The Last of Us Review: HBO’s Video Game Adaptation Is All Flesh, No Bones

By stripping the gameplay out of a game that’s fleshed out by televisual tropes, the series ends up as mostly just the latter.

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The Last of Us
Photo: Shane Harvey/HBO

The resemblance of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us to a prestige TV or film drama has been the object of both praise and derision since its release in 2013. The game’s prioritization of its characters’ antiheroic arcs—rendered through meticulously staged motion capture—along with its episodic structure and on-rails story progression, made it possible to either laud its narrative ambition or accuse it of aspiring to be something more than a game.

Thus, some kind of adaptation to a non-interactive medium, overseen by Neil Druckmann, the game’s writer and creative director, seemed inevitable, and HBO’s The Last of Us series proves that the terms of such a debate may be false. Co-created by Druckmann and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl), this eminently faithful adaptation, despite some powerful performances, is evidence that The Last of Us is ultimately just great as a game, as the parts of it that most resemble a prestige drama grow thin when the gameplay is extracted.

In its broad outline, The Last of Us treads ground that already felt familiar in 2013. Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened middle-aged smuggler eking out a life in post-apocalyptic America, reluctantly agrees to escort a teenaged ward, Ellie (Bella Ramsay), across the zombie- and wacko-infested country to a safe location in exchange for supplies. Twenty years after the zombie apocalypse began, Ellie is the world’s new hope, the first person to anyone’s knowledge who’s resistant to the fungal Cordyceps brain infection that caused the zombie outbreak. Old contacts of Joel’s in the Boston quarantine zone contract him to deliver Ellie to the Fireflies, a partisan group looking to overthrow fascist military rule and rebuild a democratic society.

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Initially treating Ellie with the same gruff cynicism with which he greets the rest of the world, and dismissive of the hope that others see in her, Joel gradually warms to her, even caring for her as a surrogate daughter. In the second episode of the season, after the initial job to hand Ellie over to the Fireflies on the outskirts of Boston goes belly-up, he resolves to help her find her way to a medical facility in Utah. The journey there becomes a tour of the various mini-dystopias that have sprung up in the two decades since society collapsed.

The show’s production design takes many cues from the game, but the result is environments that can feel too manicured—the overgrowth on abandoned cars a bit too carefully placed, the moss in a patch of sunlight streaming through a collapsed roof too neatly lit, and the moments that pause on such sights a bit contrived in their attempt to aestheticize decay. The same details that can be so immersive in the game become mere window dressing for the apocalypse here.

On the other hand, Pascal and Ramsay succeed in breathing new life into their characters. The first episode opens with a prologue set at the outbreak of the apocalypse, in which Joel loses his daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker). The series then flashes forward two decades, and while Pascal doesn’t quite read as a fiftysomething man, he compellingly wears the weight of two decades in his troubled but soft-featured face. For her part, Ramsay imbues the 14-year-old Ellie with a nuanced combination of grown-up disillusionment and childlike naïveté that lends this The Last of Us a sense of pathos even when it’s missing most of its other marks.

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Many stretches of the game that staged memorable battles with hordes of zombies—like Elie and Joel’s run-in with Joel’s smuggling contact, Bill (Nick Offerman), outside of Boston—are reconceptualized in the terms of prestige television. Episode three abruptly cuts away from the early stages of Joel and Ellie’s journey to give us a depiction of the apocalypse as it’s been experienced by Bill, a “prepper” living alone in his idyllic and now heavily fortified burgh, even finding love in Frank (Murray Bartlett), a refugee who got caught in one of his traps. Thanks to Bartlett’s insistent charm and Offerman’s unmatched ability to make libertarian weirdos likeable, the episode’s focus on ancillary characters proves to be a highlight.

