Dobian

Logan's death is so much like real life, where a major family member dies with so much left unsaid, so little resolution to things, so many dangling threads. Most shows and movies make character deaths overly tidy, with most loose ends tied up. Logan's death leaves a tangled mess, both with his business empire and the psychological state of the children he abused for a lifetime. That is why so many people can relate to this character's death more than any other.

Check my avatar. Yes, this was Lost in Space level of goofiness. 😆

Basically 35 minutes of filler until they finally got to what the episode was really about. But we got to see Jack Black and Christopher Lloyd, so there was that. The whole big red button thing was pretty ridiculous. If that's all it takes to turn all the droids into killer robots and that thing is just sitting out in the open, any janitor accidentally leaning on it while wiping off the desk would trigger a catastrophe lol.

It's funny how the show that is known for being off the rails bonkers suddenly turned into a conventional drama once it landed in the Fifties. But the final moments of this episode and the previews for next week look like it's going to get back to being more like the old Riverdale again.

You're taking a woke view of history and imposing your 21st-century views on another time. Societies evolve, and ours was evolving in the Fifties. In many ways, our society has devolved in the 21st century. The inner cities (which existed before the suburbs, they were always there) you mentioned were far different in the Fifties than they were today. Anyone could go for a walk through Harlem or any other inner city at night then. Not so today. Black families were 80% two-parent households, compared to 20% today. The internet and social media are now isolating and dividing people. In the Fifties, you would go to the store and interact with a human. Today you shop on Amazon and interact with no one. Even in the Seventies, I would go out at night to play with my friends. People still left their front doors unlocked. Not anymore. In the Fifties, you could laugh at a joke by Don Rickles, Mort Sahl, or Lenny Bruce. Today you can't laugh at anything that might get canceled. You mentioned how hard it was for women in the Fifties to have careers, which was very true. But you didn't mention how today, many women work not because they want to but because they have to. Today's economy requires two-income households for families to get by, which wasn't the case in the Fifties. The Fifties had its problems, but in many ways was more civilized than the society we have today. I could make the argument about any era of history that you're making about the Fifties. The Roman Empire was a horrible period in world history. Look at what they did to the people they conquered, to the Christians. Forget about the advancements in architecture, roads, irrigation, sewage, military tactics, law, and government. It was a dark period in world history. The Renaissance - forget it. Who cares about the advances in art, commerce, and banking? Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, the Medicis, forget about them. The Renaissance saw the rise of rampant imperialism and subjugation. It was a dark stain on our history. We have the choice to apply our 21st-century values and mores in a strict judgment of those who came before us. Or we can view all of history fairly and objectively, and understand that people were the product of their time, and had we lived then we wouldn't be judging in the same way that we do from the present with the benefit of hindsight.

I think you’re taking a very limited view of the Fifties by describing it primarily based on racism and sexism. The Fifties wasn’t some “white male fantasy.” It was a pivotal decade in the country’s history. The growth of the middles class and suburbs led to unprecedented economic growth. Television became the medium of the masses. It was the decade the human race reached space. It was the decade that started the computer age. And of course, it was the decade of rock and roll. Yes, there was terrible racism, but that wasn’t a product of the Fifties, it had existed for a very long time. The Fifties was the first decade to confront it. The Fifties was the birth of the Civil Rights movement. It was also the decade where we first saw widespread proliferation of Blacks in professional sports and entertainment. The most popular show on television, I Love Lucy (which you alluded to), featured a mixed race marriage, something that was heretofore considered outrageous. So I don’t see the Fifties as a terrible decade at all, but a decade of great and positive change. There is much, in fact, that today’s America could learn from the Fifties.

I will close by saying that you repeatedly make false equivalencies. A country having a law that you can't take a person's life against their will to save five or ten or one hundred is not the same as taking a person's life against their will to save the whole of the human race. You also conflate by combining two separate arguments, the quality of the show's writing with the moral question the story poses. Those are two completely different things. No one is arguing that the show fell short narratively. But if the writing clearly established that Ellie was in fact, the only option, that there was no way to create a cure without killing her, and that the future of civilization was bleak if they didn't find a cure, then you have the basis of a good trolley problem. I understand the gist of what they were trying to do and my points are based on this story having clearly established those facts. The bulk of your argument is based on the writers actual execution. No, Joel didn't premeditate anything. He found out they were going to put Ellie under the knife, and he had a choice to save her or let her die. He saved her, believing that she probably was the key to a cure. So for him, it was a trolley problem. The Fireflies didn't premeditate anything. They weren't out canvassing the cities for a bunch of Ellies to bring in and experiment on and see if they held a cure. Ellie fell into their lap. Your real-world example generally involves premeditation since it includes scenarios where there are sick and dying people, and there are other options available for saving them besides killing a specific individual. These laws weren't created with apocalyptic scenarios in mind. And yes, I would trust the wisdom of Socrates, Plato, and a host of modern-day thinkers and philosophers over pretty much any politician.

