I agree with all these criticisms of the show, I just think that the payoff of the relationship development between Joel and Ellie is “worth it”. I can forgive a show for it’s imperfections or even utterly implausible plot contrivances if there is a payoff. I personally got enough out of the relationship aspects to justify the other weaknesses in the show.
I wonder if this show resonates a lot with dog owners, especially men? The relationship between Joel and Ellie echoes my relationship with my perfect dog so much it’s kind of funny. I haven’t had to escort her through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but I would definitely shoot a stupid doctor in the head if he was going to hurt her. The Joel/Ellie relationship and the unlocking of Joel’s humanity can be read as one big “dad didn’t want to get a dog now look at this adorable picture of them” meme.
Yeah I can definitely see that and I think my biggest problem is I didn’t find Ramsey’s performance as Ellie very good. So I never really bought into Joel and Ellie’s relationship I guess. Which then probably led into me not being willing to suspend disbelief or set the implausibility and absurdities aside.
I guess that’s maybe what was unlocked, but if so then it’s the unlocking of his humanity that causes him to possibly doom the human race. We have no idea if the Firefly doctor’s plan to get the cure/vaccine/whatever from Ellie’s brain was likely to be successful, but I get the idea the show wanted us to believe it would be. Alternate take: Joel has PTSD, which is certainly understandable. But saving Ellie, while an act of love, is also extremely selfish.
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Given that the Pedo rebels were lead by a bible thumper they don’t seem to fit the typical libertarian mold. I think we’ll see more libertarians in S2.
I agree with others that the pacing of this episode was off. When I saw that there was only one episode left I was like “wat”. It’s a lot to cram into one episode in a show that has generally had relaxed pacing.
Yeah the story leaves it up to you to judge (and the ending scenes are an exact copy of the game cutscene here) but I think this is supposed to be the take. I like the way that it’s him talking about Sarah and Ellie and whether they’d have gotten along that prompts Ellie’s uneasiness about what exactly took place.
What is addressed here is the distinction between true love, which is selflessness, and “love” as emotional dependence. It’s too kind to Joel to say that he is experiencing some kind of renaissance of humanity. What has actually happened is that his personal emotional needs with regard to Ellie have changed. Marlene is probably correct that Ellie would choose to sacrifice herself for the good of humanity, although of course she doesn’t offer Ellie that choice either. That Joel denies that choice to Ellie demonstrates that his actions in protecting her aren’t really motivated by her welfare. It’s about his welfare.
I think this is true AND its also true that the events of the show unlock Joel’s humanity. That doesn’t mean he has become an objectively perfect or even good person, but he clearly finds a sense of purpose.
Even though I played the game, got a quesy feeling by Joel rampaging to save someone who probably didn’t want to be saved. Arguably Marlene could have just lied when she said Ellie agreed to be operated on, but even so. Whatever humanity was unlocked was definitely lessened after killing 15-20 people and possibly dooming humankind to get Ellie back. ETA: ChrisV said it better.
My nurse wife thought it seemed implausible that they couldn’t just get anti-bodies from her blood, but admittedly that’s way beyond her field - anyone more knowledgeable got any ideas about the legitimacy of the operation?
I agree with the sense of purpose, but strongly disagree with the unlocking his humanity - I thought if anything the last episode showed he had lost any humanity and that he was using his purpose of keeping Ellie safe as the only thing keeping him going.
In particular when he kills the Firefly that surrenders and then kills the doctor. I can accept killing the Firefly leader since he’s right that she’ll come after him, but there was no reason to kill those other two, other than Joel doesn’t care about anyone other than Ellie. This wasn’t like the previous episode where he murdered the two cannibals he captured, these weren’t bad people he was killing.
I thought the point was to show that Joel has come full circle - he lost his real daughter because at that point he did have some humanity and didn’t kill the soldier on the spot, and so the only way to save Ellie was to drop any remnants of his humanity. At least when Joel talked about his prior bad acts he seems to have some regret, but here at the end of the episode, I didn’t get any of that, just a man with a purpose and he didn’t care what he had to do to achieve it.
I think it also ties in to him lying to Ellie - he’s not doing that for her protection or good, but because he knows if he tells her, she might choose to sacrifice herself.
Season 2 TLOU likely spoilers ahead. Probably don’t read if you havent played the second game.
Are they really going to have the balls to kill off one of the hottest actors in the world in the first couple episodes, or do you think there is a plan to somehow keep him in the story and alter the game story mightily to do so?
PLEASE don’t read if you haven’t played the second game. Seriously. I mean it.
The second game was not told linearly, so I think they will probably find a way to tell the story in a way that keeps Joel alive until the final episode of season 2, for example, and I don’t think it would be a big stretch, either.
Also, they could go the route of starting season 2 of the show sometime in the 5 years that were skipped by the games and tell some back story.
The adults on both sides of the final conflict infuriated me, both when I played and when I watched. Just completely denying Ellie her own agency.
Of course, had Marlene just waited five fucking minutes, let Joel and Ellie say goodbye, and given Ellie a choice, there’d probably not BE a final conflict. Then again, would Ellie really be in a strong enough place (mentally and emotionally) to make a well-informed, rational decision? I don’t think so.
The reason the game and show hit so hard is because of all these questions, which is why it’s so great.
I agree that Marlene showing up suddenly at the end and the hand waiving how she got there was pretty dumb. Also I think it’s pretty dumb that they would go right into life threatening sugery so fast. I kind of feel like Joel is sort of right to start killing at bunch of idiots. It’s been the apocalypse for 20 years or whatever so you might want to take your time and not fuck up the potential cure for humanity. Other than that the TLOU is great.
TLOU part 2 spoiler
I hated the second game. Both quests should be nearly impossible in an apocalyptic world (more impossible than the events in part 1 IMO) and Joel and Ellie should at a minimum be changing their names after the events of part 1. Finding them should not be easy at all. I hope they make changes from the game in the second season.
I think that’s all fair but like I said before, to me his “humanity”, like all our humanity, includes the flaws. Even his “inhuman” acts of violence are understandable even if they are logically not forgivable. This is the nature of well rounded character development, IMO, and doesn’t bug me. Although I understand and appreciate the other view.
I happened to mention the other day in this thread that I am in the minority of people that don’t like The Shield. And the main reason I don’t like that show is that I just think Mackey is an asshole. He’s not really an anti-hero in my mind, he’s just an awful person. Joel better fits my idea of an anti-hero, he is capable of terrible violence but because we see all the way back to the roots of his trauma his rage and depression and emotional unavailability are all understandable. It makes more sense to cheer for Joel to recapture a part of him that he lost when his daughter died than it does to cheer for Mackey to murder another drug dealer, even if you want to try to reason around that Joel’s choices ultimately are unjustified and Mackey’s are arguably justified because, hey, he’s killing Bad Guys.
I think of all the people I’ve chatted with about the show, I have the least favorable view of the Fireflies. I truly believe that viewers come in conditioned by the pop culture to rally behind the rebels opposing the “oppressive” regime, but it’s not at all clear to me from what we see in the show that Boston FEDRA is actually this terrible evil empire that must be torn down with terrorism/freedom fighters. And Marlene’s actions in the last episode reinforce this view for me, the callous drugging of a child with the intent of ending her life for the “the greater good” doesn’t scream Hero to me. By the end of the show she is feeling more like a pre-Kathleen to me, with the very real possibility of rallying around the supposed “cure” to establish her own little fiefdom as the one who controls the cure. One of the major themes of the show is the danger of a power vacuum, I am not at all convinced that Marlene, with her recklessness and self righteousness, is just somehow guaranteed to erect a model society from which humanity can be rebirthed.