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Elsewhere, The Last of Us relies far too much on material taken directly from the game, as if merely stripping back the stealth and combat elements of gameplay were sufficient to adapt it for television. The result is a series that not only often runs like a compilation of extended versions of the game’s cutscenes, but is also almost assertively middlebrow. There’s a general shirking away from horror tropes like atmospheric tension and explicit evisceration, for one thing, that renders a story about ravenous monsters rather toothless.

Take the fifth episode, in which Joel and Ellie confront a cult of personality led by would-be authoritarian Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) in Kansas City. Kathleen and her henchpeople feel like also-rans from your run-of-the-mill dystopia, and a final conflagration that brings them and Joel and Ellie face to face with a plethora of rampaging zombies—including one of the game’s most menacing foes—lacks the horrific release of tension it should convey, perhaps because the episode has done so little to build the undead up as objects of real dread.

The underwhelming confrontations with the zombies may be one crucial aspect of why this adaptation fails to accomplish the dramatic heights that the game did. The first two episodes of the series begin with explanatory prefaces that have little impact, narratively or emotionally, on what follows. And the more that the characters explain and conjecture, the less substantive the creators’ ostensibly clever rewrite of the zombie apocalypse seems. On the other hand, the series dedicates relatively little effort to truly frightening the viewer, as if being scared were somehow less important to the story than laying out its capital-T themes.

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The experience of being frightened—of darkness, dismemberment, death, and decay—should, of course, be a major facet of this story. Without this visceral experiential quality, the series becomes a Spielbergian parable about familial crisis amid apocalyptic disaster—a late episode recreates the game’s homage to Jurassic Park’s morning-in-the-treetops sequence—that lacks Spielberg’s ability to make suspense, wonder, and sentiment truly feed into each other.

As The Last of Us progresses through its brutal take on the archetypical hero’s journey, its insistently grimdark vision of human nature appears more and more to be a fashionable façade. Ellie’s confrontation with David (Scott Shepherd), the leader of a cannibalistic cult, in the eighth episode provides a pair of suspenseful scenes and a showcase for Ramsay, but as it plays out here, the plotline’s trajectory is too clearly telegraphed from the outset, and the way that Shepherd’s duplicitous villain serves as a foil for Joel’s caring paternalism is too plainly laid out. In the end, by stripping out the gameplay from a vivid genre game that’s fleshed out by cinematic and televisual tropes, the series ends up as mostly just the latter: all flesh, no bones.

Score: 
 Cast: Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsay, Gabriel Luna, Merle Dandridge, Jeffrey Pierce, Anna Torv, Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman, Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid, Ashley Johnson, Lamar Johnson, Keivonn Woodard, Nico Parker, Scott Shepherd  Network: HBO  Buy: Amazon

Pat Brown

Pat Brown teaches Film Studies and American Studies in Germany. His writing on film and media has appeared in various scholarly journals and critical anthologies.

77 Comments

  1. “The experience of being frightened—of darkness, dismemberment, death, and decay—should, of course, be a major facet of this story.”

    I respectfully disagree. I haven’t seen the show yet, but having played both games 3-4 times each, the fear factor was hardly ever what made the story and its characters so compelling at its core. It sounds like you still experienced some enjoyable moments.

    Either way, I understand our roles as viewers are highly subjective. Here’s hoping I enjoy the show a lot more than you did.

    • you realize how stupid you sound… really how can you defend something you didn’t even watched. AND, that has a lot changed from the game…

      • He didn’t sound stupid to me because he wasn’t critiquing the show, he said that being scared was really secondary to the characters as far as becoming attached to them IN THE GAME, while admitting his opinion might change when it comes to the show once he sees it. What about that is presumptuous or confusing?

    • Well, in July 1940, 97% of Germans were behind Hitler. They said the same things about “downers” who said Adolf was an abomination.
      Mob rule, near universal adoration, is a very good gauge of utter mediocrity. Especially when it comes to art and politics.

      • This is by no means a universal rule, it can only be used when discussing generalities, using it in reference to anything specific makes your use of it here utterly useless and of no value.

