Do you know how to siphon gas? Dress a wound? Use a paper map? The single greatest merit of The Last Of Us is that it does exactly what any good dystopian narrative should: reminds us of how reliant we are on modern infrastructure. Though it’s tempting to tell myself that I’d do great in a zombie apocalypse, moments like small-town social outcast Bill’s doomsday preparation montage put in perspective how screwed I would really be.
For a show about a zombie apocalypse, though, there are surprisingly few zombies in The Last of Us; though the zombie threat is constant, the zombies rarely appear on screen. In part, this is a necessary move on the part of the producers attempting to transform a video game into a show. Much of the game consists of the player attempting to sneak past or kill zombies. It’s hard to imagine ten-odd hours of that translating into a convincing television series. Instead, producers focus on the state of human interaction after the apocalypse. This emphasis is most successful in the third episode, dedicated to Bill and his lover Frank, which offers a genuinely heartfelt (if melodramatic) exploration of what it means to care for someone in a world where death is always at hand.
The Last of Us slips when it attempts to illuminate the rift between pre and post-apocalyptic society with painfully on-the-nose dialogue. One or two conversations between Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) about Life Before the Zombies would have sufficed. Since the show is limited by Joel’s reticence to reveal any personal information, these moments quickly become banal. The repetitiousness is most egregious, however, in the show’s ongoing project of girlbossifying Ellie through her use of curse words. In the sixth episode alone, we get a whopping 12 variants of “fuck” from the teenage world-saver. She’s so crazy! Joel can’t take her anywhere! We get it.
Part of the show’s problem is that none of the characters besides Joel and Ellie last more than two episodes. The short-lived nature of their interactions as they travel to seek refuge in Wyoming is, of course, a function of the apocalypse, but it would have been nice to see at least one out of the laundry list of minor characters (Tess, Henry, Sam, Bill, Frank, etc.) live long enough to develop in any meaningful way.
Still, the laser-focus on the two main characters has ensured viewers are deeply invested in The Last of Us’s portrayal of a father-daughter relationship. Despite Joel’s best efforts to maintain his gruff, violent persona, Ellie cracks his hard shell a little more with every episode. If the show’s script writer, to use Ellie’s words, can figure out “where the fuck I’m going, what the fuck I’m going to do,” we might just have a bona fide zombie classic on our hands.
