The Last of Us - A Return to Appointment Television

Full disclosure - The Last of Us is my all-time favourite video game at this point, eclipsing Metal Gear Solid, Red Dead Redemption and a host of others I have whiled so many hours away on. It is far grimmer that my usual, more heroic fair, but the brilliant way it depicts two damaged survivors building a relationship in an incredibly hostile word made the survival horror aspects of the gameplay that much more poignant.

So compelling was the story, in fact, that not only did both girls ask me for updates at the supper table about my recent exploits and travails, but Glory asked me to replay the original game in its entirety while she was present. Playing the game had no appeal to her, but her need to experience the story was simply that compelling.

Needless to say, we were both excited to hear the announcement that HBO was adapting TLOU for television (I guess we still call it that!), and our anticipation grew as they announced the involvement of the game's co-director Neil Druckmann, then a stellar cast including Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey and Anna Torv, and then that much of it was to be filmed in Alberta, including a bunch of tonight's second episode right here in Edmonton.

Glory and I watched the first episode the same night it aired, despite getting to it later in the evening than usual. Two days later we convinced Fenya and Audrey to watch it with us. Tonight, after a Chinese take-out feast for Lunar New Year, the four of us and Bobby watched the second episode about 20 minutes after it was available (7 pm MST); this was after Fenya and I watched the first episode with Bobby - him for the first time, Fenya for the second, and me for the third.

The Last of Us is not just a really solid adaptation of a good story from another medium; two episodes in, it it legitimately great television. Unbelievable worldbuilding, great characters with solid motivations, and superb dialogue. Every divergence from the source material makes sense, and I greatly appreciate the opportunities they are taking to fill in the gaps that even playing the game multiple times has left me with.

For example, many of the decayed cityscapes show shattered skyscrapers leaning against each other - sure, 20-years of a fungal zombie apocalypse is going to leave your infrastructure a little worse for wear, but I feel like metal fatigue would take much longer before enormous office towers started coming down like dominoes. Sure enough, tonight Ellie (Bella Ramsey) the 14 year-old being escorted through a city of infected by desperate smugglers Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Tess (Anna Torv), runs up to the lip of a large hole in a city street and says, "Whoa, this must be from one of the bombs, huh?"

And that's how we learned that nations turned powerful weapons on their won cities in order to slow down - not stop - an enemy crippling them from within.

Don't let the zombie analogy put you off - TLOU has crafted a tremendously and terrifyingly credible endgame scenario which, while fanciful, is just the backdrop for a story which starts out as dystopian as it gets, but eventually has no choice but to mutate into something akin to hope. And while there are humans in this world every bit as horrifying as the awfully deformed 'clickers,' I don't believe it even approaches the level of cynicism displayed in shows like The Walking Dead.

If you have no appetite for tension though, let this one pass by - all five of us had our stomachs tied in knots tonight watching the protagonists trying to quietly sneak around a blind clicker, and that includes two of us already intimately familiar with the story from the game!

Best of all though was watching as part of a group, hearing the collective gasps and "oh noooo"s coming from the other parts of the room. an experience shared is an experience remembered, so I hope we are able to do this for most if not all of the remaining eight episodes.

When I was 14 or 15, I remember Mum and I did not have the easiest time communicating - probably not a tale too unfamiliar to many of us on either or even both sides of adolescent interactions. But I was always grateful for Thursday nights, when she and I would sit down and watch Simon & Simon, Magnum P.I. and Hill Street Blues in succession. We might watch other shows together on an ad hoc basis, but there was a standing date almost every Thursday night, often with popcorn, to watch those three shows in particular. 

We would talk about what we saw, and things it reminded us of in our own lives or other shows we had seen, and speculate about why people, fictional and actual, do the things they do and the ways they do them. It was good (and in the case of Hill Street Blues, great) television, but an even better chance to connect over common ground.

A coworker talked about bingeing The Last of Us when it completed (and he could be assured of the quality not dropping off mid-way!) but I counselled against it. Why would you expose yourself to spoilers or deny yourself the agonizing joy of anticipation? Half the fun of shows like this is speculating what comes next - something even game players cannot be certain of - and rehashing favourite or striking bits from the last installment.

We are only 20% through The Last of Us, but the show is easily as well-executed and the video game it is drawn from, and I look forward to another couple months of Sunday nights of having my nerves jangled, heart broken and being grateful for the relative safety of the world I live in...

...as well as not having to watch by myself.