{"id":604553,"date":"2023-02-04T07:48:49","date_gmt":"2023-02-04T13:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/04\/the-last-of-us-is-all-i-want-to-talk-about-right-now\/"},"modified":"2023-02-04T07:48:49","modified_gmt":"2023-02-04T13:48:49","slug":"the-last-of-us-is-all-i-want-to-talk-about-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/04\/the-last-of-us-is-all-i-want-to-talk-about-right-now\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Last of Us’ Is All I Want to Talk About Right Now"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Monitor is<\/span> a<\/em> weekly column<\/em><\/a> devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n

Around the WIRED offices I\u2019m not necessarily a \u201ctold ya so\u201d kind of person. Frankly, in a workplace this smart, I\u2019m more of a \u201cno, no, you\u2019re right\u201d team player. But on Monday morning, when my colleagues hopped on Slack to talk about last Sunday\u2019s episode of\u00a0The Last of Us<\/em>, all I could think was, \u201cI warned you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Granted, I\u2019d only warned a couple. But as one of the editors behind Will Bedingfield\u2019s\u00a0brilliant piece<\/a> on bringing Naughty Dog\u2019s video game to HBO and Hemal Jhaveri\u2019s\u00a0lovely Q&A<\/a> with\u00a0Last of Us<\/em>\u00a0star\u00a0Pedro Pascal<\/a>, I\u2019d gotten an early peek at the show, and when anyone would ask, I\u2019d say, \u201cEpisode 3 made me cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The series\u2019 third episode\u2014a love story between a prepper, Bill (Nick Offerman), and a man named Frank who gets trapped on his property (Murray Bartlett)\u2014is a departure from both the HBO series\u2019 main plot and the game it\u2019s based on. Bill is a character in the game, but not a playable one, and Frank is only mentioned in passing. Expanding their story was one of the many ways the show\u2019s creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (also the game\u2019s maker) sought to transform\u00a0Last of Us<\/em>\u00a0the game into\u00a0Last of Us<\/em>\u00a0the prestige TV show.\u00a0\u201cI said, \u2018Neil, I\u2019ve got a crazy idea,\u2019\u201d Mazin\u00a0told\u00a0Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a>. \u201cAnd he was like, \u2018Do it. Let\u2019s see how it goes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The gambit worked. Sunday\u2019s airing of \u201cLong Long Time\u201d\u00a0garnered 6.4 million viewers<\/a>, a 12 percent increase from the previous episode and 1.8 million more than the series premiere. (This bump is significant considering\u00a0Last of Us<\/em>\u2019 network sibling,\u00a0House of the Dragon<\/em>, was already losing viewers by its third episode.) Streams for the Linda Ronstadt song from which the episode got its title\u00a0went up 4,900 percent<\/a> on Spotify. Jimmy Kimmel had Offerman on his late-night program to\u00a0show him TikToks<\/a> of fans\u2019 tearful reactions to the episode. And Twitter couldn\u2019t stop talking about it.\u00a0Personal fave<\/a>: \u201cThe Last of Us<\/em> writers were like, \u2018Hey, Joel needs a car. What if we write the most touching and heartbreaking hour of television in the world.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was that rare episode of television that launched a thousand think pieces. Vulture declared the episode\u00a0a Rosetta stone<\/a> that \u201cunlocked the adaptation.\u201d\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em>\u00a0called it an \u201cachingly beautiful love story<\/a>.\u201d Inverse asked director Peter Hoar to\u00a0decode the final shot<\/a>. More than one outlet\u00a0called it<\/a> a\u00a0masterpiece<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As with all discourses, there was also a backlash. Druckmann himself had foretold it,\u00a0telling\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/a> prior to the series launch that \u201cas awesome as that episode is, there are going to be fans who are upset by it.\u201d Druckmann\u2019s creation has frequently received criticisms around its queer characters, and he, rightly, knew some fans wouldn\u2019t like what his show did with Bill\u2019s story. Some\u00a0called it<\/a> \u201can egregious pivot under the guise of positive representation.\u201d Others called it \u201cempty sentiment<\/a>.\u201d There was talk that the episode was an example of the \u201cbury your gays\u201d trope; further critics claimed it was a\u00a0subversion of that trope<\/a>. (The latter is closer to the truth.) And on and on it went.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Make no mistake, there is no right take here. Art is subjective, even if it\u2019s art that people feel very protective of. What\u2019s fascinating is that the discourse happened at all. In the months since Elon Musk took over, so much of the conversation on Twitter has been\u00a0about<\/em>\u00a0Twitter. Opening the app on Sunday night and Monday morning and seeing conversation\u00a0not about Musk or some other very-online dustup felt refreshing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

HBO, obviously, wants this. The network\u2019s Sunday night lineups have always aimed to spark watercooler conversations Monday morning. (Or as one tweet\u00a0put it<\/a>: \u201cHBO took [the] understanding that people get a little sad on Sunday nights and built that into an empire.\u201d) In the Covid\/WFH era, watercooler chats are less of a thing and cultural criticism often gets mired in overblown culture wars.\u00a0The Last of Us<\/em>\u00a0has been a victim here, too, of course, but on Sunday, as the Ronstadt played, it seemed as though prestige TV got back some of its magic, and people felt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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