You do a lot of conflating and apples and oranges comparisons. We’re not talking about the quality of the writing, and we’re not talking about the quality of Ancient Greek politicians. Everyone has said that the writing could have been better and that there are plot holes in the whole Ellie must die for a cure angle. We’re talking about your comparison of the trolley problem to a government making murder to save others illegal. I only pointed out how that isn’t an accurate comparison, it’s two different things. And the choice of whether or not to sacrifice Ellie for a possible cure does match the trolley problem because the story presents her as the sole option to save humanity. You can argue that this now gets into the realm of bad writing, and I would kind of agree. But this is their premise, and based on their premise, it fits the trolley problem.

You are drawing a false equivalency. Your example involves premeditation. The trolley problem does not. Legalizing killing someone to harvest their organs to save five people is not the same as the trolley problem, where someone has to make a spontaneous decision to let a trolley hit five people or save them by pulling a lever so it hits someone else. Everyone on the tracks is equivalent in the trolley problem, unlike your example where you have a healthy person and five dying people, and are consciously deciding to sacrifice this healthy person (and why not some other healthy person or a healthy volunteer?) to save the five people. The trolley problem does not give you that choice, there are six people on the tracks, and you have not premeditated anything. Governments are for the most part not run by deep thinkers. No politician today could hold their ground in a debate with Plato or Socrates, for example. You're suggesting that because governments have made murdering someone to save others illegal (I'm fine with that one btw) that it negates the trolley problem, and philosophers and their students shouldn't even discuss it. As I alluded to earlier, that kind of thinking usually leads to a bad end (anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism). It's also a fallacy to suggest that a law has more credibility if enacted in a democratic country than in a non-democratic one. A law is judged on its own merit, not on who created it. Democratic countries have lots of bad laws too.

Well no, society creating laws doesn't solve abstract morality experiments. No one has ever said or written, "The trolley problem has been solved because this state enacted this law..." If we ever start declaring moral absolutes because some government decreed it, we are in serious trouble.

I think you need to factor in that the show is presenting it as "this is the only way." Even Joel agrees with Marlene's assessment about the fungus living in the brain and immediately realizing that they intend to kill Ellie. So you have to suspend disbelief a little bit and run on the assumption that yes, the only way to get a sample to make a vaccine from is to cut up Ellie's brain. That's the canon of the story. But sure, in the real world you would say, hold on, you can examine blood samples, you can do an MRI on her brain and see if there is a less invasive way to pull out a tiny amount of tissue. But if you introduce all that into the story, it waters down the whole moral dilemma. So it's, "Ellie must die or there is no cure." [I'm just speculating but I think their thought process was that the blood would only contain cells from the fungus which is useless since they can get fungus cells from any infected person. What they need is a sample of her brain tissue interacting with the fungus and not being changed by it.]

Yes, that is another moral/ethical question. Should Ellie have been told the truth and allowed to make the moral decision herself? We'll never know what she would have chosen. I suspect if Marlene told her the truth she would have given Ellie the illusion of choice, and if Ellie chose wrong, Marlene would have said tough, we're going through with it anyway.

The dilemma over Ellie and the doctor is the classic "trolley problem" that's been studied in countless psychology and philosophy classes over the years. There's a trolley coming down the tracks at high speed toward a person who is tied to the tracks. You can pull a switch to divert the trolley away from the person, saving them, but then it will hit five people on the other track. What do you do? In this case, Marlene and the doctor are the switch operators. Ellie is the person tied to the tracks. They can do nothing (don't free her, continue with the surgery) and she dies while the others are saved. Or they can turn the switch (let her leave with Joel) and the others die. I know in this scenario some of you will argue that if they pull the switch then maybe everyone on the other track doesn't die, only a few who don't get off the tracks in time (no vaccine but somehow humanity survives). Or if they don't pull the switch then another trolley comes rolling down that track and finishes them off anyway (surgery/vaccine not successful). It's a complicated moral question.

Okay, you have a doctor and equipment to study her immunity to the fungus and possibly develop a cure. It's not a guarantee, but in *twenty* years it is the first and maybe only shot humanity has gotten. If he is successful, humanity can be saved, including all the other kids out there like Ellie. The alternative is eventual extinction for the human race, with people - including countless children like Ellie - living in misery. His choice gives humanity a shot, even if it's a small one. Yours likely dooms everyone to death. It's easy to make the decision where we are sitting, but if you were in his and Marlene's shoes, you would have to explain why you decided for all of humanity why they have no future except death now. Your argument is that it is immoral to not abandon that opportunity for one person. That would be Joel's argument. I don't agree, but I can understand the sentiment. But to call the doctor a monster like Dr. Shiro, or Dr. Mengele, or any other evil doctor, is completely unfair and a false equivalency. If you read up on them, they tortured their victims to satisfy their sadistic urges in the name of "science." They were sociopaths, serial killers. This doctor isn't trying to torture somebody and isn't doing this get his kicks or tap into his inner Jeffrey Dahmer. He thinks he has a reasonable chance to find a cure. He's thinking about all the other people out there who have no hope if he doesn't try to do something. To consider his act immoral, okay, I again understand that position. But he's no monster.

