 Hello and welcome to the last of episode seven out of nine. Is that so close? Is that something they confirmed that there was originally 10 and they squished two into one? Was that something that I don't know? Some shows now like to do that. It used to be that they were 13 episodes, then it got to 10. And now some people do like eight or nine back in my day. Back in my day was like 22 episodes a season. Oh, the good old days. And it's funny because there would be more what people call filler. But the fact is, if it was good filler, it would add to the connections all the characters have. Well, I guess what happened was that HBO and stuff was kind of like and British shows are supposed to some extent kind of set the idea in people's minds of like less episodes means better, which is kind of a logical thing, right? It's like, well, you're not straight to the more time or episode. Yeah, more concentrated. But thanks to a lot of these bad Disney and Marvel shows, less episodes are starting to feel correlated with the worst quality for some reason. Well, yeah, there's loads of filler is kind of funny. I went straight to talking about filler, which kind of implies you're right about like the perception of it all when there are shows we've watched that are 22 pissies and that have way more plot, way more quality. Oh, well. Oh, yeah. I believe I read that the premiere episode was originally split into two and then HBO told them to combine them into one because they were afraid not enough people would stick around after where the first episode was originally supposed to end. Right. They wanted to put in more Joe Lanelli. Yeah. Yeah. They wanted to get them going on their journey like outside the zone for the end of the premiere. As far as I know, the numbers have gone up with the more of the shows come out. It'll be really curious to see the conversation again about the big decision Joe is going to make at the end, be it now in TV format. Obviously, pending exactly what changes they may or may not make. Still be quite interesting, potentially. I believe before we even talk about preamble for this episode, maybe we should probably do a wonderful, our epic comment showcase. I'm a showcase. Here it is. I don't know if we're going to do that. Is that the right theme tune? John did it. John got it. It's all right. We made it. It's a great theme tune. It's very catchy. Oh, right. Showcase. We did it. Here we go regarding the rule of the clickers. I guess the EFAP crew are not aware that in both games, the clickers can use echolocation when they click, meaning even if you're completely still and silent, if the clicker faces your direction and starts clicking, it immediately detects you. Or well, it takes three seconds to find you if you're in 10 or so meters away. If a child clicker is looking at Kathleen and Kathleen is completely silent, the child clicker will attack Kathleen by the logic of the game. That is something we didn't mention at all, which is kind of bizarre to me because we all know this, or at least I'm pretty sure me, John and Fringy would definitely know this, having played the game so much. We just never use the word echolocation at all when we're talking about it. I don't know why. I could have sworn we've talked about this in earlier episodes. I thought that we had mentioned it, yes. The whole thing with the clickers is that their eyes are covered by the cordyceps and consequently they need to use echolocation in order to find enemies. The obvious thing in the game being that, you know, when they each fill a different slot, the runners can see you, so you have to worry about line of sight with clickers. It's much more about, yeah, they, yeah, clickers are a lot stronger, but with clickers, because I can't see, it's much more a game of sound because they even had like the focus mode where it was about detecting like how loud you are. So you need to like sneak and sort of crouch walk around the place. And it means that, yeah, like if clickers see you, like if you're in the line of sight, you might be OK if you're moving slowly enough and quietly enough. But it's true. I don't know why we didn't mention it. It's just another reason why it's all right that that clicker attacks Kathleen. OK. Yeah, yeah, yet another reason. There you go. Mention now. I find it funny how the show glosses over the fact that Tommy going radio silent thanks to his wife is what drove Joel to go on the journey in the first place. Dude created a domino effect that got tests killed and loads of other people killed. Was the goal with the initial part to get a car to get to Tommy? Was that the idea? So yeah, in terms of trying to figure out the timeline, I think it was. I think so. Yeah. In which case, yes, I think that the episode had a job to do and it didn't, which was address the fact that he went radio silent on someone who desperately relies on it and will take drastic action when he doesn't hear from him and the reason seems to be we stay radio silent to avoid attracting anyone here. It's like that's great and everything. Let me brother and you owe me more than that. Like that didn't happen. I don't think that there had to be some other option at Tommy's disposal to. I guess if not, he needs to have that moment where he's like, I'm fucking I'm sorry. I'm just like, I mean, I have it and I guess it's this comment. I think this comment overplays how much of that is on Tommy. It would be cool to have that be said to him and see what he says back sort of thing, though, at least. Right, because he probably would be like, well, how can you put that on me? Like, how could I possibly know about all of this? Well, yeah. And part of what happens in the episode is that Joel talks about how it's like, it's why you left me, isn't it? Which is, I guess, how he now sees the radio situation. Not one of like negligence, but one of like I this is my chance to get. Yeah, abandoned. Yeah. It's half and half for me. I think it would have been cooler to maybe have it be a bit more of it be like, you know, I searched for you. I did everything to find you. And he's like, I didn't ask you for anything or something like that. You know, what's some drama? It's a it's a role for drama, so worthwhile. Alrighty. Fringy. Fringy. Tommy says, I have to do this for the greater good because he believes in the cause of the fireflies. In the game, Tommy sees how concerned Joel is for Ellie's safety after the attack on the dam. And suddenly understands what Joel meant by saying, Tommy, I need this. He needs his brother to save him from the possibility of reliving Sarah's death if something was to happen to Ellie. But yeah, but I'm pretty sure we talked about this in prior episodes. I know what the game is doing. I think they're trying to imply that you made it seem as though Tommy's like 90% of his motivation is for the greater good as opposed to other more personal motivations. Well, OK, well, so to clarify, because I'm pretty sure I mentioned it before, the whole big relevant part with the Henry and Sam plot in the game is that that is like the moment that kind of reinforces in Joel's mind. I need to offload Ellie. Like I don't want to be dealing with this anymore. It just gives him more of a thrust to be like, well, Tommy, you knew the fireflies, you were connected to all of that. You can do it. I mean, obviously, there is that whole notion that Tommy is, you know, concerned about Joel and everything, right? Because, yeah, in the scene that plays out when he sees that, I think Tommy says, God damn it, like I need to talk to you, Maria. And then they have the big argument and then they go off. So, yeah, in the game, it is definitely more than just because he believes in the cause of the fireflies. But I still say that statement bears out true, right? He says, I have to do this for the greater good. Like that is part of why he said it. Yeah, I think I would concede it's the primary. It seems to be anyway. I think it is the main one because there's the connection to the fireflies. While in the show feels like much more about the personal connections. Fireflies are not very relevant at all, which I think I would guess was the point that I was trying to get at. Am I doing Chad here or the, well, actually kind of voice. Why don't you just switch between them? But it won't matter what the comment is before you read it. Don't know why they made Tommy a father. Why would you want to go on a mission with a kid on the way? He was willing to do it and he is going to go on an even more dangerous one in season two. Ellie provides the possibility to cure the infection. So, helping her is helping his kid in the long run. That's exactly it. They will add more depth to his character because leaving Maria and his kid both would be an even bigger decision that he will have to make. Plus, seeing Ellie kill a pregnant male and seeing a pregnant Dina would be an even bigger psychological hit for him. Well, I have not thought of those things that is interesting. The first thing we say when they show that happen is we comment on like potential story potency. And that's what that decision is. They've done that because it's going to create more layers moving forward. And so the only problem you might think it highlights is, well, then why would he go anywhere? He's got to protect his wife and kid, right? And it's easy justifications. You just have to have the character believe that this is going to be the most beneficial decision to his wife and kid. Yep. People have gone on dangerous missions and done dangerous things and have fought for dangerous causes if they, even if they have kids. Or have kids on the way. Joel wants him to go is that he believes that he can handle this sort of back and forth mission to where he's going. Well, Joel's not sure he can. And there's a lot of reasons to believe that one psychologically, but there's also just he knows the terrain, like he knows the area. I do find it a bit of a shame that they cut the escape. So short after Joel gets stabbed versus the game with how close Ellie comes to dying a couple of times during the sequence in the game. It's basically show Joel's worst fears, almost playing out right in front of him. And it would tie well into his actions from here on in her defense. Probably the one thing I would have liked maybe to have kept somehow is I quite like the imagery of him bleeding out, feeding out a consciousness, watching her narrowly survive an attack because it just said, however, we'll say we're going to be getting something pretty strong like this in episode eight, I would imagine. I think she's fine. A fair number of people during that when they're walking back to the horse. Whereas obviously the show is much more low scale down. Yeah, for sure. Very much scaled down, which probably plays out more logically and a live action show. Yeah, it can have more of a punch potentially, too, when you scale certain things down. I thought it was common knowledge to never pull out anything that has punctured your body. Don't pull out guys. More as David Attenborough accent is top notch. Also, I have no experience or knowledge of this at all, but when pulling the knife or whatever had stabbed Joel out to make things worse, I thought you were meant to leave things in until there's a safe way to remove them to prevent blood loss. It just seems strange to me how he randomly removed the object and then he bleeding suddenly got so much worse. Like, why would you do that in the game? It obviously made sense because he was impaled on something, but this is so different. I prefer the rebar over being stabbed. There's an actual reason to take it out. He is pinned with it. As for the stab and the show, he shouldn't have pulled it out. It's basic medical aid to not take something out if you can. Try and stabilize it, say, by wrapping it tightly to you to keep it from moving around and leaving it in gives you a higher chance of not bleeding out. Oh, no, I got stabbed by a thing. I should totally pull this out and let myself bleed like crap. Wouldn't that be a smart move? No, no, it wouldn't stop doing this. At least in the game, he was stuck on something, so he had no choice. So let's talk about this. I was playing atomic heart and I had people back and forth think a big bunch about this. We got some experience maybe on this with with rags here about about wounds. But then there's also our basic knowledge when it comes to these sorts of events. The reason we didn't comment on it apparently is that the four of us had a similar perspective on this, which was that Joel in shock pulled something out that he thought was going to be a lot shallower than it actually was. And you do that in that environment to immediately prevent any possible infection or at least further infection than it's already there. Because it's