While 'Long Long Time'’s appeals to emotion may have hit home for some, the episode’s overall writing fails to adequately support its unoriginal and saccharine plot.
Wow. TLOU2 was one big (poorly written) fanfiction.
And it seems that the same goes for the show.
I'm starting to think that Druckmann simply dislikes the OG game because of the changes that needed to be applied to his first draft (that included the infamous Tess revenge story line or Joel being instantly attached to Ellie) in order for the story to actually work.
But maybe I just don't have enough IQ points to get the genius here. :P
I actually quite like the basic premise of tlou2, though its execution and in particular the ending leaves... a LOT to be desired. that's a whole different essay though. thank you for commenting!
Your analysis (and Kins comment on cottagecore) went over everything perfectly.
It's just such a shockingly surface level episode! It's got me so annoyed that they really could've had their cake and ate it with the more appropriate game characterisations. Where Bill, who although a libertarian with no social attachments, actually took for granted the passive enrichment he got just from living surrounded by people and is (suprise, suprise) lonely in the Actual Apocalypse. Frank, who goes for someone so opposite to him because, well yeah who else do you pick, but of course so desperately wants to reach out and help other people, not just convene with Bill's asshole smuggler "friends". You could even un-bury the gays and have Joel and Ellie arrive before he leaves (I mean what would even bite him in Bill's miraculously evacuated town), hell, have him beg them to take him with them to the Fireflies so he could actually help people!
Sigh. Don't know how you have the strength to slog through these episodes, I'm treating this as my series finale and just living vicariously through these posts from now on...
Again, never watched the show or played the game, but it's the (especially white, especially American, very white-collar) idea of a cottagecore paradise, right? Which (whether or not you believe it's colonialist) is ultimately unrealistic. Subsistence farming isn't strawberries and chickens so much as it's backbreaking labour, and it would be worse in the middle of the zombie apocalypse where you barely even have enough land to rotate your crops. The white collar idea of manual labour as something easier and more restful than their current lives studying or working service jobs. And once they've built their false paradise, not using it to help people literally running for their lives out there, just to support themselves - individualism taken to selfishness.
Also this made me laugh: 'It’s got the emotional depth of a Pinterest board, the range of a character playlist. It assembles aesthetic signatures, tropes, and tracks its audience already associates with romance and emotion and hurls them at us with the grace and subtlety of a bowling ball in an attempt to make us sob. '
This was significantly better written than the episode tbh. I absolutely hated the episode and went online assuming others would have similar criticisms and found nothing but frothing-at-the-mouth praise and I have felt slightly insane ever since. Not a single part of this episode worked for me in anyway. It was exactly as you said, shallow and surface level in every way, but the endless praise left me feeling doubt over my own experience. I literally wrote my M.A. thesis on the last of us and was willing to let my criticisms of the first 2 episodes go, because sometimes it takes a bit for a show to hit it's stride, but episode 3 stripped me of any faith I had. So I sit here, astonished at the people who loved it and thought it was brilliant and very much appreciating your thorough, insightful commentary. My only criticism is that I've read MUCH better written fanfic than this episode :P
I admit I enjoyed the first two episodes well enough, but this one really lost me. Ellie telling Joel not to take his anger out on her, and Joel just going 'yeah, fair enough'? Ellie stone-cold cutting and stabbing an Infected in painfully obvious foreshadowing for her future darkness, instead of spending adequate time exploring who she was before it got a hold on her? Wasn't loving it.
And the romance - your point about feeling grossly manipulated by the narrative (and gaslighted by the collective response to it) is just. So true. Any chance I had of feeling compelled by their beautiful love fell through the second I found myself unable to believe in Frank as a person. The man's the last survivor of 10 travellers, he's spent four years navigating the collapse of civilisation, he... immediately flirts with the first guy to trap him in a hole? I'd have been much more into their connection if this was a deliberate, desperate scheme that evolved into something genuine over time. As it is I just don't grok this man as a rational human being, let alone someone who'd appeal to Bill. He's a shallow ideal.
