#I forgot to include my feelings about the “cure” situation with the fireflies

[thesoulofasurvivor]

The Last of Us Episode 9 FINALE + season review

this entire post is of strictly my personal opinions only, just a disclaimer. I only speak for myself. Another very entertaining episode, there are many scenes that hold so true to the game and those scenes I appreciate.

But I gotta be honest. I'd be lying if I gave Season 1 more than at best a 6/10 rating.

SPOILERS BENEATH THE CUT!! long post warning ahead

Episode 9: we get the giraffe scene, it's very lovely and so goddamn sweet. I love the interactions we finally get between Ellie and Joel, just pure Ellie and Joel content finally, just the two of them with nothing interrupting, plus, we got to see Ellie's mom; it was so great to see Ashley on screen! And wow, they actually blessed us with one single infected. But again... Boy was this ever ridiculously rushed. They spent $500,000 on making a bloater suit and used it once for 3 minutes. Ellie is telling jokes and bam so suddenly the screen goes black and they're already in the hospital. It just happened so goddamn fast I could physically feel the rushing time limit of the episode that was only 42 minutes. Don't lie to yourself. It says 44 minutes but we all know that intro sequence is at least a minute and a half long lol 😂 even my mom was like ?? oh uh, okay... everybody is dead okay, show over. Even SHE acknowledged how rushed this was. The hospital scene was, despite my criticism, done well, it was great. They ended the show how they ended the game, I believe that was beautiful! Though I do admit, I wish we got a glimpse of Abby mourning her father to give the audience that feeling of, "omg, what's going to happen next?"

I support Joel's decision. I don't care what anybody says. The Fireflies wanted to murder a 14 year old child for an "I think," they wanted to kill her thinking they could make a cure from ONE try at it? Nah. That's not how it works. There are many ways an intelligent doctor could have gone about it to keep her alive while running tests and experiments. Vaccines and cures and shit aren't made from ONE try. Killing the person with the antibodies you want is literally so dumb and no one can ever convince me otherwise. #TeamJoel. I love you Marlene but oof. They literally said it's like... Cells or some shit. They can just extract the stuff without killing her. I dunno, I just think it's dumb.

Anyways, I am not going to say anything more about tonight's episode. Why did I rate the show 6/10? I don't hate it, I don't think it's terrible or bad. But I do feel very disappointed and like it was severely lacking. It could have been so much more, clearly, because what we did get is in fact absolutely amazing.

Their biggest enemy is time. They rushed it, and they rushed it badly. They cut corners, they basically strictly took cutscenes from the game and that was the show, which I personally believe is just... Lazy. The story is more than just the game's cutscenes. We get so much wholesome content that happens during the gameplay. Like Ellie's admittance to a fear / dislike of fairies!

The acting? Goddamn, flawless, the actors' performances were amazing and nobody fell short. The visuals? The scenery? The infected? Absolutely gorgeous, breathtaking. They DO stay true to the game for so much of the show, some things they executed better than the game, the music, the audios, it's all so well done.

But the rushing really brings it down for me. They rushed it just far too much, and they made the world so safe it barely feels like a "zombie" apocalypse (and I say "zombie" loosely because the infected aren't such). Joel and Ellie travel hundreds of miles and... I guess just, barely any trouble whatsoever. Marlene asking how they travelled "all this way" and making it sound like some big feat? Really wasn't earned in the show in my opinion as it was in the game. Of course they made it all that way, there was very little trouble along the way.

The infected feel very unimportant. I'm left asking... What's the point of Ellie's immunity? What's the point in the Fireflies quest to find a "cure" ?? The infected aren't really much of a threat, it seems pretty easy to avoid them altogether. I've seen people calling The Last of Us an apocalypse that would be relatively easy to survive based on the show due to the fact that you just rarely ever seem to encounter infected or other hostile survivors.

And yes I can understand they seem to have made the infected "more dangerous" and they don't want to "flood every episode with infected," but there's a difference between overdoing it and... Just having zero infected altogether. If you search up, they say over 60% of the population is either dead or infected... Well in the show it seems like they're just all dead rather than infected.

They changed the lore of the game, they changed it completely, and then did absolutely nothing with the new lore. I still honestly barely know anything about the new lore because they really didn't show us anything about it. Not once, NOT ONCE, did we see any character enter a building or any location with the living fungus tendrils where they have to avoid touching it or whatever.

The show is just far too rushed for me to give it anything more than a 6/10. They seriously missed a lot, they cut way too many corners and they made the world seem too safe, and in my opinion, they reduced the threat levels of the infected. Who cares if they are more "crazy" if you barely ever see them?

I really enjoyed it, it was entertaining and it was nice to have those moments of pointing at the screen and going "omg that's from the game!" and if they release it on dvd, guess what? I'm buying it. But it was rushed. Too many cut corners. World is too safe. They went from one extreme to the other; too many infected to practically zero infected... There is infact this thing called middle ground, but I personally feel they just skipped to the extreme of practically zero and that was that.

I absolutely do recommend the show. But... Do I recommend it over just watching the game on youtube? Probably not... If someone said, hey I wanna know the story but I will only watch the show or watch the game on youtube, what one do I watch? I'd tell them to watch the game on youtube, and then if they love it enough, THEN watch the show.

Thank you to everybody who actually reads these! Again, all of this is personal opinion of me myself and I, I speak for nobody but myself.