  2. Look, I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the show, but if it ~at all~ follows the story of the game, I think you seeing “all flesh and no bones” shows that you are not very apt as a reviewer to look into subtext and find how the story deals so much with PTSD, survivors guilt, and depression. Such a cathartic and empowering story for those of us who struggle with these things. And also a beautiful tale of those who try to find beauty in a world that wants to give us anything but.

    But hey, you being the sole negative reviewer sent traffic to your site, so kudos to you as I am sure this was the goal!

  3. This IS a show, not a game, why would you expect gameplay and judge it as that? The amount of times you mention GAME in the review is quite revealing. Yes that’s the source material, but this is a different medium. Why don’t you try Ignoring the game entirely and judge it based on it’s narrative, acting and the emotions envoked, just like every show should be judged and like what most reviewers have done. Seriously, did you just have to be the one person to give this a rotten review (as per Rotten Tomatoes) just to be special? 2 out of , REALLY? You’re not looking smarter here. Yes, you are entitled your own opinion, but I’m glad most peope have a better one of this show and I look forward to disagreeing with you even more when I watch it myself.

  4. “…as if being scared were somehow less important to the story than laying out its capital-T themes…”

    Yes, you did understand. You just didn’t like.

  5. Wouldn’t almost 1-to-1 adaptation from the original materials be considered “no flesh, all bones” instead of the other way?

  6. Pat,

    I have no knowledge of any of your pior work, but you were the only negative review thus far, and it made me want to take a look at your words, to try to understand what you were criticising.

    While you make some valid points throughout the read, I do have to ask: Why are you comparing the TV show to the game?

    The thing is: we do know this is an adaptation. Most of us, at least. And that was our biggest fear — how are they going to treat the gameplay sections? Cutscenes can be adapted to a TV medium by anyone. Hell, they’re small clips of movies, to begin with. But the gameplay’s translation must be meticulously treated, in order to not lose pace, nor the story-line.

    What I read was mostly the game’s abstract, more than a review. Somewhere in the middle of it, you throw in a (not such much of a) political joke, that, while not being up-to-date on the show, makes no sense to me whatsoever…

    After that, you give us a few spoilers (that had no prior warning) from something that was not in the game, to begin with. All that, while trying to make a point about the games ambient — completely missing the point of the “zombies” (infected) in the game, in the first place. They’re not there for only gameplay-fun. They’re there to make a perfect contrast that humanity is as bad, or even worse, of a threat, than the actual infected. Not suspense, not drama, contrast.

    With this being said, I do not comprehend some of the comments you do on the review, even thought you might have been quite limited writing it, due to embargos. Nonetheless, I do not understand the score given, considering your words. It looks like an odd scale, to begin with. Even with that aside, your words were not brutal enough for a negative review, in my eyes, by any means.

    With that being said, I wish you all the best, and I sincerely hope for a follow-up.

    Best regards,
    Pedro L.

    • I didn’t read the review for fear of spoilers. I am happy I did not Pedro. I have seen reviews from Slant, and they consistently seem to be clickbait. Everyone is saying this is incredible, Slant will say it’s garbage. Sometimes I like to see what they rate, just for fun. I can’t take them seriously though. It’s like a spoiled child doing anything to get attention. It’s very embarrassing.

      • It is not a huge spoiler, but it was something that could’ve been hidden behind a spoiler-wall, like in Reddit. Nonetheless, I think everyone is perfectly entitled to their opinion. I do, however, believe that some people might want to be different from the group, just for the sake of standing up. Nothing wrong with that, I just find it… Odd…?

        It’s an interesting read, tho, and I do appreciate it.

    • Pedro, in one breath you go after the reviewer for “comparing the TV show to the game,” but then you spend the next paragraph comparing the TV show (which you haven’t seen) to the game *yourself*, like a complete hypocrite.

      You “sincerely hope for a follow-up” from the reviewer? We I’m sure the reviewers hopes… you’d watch the show first before running to its defence like a fanboy.