And yeah. Not at all impressed with them loading Bill up with "New World Order" conspiracies and doing NOTHING to explore what that realistically does to a person. How wonderful of life to reward him with steak and true love through no particular effort on his part, I guess.
Anyway, thanks for the blog and the salt, very cathartic and yummy haha.
i love your idea of their connection be a desperate scheme that eventually evolved into something real! i think that could have been so compelling. thanks for commenting!
great article ❗❗ as a disabled person its genuinley crazy that they can get away with this. the amount of posts ive seen on tumblr (on my algorothm reccomended for you page, NOT my trusted mutuals...) praising it to the moon and back and i didnt even KNOW he was disabled... and thats why they killed themselves bc of a disease that wasnt even like, terminal... What a disaster!! its simply cruel all around. they did not even have to die. God. Love this analysis, cant say more because it has already been said right here...
it really is pretty crazy!! seeing even commentators i respect post about how amazing the episode was and feeling gaslit like.. am i really crazy? is this good and i'm just a hater? but no.
thought of something else. Sorry. as a massive fan of gay divirce and gay animosity and just people being cunts in general the continuous decisions to sanitize people in a series based on a game that has such an overwhelmingly cynical and hostile outlook is so baffling. like the show cant trust the general non gaming public to like a character who was so beloved despite how bad he was as a person (i mean, in general, obviously its a grey area and stuff but the show clearly thinks joel was a bad person in the game..) that they fully refused to accept the sequel on any level because he gets brutally murdered in the opening is So. interesting.
loved ur first essay!! my friend (not a last of us player but enjoyer of media criticism) and i (assured tlou2 hater and lukewarm hater of tlou1, but ellie fan as one has to be when living in this society) read it and talked about it for hours. so thorough!! but i still had a stupid hope that like well... Maybe the sanitization will end... um. yeah. it just gets so much worse !! idk if you will write these for every episode but if you do i will be reading them all so delighted
ahh it makes me so happy to hear you enjoyed it/talked about it!! yeah i doubt we're getting out of here at this point.. if there continues to be things to talk about i will surely talk about them :)
Wow. TLOU2 was one big (poorly written) fanfiction.
And it seems that the same goes for the show.
I'm starting to think that Druckmann simply dislikes the OG game because of the changes that needed to be applied to his first draft (that included the infamous Tess revenge story line or Joel being instantly attached to Ellie) in order for the story to actually work.
But maybe I just don't have enough IQ points to get the genius here. :P
I actually quite like the basic premise of tlou2, though its execution and in particular the ending leaves... a LOT to be desired. that's a whole different essay though. thank you for commenting!
Your analysis (and Kins comment on cottagecore) went over everything perfectly.
It's just such a shockingly surface level episode! It's got me so annoyed that they really could've had their cake and ate it with the more appropriate game characterisations. Where Bill, who although a libertarian with no social attachments, actually took for granted the passive enrichment he got just from living surrounded by people and is (suprise, suprise) lonely in the Actual Apocalypse. Frank, who goes for someone so opposite to him because, well yeah who else do you pick, but of course so desperately wants to reach out and help other people, not just convene with Bill's asshole smuggler "friends". You could even un-bury the gays and have Joel and Ellie arrive before he leaves (I mean what would even bite him in Bill's miraculously evacuated town), hell, have him beg them to take him with them to the Fireflies so he could actually help people!
Sigh. Don't know how you have the strength to slog through these episodes, I'm treating this as my series finale and just living vicariously through these posts from now on...
"shockingly surface level" is a great way to put it. thank you for commenting!
Again, never watched the show or played the game, but it's the (especially white, especially American, very white-collar) idea of a cottagecore paradise, right? Which (whether or not you believe it's colonialist) is ultimately unrealistic. Subsistence farming isn't strawberries and chickens so much as it's backbreaking labour, and it would be worse in the middle of the zombie apocalypse where you barely even have enough land to rotate your crops. The white collar idea of manual labour as something easier and more restful than their current lives studying or working service jobs. And once they've built their false paradise, not using it to help people literally running for their lives out there, just to support themselves - individualism taken to selfishness.