it's an old piece of wood that's stuck in it. It's really bad if it gets into your insides, so to speak. I don't think, especially judging from his reaction, that he thought it was anywhere near as deep as it ended up being. Well, it was the snapped off handle of a wooden bat, right? Yeah, that's right. OK, yeah. And there's just a really long shard of it that was inside and he didn't think it was. Of course, the fact that he didn't feel it clearly. That's the thing, I didn't. That's how I took it when I watched it. I was like, oh, fuck, he like obviously he was hoping that was not as bad as it actually was. As we sit around watching this in the comfort of our own homes on our chairs in our houses and we're not pumping, you know, full of adrenaline and we're not stressed out and we're not in intense pain and we have not just killed someone with our hands. It's easy to look at someone else and criticize the decisions that they make in those kinds of moments. He was obviously in a very stressful situation. So him doing that, I think it if you survive this long in a post apocalypse, you probably would have come to understand the whole concept of, you know, like leaving something in because you don't want to bleed out. I just think the fact that when it actually happens to you and you're in that situation, I think that's a good argument. Yeah, and you look down and it's I mean, when it when you look down and it's in you, if you might not be thinking about that, you might think like, oh, shit, this thing's in me. I have people fighting over it in chat and one person said, the whole fucking point is you're supposed to wait until you're in a safe place before you yank it out so that you can pull out the to come blood. And then someone else said, no, the whole fucking point of not pulling it out is that you can get to hospital where they can sort you out because you're already going to be set for antibiotics, they'll take care of it. This will does not have that. This will doesn't even necessarily have necessary safe places. So just like they're being chased by bandits, but him pulling it out has reason behind it and he's in shock. What does it look like if you're on a horse that's galloping and you've got a giant chunk of wood stuck in your gut? That's another thing that happened. So someone in chat said, obviously, shouldn't have pulled it out because having a wound just open like that on the horse is going to crush an open bubble. And then someone said, how is it better with the wood in that he's on the horse bouncing up and down? So what I'll say is there were no great choices here. No, and all the question is, can you believe he would make that decision in that moment of my answers? Yes, I don't really have absolutely. I could. Yeah. If you're in a situation like that and you're with him and he pulls that out and you got to get on that horse, you want to be holding something, putting a lot of pressure on there and you want to keep that, you know, kind of still and you want to make sure that you can kind of sort of seal it back up as best as you can. You don't want it to just have blood flowing everywhere because that's not good. And yeah, I still think it's I'm sorry. It's just even if we counted this strictly as a flaw that he pulled it out, I would still count it better than the game because the game when he just should have been dead. Just throwing this comment into the wild because, A, haven't seen a comment bringing it up. B, I'm curious and would like to explore and dive deep. And C, why not? At 3340, where the dog is sniffing out for infection, it gives Ellie the pass. Moller and Rags briefly infer that it's because of her immunity. I think it is a reasonable interpretation to make. Ellie's immunity, from what I understand, is rare and special. So there may be effects we don't know about. Having said that, does it seem convenient or lucky that her immunity has this effect? There might even be an argument that it is plot armor. On top of that, the system the posse uses to search for infected seems a bit contrived as well. They have guns, and they clearly don't mind using up their bullets or making noise since the guy says, quote, last chance for a bullet. Why not order the duo to strip to check for bites? I think the series may have ended if that happened. Perhaps this moment with the dog was meant to set up part of the later emotional conversation between Joel and Tommy, where Joel feared Ellie would be ripped up. However, I do wonder if it was worth the cost of having the dog. Is there a way to write the scene where the tension could still be present, but still have something more logical than a dog search? I don't really take an issue with it. I don't have any issue with it at all. So we know that the time it takes between getting bit and someone turning into an infected is at the most. Like if they get bit on like the ankle or something, it's going to be like what, 12 hours? Pretty quick. So something like that, yeah, that noise is going to be a day. Probably not it. There's not going to be a lot of time. It's a it's a very quick onset for this kind of an infection. If they have a dog who's doing it, dogs are really good at this sort of thing. And if they have a dog who's doing it, then they have experience doing this in the past and they believe the dog to be pretty accurate and it's shown itself to be pretty accurate. And I think it's a matter of what it's actually smelling. It's probably smelling the wound itself when it's smelling people. Because again, it's not like this is a long process. If you've been bit by it, the bite in the wound leaves some kind of an odor that's on the outside of the body because of, you know, the bite. And that's what the dog is probably smelling. But Ellie's wounds have been healed for months. And I don't think that the presence of this whatever it is in the blood, we don't have any reason to think that it's perceptively different to, you know, regular blood, especially when it's inside of her. Maybe if Ellie had big open wounds. But, you know, even then I doubt it because the wounds wouldn't be like infection bites or anything really here. Pretty sure the commentary even says, like, well, yeah, I mean, you know, it's science fiction, right? Like whatever the immunity is, it may just manifest in a way that means that she's immune from the dog noticing. I suppose it really is the question of is it that unreasonable or ridiculous that they would use a dog to search? I don't think it's unreasonable. As Raja said, if it works, even compared to stripping them, like I would rather use the dog. The dog is pretty cool. I feel like the dog is better. The dog can just instantly, especially if it has a reliable track record. I mean, we use dogs now, right? To search for things. Yeah, we do. Not pretty good. And it truly is up to the writer. It's a bit of a winner. It's truly up to the writer whether or not dogs can sense it in things slash whether or not the dogs are even immune to the virus. They've obviously chosen one of two options on both of those. And then we look at what we got, which is that we got the tension with Joel being really, you know, scared about what was going to happen to then feed into the scene with Tommy. One scene I dislike in this episode is with the sniffing doggo. If Ellie has traces of virus left from fighting off infected, why did it get super friendly? Conversely, if she isn't a carrier, why did it approach her so much more antagonistically than Joel? I get it. That's how the show creates dispels tension, but doesn't make much sense to me within the show. Well, you can easily headcanon the dog thought it smelled something maybe, but then didn't. Maybe it could have just been just that's how the dog was feeling in that moment with no real clue. The dog made its choice that, you know, she was cool and we don't know what the traces of this virus would, if at all, smell like. Yeah, I mean, I can't see this as being contradictory. It's just some choices made to have the scene get a bit more tension that doesn't, you know, contradict anything. I like in the scene where Joel is teaching Ellie how to shoot. His main critique is that she keeps flinching. Then when he takes the gun and shoots the dummy, he doesn't flinch, but she still does, even though she's not the one with the gun to show that. Yeah, she is flinching. And Joel does know what he's talking about. It shows his experience with a weapon that he can recognize someone else's shortcomings with it and try to teach them, knowing how to do something and then knowing how to do it so well that you can teach it to others around two totally different levels. I just thought that was neat. There's a couple of neat things that happen in relation to that on the show. Also a couple of flaws here and there, but hey, you point them out where you can. Speaking of fun fact, around the time Joel and Ellie crossed the bridge in this episode, it is possible to spot the filming crew in the corner. Really? I double checked, unless this is true. I figured you would. The big wide shot where they're heading across the bridge. Oh yeah, wow, look at that. Yeah, right, see that? There it is. Look at that, there they are. They're right down there. There's that bottom left there. Just a big crowd of people. That's all good. All right. Hey, Joel and Ellie, look, survive. It's a bird's-eye view, right, over the bridge. All the Jackson people, they come across these two people in the wilderness and just like a film crew following them in the middle of the apocalypse. We're filming a little documentary. We've been going for 20 years and our whole point is to stay off the grid and not connect to the world in any way. And you're like, oh. Everyone that they meet goes along with it. They don't bother, they act like the film crew's never there, like all the raiders and even the zombies and everything. They know, so they just ignore the film crew. The old couple at the start had seriously some of the funniest dialogue I've heard. She gives so little of a shit and probably knows that lying and being hostile would just make it worse. Her husband clearly being annoyed at her decisions makes it so much funnier. Nice with some proper and appropriate levity and a very downer sharing. Yeah, I really like that. I'm very sorry, by the way. I don't even like, I'm just fucking around. No offense to the commenters. These are fine comments. I did really like that scene with the old couple. That one neat. Well, so the way I imagined it happened was she was just sitting and they're doing a thing. He comes in with a gun to her and says, like, don't make any sudden movements, and she's just like, ah, am I dead then? Or what are we doing? And he's just like, no, no, I just need some information and I'll leave you alone. She's like, okay. And then like they wait for the husband. Eventually she's just like, do you want some soup? Like I could totally see that happening. It'd be really fun. Well, I do largely agree with you guys' analysis of the series. It does feel like you guys have given way more grace to projects you want to be good and much more critical life of things you want to suck. What do you mean want to be good and want to suck? It's not a thing for us. We take everything as it comes. We want everything to be good. So yeah, ideally, if everything could, that'd be nice. But I'm pretty sure you guys can just look at the way we talked about the show before it came out. We were not that optimistic. No, we shout on it quite a bit. And we were with the memes about the last two. Honestly, about what the show was going to be. But I feel like at this point it's basically won us over by being pretty consistently quality. I will never stop referencing how in Batwoman, the second they gave us a good scene, we all shut the fuck up and then praised it. Yes, that's right, the scene with Luke and that guy. Yeah, I have referenced it before and again. How do you think that happens if all we're looking to do is clown on a show? The goal is not to be bad faith in that coverage, like ever. Yeah, like we want good stuff. I don't like these sorts of observations of like, oh, you guys are just giving this one so much leeway. It's like, man, I really don't feel like that's the case. Make better arguments. That's all I'm gonna keep saying back to this. Well, make some arguments. Make an argument at all, I think is what I want instead of just saying it. Yeah, because obviously all we have to say in response is, oh, no, you, I think that you guys go way too harsh on things you don't like and you're way nicer to things you do opposite to us, I guess. I wondered this about Batwoman and the Resident Evil movies. You don't need to wonder about those, you're okay. I guess the thing is that Batwoman's an interesting one because it's