The Last of Us: TV Review - Zombie Video Game as Prestige TV Zombie
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An uneven show that feels like prestige tv fool’s gold.
HBO’s latest prestige tv series, The Last of Us, is a strange one.
The series, which premiered in mid-January and recently ended its first season, follows the trials and tribulations of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his teenage ward Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as they navigate the perils of a post-apocalyptic, fascist America under siege by fungus-fueled zombies. Considering that description it should come as no surprise that the series is based on a 2013 video game of the same-name.
It seems a bit of an odd choice to make a prestige tv series based on a video game, but thanks to the hard work of HBOs savvy marketing department, the show was well-received by critics and generated a modicum of cultural chatter, no small feat in our scattered entertainment era.
Full disclosure, I’ve never played the video game The Last of Us and in fact had never even heard of it until the tv show came along. This lack of knowledge left me unencumbered by the source material and able to judge the series solely on its value as a tv show not as an extension of the video game.
My thoughts on the series are that…it is…despite some great moments, overall sort of underwhelming. The show is very uneven, as it’s at-times extremely compelling, but also often dull and aggravating. It’s also one of those rather annoyingly trite shows that poses as elevated but is really rather philosophically vacuous and politically vapid.
The first season runs nine episodes and the first episode is easily the best of the bunch. The drama of a civilization instantly crumbling due to a quickly expanding pandemic – a fungus spreading across the globe which turns its victims into zombie extensions of itself, is fantastic and eerily reminiscent of the real-world’s recent tumult. The flashbacks in episode two of how the pandemic started are equally captivating and may have been my favorite part of the series.
Another solid sequence is in episode four and five when Joel and Ellie meet up with a pair of brothers in Kansas City. The four of them must avoid not just zombies but blood thirsty locals. The conclusion of this particular adventure is phenomenal.
The problem though is that the show often feels like…well…a video game. The set ups for most of the adventures feel painfully contrived and uncomfortably like a sequence from a rather simple video game.
The series also has trouble with pacing and with generating and keeping dramatic momentum. For every episode like one, two, four and five where you’re fully invested, the show also has episodes, like three and seven where everything slows down to a crawl and we get stuck in the muck and mire of inconsequential characters and their flaccid non-drama.
It really is purely coincidental that the focus of the drama in episodes three and seven revolves around characters being gay. Even if these characters were as straight as arrows their stories simply wouldn’t be that interesting. Although it must be said that HBO injecting a heavy dose of cultural politics into a story that doesn’t need it is not the least bit surprising in our current hyper-political age. In addition, considering the paucity of people we get to know and spend time with in the series, that close to half of them are gay is sort of hysterical in an absurd way. To quote Kurt Cobain, “what else can I say, everyone is gay!”
The later episodes encapsulate the overall issues with the show as they seem both dramatically lethargic and narratively unfocused. In these last few episodes, a survivalist, charismatic Christian cult comes to the fore and considering the other cultural politics of the show it will not surprise you to learn that they are the most-evil people imaginable.
Despite the first season being much too slow at times, it also somehow manages to feel uncomfortably rushed at its conclusion. It also doesn’t help that the series and its violence become less based in reality in terms of its action as the season progresses, culminating in a rather bizarre 1980s action-movie climax.
The acting in The Last of Us is like the rest of the show, not particularly great. I genuinely like Pedro Pascal and find him to be a pleasing screen presence, and he does solid work as the tortured tough guy Joel, but he’s never really asked to do too much heavy lifting.
Bella Ramsey as Ellie is like nails on a chalkboard. Ramsey is a very unappealing screen presence and she feels completely phony as the struggling teen. Ramsey’s cadence and speech are so odd as to be grating and her entire performance rings very hollow to me.
Melanie Lynskey, an actress I very much like, is terribly miscast in a supporting role as a revolutionary leader fueled by bloodlust and revenge. Unfortunately, Lynskey is so unbelievable in the role as to be ridiculous and it scuttles what is one of the more intriguing storylines.
As for the special effects, the zombies do look pretty cool, and the actors portraying them do a terrific job of being creepy as hell.
On the whole though watching the first season of The Last of Us, despite its occasional high points, felt like a bit of a chore. Maybe I would feel differently if I was familiar with the video-game. Who knows?
In terms of just being a tv series, The Last of Us seems like one of those prestige shows that, like HBO’s Westworld, run out of creativity, lose the plot, lose their audience, and then are quickly tossed down the cultural memory hole never to be thought of again.
Considering The Last of Us seems to have already lost its creative steam (around episode six), I’d guess season two will see a precipitous decline in both audience engagement and critical adoration. It seems to me this prestige drama is a mindless zombie ultimately not long for this world.
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