      • One thing you’re missing there, is the fact that the show is based upon the game, but not a direct copy. He’s complaining about the show, and the lack of gameplay – not literally, obviously.

        One thing I do think you missed, was the fact that I was not deffending the show. I was commenting a public review, about a world/story I do know and love. No one here is discussing the quality of an unreleased show.

        And I think you didn’t understand my “follow-up” sentence, since all I was saying was: I hope to get a reply from Pat, in order to better understand his critique. You are, however, being quite rude with your comments, therefore, do not expect a follow-up. lol

  7. “In the end, by stripping out the gameplay from a vivid genre game that’s fleshed out by cinematic and televisual tropes, the series ends up as mostly just the latter: all flesh, no bones.” Yeah, I definitely wanted to see Joel keep opening drawers to find supplies and eat vitamins. Even picking up bricks or bottles to distract the Clickers. A real human can definitely use a stealth mode to see what they hear. No adaptation will ever be like the source material. That should just be common knowledge by now. It should have elements that keep the story of the game alive. I have trust that they’ve done that. Now, I’m not familiar with your work, but I’d suggest if you expected a show to copy a games story and not put in new fresh ideas, then maybe don’t review media that is a clear adaptation. It should have its own look. I feel they’ve worked hard to do that.

  8. Idk, this review reads like it should’ve given at least a 70/100 by the end and not the 50/100 you posted just so your site could gain more views. And getting upset that a tv show doesn’t come with the interactive gameplay is absurd.

  9. I’m just here to blast all these comments who clearly can’t take any criticism of their beloved franchise. Fanboys are the worst when it comes to gamers. I love the first game too but will reserve any judgement of the show until I watch it.

  10. I think I understand. The fact that grass badly placed on a car or dirt and moss badly lit actually influenced your negative review, made me think that perhaps you suffer from some sort of O.C.D. where if even the smallest detail of something is off, the whole thing is automatically bad. And seeing how your review is the only negative one, I think my theory is at least somewhat plausible.

  11. The butthurt here from people who haven’t even seen the show yet but can’t conscience even one critical review is very embarrassing. TLOU is of my favourite games and a high-water mark for dramatic ambition in gaming, but of course they did borrow heavily from prestige TV of the 00s and at times it was somewhat trope-y, but this didn’t bother me and I readily accepted it in its service of elevating video game storylines. I haven’t seen the TV adaptation yet; I expect I will like it even if some of what Mr. Brown says is true, but the man is entitled to his opinion. The argument that he did this for attention is so weak and only shows that you can’t handle 1) having your precious need for perfection for this game/show marred in any way, and 2) the idea that perhaps, even in a small way, some of what Mr. Brown says could be true. Be the bigger person, politely disagree with the man and move on.

  12. Reading through these comments makes me ‘somehow’ hate fanboys even more. The comments here belong on a Marvel/Star Wars geek forum or sucking the tit of Christopher Nolan. Us Slant readers (as in not those who only come here only via other means,) enjoy how their writing, opinion, and TASTE, isn’t that of streamlined nerdboy garbage in these times when most online critics are sheep and often frankly non-specific writers (still better writers than most IMDB/Letterboxd users, though.)

    • The problem I see, as someone who has little real interest in TLOU the show, is that Slant has a reputation for contrarianism. Not the good kind of contrarianism, which pushes back at cultural groupthink – the bad kind, the reactionary kind, the kind that means it’s a consistent outlier whenever I use Metacritic to guage something’s quality.
      About five years ago I started using Metacritic regularly to discover new art, and I began to notice that the sole red(ie. negative) review for many big-name, well-reviewed films/games/shows consistently came from the same place: a magazine called Slant. This is the only reason I know of Slant at all. I live in Britain so I don’t know whether it’s a particularly august publication – the reviews are often well written, if lacking in any real personality or enthusiasm(even the positive reviews) – but it was unknown to me until I began to see its outlier reviews at the bottom of so many review roundups on Metacritic’s been out for months.