like, so when you go to watch Batwoman, you know it's gonna suck, right? It's like, yeah. We're 99.9% confident. And yet we still point out if we think it's doing good at anything. Yeah, because they had that one good scene. That's right, one good scene in two seasons. I think they've had instances of acting and moments where we've been like, oh, that looked okay. You know, like choreography maybe, but most of the time, yeah, it's just shitting. Yeah, because obviously we expect it to be bad and we expect that that badness is gonna be really funny and worthwhile to point out and observe. But I mean, if a good scene shows up, if something is commendable, then it ought to be commended. If you feel that way, then you'll have to prove it, provide a similar point that they let pass and things they like, but to the opposite and things they don't like. The last of us two versus God of War Ragnarok, when they talk about how the games emotionally manipulate you using the death of a dog. So I'm hoping that the commenter is pointing out, it's like, that's an example. The problem is it's like, am I meant to read that as a thing where we let it pass and Ragnarok but criticize it in the last of us two? Yeah, 100% I think the point there is that if you have a bias in favor of God of War Ragnarok and so they allow it to manipulate you. We did bring it, we talked about it for so fucking long. We talked about it on our coverage and we talked about it in response to the synthetic bad video who made the same point about the last of us. We got to speed run it a little bit because this is the thing, it's our job. We got to explain this stuff. People apparently didn't understand, so we got to do it again. The purpose in the last of us two and how killing a dog was supposed to achieve something in terms of writing, it's like, what happened? Well, isn't it sad that Ellie kills a dog that was friendly to Abby earlier in the timeline and you were happy with this dog? And you know this because of a scripted fucking fetch sequence meant to make Abby come across as more likeable, but also to just make you be like, oh, cool, a dog. And then it's really sad because you kill that dog as Ellie, isn't that sad? It's like, okay, and so this is an attempt to humanize her desperately because this takes place soon after she's killed Joel and you're playing us here. So her playing with a dog is supposed to make you be like, oh, I like dogs. Okay, Abby isn't so bad. And then to have Ellie kill that same dog, you're like, oh, Ellie, oh, but it's like- Well, except remember, it was the other way around. The dog dies first and then you find out- Oh, I'm not talking about how it's been like what we're supposed to take away from it. It's the dog you played fetched with, isn't that fucking sad? That's it, that's it. It has no layers beyond that. Well, I say it's transparent, it's pathetic and it's attempt to jumpstart likeability in a character. I have no sympathy for a fucking creature that tries to kill me just because I played fetch with it earlier. I don't even know, like, why would earlier in Timeline later in the game? Continuity? Yeah, continuity, that'd be it. Look at cute dog and then how cute dog lights Abby, don't you like Abby, and then don't you hate the dog had to die sad? Do you remember the controversy over that too? They promised no one would have to kill a dog in the game and then they had to. That was the dog they had to kill. Oh, geez, all right, yeah. Now, maybe someone in the audience is thinking, what, that's the exact same thing as Ragnarok, though. That right there, what you just said is Ragnarok. So, okay, in Ragnarok, the primary purpose, I think, of the event is to show Atreus, like a character we've known and fucking hopefully liked, for 50 hours dealing with death, is going to feed into the major. Deal with the impermanence, the impermanence of life. The major plot line is going to be his ability to deal with his father's incoming death and a big old chunk of foreshadowing that his desperation to prevent death can lead to much more drastic decisions, such as hanging out with Odin or sympathizing with Asgard. Those are going to be significant elements of the story and it's all going to come from his fear of losing his father and his fucking disdain for allowing people he loves to die. We see in the same contrast pretty sharply with Kratos' awareness of what's happening here and basically acceptance that this is what's happening, that Fenrir is dying, and that Atreus needs to accept that and deal with it and help him. It prompts the soul to enter the knife, which has major implications on the plot line later on. All of this gets us to the bear payoff and everything in between. You also have this event being incredibly important to Kratos. It's a representation of his basic approach to grief, like Fringe just said, as well as Atreus' and it's consistent with what we know about him, but it's still a refresh. You even have Mimir about how it's like, oh man, you've got to be more opened up. You can't just be so closed off. It's like he's the two opposites at that point in the story, right at the beginning in terms of how they deal with this sort of thing. This prompts the big blowout, the big conversation that Atreus has with Kratos because he's like, we've got to start training, we've got to be prepared and he's like, we can't keep fucking hiding. And then Fenrir's burial gets to the point where Atreus discovers new abilities and he has to be able to control them. It strains the father-son dynamic, which stretches and reforms throughout the whole game, showcases both characters' responses to grief, generates the opening plot line, builds up significant portions of the, I guess you'd say, deuteragonist plot line being Atreus, close to halfway in the game. And then it sets up the major payoff in the third act in several ways for Fenrir. On top of all that, it's a fucking amazingly acted scene. And it's an event that no human being really has any issue with relating to, the death of a pet. Most people understand the pain of this. And so knowing who Fenrir is is not important to the scene. It's knowing who Atreus and Kratos are and what it'll do going forward when it tells you about them. It has so much purpose and the fact that people feel so much the dog's dying is actually blinding them to seeing what is actually the purpose of that scene. They see the dog dying and they close their brains off. They're like, oh, it's just fucking emotional. And it's like, no, no, no. There's so much happening here that's gonna play into things later on. We're forgetting that fundamentally, the goal of a story is to essentially evoke some level of emotions from you. Like it's trying to get you to feel a certain way at specific times. That's not a bad thing. No. All of it comes down to how purposeful it is, how well executed it is. And I would hope that there would be a recognition of the major differences between these two scenes other than dog died, you're meant to be sad about that. Like that is some of the most reductive like analysis of what was happening in Ragnarok to then compare it to like the last two. You know what? Maybe we're wrong. Like that's insane. We were wrong about the last of us too. And there's more going on with that dog that we didn't realize that you can connect in the same way that we did with all those things in Ragnarok, right? But we call it manipulation in the last of us too because the dog is fucking wheeled onto the stage to be cute and hopefully make you feel better about Abby. And then it's killed at a QTE thing by Ellie. And it's meant to be sad because you played fetch with it. It's like that's pathetic. Really not, it's really not anything more than that compared to again, how much is to be gleamed and drawn from that scene in Ragnarok and everything that it feeds into for the rest of the story. You can't be saying that like these are exactly the same. This shows the bias of EFAB. Like what do you mean? The effort? I don't know, I feel like it's on the bias of you. Like I don't know what to say. You just don't recognize what these are. I'd say that first and foremost, like you should be able to look at basically anything including things that suck and try to be able to like present good faith understanding of what the objectives you can glean from like what's happening in a scene and then to explain, you know why you don't think it works or anything like that. I feel like that needs to apply here. What are they trying to do here? Beyond just make me feel sad. Even to downplay, like making you feel sad. Like it's valid to try and extract some emotions from you as a player or a viewer. Yeah, I don't know. Like that's kind of hilarious that that would even be sad. We talked about this in the stream. This is what I'm saying. It's annoying but acceptable when someone says I think that scene sucked. Explain to me why it's more meaningful than I think it is. Like okay, but to do it after we've explained this twice? Come on. And to then not only to bring it up and say, see this is an example of eFap's biases because they like God of War Ragnarok. So why do you think we like it? Yeah, I know it's what's just like, I don't know what's the difference between letting it slide and having a reason for it like in your view. Watching the comments section slowly turn against the panel with each episode has been an interesting experience. I would say as someone who keeps an eye on the comments it's been flowing in all different directions at all times. They have ignored many things. They would have otherwise called out and have called out in many different shows. Such as? Such as? They've been so effing effusive in their praise for the show that when Molly said he still prefers the game, parentheses at the beginning of the video, it sounded like a lie, lol. Like going on and on about how your hot wife's twin sister is just to turn around and say, but I still prefer you, lol, lol, lol, sounds disingenuous. So they're unhappy because they don't believe me when I say I prefer the video game. Here's the problem that Molly's gonna face. We're talking about the show. He doesn't get to sit down and explain in detail like everything he likes about the game because the game is coming in and out of our discussion. You know, while we're going through the show, we're watching the show. Go watch my stream on The Last of Us. I'll tell you everything I like about it in there. I feel like it's so obvious. We're talking about the show. We're not talking about the game as much right now. So like, Molly can't lay out all of the arguments like from beginning to end of the reasons why he prefers the game to the show at any given moment. I have a preference for the Joel with a tougher wall that's being broken down. Instead of him being, his wall is softer to begin with. I prefer it being harder to begin with. Again, that's just a preference. There's not, I don't think it makes a character better or worse. I prefer Joel and Ellie's performance in the game to the show. The show they've had to sort of convince me while in the game, I was into it straight away. So, and that I think I could argue more than just a preference. I prefer how the story's paced in the game than the show. I'm fine with the show's pacing. I just think the games is better. I'd have to go into more detail to be able to argue that, but I can't right now. I prefer the amount of time I spend with Ellie and Joel in the game. And the fact that it's a game is kind of the benefit it gets here, which is a little bit unfair, but hey, that's just the reality of mediums. I get to survive as Ellie and Joel in all of the gameplay. And so it like, it can almost run subconsciously in my mind that they've spent a lot of time together and been through a lot of things together and that can help me bind them in my own mind as well. There's things that happen in the show that don't happen in the game. Like, I'm pretty sure Joel doesn't barter with one soldier that just so happens to be the one he bumps into that night. I'm pretty sure that's a change that we were against. Joel's like aim bar in episode five, was it? The, that's not, that's not something any, but everyone pointed that out. I was like, yep, that's not good. Joel like didn't take anywhere near the amount of resources from Frank and Bill's that everyone were thought to be reasonable. I can't think of many arguments against the fact that he like, he only took the rifle and that was it. It's just really weird. At least that's all I think we, you took some tins, but it's just like, you think you would have taken more than that. Did they ever try to even distract the clickers in episode two? I think that was something I was, I was highlighting as like, cause you get to do it in the games all the time. It's