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 seemingly didn't understand the thematic core of the source material. I spent thousands of words and at least a dozen hours articulating these into coherent theses, to make it clear why I thought the first two episodes were bad, and why I thought the series wouldn't work going forward.

We're done with that shit now. The train is off the rails. 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, to be sure, but for the most part an excellent 60-90 minute long episode of a TV horror-action thriller could be made as a direct adaptation of the source material.

Instead, Bill and Joel never meet. Instead, the entire episode is devoted to flashbacks between Bill and his lover Frank. 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, meat with every meal, etc. 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. Frank then starts dying of AIDS, or something. So they both kill themselves. The end.

That's the episode.

Conveniently, Joel and Ellie encounter their two 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! Storytelling!

I have no idea what to make of this episode. I was told that this was the most faithful video game adaptation ever. That was a lie. At this point, after Episode 3, I can say with confidence that The Last of Us on HBO has nothing more to do with The Last of Us than Halo had to do with Halo: Combat Evolved. But, of course, if I point this out, I'm going to be hounded because, "The writers just want to do their own thing! Enjoy it for what it is!"

So what is it? Is this an adaptation, or is it "its own thing?"

Clearly the answer is the latter. This series is the PS3 game in the same sense that Total Recall is the Philip K. Dick story: it isn't. For that reason I won't bother exhaustively analyzing the original game, comparing thematic points, making notes about the performances, discussing what Bill means as a warning for Joel in the story--it's just not worth it. There's no point. 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 done well. Overall there is more to like in this episode than in either of the previous two, mostly re: performances. I think there is a seed of an interesting idea here. But Mazin utterly and completely fucked it up by having the violent zombie apocalypse be instead nothing more than a peaceful suburban neighborhood. There is no sense of danger, there are no Max Max-like undertones, the one brief fight scene makes no sense and ultimately comes to nothing--you can take this plot out of its context and smack it down in the middle of modern America and nothing would change. Even The Walking Dead, which I fucking hated at the time, did a better job of capturing the apocalypse. No effort whatsoever has gone into the setting of this series. No thought, no time, no care.

This isn't The Last of Us. It's also not a post-apocalypse. It's certainly not a zombie show. Tonally this episode felt like a romantic comedy; it had so little to do with the bizarre Dead Space-esq psychic fungus of last week that it's almost impossible to comprehend that someone thought they should go together.

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. To make this work there needed to be a lot more violence and a lot more strife between the main characters. Instead it's sappy romance through-and-through, and it's not even good. The dialogue is cliched and the characters are models of functionality, to the point of triteness; one, Bill, is the tough, closeted homosexual--he is the husband. The other, Frank, is the girly one who likes clothes and interior design; he's the wife. They even go so far as to have Tess and Frank get along in a flashback, while the men--Joel and Bill--make snide remarks on the side.

It's just absurd. 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 characters develop a relationship.

Instead, we got Queer Eye.

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

As for them killing themselves at the end, it's such trite bullshit. Gay love is pure, you see, so it's extra sad when homosexuals commit suicide. The ironic thing is that by killing Bill off, Neil and Craig are perpetuating the "bury your gays" trope. All the gay people AND all the black people die in The Last of Us! Shit, when Reilly dies--that's two for one! Is someone keeping score here?

But the bottom line is that Episode 3 is really just a cop-out. Mazin didn't want to splurge on complicated action and, for some reason, doesn't understand that violence is the entire point of a post-apocalypse. He needed Joel to get a car, so he had him inherit one. Rather than work these new story elements in through conflict and character development--as the game does--the writers wasted an hour on a set of pointless, conflict free flashbacks, all of which eventually come to nothing, BECAUSE BILL AND FRANK NEVER MEET JOEL ANYWAY.

Once more:

THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE GAY LOVE STORY WAS JUST TO EXPLAIN AWAY HOW JOEL GOT HIS CAR. THAT'S IT. I SEE THROUGH YOU, NEIL AND CRAIG. YOU AREN'T FOOLING ME.

Anyway, Episode 3, like the rest of the series, is full-blown AIDS. No wonder it killed Frank, that shit is infecting everything. My reviews end here. I'll probably continue through and write up a final recap on the last episode, if I make it that far, but there's nothing more to say on the series. It's dull, it's cliched, it's lazy, 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 really lazy and boring. It just isn't worth the time. No one will remember this garbage by next year.