      So the issue is not with the negative review of this show – it just happened that I was glancing at the review roundup and noticed that, yet again, the sole outlier was Slant. And I was interested in seeing the comments, because the only time anyone ever bothers to comment at this site is when the reviews are negative. Genuinely, I see absolutely no comments under any of the positive reviews – it’s not like Ebert’s site, or Indiewire, or other sites, which have a lot of engagement under even the most mundane reviews of the most unpopular films. Slant only seems to get traffic when the reviews are negative outliers that drive people to comment underneath.

      Bear in mind that I’m not invested in TLOU being good: it got great reviews from almost everyone from almost every publication, but I haven’t watched it for the simple reason that I’ve played both games and feel very little interest in watching the same plot again. Also, I didn’t actually enjoy the first game much. I thought the plot was pretty dull overall(aside from the gorgeous, almost perfect ending) and the gameplay was way too stealth heavy and cumbersome(I enjoyed the gameplay from the second game much, much more, and loved certain grace notes from the plot, but again found the narrative overall too broad and inconsistent, and far too messy to be consistently engaging.). So I’m not a fan of the first game, and I’m only a qualified fan of the second. And I haven’t watched the show and don’t really want to. I enjoyed Chernobyl but not enough that it made me want to sit through the slog of TLOU’s stodgy plot again. So, clearly, I’m not a ‘fanboy’ of the, ugh, ‘franchise’.

      The problem, as I’ve said, rests not with review itself but with the way this site seems to focus on driving traffic through negative reviews. I’ve no idea if it’s even an explicit policy at this site, but Slant seems to pop up with negative reviews of otherwise immaculately reviewed and hugely popular games/films/shows on too regular a basis for it to be mere coincidence. But since it’s impossible to prove either way(you could just claim that Slant has higher standards than every single other publication on earth for example, although that’d doesn’t jibe with the normal, often highly positive reviews it hands out to the kind of films and games and shows that _don’t_ drive traffic) I guess it’ll just continue doing what it does, and unfortunately it’ll be difficult to trust it as a result.

  13. These comments are embarrasing. Way to represent gamers. Critical reviews are not attacks on your personal existence; get over yourselves.

    • A “critic” spoiling the work without warning in his review isn’t a competent critic either. You read critics to know if it’s worth watching, not to know how everything happens.

  14. Christ, imagine taking a videogame adaption so seriously that when someone criticizes it you cry and call them a contrarian. People are allowed to not like things.

  15. Thanks for this honest and enlightening sharing of your views and reaction to the show. It’s refreshing to have someone give a thoughtful take without pandering to the creators and without fear of the overzealous backlash from those who can’t handle opposing viewpoints. Rather than criticizing you for your honest take you should be celebrated for it. It’s so rare these days to find an actual journalist. Kudos.

  16. lol at the comments, if the review is negative it’s must be a troll right? lmao
    neil cuckmann keeps destroying any good image of this franchise, that’s si sad

  17. You must be one of the few people who were not paid by HBO to write something positve, when I see 97 positve rating percentage before the show started it is so obvious, like what other companies did with Star Trek Discovery/Picard, Star Wars Obi-Wan, Rings of Power and more of poorly written cashcows.
    I’ll watch maybe the beginning, so far from the trailer I can say I’m disappointed by the main cast. The game was so popular because of Joel and Ellie, their developing relation, and especially that you liked them both a lot. Ramsey is not a good actress and not likeable at all, but I guess nowadays I’m not allowed to find someone ugly, shame on me. Pascal is a great actor and very likeable, but he’s not fitting the Joel attitude, which is more like a Clint Eastwood type, guy without a name, in game 1. Or like Hugh Jackman in Logan.

    Looking forward for Pascal in Mandalorian next season. But The Last of Us series? No thanks.

  18. I’ve been privileged enough to see the whole show and I am a huge fan of the game. I can officially say your talking shit and are massively looking for the negative attention.

