The Last of Us Episode 3: What.

Episode 3 of The Last of Us on HBO is well past parody. It may even be a joke.

Over the last two weeks, I've explained why The Last of Us on HBO has failed to capture the characters from The Last of Us on PlayStation 3. I criticized the presentation of the world, writing that Mazin didn't understand the thematic core of the source material. I spent thousands of words articulating my criticism into coherent theses, to make clear why I thought the first two episodes were bad, and why I thought the series wouldn't work going forward.

Now it’s time to get to the fucking point.

What is this shit?

Episode 3 is supposed to be an adaptation of Bill's Town from the game. Bill's Town is one of the most memorable levels in The Last of Us, with an extraordinarily well-realized supporting character, tons of great locations, and two of the franchise's most iconic set pieces: the upside-down trap sequence and the attack of the bloater. Some changes would need to be made to mitigate the video gamey structure, but an excellent 60-90 minute long episode of a TV horror-action thriller could have been adapted directly from the source material.

Instead, the source material was not used at all. Bill and Joel never even meet. In this version of the story, we receive nothing except flashbacks of Bill with his lover Frank. It seems that after hiding away while his town was evacuated, the prepper Bill secured a suburban neighborhood from all threats. He has everything there: infinite electricity, hot water, plentiful gardens, and meat with every meal. A few years into this affair he meets a man, and the two develop a pure, flawless, perfect relationship in this idyllic utopia. They eat strawberries together and drink wine! There's no conflict whatsoever, except for one brief encounter with syphilitic raiders who kill themselves by--literally--running head-first into flamethrowers, and one random infected who walks into a trap.

Frank and Bill grow old together. Then they kill themselves. The end.

That's the episode.

Conveniently, Joel and Ellie encounter their festering corpses, pick everything over, and get a car, a bunch of new guns, and a complete resupply, all after no conflict whatsoever.

In the game, you had to fight countless infected AND a bloater for that car. Here? The keys are just lying on the ground! They're right there!

I was told that The Last of Us was the most faithful video game adaptation ever. That was a lie. Clearly Craig Mazin wanted to tell his own version of the story. That makes cataloguing the countless ways in which his version is inferior pointless. I spent my last two reviews complaining about how things were different for no reason, and there is clearly no point anymore. Instead I’ll say this:

Nick Offerman played an interesting Bill. An episode like this, focusing on love in the post-apocalypse, could have been good. There is more to like in this episode than in either of the previous two, because at least Offerman can act (unlike Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey). There is the seed of an interesting idea on display.

But Mazin utterly and completely fucked it up by having the violent zombie apocalypse be nothing more than a peaceful suburban neighborhood. There is no sense of danger anywhere in this episode. The one brief fight scene makes no sense and comes to nothing. The video game that this is based on is clearly part of Mad Max’s lineage. You would never, ever have guessed that from what Mazin wrote. You could take this plot out of its context and smack it down in the middle of modern America and nothing would change. No thought whatsoever has gone into the setting of this series. Where do the supplies come from? How do they keep everything repaired? How could two people do all of this?

Mazin does not care.

This isn't The Last of Us. It's also not a post-apocalypse. It's certainly not a zombie show. In tone this episode feels like a romantic comedy; it has so little to do with the bizarre psychic fungus of last week that it's almost impossible to comprehend that someone thought that they should go together. I can’t believe anyone is okay with this.

While I didn't hate Episode 3 like I hated Episode 2, I was still bored out of my mind. It's colossally drawn out; every scene could cut away minutes before it eventually does. There is no conflict at all. The dialogue is cliched, and the characters are models of functionality. Bill is tough, right-wing, and closeted: he is the husband. Frank is the girly one who likes clothes and interior design: he's the wife. Mazin even went so far as to have the women, Tess and Frank, get along in a flashback, while the men, Joel and Bill, make snide remarks on the side. This is the caliber of writing that wins critical acclaim?

I can envision this episode in my head. It actually takes place in an apocalypse. There are infected everywhere. Survival is exhausting. They put in long hours. It looks less like Queer Eye and more like Little House on the Prairie. Eventually the two men develop a physical relationship.

Instead, we got Queer Eye.

Doesn't that house just scream post-apocalypse to you?

Then, of course, they commit suicide together, because gay love is extra pure, and it’s more tragic when they die compared to someone like Tess. This is, of course, another cliche, and the perpetuation of the "bury your gays" trope.

The bottom line is that Episode 3 is a cop-out. Mazin needed Joel to get his car, and he didn’t want to film or write the complicated action from the game. He decided that the protagonists could just inherit the car instead. An entire episode, eleven percent of the whole series, is devoted to flashbacks that our protagonists get literally no insight into whatsoever, just to explain how they got their free car.

Let me restate this: ELEVEN PERCENT of this series is wasted on flashbacks that come to nothing, because Bill and Frank NEVER MEET JOEL AND ELLIE ANYWAY.

Once more:

THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS HOUR-LONG DIVERSION WAS JUST TO EXPLAIN AWAY HOW JOEL GOT HIS CAR.

I see through you, Craig. You aren’t fooling me.

Anyway, my reviews end here. I may write up a review on the final episode, if I make it that far, but there’s nothing more to say on HBO’s The Last of Us. It is phoned-in and cliche-riddled, and it’s not The Last of Us. And while it might be fun to analyze something that's really bad, it isn't that much fun to analyze something lazy and boring. It isn't worth the time.