Joel as well as Ellie have been grappling more recently with humankind however this week, the undead returned to the spotlight.
Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Endure and Survive’
Yes, you read that correct … “The Last of Us” is an emo-show.
The past two episodes Joel as well as Ellie have been confronting their humanity as they consider the most and least desirable routes for their kind, starting from Bill and Frank’s romantic desire and Kathleen’s “kill ’em all” bitterness.
In the episode this week, which was aired on Friday night HBO Max and will be aired at HBO on Sunday evening, against the Super Bowl — the undead were able to take the center of the stage. As Kathleen’s army descends upon Joel, Ellie and their new allies Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Woodard) The ground then is opened up and a raging mass of infected creatures is unleashed, consuming hundreds of gun-toting goons. This is a stark warning of a global threat that has been in the last 20 years. The people who survived the Cordyceps disease have been shooting their guns in the wrong direction.
George Romero told the same sort of cautionary tale in the film of 1968 “Night of the Living Dead,” and later during the follow-ups. Romero’s characters were human and set up barricades to protect themselves from the crowd of mindless creatures; however, repeatedly, they’d be distracted by their own arguing and let their guards fall down and end up being killed by strangers or devoured by monsters. The popular TV show “The Walking Dead” ran for 11 seasons and had the same concept. While the fortresses of the show grew in size as well as the residents inside them more organizedeach year an apocalypse would strike the living and the dead would profit.
What separates “The Last of Us” in comparison to its predecessors is the fact the fact that it doesn’t focus on the abolition of human civilization as such. This is just an imposing dark backdrop to what has so far been an intimate and intimate story. The drama the past week took place in Kansas City could have filled the entirety of a Romero film, or even two to three “Walking Dead” seasons. However, these issues are nothing more than something our heroes must get over, hoping to sustain as few injuries as they can.
This isn’t enough to stop the director of the episode Jeremy Webb, and the screenwriter Craig Mazin, one of the show’s creators from getting towards the chaos of Kansas City. The result was one of the most pure and thrilling sequences from this program since episode 2.
The show begins with a flashback around 10 days ago, in which Kathleen’s resistance group beat the FEDRA soldiers and carried their bodies across the streets with a wild celebration. In the evening she embarks on her tireless hunt for Henry who was a former FEDRA informant has been blamed by her for the murder of her beloved brother, Michael. She begins by bringing together every collaborator she can track down and telling them (or more precisely in a lie — the possibility that, if they agree to cooperate, they are likely to be heard before her court. (“You’re everyone guilty so this is how it will go.”) This is the way she discovers of the fact that Henry and his 8-year-old son Sam are protected by the Dr. Edelstein by Doctor. Edelstein — the man Kathleen will later question and later film, just as we witnessed in the last episode.
However, don’t feel bad for FEDRA as well as its network of Quarantine Zone snitchers. As Henry later describes to Joel his son, authorities were so brutal to the residents of the city — “Raped and tortured and murdered people for 20 years,” Henry says that the town was known all over the world in the name of “Killer City.”
Henry as well as Sam were, it is we suspect as the two men who sneaked in on Joel and Ellie in their office building hideout at conclusion of last week’s episode. When they left Edelstein’s hidden hideout, Henry saw Joel and Ellie escape from an ambush. In the hopes that these newcomers would aid in their to escape, Henry and Sam followed them to devise an idea. Four of them have to go together through the city’s tunnels for maintenance -they Henry claims are not contaminated by the disease, thanks to the secret FEDRA program that Kathleen isn’t aware of -and then escape via a residential area near an embankment. This is next to the bridge which is out of town.
However, Henry chooses to come open to Joel to let Joel know that Kathleen is in a state of anger. Henry did mention FEDRA to Michael as he was in need of medication for Sam who, was deaf, and also deaf was also a victim of leukemia. (“I do not work on rats.” Joel reflexively says at an instance. “Today you do,” Henry says.)
That’s why our escapees being confronted with numerous militia rifles. They make it through the tunnels in good shape however, the sniper takes them down as they come out, and by the time Joel is able to disarm the gunman Kathleen’s troops have bulldozed their way through. Henry is willing to give up his life to let Sam Ellie and Ellie to get out however Kathleen isn’t enthralled by any sob story of the death of her brother. “Kids die, Henry,” Kathleen says. As she draws the gun from her pocket, she says, “It ends the way it ends.”
In the background, the monsters. Before Kathleen is able to shoot her massive armored vehicles slips through an opening in the earth, and loses massive amounts of the extremely dangerous underground creatures Henry refers to as “clickers” — including one Big Boss mega-zombie who looks terrifying and amazing. (The video game contains an entire hierarchy of affected.) Due to Joel protecting his friends from the sniper’s hive when they race towards the embankment, all four them manage to break out of the chaos. However, they’re not spared: Sam gets infected. Even though Ellie is trying to help him by smear part of her blood onto the wound, he turns insane, and Henry is forced to shoot him. Without a reason to remain in the fight, he shoots himself.
This is a truly sad ending as these brothers could have been great travel partners. Ellie and Sam were fast friends sharing a love for her collection of puns as well as the comic book series they both enjoy. (Quoting from the book, Ellie says, “To the edge of the universe, endure and survive!”) In the final moments before close, they discuss their fears and Ellie confessing “I’m scared of ending up alone.” Then Sam – poor Sam, fated Sam asks the question that everyone would have been asking when they were trying to kill one to kill each other.
“If you turn into a monster, is it still you inside?”
Side Quests
Kathleen does not stay for long enough to be the heroic tragic character she was destined to be, but Mazin does provide Melanie Lynskey with two fantastic scenes that enhance the character. The first one is a collaborator review of the night FEDRA came down, in which she scolds the group for having their neighbors sold out to buy “apples” and then demands she know what they have learned. (“You’re informers! Tell me!”) In the second scene, she wanders around the old room and talks about her childhood with her brother, a decent man who was begging her to be able to forgive Henry. The purpose of these two episodes is to prove that Kathleen was able to justify her decision to take out FEDRA and anyone who helped them. But she also knows that she took things higher than Michael would have.
Sam and Henry are locked up over the course of 10 days inside Edelstein’s secret loft, along with a tiny amount of canned food and a large box of crayons. Then, they travel with Joel as well as Ellie to the ruins of an underground town, that has games and books. Like always, the main goal in almost all post-apocalyptic fiction and, well, even in real life — is to locate an area of safety with food and activities and to remain as long as is possible.