Marlene wasn't a monster. She had seen civilization destroyed and *billions* of people die. And here was a person with immunity, and they had a trained geneticist and the medical equipment to produce a vaccine from her. If they try, humanity has a chance. If they don't, the extinction of the human race is pretty much guaranteed. Putting one girl's life above the billions who died before her and the millions remaining would be absurd, as terrible as it sounds to kill her. Yes, Joel killing all those people to get to Ellie shows the glaring contradiction in his character. He will save the girl at all cost, even at the expense of other lives. The doctor he killed could have saved lives in other ways even if he didn't find a cure. Joel is a complex character and probably the best video game character ever written. I can completely understand his motivations given his personal history, as flawed and tragic as he is. The way he rescues Ellie shows that it is not heroic but monstrous in it's own way, as he tries to atone for the guilt over his daughter's death twenty years before.

I thought Bella really came along in her portrayal of Ellie in this episode. I do root for her because I like the actress. For those who don't know, this episode is the whole Left Behind dlc from the game. I thought it hit all the beats and recreated it faithfully. The mall confused me and my wife though. There was a lot of retro stuff like 80s music, the video game arcade, the Esprit store (still around online but most shops were closed after the 90s). Cool though. I get people not caring for the episode because it's a flashback. I'm not a big fan of flashback episodes either. You want the story to move forward but have to do a timeout to visit the past. But this does tell the origin of Ellie's bite and learning that she's immune.

True, but these are a tiny minority of extremists and not representative of the fan base, just like there were extremists on the other side sending death threats to J.K. Rowling on the release of Hogwarts Legacy. Publishers like Naughty dog and Warner Brothers (Hogwarts) are wise when they ignore the toxic social media crowd instead of pander to them.

This is a hot take. Naughty Dog released Left Behind separately because it's a back story and DLCs are how game publishers make more money from additional sales as well as promoting more sales of the base game.

This was the same theme with Walking Dead, where the handful of people left are the worst or stupidest people you can imagine. I would think that in a real apocalypse you would have groups - mainly from our military - who would re-establish pockets of civilization.

Yeah, she was much better in episode 3. The bit where she kills the trapped zombie was too sociopath I thought, but the rest of the time she was fine.

Eh...there were a lot of legitimate criticisms about the narrative approach to the game, the character Abby, and the storytelling. It wasn't just that people didn't like gays or couldn't handle a complex story. As for this episode, it was a nice story and beautifully told. I think a lot of the reviews I have read that it was one of the greatest episodes of television ever are completely over the top. I can think of dozens of great episodes from iconic shows that were better than this. I can nitpick things like Bill shooting from the middle of the street instead of from cover, which got him shot. Downing all that Vicodin and having a nice conversation before going to the bedroom to die, when they should have been passing out at the table. Starting the flashback that dominates the episode when we never encounter the character in the present through Joel and Ellie was kind of awkward. But I can hand wave those things. The main story of Bill and Frank was lovingly told.

I've only watched a couple of episodes so my opinion might change. But from what I have seen so far, it isn't just that Bella doesn't look like game Ellie. And let's be clear - and this gets into a general condescending view people have of video game characters, that what they look like doesn't really matter. Because it does. For example, if they decided to continue Harry Potter from right after the fall of Voldemort but had some actor who looks nothing like Harry Potter play him, people would have a fit. But when it's a video game character, no big deal. I had the same issue with Uncharted the movie, where young Nathan Drake didn't evoke anything of game Nathan Drake for me. But setting appearance aside, the real issue is that so far, Bella hasn't captured Ellie's personality very much. She's angry, arrogant, and snarky. But she also lacks the innocence, warmth and compassion of game Ellie. She is basically playing her Game of Thrones character, which doesn't work for me here. They also seem to be making her a Mary Sue, while game Ellie grew as she learned how to survive from Joel. That said, I would have preferred the actress - who is black - who played Joel's daughter to play Ellie. She seemed a much better personality fit to me for the role, and I could have quickly accepted her as Ellie versus Bella. As for gay men having sex, this story really isn't the place for that, just as it wouldn't be the place for straight people having sex. It's not that kind of story. It doesn't make you a misogynist or a homophobe because you don't want to see certain things in certain stories just for the sake of shoehorning them in.

This show was too messy for me. It began as The Titanic, then turned into a Twilight Zone episode, then Dr. Who shows up, and then it wraps up with Maura in Space 1999 (not a typo, the old show).

I was going to say the same thing. You may not have known the whole reveal in Dark before the final episode, but you could figure things out as you went along with the time travel and everything. They revealed things a little at a time. But this show is like Lost, just mystery piled on top of mystery.

The triangles/pyramids showing up everywhere kind of reminds me of Hurley's lottery numbers. The triangles/pyramids showing up everywhere kind of reminds me of Hurley's lottery numbers.