    • Just wait for next season. You’ll be doing the shit-talkin’ then (unless you are dogmatic Cult of Woke.) As will I. Presuming s02 follows the sequel that is. TLO2 was a better game but an *atrocious* narrative. Basically it’s a 20-hour seminar on why Woke cultists cannot create successful franchises & much leech onto existing ones.

      I expect this season to be good though, and it’s certainly possible Craig Mazin will save s02 from Druckmann by making Abby a more realistic character. Possible but not probable. Druckmann is a very successful sociopathic leech, slick & manipulative, a real Dark Triad exemplar. Chances are he’ll get his way.

      • This is, unfortunately, the most American comment I have ever seen, lmfao. It’s been TWO and a half years, and you’re still butthurt that the game was not another love story. Quite weird from your part, but hey! That’s not my problem!

        And I do love the fact that being “woke” means representing humans… You guys really are weird…

        Last, “Chances are he’ll get his way.” – Yeah. His and his 497 coworkers… Please, get a grip.

      • TLO2 was fantastic in that it triggered so many gamergate incels who hide their anger at not being allowed to use racial slurs in casual conversation anymore by calling everything Woke. Triggering maga trash is fantastic.

  19. The reviewer clearly hasn’t watched the show. It’s a perfect adaptation of the game. Possibly the best video game adaptation that has been committed to screen. Every ounce of the episode was gripping. Just because it’s not an arthouse movie with no plot and stupid cinematography decisions that attempt to be cutting edge, you don’t like it. I feel sorry for the souless generation you are teaching film studies to.

    • I feel bad for the soulless people who’s argument for someone not liking what they did is “you didn’t actually watch it!”

    • Funny because my discord friends are all complaining about how it doesn’t follow the video game, at all. Chief criticisms are: Ellie has no reason to trust Marlene, and Joel has no reason to trust Marlene, and why was it an airplane that crashed?

      The show sucks dude.

    • In a not distant past, the discussion was whether cinema could adapt works of literature, to render written images and metaphors “realistic” or whether cinema would be able to attain the same level of psychological insight, “caress the truth”.
      Adapting a ….video… game? In “video” you’ve already “seen” the images. You are asking for a ….copy. Where is the challenge in that?!
      O tempora, o mores! American crétins!

  20. “The resemblance of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us to a prestige TV or film drama has been the object of both praise and derision since its release in 2013”

    For those who have not played or do not play video games, it is essential to explain that the praise came from those who had the opportunity to play the video game on a PlayStation console, it seems redundant but clarification is necessary to differentiate those who mocked because in their great Most of them did it because they were brainless fanboys of the rival PS brand that is Xbox. Most of them saw it on YouTube. It is unusual for the editor to consider these data relevant when beginning with the criticism of a TV program.

    Pd: use google translator to translate the text into english

  21. The show is boring and riddled with terrible cinematography (lots of tell, not show). The PTSD flashback was mega cringe. The kiss was mega cringe. The horde not responding to repeated gun fire…

    Dunno, the characters are flat. Tess seems to have just existed for Joel to have a sexual partner? Sarah only existed so he could be a father? Seems like the director has no imagination to signal relationships without showing them.
    The best scene was Joel offering his hand to Ellie, and then looking at his hand weirdly after she took it.
    I have never played the video games, I never will at this rate.

    This is the same post apocalyptic zombie crap we have gotten before.

    What a shame given how good Chernobyl was.

    • You are totally right. What I found more astonishing is the massive marketing barrage and the “critics” push to rate this show on a level of a Sixtine Chapel of television. There should be a show about how mediocre shows like this are pushed on to the populace.