Also this made me laugh: 'It’s got the emotional depth of a Pinterest board, the range of a character playlist. It assembles aesthetic signatures, tropes, and tracks its audience already associates with romance and emotion and hurls them at us with the grace and subtlety of a bowling ball in an attempt to make us sob. '
it literally is the white american cottagecore paradise.. glad i made u laugh!
This was significantly better written than the episode tbh. I absolutely hated the episode and went online assuming others would have similar criticisms and found nothing but frothing-at-the-mouth praise and I have felt slightly insane ever since. Not a single part of this episode worked for me in anyway. It was exactly as you said, shallow and surface level in every way, but the endless praise left me feeling doubt over my own experience. I literally wrote my M.A. thesis on the last of us and was willing to let my criticisms of the first 2 episodes go, because sometimes it takes a bit for a show to hit it's stride, but episode 3 stripped me of any faith I had. So I sit here, astonished at the people who loved it and thought it was brilliant and very much appreciating your thorough, insightful commentary. My only criticism is that I've read MUCH better written fanfic than this episode :P
lmao, so have i to be honest. thanks for commenting! also i'd love to read that last of us thesis 👀
I admit I enjoyed the first two episodes well enough, but this one really lost me. Ellie telling Joel not to take his anger out on her, and Joel just going 'yeah, fair enough'? Ellie stone-cold cutting and stabbing an Infected in painfully obvious foreshadowing for her future darkness, instead of spending adequate time exploring who she was before it got a hold on her? Wasn't loving it.
And the romance - your point about feeling grossly manipulated by the narrative (and gaslighted by the collective response to it) is just. So true. Any chance I had of feeling compelled by their beautiful love fell through the second I found myself unable to believe in Frank as a person. The man's the last survivor of 10 travellers, he's spent four years navigating the collapse of civilisation, he... immediately flirts with the first guy to trap him in a hole? I'd have been much more into their connection if this was a deliberate, desperate scheme that evolved into something genuine over time. As it is I just don't grok this man as a rational human being, let alone someone who'd appeal to Bill. He's a shallow ideal.
And yeah. Not at all impressed with them loading Bill up with "New World Order" conspiracies and doing NOTHING to explore what that realistically does to a person. How wonderful of life to reward him with steak and true love through no particular effort on his part, I guess.
Anyway, thanks for the blog and the salt, very cathartic and yummy haha.
i love your idea of their connection be a desperate scheme that eventually evolved into something real! i think that could have been so compelling. thanks for commenting!
great article ❗❗ as a disabled person its genuinley crazy that they can get away with this. the amount of posts ive seen on tumblr (on my algorothm reccomended for you page, NOT my trusted mutuals...) praising it to the moon and back and i didnt even KNOW he was disabled... and thats why they killed themselves bc of a disease that wasnt even like, terminal... What a disaster!! its simply cruel all around. they did not even have to die. God. Love this analysis, cant say more because it has already been said right here...
it really is pretty crazy!! seeing even commentators i respect post about how amazing the episode was and feeling gaslit like.. am i really crazy? is this good and i'm just a hater? but no.
thought of something else. Sorry. as a massive fan of gay divirce and gay animosity and just people being cunts in general the continuous decisions to sanitize people in a series based on a game that has such an overwhelmingly cynical and hostile outlook is so baffling. like the show cant trust the general non gaming public to like a character who was so beloved despite how bad he was as a person (i mean, in general, obviously its a grey area and stuff but the show clearly thinks joel was a bad person in the game..) that they fully refused to accept the sequel on any level because he gets brutally murdered in the opening is So. interesting.
right!! i don't know if you've read my first essay on the show but i talk about the sanitization there :)
loved ur first essay!! my friend (not a last of us player but enjoyer of media criticism) and i (assured tlou2 hater and lukewarm hater of tlou1, but ellie fan as one has to be when living in this society) read it and talked about it for hours. so thorough!! but i still had a stupid hope that like well... Maybe the sanitization will end... um. yeah. it just gets so much worse !! idk if you will write these for every episode but if you do i will be reading them all so delighted
ahh it makes me so happy to hear you enjoyed it/talked about it!! yeah i doubt we're getting out of here at this point.. if there continues to be things to talk about i will surely talk about them :)