kind of fun. It just seems like something, if you're familiar with clickers, which they are, they should know to try throw anything across the other side of the room sort of thing. It doesn't even get referenced. When Tommy, for some reason ditches them in episode one when he really didn't need to, right? That's, that's just a category of worse change. Yeah, that was, I remember that we felt that the scene as a played out with Joel being confronted by the soldier just played out in a way that seemed to be more awkward than, than it did in the game. Yeah, yeah. Like sense of place and the slope and everything, like it just didn't flow as much. We just talked about earlier how it would have been better to have addressed the, the whole like, he didn't talk to him on the radio anymore. Like that, that, that's something they added in and then didn't I think do enough to work with. The test is choice to use the lighter instead of a grenade, which would have been like just a way better fucking choice, way more consistent. Joel didn't take anything in that building, right? When he, when it, when there was loads of guns and ammo on the floor and he didn't take any of it, he just had what he had with him, which is another just like, what the fuck are you doing? This, these things, like, I don't know if necessarily I want to say all of these things, but I don't think these things happen in, in the game. Do you remember when they replayed the, the, the, the clip of him and Sarah? Yeah, yeah. It's like that, that was, that was a bit embarrassing. You don't need to do that. Joel didn't take the shotgun that he got off that kid that he killed. It's just cause there's so many of these things that have been listed as part of. Yeah. Well, and there you go. All of those things. I'm pretty sure I either consider to be non-existent or better in the game and then the funny part is I didn't need all those references. I don't think because I've already highlighted the primary draw of this story is those two main characters and I think the performances and the relationship are superior in the game. I need to see this through to the end to be able to say if I think that definitively. But the thing is, I don't think that it's like this wide gap between them. I just prefer the game. Well, if I were to say right now, I haven't made my mind up. I'm basically waiting till the end of the season to see what I think overall in terms of which I think was better. So like if someone asked me which you think is better, I think my answer right now would be, I don't know, get back to you in a couple of weeks and then I'll figure it out. You know, there are things to be critical of that are like in the show and the game just to, cause this, I'm kind of coming back to the whole like we're apparently so hyper biased in favor of the show. The fact that the luck of the Raiders turning up at the uni, at the same time as they did. It's like, that's a spree game. We're pretty fucking hilariously lucky that the sniper can't shoot for shit. It's dark and he has shit aim. Nobody's going to kill me. I know that you could be like, well, it's just an old dude, right? It's like, I mean, that's still luckiest fuck, man. They all could have died. They did know he was there. He could have tagged daddy. What are those for? But he didn't. I think when they decide into like move through the city, they just commit to that building because they want to get a higher view of stuff. When they're like, oh shit, it's probably infested. I think Rags was like, is there no other option in this city? Is that it? We got our set piece to do and it's like, okay. Yeah, and how like only one Raider attacked Joel in that sequence we said, I remember us saying, these are all off the top of my head. I can't remember, we've pointed out way more floors than this, but I'd have to go through all the episodes. The point is, this is kind of annoying. I would say that we categorize as best we can based on everything we're seeing. And we're doing all of this like off the fucking cuff, live reaction, straight away. This isn't, we all get to watch this twice or three times, write a script, correct it over, and have it proofed by friends or something. And I think the best thing we can do is then check out people making arguments in response and that's what I feel like we're doing. And some of them are good. Some of them aren't so good, I don't know. The best people come up with is that we're biased because we like the show, which is a really weird thing to start pulling, but they've only started pulling that in like after the first four or five episodes coverage because if anyone had said anything about our feelings for the show, it would have been negative. But it feels weird that that's the choice of bias when obviously if we get to motivation, mind in the opposite direction, what are we gonna say? You all hate it because the last of us too. You hate it because of Neil Druckmann. Constructing a motivation for you is way easier for us than it is for you about us. Like you have to say that we like it too much. Like, oh, okay, you don't like it too much. Like there you go. You don't like it enough. If you want us to join you in that horny hatred, you gotta give us arguments and they gotta be good. They can't be just, you're being too nice. I just hope we get stuff that's a bit more substantive, which we had plenty of in this episode and I'm gonna grab them as soon as I see them. It's a defense against criticism, but I said I like the game more. Do I just lie and say that I don't so that they don't think I'm being disingenuous? I guess that's the better scenario, I don't know. Nothing, people are still bewildered by the idea of something being properly adapted and are struggling to move on from the mindsets of previous war shows to call out imaginary criticisms. Yeah, I think that's kind of true. You gotta assume there's at least someone here who's a little angry at this IP and that's what's fueling a lot of the criticism, right? Maybe somebody. The show has a lot of things to praise though, so their praise is pretty understandable. Well, I would hope that the understandable praise is understandable, as in, like, we're not trying to praise it for no reason or desperately, we're trying to praise things that we spot that we think are good. So, you know, let us know if we fuck that up. Maybe they just missed those things. It's easier to miss flaws than things that you like. And I think that would be best accentuated by the crew being spotable at the show. None of us saw that. Probably wouldn't have seen it on fucking five viewings, but there it was and I'm happy to be like, oh, shit, that's a fuck up. But obviously the scale rises and there are other things that we don't necessarily spot that can be drastic. If you don't like this, you're a toxic fan. That's how this EFAP sounds to me. A bit of a reductionist view. I don't know why you're trying to almost couch it in the lens of like the way that showrunners will talk about, I don't know, like fans who disagree with the... I assume you might be referencing when, like, Rags said, if you think that the acting's bad, you're coping or something like that. And I'd just be like, we never called anyone toxic for not liking the show and nor did we ever mean that to be the case. You're hearing things that aren't quite there. You're allowed to not like something, that's fine. We want better discussion, all right? So do away with this shit, the whiny shit. I don't want any of this. Talk about the arguments, all right? They're better, they're more interesting. And when you say that we're making, when we're screwing up, just put in one example so that we can at least latch onto that. And please don't choose the death of the dog in God of War Rags after all the time you've spent explaining it. You've got to abandon the dog water, right? Don't do it. I wanted to say, like, I don't recall any of you referring to anybody as a toxic fan regardless of whether they had a good argument or not. And whenever they do have a good argument, I find that you're quite happy to respond to it and engage with it. That's the goal. Acknowledge whether it's a good point or not. Very. Do you remember, there was a person who loved Las Vegas One and there was like a clip that went around the internet when Las Vegas Two came out where he was once Joel died, he like ejected the game and chopped it up with a scissors and he was like tearing up or whatever. He was very fucking furious, personally pissed off. And that's the thing I recognize with a lot of media, you will get very personally invested. And so the residue of the fiery insult people had felt from the Las Vegas Two is just bleeding all over this game. And whenever there's a reference to Las Vegas Two or a change that seemingly seems in favor of it, people are ready to fucking bounce on this thing. And if you have people like us being like, you should calm down, this stuff is actually pretty good. We can come across as crazies to them, which all right. That's something I would, but like. I get it. I get it. Whatever feelings and baggage you might be coming into it with owing to, you know, attachment to the series, which I mean, most of us here have. If we can do it, you can certainly do it. Cause I mean, and especially here, cause we've got such a mixed bag, right? Cause Molo and I have a lot of experience with all of the games. Molo rags and I don't like the Las Vegas Two. John likes the Las Vegas Two. It's like a real, it's a real amalgamation of different perspectives and experience with the series. So I certainly know, I feel like what you're getting here is an echo chamber at the very least it wouldn't be an echo chamber. Or you wouldn't expect it to be one based on all of the perspectives that are feeding into it. And however this was going to turn out, like I came on here, I was happy to, but I expected that I was going to be like the one liking this show and that you guys probably maybe wouldn't care for it. I wasn't sure. I didn't know. I just thought like, they didn't like Las Vegas Two. Maybe they won't like this. Maybe they'll screw this up, but it's been a pleasure to realize that we're kind of on the same page, I think, with this show. And if we weren't, that would be okay too. But it's, I just think it's cool that- But they're just bringing a lot of similar values with storytelling and yeah, different arguments. Yeah. They'll probably give credit to the praise where it's deserved, I think. The premise of this IP of EFAP is to just break things down and find the things that are there and then draw them to conclusions and other people hopefully can see them or find flaws in them or see things of both of them. And then they talk back and forth and reach some kind of conclusion. Like I said, depending on how charged the media is, because like I said, this is not our first controversial opinion. Like I said, it was really weird last time that they referenced TLJ when it's like, man, can you think of all the crazy things that have been said between now and TLJ in terms of hot takes from us? Oh yeah. And that was a hot take, by the way, TLJ. So saying TLJ is bad, that was one of the most polarized discussions on media ever. Yeah, it really was. Times are changing, but also they don't really, in a way. The Last of Us TV show is just the next in a line. But I still think it's very good. So let me know if there's things I've missed or maybe things that you think were very erroneous about the arguments we just made or we'll go on to make about whatever episode we're dealing with this time. Because I enjoy checking them out, a preamble, what we've come to understand from different like next time-ons or assumptions about the structure of the show. The way The Last of Us game happened was that it all released and then it got a DLC and the DLC took place between two parts of the game. And that remained, I guess, relatively a spoiler free. I wouldn't have assumed you'd think Joel would die in that moment, Rags. So especially with you know exactly where and where he actually dies. The point of the game is that you deal with Ellie for a while and then Joel does wake back up after she's given him some help. And so they show us in the DLC how she managed to at least begin getting him back to health and we get flashbacks with her life before the fireflies before Joel and stuff with a certain character. And it looks like that's what they're gonna be doing this episode. I wouldn't be surprised if we're dealing with the same format as the Frank and Bill one. It's probably gonna be full focus on Ellie's history. Frank and Bill. Yeah, that's my guess. The way they did it with Frank and Bill was a starting and ending scene with Ellie and Joel. So I wonder if they'll do that for this as well. Yeah. The