  22. Thank you for putting everything into words where I couldn’t.

    I am desperate to love this show, but it is very surface level and dry. The actors who you actually feel for are either dead now or haven’t been seen since episode 1. Joel doesn’t feel well done at all, which is super infuriating because I was excited when they cast Padro Pascal! Two more things that left me upset was how poorly they delivered on Tess’ death. The last being how creepy they made the deal with Frank and Bill. To have to make things sexual in order to deliver that disturbing line about not being cheap.

    This show isn’t bad, but it sure as hell isn’t The Last of Us in anyway thus far.

    It’s just another zombie show.

  23. Never played this game or any videogame. But I read the positive reviews and one of my pals giving it a two thumbs up—poignant and moving E-3 was some of the finest episodes of TV I’ve ever seen. Truly a treat. The interplay between the two leads is also terrific—”Joel, do you know diarrhea is hereditary? Yah, it runs in your jeans/genes!” Two former GOT actors it seems. But the other three of the four episodes I’ve seen are kinda meh? And, I’ve watched some great “zombie/apocalyptic” shows, What am I missing?

  24. This show is one of the most boring HBO originals… and Ive seen ALL of them. I was giving it the benefit of the doubt because it’s HBO but episode 6 I’m literally falling asleep Jesus Christ it’s a f***g soap opera let’s get some more monsters or I’m out. Preferably before the last 10 minutes of the episode.

  25. I personally have seen the show and played the game. I agree with you, and I am relieved that I am not the only person that feels that the show is very hollow. It’s missing so much. It’s as if the creators slapped the staple cutscenes together and decided to call it a show.

  26. Ive watched the show and played both games and attention seekers like you just like to pan stuff to make name for yourself its better than most of the shit that is usually on its agood bit of fantasy tv to keep us entertained

  27. Ellie is an awfully annoying chracter. Terrible casting. It almost unbearable to watch the acting from Bella but storyline is good.

  28. I have seen the show (well 7 episodes ) and I think this reviewer is not at all wrong. I was engaged during 2 and 3, but the way things a structured vis a vis narrative and character arc, I’m having a hard time caring about what’s going on.

  29. 6 episodes in and a lot of what the review covered has been verified. The entertaining parts are far too few and far between.

  30. Thank you for putting into words what so many of us feel. It’s like living in the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes” where everyone is ooohing, aahhing, and gushing over his “clothes” that he’s not wearing, and no one has the courage to point out the obvious fact that he’s naked. Until a child does. The fawning over this show like it’s the best thing since the invention of the television is mind-boggling to watch. It’s like “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad,” “True Detective,” “Game of Thrones,”, etc. never happened. This show is mediocre at best, and Bella Ramsay has ruined a great character by turning her into a smart-ass douchebag that Joel would’ve run away from in real life. Ellie is not like that in the games. If you think she is, then I urge you to play them again. She rarely talks to Joel in a disrespectful way in the game, but in the show everything out of her mouth makes her sound like a tremendous dickbag. It’s like they took the worst aspects of Ellie’s personality, amplified them, and then jettisoned all of the good aspects. Watching Bella’s characterization of Ellie has ruined this show for me and I stopped watching after Episode 6. One day, our society is going to wake up from it’s collective mindlessness and wonder how this show was raved about like it was the next “Doctor Zhivago” or “Lawrence of Arabia.”

    • Generally speaking, actors do not get to write their own lines. So singling out Bella Ramsey’s characterisation seems misplaced here.

      I wasn’t bothered by her having a slightly different personality in the show, tbh. So for me at least that wasn’t why the show felt disappointing.

  31. I have to agree with the author on this one. Unfortunately this show is pretty stale. It’s good…but immensely overrated. There is never a sense of tension or fear a world of “supposed” chaos. Attention to detail is up there but I don’t buy most of the emotional moments. Most screen time with the main actors is either pointless banter or traveling scenes. Characters rarely encounter any form of opposition whether from infected or people. Just smooth sailing all the way through. We just have to assume way too much in the show and take their word for it. It doesn’t have to be all action, but one 2 minute fight per episode is simply not enough. Once it’s all said and done, this will be a very forgettable series

  32. Maybe too mature for this HBO show,,, at 63 with ample studies in Anthropology and Warfare History,,, and the personal experience of my working profession Cardiologist,,, that make me face daily experience with suffering, death, fear and threat for survival,,, watching the show is not only the lack of action and fear,,, but is that it give me the feeling that this people act as if they are in a masquerade party,,,

  33. You’re the minority in your review. 99% agree the show is fantastic just like the game was. Did you watch the same thing we did? Lol.

