Unsurprisingly, Ep. 4 of The Last of Us gets real dark, real fast.
Meanwhile, Ellie and Joel have a pun time.
The Short Take:
Only on this show would last week’s episode have been a palette cleanser for the bleakness of this week’s. We’re off to the action suspense races as the series introduces a whole new milieu.
Image Credit: IndieWire
[SPOILER WARNING: If you have not yet seen this episode, keep on driving.]
The Long Take:
Going into this week’s episode, I did wonder: how were they going to top The Ballad of Bill and Frank? So many critics and podcasters called Episode 3 one of the single best episodes of television they’d ever seen. Wouldn’t that mean that Episode 4 would inevitably be a letdown?
While it’s true that Episode 4 can’t compare to Episode 3 as a self-contained story, it works really well as a complement to it. If I think about Episode 3 and 4 together, as a sequence, I recognize it as a lesson in smart television pacing and plotting. Episode 3 was the perfect bridge between the premise-establishing start to the show in Episodes 1 and 2 and this next arc in Kansas City. I don’t think we’ll stay here more than one or two more episodes, as the video game is what The Ringer’s Joanna Robinson calls a “road show” in which the protagonists travel around from city to city, meeting a different set of characters in each one. However, if we had gone from the tense running from building to building action of the first two episodes to the tense running from building to building action in this episode, many viewers may not have had the endurance for it.
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Oddly enough, the positivity and love of Bill and Frank’s story, however bittersweet, serves as a palette cleanser between these two darker legs of the series. Last week’s episode focused so much on hope and love and the best of human living in dark times. In stark contrast, Kansas City seems like the bottom of the barrel — the worst of humanity in a post apocalyptic world.
Just as Bill and Frank, against all odds, found each other and could trust each other for 20 years, we see here how the opposite just as easily could have been true; distrust and violence could have taken over. That, in fact, seems to be the main lesson Ellie learns this episode. When camping in the woods, she asks about the danger they’re in and Joel tells her that it’s not clickers they’re hiding from out there; it’s other people. Later, upon driving deeper into Kansas City, Ellie asks Joel how he knew the person they first encountered was just faking his injuries, and Joel responds by saying that he’s been on both sides of that situation. That he and his crew did what they had to in order to survive. That’s bleak.
Image Credit: Polygon
From conversations throughout this episode, I can surmise that factions have developed in Kansas City, with considerable infighting between Kathleen, the leader of the group that Joel and Ellie exchange fire with in the episode, and Henry, who, as far as we can tell, is on the run from Kathleen’s militia, along with his son, Sam. We see Kathleen interrogating someone, and, in the process, learn that — at least in Kathleen’s view — Henry ratted her brother out to FEDRA, which resulted in them beating him to death.
The utter tragedy here is that it seems like all these people were neighbors and friends before the world came crashing down. The doctor whom Kathleen so callously shoots after interrogating him pleadingly says that she delivered Kathleen as a baby and is (or was) her doctor. So to think of how twisted relationships from the before times can become is harrowing. I’m having a hard time pinpointing exactly why, but I’m getting a lot of ABC’s Lost vibes from this episode. Maybe it’s because these people who had normal lives before this catastrophic event disturbingly become ruthless in order to survive?
Image Credit: IndieWire
I feel like the casting of Melanie Lynskey as Kathleen works in a similar manner to Nick Offerman as Bill. I have a stereotype that I associate with her based on past roles. In Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up (2021), for example, she plays a mild-mannered suburban wife and mother. So to see her as this hardened, vengeful leader is extra terrifying because I fill in the blanks as to just how different she probably was before. Since it looks like Joel and Ellie are going to be with Henry and Sam next week, I’m looking forward to hearing both sides of the story and finding out what caused these neighbors to break from one another so tragically. And just how far off the deep end Kathleen has gone.
As much as Episodes 3 and 4 contrast, so too do they construct a rhyming scheme. Even though the relationship between Bill and Frank is romantic (that’s underselling it; I should say a love story for the ages) and the relationship between Joel and Ellie is a platonic, father daughter one, I see that the former’s bond echoes the way in which, in this episode, Ellie and Joel begin to bond and establish trust. Sure, Joel says she’s not family — only “cargo.” But his actions speak louder than his words, and the way he worries for Ellie’s safety — like when he frantically asks if she’s hurt or tells her to hide behind the wall — says otherwise.
There were so many great Joel and Ellie moments in this episode, but I’m going to shout-out the glorious series of puns. Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good (and by good I mean terrible) pun. I’m here for dad jokes all day. So Ellie’s frequent consultations of her pun book and the sheer delight she derives from trolling Joel with its jokes make me incredibly happy. The bit is also very functional as a storytelling device because each time Ellie tells a joke, she chips away at Joel’s icy exterior just a little bit more. There’s a big payoff of this at the end of the episode, when Joel rolls over to go to sleep and smiles after Ellie tells the scarecrow joke. Their shared laughter was so sweet and genuine. It was almost as if they were having a slumber party as opposed to hiding out from zombies and marauders.
Paralleling the juxtaposition of Bill and Frank’s love with Kathleen and Henry’s hate, Joel and Ellie’s experience in this episode illustrates the flashing emotional contrasts of life. That even when we grieve and carry the burden of suffering and tragedy, we must also find those smaller moments of joy and happiness as a reprieve. And, conversely, times of joy and happiness can wither and turn to ash in the blink of an eye. The series staged this contrast in the final scenes of the episode, when Joel goes to sleep smiling and giggling only to later open his eyes and find Ellie being held at gun point. (I knew that comment about his hearing was foreshadowing something, no matter how clever the glass trick is.)
What does next week have in store? Will Joel and Ellie convince Henry and Sam that they are better as allies than enemies?
Perhaps, if the two pairs can realize just how much they have in common. I thought that the amount of time the camera lingered on Sam’s superhero drawings added a meaningful layer to Joel coming to terms with Ellie having to be more grown up than she should be by this age. He’s been trying to shield her from the world, whether it’s a mass grave, guns, or even a pornographic magazine. But in this episode, after she saves his life with the gun he didn’t know she had, he realizes that it’s actually safer for Ellie if he accepts reality and teaches her how to use a gun properly, rather than staying in denial about being able to cover her eyes and protect her innocence.
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Based on what little we’ve seen of Henry and Sam, it seems as though they could serve as a mirror for Joel and Ellie in terms of how a parent/child relationship must adapt in this new world. Do the superhero drawings and the mask on Sam’s face indicate that Sam has created this superhero metaphor to cope with the horrors? Or has his father, Henry, tried to, like Joel, shield Sam from those horrors by pretending it’s all a game, a la Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful (1997)?
We’re way past where I’ve played in the game, so I’m just as blind as non-game playing viewers now. Anyone know what the deal with that undulating crater is? *shivers*