I guess that’s a weakness of your basic post-apocalyptic road-movie structure: You’re only gonna run into so many people, most of whom are adults, most of whom are carrying guns that they may or may not be shooting at you. Not a lot of opportunities to explore the rich panoply of human emotion, you know? This lack of variety is reflected in the effectively one-note performances of both Ramsey and Pedro Pascal, and it handicaps the show considerably. More interesting or innovative writing could work around that, but, well, you get what you get. 

Even the exceptions, like this flashback, aren’t really much to write home about. You can see Ellie’s wide-eyed wonder at the mall coming the moment its lights switch on, and the show does nothing unexpected with the sequence. Even if it did, Gustavo Santaolalla and David Fleming’s constant, hyperactive, sledgehammer-subtle score tells you exactly how to feel about everything at every moment. I’ve been rewatching The Sopranos recently — I know, I know, that’s hardly a fair comparison for this or any other show — and it’s amazing how its lack of a score makes it feel so much more wide-open and intriguing than this. A little more faith in the audience’s ability to think for itself would go a long way.

Which is the story of The Last of Us, I think. Every week it comes on, every week it’s basically serviceable genre entertainment, and with a couple of exceptions (the highs of Episode 3, the lows of Episode 5) every week it’s out of my mind within minutes of the closing credits rolling. You don’t really need to think for yourself, as there’s simply not much to think about.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Last of Us for Decider.

If there were an award given out for the year’s most adequate hour of television, The Last of Us Episode 6 (“Kin”) would be a contender. Basically competent, mildly engaging, largely inoffensive, gesturing in the direction of emotional power without ever running the risk of triggering it directly, it comes nowhere near the highs nor the lows of the five episodes that preceded it. Some lovely scenery, some cursory worldbuilding, a reunion and a farewell, a bunch of wild animals in a post-apocalyptic city, an unsuspenseful cliffhanger, and that’s a wrap. It’s a fresh installment of the biggest show on TV right now, and it’s pretty much just there.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Last of Us for Decider.

The Last of Us made its sympathetically portrayed fascist collaborators Black and Jewish and had them hide with a child in an attic or else the antifascists would murder them. When you type it out it feels even more unpleasant than it did to watch it. Who does this thought experiment serve? In whose shoes is this placing us? Surely it’s intended to be “makes you think” television. What, exactly, are we supposed to think here?

I reviewed The Last of Us episode five for Decider.

A group of revolutionaries has overthrown the fascist FEDRA government — but is the cure worse than the disease? Pretend you don’t know anything about how Hollywood tells stories and find out tonight on The Last of Us!!!

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Last of Us for Decider.

Along the way they play Linda Ronstadt on the piano, they eat delicious meals prepared by Bill, they revel in strawberries grown by Frank (Bill’s high-pitched squeal of delight upon tasting a fruity delicacy he probably hasn’t enjoyed in over a decade is delightful), they fend off an attempted invasion of their property by raiders with a show of booby-trap force that makes Kevin McCallister look like a guy with a banana peel, they befriend Joel and Tess (RIP), they renovate the neighborhood and some nearby shops, and they pretty much act like basically decent people making the absolute best out of the absolute worst situation. Keep in mind the entire main narrative stops short for, I dunno, 50 out of the episode’s 76 minutes to show all this.

I reviewed this week’s The Last of Us for Decider.

The rest of the episode, and this is definitely the cool thing about it, stars a grand total of three characters and three characters only: Joel, Tess, and Ellie, trekking through the overrun ruins of Boston in order to exchange the girl for the battery the adults will need to fire up a truck and take it cross country. That’s right: no resistance fighters, no jackbooted security personnel, no working stiffs, no fellow smugglers, not even extras save for the infected. It’s all Pedro Pascal, Anna Torv, and Bella Ramsey, which sets up the unconscious expectation in the audience that if enough of these three characters die, so too will our story. It’s smart filmmaking.

Smart enough, I think, that it can power through a lot of objections you might have as to the been-there-done-that nature of what they say and do. I’ll state for the record once again that I have not played the Last of Us video games; I’ll state for the record once again that this doesn’t matter, since I’m reviewing a TV show and not the games it’s based on. As such, well, it’s 2023: You’ve seen crumbling cities overrun by vegetation a million times before (Netflix’s Alice in Borderland Season 2 got there just a few weeks ago!). Ditto plant/fungus-based humanoid monsters. Ditto dialogue like “This is your chance, you get her there, you keep her alive, and you set everything right,” which when delivered by an infected and doomed Tess is supposed to come across like a major moment instead of throwaway text from a cutscene. It’s way more the latter than it is the former, I’m afraid.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Last of Us for Decider.

Provided you don’t mind watching a show without a single original thought in its head, the series premiere of The Last of Us is an okay way to spend an hour and twenty minutes. And honestly, why would you expect this show to blaze new trails for the post-apocalyptic zombie genre? It’s an adaptation of a ten-year-old video game that itself arrived years deep into the zombie renaissance best represented by The Walking Dead, from Chernobyl creator (and labor “dissident”) Craig Mazin. George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead it isn’t. Hell, James Gunn and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead it isn’t, either. For one thing, both those movies were scary.

I reviewed the first episode of the next big thing for Decider.