way they've been building these stories is that the story and her history is going to relate directly with Joel. And I would imagine that it's pretty easy to draw it from the game anyway, but we'll see how the show does it, I suppose. Fungus growing. A dog could smell these credits. Or could it? Is it the wounds that it smells? We went over those. It's been telling people it can detect it, but really it doesn't. It just gets rid of people it doesn't like. Yeah. I think that we are doing the same format of seeing what's happening in the present day story. Right, because we're in snowy times. Yes. Not to say that this is the first time there's been snow in the history of this world, but there's the blood there. Look, until we see anything that contradicts that information for you, we will maintain that this is the first snow on Earth in this... How will they deal with this? What's all this white stuff? I'll be pretty fucking weird when the first time that happens in all of human history. Really cold water. They put snow on that horse. And he was like, I'ma get rid of it. Yeah. I think I've had an animal abuse. This is already different. He's awake. He'll probably go, but then she'll go grab something. I don't think she's intending to leave Joel at this point. I think she's just like, I'll go, but I'm just gonna go get a first aid kit. Oh no, I'm suggesting that the payoff will be she doesn't, of course. Right, right, right. I don't think that's gonna be a surprise to anybody. I'm just saying, I don't think even for a moment she was thinking like, I'm gonna just leave. I'm willing to believe there's 10% even of her brain being like, if I leave, get on the horse now, I can get back to the Tommy people and live a nice, happy life. Do I really have any chance of leaving Joel here? That might be a little whisper in there. Sure, that's fair. Oh no, bully character. Is this the house lights flickering right now? In the gym? Yeah, I guess so. Maybe the power is really spotty. Yeah. That's a nice detail, yeah. She got hit in the face. That's called abuse. Captain Kuang. I think he was in the expanse. Yeah, I think that's what I'm recognizing from. It's funny because I recognize him and I'm like, what from? It could be that, yeah. Two paths ahead of you. A mug path. You keep acting like you're drunk so you get the life up at dawn, walk the streets, walk the wall. You take shit orders from your patrol leader who'll probably be Bethany. And that'll be your life from now until you catch a bullet from a Firefly Fall drunk off a roof or get your hair caught in a moving tank tread. Dang, there's your hair. Oh look, it's the naughty dog. Poor. We're cool in the summer, we're warm in the winter and best of all, when you're an officer, you get to tell the Bethanese of the world exactly where to shove it. See, you can be a bully to bullies. Yeah, that's right. But you can work within the system to bully people. Yeah. You can become a Kuang all of your own. This is Fedra she's with, right? And this is cool to have a guy be like, we're what keeps things sane and cool in order and people protected. It would fall to chaos without us. Like, yay, Fedra on strictly assholes. Regardless of, yeah, like that he has some conviction. You want to take the mug way or the Kuang way? Oh, the Kuang way. Go Kuang. Because obviously there are Fedra outposts or locations where they all went fucking nuts, apparently like Kansas City. Well, yeah, because you imagine any amount of coordination just deteriorates over time. They start to become more independent, I guess. More fascist-y. Well, some of them, yeah. Don't give the Walkman just to earn it with Kuang points. You have to turn in 200 Kuang points and you get, you don't just get a Walkman. You get your Walkman back. But every individual piece of trash she picks up from the floor has one Kuang point. So it won't take too long. It would be a Walkman because of the 2003, right? That was when the apocalypse started. I mean, I'm not iPod yet, I guess. Yeah. I don't remember the portable CD players, right? Well, iPods might have been like right around the beginning there. Yeah, they were definitely portable CD players. I had a walking man. Did you guys have a walking man? I did. I had a little CD player. I was reinforcing all of the space stuff with all these posters. I was wondering if I had action films. This is my corner. That's your corner. You stay on your side of the room. You know, Scott, if you could see music by Jerry Goldstein in a space, it would be so funny if they had, like there was a name in that credit they didn't notice was someone who's worked on this too. And they'd be like, is that a problem for God to do it with a cannon? I don't know, whatever. I'm only 10 quang points short of a CD player. Go collect some trash. You're a good citizen. Yeah, you can, every pound of trash, you get a quang point. Every pound, I said for every individual item, but no, you've made it much more difficult. Oh, that's pretty excessive. This is a world full of trash. We got a ton of quang points. I mean, he's giving it for 200 quang points. He gets back his walking man. That's not costing him much of anything. I know, but it's not about him. So I'm saying the good stuff costs you like 10,000 quang points. Ooh, yeah. But that'd be really good stuff though. He has his little kiosk and he's got like a big fluffy teddy bear that's like 5,000 quang points. That would be crazy. Riley? Ow. I landed on my hip. What the hell? I thought I was bitten. I know. It was kind of awesome. Don't be like that. It was a joke, okay? I thought it would work better. You're not going to kill me, are you? I haven't seen you. And I don't even know how long. 45 days? Well, 46, technically. I thought you were dead. You've been gone for three weeks. I should fucking stab you. No, I appreciate your mercy. All this time, I thought you were dead. Yeah. Here. Look. I'm fine. I just ran away for a bit. That's all. If you're going through some shit, you're supposed to, I don't know, talk to your best friend about it. No way. Still no roommate? I had to sleep under Liz for three years, and you know how bad that girl smelled. Who gave you the black eye? Tell me where you were. Give me a name, and I'll fuck him up. It was Bethany, and I already fucked her up. Where were you? You're a firefly. You still have it up. I joined the fireflies. No, fuck you. I'm not in the mood for this, Riley. I'm really not in the mood. What are you doing? I'm making sure I don't get caught with a firefly in my room. Relax. There are no soldiers on the entire floor. You're a firefly? Jesus. I told you I'd fucking do it. Talking about liberating the QC is not the same as fuck. Where did you even? Here, congrats. Hey, are we cool? Are we cool? Come with me for a few hours and have the best night of your life. I disappeared, and you're mad. And I owe you an explanation. Let's get out of here, and I'll tell you all about it. It's 2 AM, and in a few hours I have drills. It's almost morning, and I have military drills. You know, where we learn how to kill fireflies? Get dressed, turn around. You're so weird about that. Put some pants on, and let's go. We're thinking about hanging in the park. We can't go there anymore. So you patrol what they just put in. Well, we're not going to the park. So dumb. Come on. When have we ever gotten into trouble? Guards? No. Because Fedger's fucking stupid. Ready? This better be good. Probably not the best joke, but hey. Yeah, this is why you spend your Kuang points frivolously. Save them. You don't save or invest your Kuang points. Yeah, you can get therapy for 1,000 Kuang points. Man, you are not letting that Kuang-like one go, are you? It was Bethany, and I already fucked her up. Oh. Where are you? Stole her lunch money. Her Kuang points. You have fireflies? Jesus. Does the gun prove it? I guess so. Do you guys remember she's from Wrinkle in Time? Yeah, that's where I know that film's from. That film's really good. It's an excellent film. It's really great. Definitely not a 1 out of 10. I can't tell if you guys are being serious. Is that a good film? We have an E-Fat movies on it. You can go check it out if you want. Yeah, it's great. Oh, she's getting a new dress. I don't like this dress. I'm going to get a new one. Oh, she's turned herself to ribbons. This is what it's like to chew five gum. The movie. Oh, my god. Look at this. She's turned into my goodness. Look at this dude. Wait till you see the... Oh, no, no, no, no. Oh, oh, oh. Top of his head. Oh. Where are we going? Of course you should with your life. Dweeb. You're a firefly. Which means I cannot trust you. Your trust has been reversed. No. Because Fedra's fucking stupid. Be nice to Fedra. They make the trains run on time. That's true. Man, that was real close. Rocky start. That was very close. I guess that's just how it would go, right? You'd hear it before you see it. Might be real awkward if the car just like reversed back. Or it stopped at the alleyway just went, we can see you. What are you doing? You can't fight everything in everyone. How would that attitude? Are they teaching you this? Fight everything everywhere. Everyone, everything at once. I know that movie. Fuck Carol. Fucking Carol. Yeah, I hate Carol. Carol. Carol should have used her quang points to get a fucking clue. Firefly lights are better. Wow. One point for the anarchists. We prefer freedom fighters. How many floors? Like two. Like two? So two. Well, three's like two. Similar to two. Could be one. Like a one floor building. You'd be like, it's like two. And that would be accurate. Oh, this seven? A seven's like a two. Oh, shit. Oh. Is he dead? Yeah. Doesn't look alive. No, no, this guy wasn't here yesterday. Oh, so we should leave. Well, I mean, there's no reason to assume he's infected. Well, even then, like if people have been through here or if the cover's blown or the place has been found. Well, she's a dead guy. You think this is going to be like how she got bit or something? Oh, no, we don't have to be doing that until the end of the episode probably. I mean, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Like this is the I mean, this guy specifically. All right, because the answer is yes, yes, yes. I don't fucking know how she got bit. You're going to find out. Take those pills. Oh, no. What? That boy. Bye. He's a chunky boy. I guess because of the water leakage, I guess you could probably argue that just seems funny to me, I don't know. It does, especially when they took the bottle away. It's like his spirit from the other way is like, fuck you. He didn't enjoy the company. He had to go. He only paid me for three minutes. Remember, drinking when your underage is bad. That's right. We do not condone this kind of reckless behavior from the youth of tomorrow. We, unlike Naughty Dog, do not intend to encourage underage children to drink. That's right. Something should only be reserved for the sanctity of adulthood, like drinking, pill-popping, or monopoly, prostitution, and monopoly. They kind of made me swear not to let other people handle my sidearm. I'm not to handle my sidearm, because I'm such a fucking firefly. Hey, this is what we call peer pressure. I know. Here, you take the booze. I'll take the gun. It's a very irresponsible of your booze. I started dating some firefly dude. I was like, ah, it's cool. I think I'll be a terrorist. Yep, that's it. We're getting married. Would you kiss me under the Rusty 7-Eleven sign? At least you gave up on making the Kuang points joke. What? How would that? Would you kiss? Well, you think you could trade Kuang points for kisses? Kuang, don't roll that way. Why did you even bring up the points again, Molo? You knew what was going to happen. I did. That's why I did it. I defended the Kuang points. Kuang points are no joke. Do you want to? That's it. No word initiations? No. I said yes, and now I'm a firefly. That seems very insecure. Not like they, not like insecure, like people are insecure, but as in like not secure. I know what you mean. Like it's very quick. I assume. What is the heading quote? Well, the implication of his story, though, is that they've known about it for a while. Right. Presumably they've done checks on it. Well, yeah, you'd figure that if they've lasted this long, they would have a pretty thorough system. Oh, boy, it's like unshotted. Doing some jumping across rooftops. I'm going to say it's like Kenobi. Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. No, it's unshotted. There's platforming elements in the same way that these games often have stealth elements. You do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Oh, boy, the atomic heart platform is great. Maybe it's more like Assassin's Creed 2. It's like Venice rooftops, but it's Boston. Or like any game where you walk across buildings. That's right. We're living our own population. Fireflies blowing up the stories, people, didn't help. Propaganda, shit. Yeah? Propaganda, huh? Not when civilians are around. That's Propaganda, bullshit. Aha. It's OK, you don't know everything. I agree to disagree. I feel like it would be easy to see up there. Them all? Yeah, pretty much. You out of your fucking mind, they sealed that place off for a reason. It's full of infected. If it's sealed off, then why isn't it sealed off? Good question. So it's not sealed off? And so the conclusion is, Bedra lads be using it for fun, or they don't want people to know? Is that the idea? I guess there's a lot of things that you could infer from that. Well, they should still be pretty fucking careful, I guess. Thankfully, that will be. Ew. It's been exposed for a few years. So to the point where you connected that block up to the grid, this place got connected, too. Not that they know. Oh. They wouldn't know? Why wouldn't they know that? Pay attention. Yeah, don't try and let somebody in. Especially since you can find out just by taking a casual glance. And why wouldn't they have searched this place if it's literally in their own city? Yeah. And also, if it's full of infected and not sealed off. I'm getting a lot of information here that's seeming quite right. So it's full of infected and sealed off, but the Bedra people have never been down here, and they also don't know there's electricity feeding into here. It seems like it could be a massive problem if it does have infected, and it's in the QZ, and they're not keeping an eye on it actively. And it's a mall down here, right? Yeah. Resources? Yeah. I'm sure that, plus the Bedra and Kansas City kept the infected from coming out. Assuming that would just be anything that you do. The only argument I could buy as to why Fedra aren't here is because it's filled with infected, but clearly it isn't. Yeah, because otherwise, there would surely be a lot of utility in a place like this. And especially now that all the lights are on, surely this might attract the attention of Fedra. Delights. We're fine. You saw outside. It's like a big bunker. No one can see shit but us. I just don't understand how they could conclude Fedra don't know that electricity fed into here. That's just weird. Well, I mean, of course they would, right? They just understand how the grid works. Most people would understand how the grid would work, I guess, I would have thought. Was there in the game, where was the shops? Was that in the QZ as well? I think so. I don't see why it wouldn't be. I mean, it's funny because all they needed to do was say, yeah, it's sealed off and it's, I don't know, going to be checked out eventually by Fedra more than likely so we can have our fun with it before they do that or something. Yeah, electric stairs. There's the move. Can you believe it? Oh, and they're playing the song. I like that she thinks that Escalade is a cool. Yeah, kind of cool anyway. They are, but especially if you haven't really seen them before. Yeah, you've never automated travel. I wonder if they work after 20 years of being not hooked up or something. Well, it's the thing, right? Is this place been untouched for 20 years? No, no, no, it's around. Well, it probably was. Like it probably hasn't been for 20 years, right? If it's in the QZ. So that's kind of what I'm getting at this. My understanding of this place and how it relates to Fedra is very strange. Yeah, right now I'm just, yeah. Because like if it has been cleared out, then why would they telling people it's infected here to scare them off? But then that doesn't match the whole, they don't know that electricity is coming in. But also to what end? Why would you scare them off? Like, what does it matter? I don't know, yeah. Is it because it's like a big area that would be difficult to patrol and maintain? Is it because they're super fascist and they don't want people having fun? I guess the best argument I can make is that I imagine that overseeing a shopping center would be tough because of all of the hallways and all of the individual shops and then all of the rooms within those shops. Like it'd be hard to keep track of. As much as I guess I'd agree, it's still more space. I, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I feel like that's kind of a still man. I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. Looks like comfortable. Yep. Well, he's not comfortable at all. Sometimes they all kind of comfy. It is very comfy, I have to say. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Things remembered. Gap. Oh, that could fit through that gap. Give me your hand. Might be carousel time. Blood brothers. We have blood blood blood blood. She just dunks, hits something. She's not actually really guiding her well. She just hits a pole. Just one of them 300 pits here and she just walks her into it. Now we're almost to say almost. There she is. Oh my goodness. A carousel. Carousel. Now, I'm almost curious as to why they wouldn't want to make sure this place isn't sucking up energy like they'd want to close it down. Especially in a place that is, yeah, resourced. Yes, all of a sudden an entire mall getting electricity sucking it from the grid. And they'd have to know about it. Yeah, I want to ride the horses. Can't believe that they used to drive spikes through the middle of horses and coat them. Yeah, that was really cruel of them. We've moved on since then, okay? That was past mistakes. They had different morals back then. Progressive people now, yeah. This is before the horse uprising of 92. No, we should stay sober. We shouldn't drink and drive. You shouldn't drink and ride. That guy died from drinking that, you know. Oh my God, I can't, I want to ride the pony. This is cute and all. I hope something happens soon, though. It's a little lump. Where's the zombies? Little slow on events. I would even say it's a little bit slow on conversations, too. It's mostly just them having fun. Yeah, just sort of hanging out. There should be a bloater on one of the horses right behind them. He's like, rawr. He's riding it like, oh, this is great. Yay, horsies. Did you really leave because you actually think you could liberate this place? Don't say it like it's some type of fantasy, Ellie. They've done it in the other QZs. Yeah, we could do that too, for like the future. What are you saying, do it from the inside? You could be running things. You could be running things. You know what Kwan gave me? Points? Sewage detail. No sewage detail. Standing guard while people shovel shit. That's what they think of me. Why, someone's got to do it. Yeah, someone's got to do it. First off, you get this pole standing around all day holding a gun is probably. She doesn't want to do it. Hey, man, we've all got a pitch in the game. You don't even have to do it. You just stand there watching. I just want to hear more of a reasoning, I guess. I would have gotten it back then too, you know? You know, you're the one thing I miss from that fucking place. Because I would assume that in terms of my motivation, that might have just been the thing that made her go like, you know, actually, I believe enough in the five flies. I'll do that rather than. Well, so I guess the weird part to be like, that's what they think of me. And it's like, I mean, what are you scoring low on your like raids and that they need? It's not like they hate you, I assume. Well, I mean, maybe it's, they don't want it to be like an officer, right? They don't, because maybe they don't believe that she is, I guess, as in lockstep. I think that would be a better reason. I just didn't, I wasn't sure if that's what she was going for as opposed to I just don't like that job. Yeah, I get you. Like if they put her on sewage detail, because she's clearly a bit of a wild card, you're like, oh, okay. Yeah, I could see why that would annoy you. On yourself? That's not how you don't, what's your left hand doing? I think she's trying to put both on her head. Didn't really look at it. Wow. Who messes that up? Okay, yeah, get up. Okay, okay, sorry. That's a pretty cool, that's a pretty cool rabbit. He is, he is a very, look at him. He's wearing sunnies as well. He's a very cool rabbit. He's affirming people's confidence. Didn't they not print in the game? Oh my God, I can't believe he's actually gonna work. No. Hit retry. Okay. Oh, come on, fuck you. Put it up here. Uh-oh. What just happened? I think we broke it. I think we did too. They gave it to him in the shell, huh? I think they broke the machine in the game. Oh, it's just taking time before it fades in, right? Or is it not? I think it's just an old 20-year-old machine. Oh, okay. They really should replace the ink in that machine. I don't know what they're saying. I mean, that's the main... It's the lack of the management of the shopping center. Yeah. Fuck, this place really is a huge drain, isn't it? Is it an entire... Whoa, an entire working arcade? Oh, yeah, because remember she saw the arcade in the place that they stopped over at. She saw more combat troops, yeah. Which I think she had a poster for in her room as well. In the games, that's right. So she can finally play, and then Tetris, and maybe Street Fighter II, yeah. Look at all these arcade games. I think they had a fictional game in the game where she plays with someone called Angel Knives and... The license thing, right? Yeah, the interesting thing about that is it's clearly Mortal Kombat, but not Mortal Kombat. Yeah. I guess they got Mortal Kombat for this, though. Oh, Daytona. You guys remember Daytona? Oh, yeah. Daytona USA, yeah. Gotta insert coins. I'll just cheat away to this stuff. Got any Kuang points? Wow, now he's doing it. It's making a comeback. I'm taking it back. I'm bringing back Kuang points. That lucky that that's the way that it is? Did someone already break it? Oh, apparently she spent an hour breaking it open the door. Oh, OK. That's a lot of Kuang points. She planned this whole day out. Rahaz. Oh, they're going to play Mortal Kombat. Yeah, that's Mortal Kombat. Yeah. This is 2023, like in our world. So they could have just found an old abandoned arcade and just like fix the quasi fixed it up. Well, there's a couple of changes I would have made. I can't buy that this place is drawing that much energy and Federer don't give a shit. And nobody cares. This is like a bunch of working arcade machines and all that sort of stuff. Now, you know what? I don't know that that is how you play Mortal Kombat. Smash the buttons. Yeah, button mashers always win. I was going to say button mashers is everything. No skill whatsoever. Wow, you got fucking wrecked, loser. Yeah, she got it. Yeah, like flawless. Wow, you didn't hit her once. I think you can get by mashing buttons. I had this exact game for Sega CD. You can definitely get by, but you can get by. It's just, you know, that high level play. Yeah, you're a fatality. Do it. She knows it. Get a little combat bones in. Well, turn them into a pile of bones and suck the bones out. Oh, yeah, she freed his skeleton. Yeah, he can be free to no longer in the world. Flashback. I'm free. So she's been there a few times, which means that it's, I guess it's been like this for long enough that it wasn't like just a couple of days. There's another part of it that could help believe it, right? Haven't it be active just for like a half hour even, but it's been long enough. This is a ominous ass. This is our spooky shot. Yeah. This is our scary shot. Whose POV is this? Is it someone noticing the bright ass lights? It'd be all about spooky music and spooky lighting. Every story has an S. It's funny for a moment that you're like, what's wrong with Rebecca? Why is Rebecca the doll of that thing? Is that, are we doing the three good? That's a Zambie. I live. Looks pretty good though. Money's worth. She has a gun though. I feel like you're going to need more than one clicker, but I'm not sure, because the game has a lot of them. Must be sticks up on them, maybe. Maybe they're so... Yeah, that could work. Oh no, I got stabbed. Next thing. I have to wake up and make my bed soon. You're here tomorrow. I got you again. What could it be? He doesn't like it. I don't need them anymore. I'm just going to give you all my quang points. Better. Better. It's a zombie. In the games, it is water pistols or water guns. Yes. Macho, Nacho. Is this where you've been staying? Mostly. So, she's actually like... This is her place. Shut up! You made a second. Where did you get that? Oh, that would be the joke book that she had. Right, yes. She had part one, and now this is part two. Well, no, but when she was with Joel, right, that would have been part two, is what I'm saying. Yeah, what I'm saying is she had part one in this episode on her desk. Yeah, I saw that. That's why