Weekend Watch - The last of Us Episode 1
Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week, we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers is the first episode of HBO’s new television series, The Last of Us, based on the critically acclaimed survival horror games from Naughty Dog and Sony. The show stars Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Merle Dandridge, and Anna Torv and opened its first episode to widespread acclaim from fans of the games and fans of television in general, briefly earning the highest IMDB rating for a television show ever. Let’s get into it.
Letter Grade: A-; this show is clearly well-made and has made fans happy. We’ll see how it continues to handle the hype.
Should you Watch This Show? Probably. If you loved the games, my understanding is that this is must-watch television and a phenomenal adaptation. If you know nothing about the games but like post-apocalyptic stuff, this looks to be one of the better offerings out there too.
Why?
The Last of Us’s first episode, titled “When You’re Lost in the Darkness,” comes out swinging, feeling equally like a high-quality television show and a solid video game adaptation at the same time. If you’re like me and have only heard about the games but never played (because you’re an Xbox gamer only or something), the show does a good job of establishing characters, relationships, and the world in the first episode, doing enough to keep us less knowledgeable viewers hooked while paying enough service to the initiated to not alienate them. Their combination of worldbuilding and character establishment has made this one of the better first episodes that I’ve watched in a while, even if it is nearly an hour and a half in runtime (cable used to do double features for their premieres right?).
Like he does in so many of his features, Pedro Pascal helps sell the product. His performance as Joel just in the first episode has me hooked and interested in his character development. He plays the hardened cynic who secretly cares about people really hard so well at this point that you’d almost forget his first major HBO role as Oberyn Martell. In The Last of Us, he dons a relatively believable southeast Texas accent and shows us a range in this first episode that goes from stretched but loving father to mournful and hardened veteran to begrudging caretaker who finally has had enough and decides to do something about it. Honestly, if he just turns this first episode in as a sizzle reel to casting agencies from here on, he’ll probably be in a job for the next twenty years.
Luckily for Pascal, The Last of Us is no Wonder Woman 1984, and he doesn’t have to carry the show on his back. As apocalyptic shows go, the production value is high, and the storytelling seems to be taking it in a good direction. Director Craig Mazin and his team do a phenomenal job in this first episode of capturing the world and, strange as it may seem, the gameplay of The Last of Us in the medium of television. From an early scene of a truck suddenly forcing Joel and his daughter to take the longer, more dangerous route out of town to Joel’s to-do list of sidequests in Boston to what I assume is cutscene dialogue options when Joel and Tess are offered the job of transporting Ellie, this first episode showcases the right ways to turn a video game into a less interactive and more linear form of visual media.
The Last of Us episode one introduces the show’s audience to its world and characters in brilliant fashion, capturing the spirit of the video game in the form of a television show that is sure to make most fans, new and old, happy. One small knock is the show’s current similarity to many other apocalyptic shows, which should be assuaged by the end of this first season if my friends who played the games are to be believed. Should it achieve that uniqueness and distance itself from the pack, I think we can optimistically say that we have been blessed with yet another hit from HBO. The show’s next episode airs tomorrow night, and all episodes are available from the time of release on HBO Max.
