a bit silly. It was compared to the start of Up by the Guardian which I completely get but that wasn't almost an hour long.

There is a lot of "so brave to diverge from the main characters" but I feel like it wasn't brave at all because they knew exactly that it's the kinda move critics lap up.

I do like that it filled out the world a little bit. I often find the wider world more interesting than the plot. Shows like Walking Dead and Handmaid's Tale got boring very fast A plot wise. For instance when Frank said "Baltimore QZ is gone" all I want now is to see Baltimore QZ.

It did seem a bit odd, but I'd put it down to two things; Bill is a survivalist/prepper who basically thinks he's Rambo, but he's also not Rambo. We have no idea if he has any actual training or military experience, but likewise there's little reason to assume the raiders do either. But also we see Joel at the start talking about missing shots happens far more than you'd think. The raiders are panicked, flames shooting off in front of them etc. Bill may be out in the open, but he also has a huge advantage over them and has likely placed himself where he can take out the raiders as quickly as possible even at the expense of cover, because the longer they survive the more chance they either regroup and take control or make a run for it and return more prepared, and both of those scenarios puts Frank in more danger.

Bill's risk is half calculated, half emotional. He has to protect Frank at all cost (to the point of not even waking him or having him ready to help), and if anything he becomes more distracted when Frank rushes out.

But yeah, it did feel a bit off, and was partially just to serve the fakeout of thinking Bill might have died, then presuming Bill was in the wheelchair on the porch, until we see it's Frank in the wheelchair.

One minor quibble about this one. When the raiders attack, Bill stands out in the open firing back using a rifle with a scope on it (which leads to Frank going and distracting him so he takes a bullet). Why wouldn’t he be lying up on roof or at least positioned somewhere where he isn’t such a big obvious target? I don’t usually go in for this nitpick-y type criticism (it didn’t really matter to the overall arc of the plot) but it just pulled me out of the episode for a moment. We’d just watched the guy spend years preparing for exactly this kind of situation and he did something incredibly reckless and foolish when it arrived.

But overall an well-judged divergence from the game (though I’m expecting it to be the only major one).

Without going into game spoilers, Bill is a very minor character in the game, and I think the show has done a better job of making him important and having a greater impact on Joel going forward than the game did.

Not sure why its getting so much love at all,

Yes it was good TV but added absolutely nothing to the plot ,

They must have very little of story to tell if your wasting a whole episode away form the plot line ,