this is a meaningful gift, I guess. How does a computer get drunk? It takes screenshots. That's not bad. Butterscreen shots. I don't actually know. Okay. Oh, they don't know what screenshots are? Oh. These are pipe bombs. These are not good. You shouldn't have these. No, they're not mine. I swear. They belong to the chef who used to use. They kill people. It's to kill buildings, evil buildings. Oh! Well, that still doesn't account for Fedra. Yeah, that's true. I guess I'm just like, that's something. They were putting pipe bombs in the tacos. You're just some new scrub girl. No, no, no. Were you going to blow me up with your little pipe bombs? None of this shit was even a fuck you, Ellie. You made bombs, but I already said like you sort of did that before, but now it's confirmed. They're sending me to a post in the Atlanta QC. Tonight's my last night in Boston. Subway. Eat fresh, which is not going to happen. It's very unlikely that you will be eating fresh at the local subways at the mall. But it says eat fresh. That's true. They have become liars, sandwich sellers and liars. They go together in between those two buns is nothing but broken promises. Low calorie lies. And I wanted to say goodbye. This is the music that plays in the confrontation between Joel and Ellie, but they didn't play this song in that scene. So I do really like this track. I do really like this track. Hope nothing bad happens in here. This creepy ass hallway. No, this is the nice hallway. I think all that's happening is she's making, yeah, that she's making a choice to go back. Or loser. Didn't even commit. No spine. It said ominous music is playing. That's kind of messed up. Surprise. That's the second ill-advised joke you've done. The fifth wonder. Give me the book. Give me the book. I came back for you. You said it was my gift. I'm not leaving without it. Yeah, you didn't say it was, yeah. And traded in for maybe some... No back piece. ...quong points. All of a sudden you're alive and you give me this night and now you're leaving again forever. Just join some cause I don't even think you understand. You don't know everything. You don't know what it was like to have a family. And I want that again. Yeah, but they're kind of a crazy family who blow things up. What I think they are, but they chose me. I matter to them. You're my best friend. You're my best friend. And I'll miss you. Where's that zombie? If I remember correctly in the game, she says she's going to be leaving and then Ellie convinces her not to, right? I remember someone's convinced. Werewolf. I can't remember who. Like whether it's Ellie to go to the Fireflies or Riley to stay with Bedra. I think Riley says she's coming in to go and then Ellie's like, she just says don't. And then she's like, okay. And yeah, she takes off her tag, her Firefly Dog tag. Oh, right, okay. But on your furry costume and dance... I'm guessing they might be trying to have this be different to further reinforce maybe Ellie's desire to help the Fireflies and follow through. Well, yeah, they seem to be presenting the struggle between Fedra and Fireflies to be very balanced in this show world. Or at least more balanced, it feels, and that it shouldn't be outright agreed on one side or the other. Why'd they put masks on? I can't see the emotions. I feel like they'd go through those. I don't know. I don't know what the tops are made out of. Well, what are in those? If it's like valuables, I can imagine that glass is strong as fuck. It looks like they're just like masks and stuff as a Halloween store. It is a Halloween store, so I can't imagine they have that valuable. Maybe they have relics. Like mummy toes and things. Like werewolf teeth. Like the real things. I'm sorry. No dog tag rip off in this one, though. Damn. Ruined it. It's probably going to take a couple more bullets and that should be it. Oh, she's knocked out? Oh, that's not good. She was not good. She was not affected with that firearm. Well, it'd always be a little bit. I think she should have easily killed it. Yeah. Oh, you should have used the gun. Sneaking up on them when they were playing the music loud would have been perfect, but they didn't do that. Hey, no reason someone else can't enjoy that. I guess they weren't that strong. I like the contrast in their reactions to it. Yeah. There's some more stuff over there you can break. There's more stuff over there you can break. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? Wait, I see it. We've got two options. Wait, I see it. We've got two options. We take the easy way out. It's quick, painless. Option one. We take the easy way out. It's quick and painless. I'm not a fan of option one. Option two. Two? We fight. What are you talking about? It's over. We're going to turn into one of those things. There are a million ways we should have died before today. It ends this way for everyone sooner or later, right? Some of us just get there faster than others. And a million ways we can die before tomorrow. But we fight for every second we get to spend with each other. But we don't quit. Whether it's two minutes or two days. We don't give that up. We don't give that up. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to give that up. My vote. Let's just wait it out. Just be a poetic and shit. You know, we can be all poetic and just lose our minds together. What's option three? What's option three? Sorry. They're both pretty great actresses. Performance is the strongest episode. That'll do. There you have it. That was an episode. A whole episode. It's going to be probably my least favorite. Definitely my least favorite. One of the weaker episodes of the season. Even though I think there's some pretty great elements in there. Yeah. I really just didn't like there was a couple of times where I'm like, alright, something needs to happen now. I get it. They like more combat. Let's go. I don't think that was my problem. I think they could have actually reinforced their relationship a little bit better in that episode. I feel like they could have done a bit more. I think the time we had with them, I would have expected them to do a lot more in terms of binding. You basically got a whole episode dedicated to them and I don't feel like we got as much as corresponds with the amount of time that we spent on it. But I still probably would actually kind of call it a pacing issue. I mean, Rags, you're not just talking about having action scenes but development. Yeah, just sort of things. Maybe some more back and forth on the Firefly stuff or maybe more time with the Fedra people. I don't know. Yeah. I think we could have stood to get more time with the Fedra stuff. I think we could have. The impression I get in terms of their back and forth is that as it's like the conversations getting more and more real right as time goes on at the beginning it's just like fun banter as the night is sort of progressing and time is running out. It's like it becomes more and more of like a real conversation about the differences between them and that there is like this problem here that they need to sort of work through. There's like a mini Firefly and a mini Fedra agent here. Yeah, pretty much. And the longer it goes on the more that they're going to start to be more firm in their perspectives one way or the other. I think what I want is not more conversation on that but maybe more conversation about other things that could have also been thrown into the mix. Yeah, like what they prefer is people. Or maybe like their sort of modus operandi is individuals, right? Like what is it that they, aside from how they fit into Fedra or the Fireflies, like what do they kind of want from life? I guess we kind of got a little bit of that. Yeah, I think that's all I want is I just want a little bit more more material for both of them in this episode which is funny to say when it was so focused on them it just seems like in terms of the density of the character that we got which is a little bit thinner here than has been the case in other episodes. Yeah, and it comes at a time that's very I was curious how it would feel about this, but like peak investment Joel's nearly dead now an hour with these two and it's like, okay. Well, I guess the argument in favor of it is it's meant to be all feeding into Ellie's motivations the desire to like not give up. Yeah, she'll fight for every last second she can get with. Yeah, because what happened with Riley I mean obviously it didn't work out for her but you know Ellie is alive and maybe in a position to do some real good in the world because she decided to fight through really difficult circumstance so if she's going to do it again. So like thematically it's cool I just feel like we could have done more. Yeah, I think I'm also hitting on a preference that I think would be shared by many in the audience it's like. Which is to focus more on the like the current situation that they're in. Part of it like what's funny to compare to the game is the fact that it's DLC means that it just it can't really get in the way it's something you play at your own leisure. Yeah. Well, I guess it's interesting because we more or less sort of came to the conclusion last week that this would be the time for this episode. Yeah. I think the problem is that I still I feel like this episode can't come after the what we're going to be getting an episode I like I feel like this probably is the best place for it. It's just that it's always going to be a difficulty of in the game it is off on as like kind of an epilogue prologue right to the to the main story. I mean not only is it chronological but like it's a great buffer between Joel sort of falling and then Ellie being in this state of like oh fuck what do I do now and her becoming a little bit more independent you know. What sounds like you disagree then that you feel like this was that this slots in super well? I think this could have been condensed like the Riley and Ellie stuff and then I would have like the third act of this episode to introduce like the David stuff right maybe lead I think I think that that could work as well I imagine that that was probably not entertained though my guess would be that they always thought that this would be a whole episode. Yeah and it's like how can we tweak it to make it more fruitful than I guess it's like probably what we've all said about the rooftop jumping relationship stuff but to be honest with you I wouldn't have been against involving more scenes in the present instead of just the two main ones now I'm not going to say in the game Ellie drags Joel to like a more tight place and she searches through it for medical supplies she goes to a pharmacy at first which is perfectly reasonable but I think everything's empty in there and then she notes that there is a crashed military helicopter at the ceiling and she finds every material she needs in there I've always found that to be lame as fuck which is funny right because if she had found it in the pharmacy I probably would have been like well I guess it's lucky it hasn't been ransacked but that makes a lot more sense kind of convenient helicopter yeah and then there's also the angle that she kills like I want to say 30 bandits or raiders and like 30 infected or something it's a lot yeah because you're doing the video game stuff meanwhile here there is literally one person that she kills with and so maybe you could have another two scenes and she has to work a little bit harder to get the material she needs to save Joel in some way we can try try something maybe more so integrate the other component of the left behind DLC which was maybe yeah with some tweaks because that's a big blast of these two and you're going to need the conversations they have to be very interesting keep everybody invested because the reality is that as an audience regardless of whether you know about the games or not you are going to be pretty hyper invested in your protagonist being on death's door yeah no I think a lot of people who haven't even played the game if they're watching the show one by one I think this episode comes a little bit of a disappointment but I'm hoping that episode 8 will be everything it needs to be out of curiosity what would you put forth is the main difference between this and episode 3 in terms of what might be the observation of you have this whole story that's running that doesn't seemingly apparently feed directly into the main plot I think that it's very apparent that episode 3 captures an entire lifetime of relationship while this tried to capture a limited portion of time I don't even know that they've spent the time that well well that would be I think that they were pretty effective with the time that they used in episode 3 to tell the story between Bill and Frank I feel like we got a lot of dimensions to that