    • I’m deeply fascinated by the horde of fanboys who feel the need to mock a negative review they don’t agree with, and somehow cite the fact that it’s in the minority as relevant.
      People like different things.

  34. I was wondering why the show is so rudimentary when it comes to storytelling and why the plot is so awkwardly conceived. Now I understand that it is not adapted from the game but follows it to a t. Two stars is the max this show should get.

  35. I played and finished both games. I really loved the first one and enjoyed the second one though I didn’t love it because the story moves away at times from Joel and Ellie. The relationship between the two is the main theme and what makes the game unforgettable in my opinion but their relationship is enhanced by the world they live in. And the world is brutal and full of infected and raiders. The fear factor is truly important because Joel and Ellie can die any time. I finished the show today and the whole season and the finale disappointed me. They gave a lot of time to secondary characters (longest episode is bill and Franck, and among the shortest are the last two episodes). They should have given David’s story that time in order to establish the trust and respect between him and Ellie that the game displayed while the show didn’t make much sense. More time should have also been given to the finale as it went so fast, I wish they had spent more time with the fireflies and tried to make the killings less anticlimactic as it seemed like a walk in the park for Joel while it wasn’t (for me at least) in the game. The sense of danger was felt when Ellie was born (thank you infected) but that’s it. Well, just to say that I agree with Pat when saying this show doesn’t live up to the game’s standards. Mostly because we didn’t spend enough time with Joel and Ellie and didn’t go through enough scary traumatic moments with them. We needed more clickers, bloaters and displays of how the cordyceps works in the show. I am disappointed in the season 1 but considering I didn’t enjoy tlou 2 as much, maybe I will find season 2 more rewarding.

  36. I was left feeling underwhelmed by the show (I’m familiar with the game), and you hit on some of the points why it felt underwhelming. The story is a little thin, is what it comes down to. At no point did the adaptation really surprise me compared to the videogame experience, maybe excepting episode 3. It feels like they should have expanded on things but they did not.

  37. This is a rather embarrassing review, it reminds me of Trump or Qanon supporters’ arguments.

    *Everyone else is wrong, and only I know the real truth.” Or maybe you were deliberately attempting to be the one bad review in order to get attention? I’m guessing yeah, at least it was a factor in this desperate attempt to come up with criticisms, which is painfully obvious and none of them sound genuine or even remotely significant.

    This is a TV show, not a game, so comparisons are meaningless and yet this review is nothing but that. On its own it is a brilliant piece of work, it is fresh and original, and the one off episodes make it stand out in this golden age of television drama. Nothing quite like it is on TV anywhere else.

  38. Stumbling onto this review about a year later, it’s pretty funny to see all of the comments come after you for “looking for attention” before even seeing the show, when in my opinion your words were proven pretty much exactly right. To me, the show ended up being just okay, but there’s a lot to dislike here and you pretty much nailed it.

    People always give the same lame defense of “Oh, you wanted to see Joel kill a trillion zombies/looking in drawers lol” but the thing is, there needs to actually be *something* to replace the role of the gameplay in the show and serve a similar narrative or atmospheric function, and there really isn’t. No real additional depth (outside of a good job in episode 3), no intensity, so all that’s left is just a semi-joyless, very dry speedrun of the game’s cutscenes, with a Joel and Ellie that we never really see or feel grow together. We’re just told that they do, and that they’re important to each other now. Turns out all that time they spent bonding during the gameplay outside of the cutscenes actually was important…

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