relationship where it feels like we explored one very specific dimension of this relationship when I feel like we could have gotten I think I just want a better understanding of who Riley is because I feel like after that episode it's like I've got a decent understanding of who she is but I don't feel like I've got a very great picture of her overall mostly in relation to Ellie and the Firefly stuff but not really much else setting justification wasn't very good no that was probably the weakest part of the episode it's just this constant thought in the back of your mind of like why is this so they're in the shopping center it's got power there's no infected maybe Fedra doesn't care about it maybe but also you've been here for a while like just as a posting it's just kind of world building and plot questions which haven't typically been as much of a problem in this this show so far I did kind of like having Joela wake to know that she had the chance to leave and she chose to stay and save him that'll be super meaningful to him I quite like the shot with it holding each other's hand that was dude imagine in the finale if he's recalling that as well as like feeding in because of course that would have fed into it in the game as well but maybe more of that conscious awareness not to say that he wouldn't be aware that she saved him no matter whether he's awake or not but being awake to see that happen is like there's much more of the at least from my understanding of the game my read on it was that he was like out for the whole time that he was just constantly sleeping exhausted totally unaware of what was going on and Ellie was taking care of everything I agree that I wanted a bit more like to understand Riley's perspective a bit more I think it could have done with a scene at the beginning where she's like with the fireflies sort of feigning compliance and then she escapes at the very beginning where she's like yes I'll sit in my room fine and then she has an opportunity to leave and she escapes out of window or something but before that you see her engaging with her like firefly superiors or whatever giving her giving you a sense of like where she's at what she has to deal with I think what I might want is the Fedra her with Fedra see what she was like there so maybe it doesn't mean a bit of a time jump because of course there needs to be some passage of time but maybe that would be worthwhile I don't know I feel like there was something to be tweaked it's kind of what you're honing in on I think I would like to fight too about like after weed out anybody who's going to be changing in any significant way the status quo and then Ellie could be like they haven't weeded me out and they should be like yeah because you're careful with how you say like this Daniel that she's like oh am I it's like you think Fedra is so much worse than they actually are then she could be like Fedra do this that the other and she's like you fuckers do more damage than Fedra ever does you know they kind of play at this sort of thing but it would have been nice to maybe have three main conversations that run throughout and then at the end they realize like fireflies Fedra it's all the fucking same like it's just a mess we're all fighting and that we need to you know something maybe a little bit sappy but yeah because I think the closest we got was the fight with the pipe bombs that was like the most we got and I feel like we could have gotten one or two more heated arguments about it we just need a little bit more conflict I think they did a lot of scenes of them happily enjoying their time together with each other which is totally good and fine I just think because you think about it's like playing with the masks the dancing with the mask playing model combat together doing the carousel these all show up by the way in the in the game too but I don't know it feels like they knew in the game they had to pace it so that players wouldn't want to like you know leave or pause and because the way they do is the intercut back and forth between present and past and yeah the present present day is like the combat focused stuff whereas the the shopping center was much more story heavy yeah but there's a running sequence in there which is another change by the way it's kind of funny I on one hand I prefer that they don't suddenly have to deal with a horde even though it is more justified in this because they have the hive my network thing going on however they went with one it's like okay I can deal with one that it's like ah but the only reason that he got you to is you didn't handle it very well at all I guess the thing is though it's Riley missing it's like yeah maybe she hasn't trained very well it's not quite that it's that she sees him she goes to aim I think she tags him three times like two in the torso one in the leg and then stops firing and runs away and it's like no no no no finish him finish him now these are why you have those bullets are you saving them for later yeah like it makes no sense at all you keep shooting execute him at that point you've got the best shot you'll ever get when he's on the floor you got the head right there that's what you gotta do and so she stops tries to run and block like her direction and then he pushes there like it tackles or something and then she just gets knocked out it's like ah this is lame action scene yeah it's just more logistic acting saying logistics kind of not being great could she maybe have only had that many bullets left in the gun I don't know if that was established maybe like I imagine that it's fully loaded that'd be my guess feels weird that we only have three in it yeah we're gonna give you a gun in a magazine but we're only gonna give you three bullets for it it seems weird and you know what there should have been a scene where she takes a clip out and it's like oh and they got three bullets left well I don't think that's what happened I don't think she ran out of ammo I think she just stopped shooting well especially because they have a shot they do the getting knocked out with the gun they have a shot of the gun which is very much a show thing they're planning on using to potentially kill themselves that's true yeah so there's gotta be more bullets in there yeah they she just decided not to shoot the zombie again I was thinking if they were gonna show that then like so are we gonna have like that scene in this scene because the timecode shows on vlc and everything but I was like are they gonna show the scene where Riley starts to turn but Ellie doesn't I feel like that's something that was missing in both the game and the show I don't know that seems like a really good scene well because what does that look like exactly of Ellie actually being okay but then Riley gets more and more deteriorated until she starts turning and they both realize like why aren't you and then it's too late and Riley starts going you know that would be fucking traumatic as hell well I guess I guess the thing is is that you would imagine that that's the point where Marlene links up right that that yeah maybe maybe that's what the scene looks like that Marlene shows up and Ellie seems to be totally fine while Riley is deteriorating even though they have bites in pretty much the same way yeah like if Ellie had to kill her in some horrible moment and then the fireflies turn up because this is apparently a firefly area and then they just as you said they just find her and like you know they pull a gun on it when you've bitten and she's like at this point it's been like you know however long and they realize nothing is spreading nothing is and so they capture immediately and they figure out what they're gonna do and they realize she just doesn't get infected which links right up with episode one then yeah I wonder if that is like because it's almost like well it is more poetic if you don't see it deteriorate it's like but it does though and that's kind of what makes it really tragic isn't it yeah I mean how tragic it is that they both got infected the fact that one of them dies and the other one survives and has to sort of deal with that I wouldn't want to take it away from an artist to be like I don't want to show that scene you know how it goes and it's like I guess it's up to you but I feel like it's I don't really know how it goes actually well I think something that I remember because remember at the end of the end of the last of us how like Ellie gives a speech of you know like Riley was the first to die and then it was Tess and then it was Sam like that she's the one who keeps surviving yeah like sort of having to deal with that almost survivor like guilt that she might have it was like that'd be a really good way to reinforce it like it's sad it would be really sad it would be a really sad scene on top of the sad scene that was already there well you can definitely through careful dialogue just have her express dramatically like why me and why can't I help you yeah because that'll set a foundation then it seems like it's a potential opportunity it would be tough I think from like from a writing standpoint it's you got to be I think pretty considered in terms of like how you want it to play out and how it would feed into a character going forward but yeah I guess I'm kind of surprised I was almost thinking that that's what we would get in this episode is how it leads directly into her linking up with the Fireflies but maybe that's just going to be vague like maybe never know I think that could be a good scene but to be honest I'm personally kind of glad that doesn't go there I don't think we need to see that scene it would be so bleak if they did that like to show Ellie just like killing off Riley like I don't know I like where this story ends they had a whole episode to be happy now it's time to pay the piper oh we got some drama covered in episode 8 I'm sure I was I was really impressed with their performances on both of them at this point I feel like anybody saying Bella Ramsey can't act is like I'm sorry you're just wrong no she's good yeah no I'm happy to say she's good I'd say she's pretty good at this point like she if it was like she's had several scenes at this point that have really I guess pushed her to the extremes of like human emotions I was the same with the actress for Riley as well she was really crying there in the end she was like bowling and what I liked about their little story in this episode is that there is an identifiable zigzag with like their attraction to one another like the first point is in the photo booth where Riley leans in a little too close and Ellie is a bit uncomfortable I mean she likes her but she's just like okay this is a little bit more than I was expecting in this moment in time like can you just back off a bit please and Riley reads this she's like okay sorry and then like the next point is in the arcade machine where um Ellie is like waiting for her for Riley to kiss her and she doesn't probably because Riley is thinking about how Ellie reacted in the photo booth and is going well I don't want to weird her out so I just won't and then Ellie's kind of disappointed but the problem with that is in the game that beat was better because with the arcade machine in the game it's not working and it's like an angel knives game and like Riley is like saying just grab the controls just trust me close her eyes and then Riley has this whole bit where she like narrates the game as if it was powered up and working and then you kind of go into Ellie's head and it's like she's you can see her sort of envisioning the game in her mind and then like Ellie seeing that work that Riley is putting in to make her happy that's kind of what prompts her to like wait for the kiss that then doesn't happen and this I feel like it doesn't work as well just with the functioning Mortal Kombat 2 machine interesting as a comparison I guess yeah you can see that because it is a lot for friends to try and generate an experience that you're not even having this is the place just being on and active yeah and then it all culminates obviously with the kiss on the glass cabinet yeah I think there's a lot of tweaks that could be made to improve this one and I think I agree I think this is the weakest of the season yep yeah I agree with that I think I'm there I think I'm there at this point I thought this was fine but I have to agree yeah this was probably the weakest well it's a good skill floor I'd say to have I just I'm hoping they can well because the floor here still isn't bad and there's still some worthwhile stuff in this episode I want to see the next episode give me I want to see how it all plays out well that was the last of us episode 7 EFAP TV closing out, saying goodbye Toodle Pip, Jiri, Osa yeah bye bye bye everybody see you what did you bring me