Danny Franks

Loved it. I knew what the episode was going to be - that it would be based heavily on the game's Left Behind DLC - and it did not disappoint. Bella Ramsey was fantastic again, going from her panicky fear over Joel to sullen, teenage moping to looking absolutely smitten and lovelorn as she looked at Riley on the carousel. And then her anguish and rage at the end, when she realised her life was over. I liked that Riley tried to be older and wiser than Ellie, but wasn't really and still got giddy and silly over all the same things. I loved the decayed, rotten mall (still with an arcade packed with machines, as it would have been in 2003) and the "wonders" that were actually incredibly mundane in the real world. Loved the sweet, tentative romance that was blossoming... briefly. But the dangers of this world just don't allow for reckless teens to be reckless. You hear, 'oh, how could they be so stupid?' as though fourteen year olds never do incredibly stupid, dangerous things in the real world. Of course we knew what was going to happen. The show already told us - Ellie said she got bit in the mall that no one was supposed to go to, and the pregnant pause before she said she was alone told us she wasn't. But just because something is predictable, it doesn't make it bad storytelling. People seem to really want shocks and out-of-nowhere twists, which completely undercut good old tension building and foreboding. People complaining about not enough Joel... how much shivering and groaning on an old mattress do you want to see? The man's not going anywhere, and seeing the tables turned, for him to be completely reliant on Ellie for survival, was nicely done. It's strange, I've seen so many people saying they'd love a Joel flashback episode but when Ellie gets one, it's branded boring and disappointing. Reminds me of the people who only liked the game because it was about a tough, grizzled old dude smashing zombies... oh yeah, there's some annoying girl that tags along as well.

Nynaeve is the conservative, hometown curmudgeon who hates new cultures... and spends almost the entire series visiting new cities with her friend who just loves experiencing new cultures. It's hard to say what the original plans for Mat were. I suspect that Jordan originally only envisioned him as the spanner in the works, to give more jeopardy to Rand's journey. That was when he wasn't sure if he'd even get a second book. I think the weapon Mat carried in book one was his longbow, before he got the dagger. I don't recall any mention of him using a quarterstaff.

Xander being neutered would have prevented about 60% of the show's storylines from even happening. Buffy's life would have been much more peaceful.

I've heard the name Noah Centineo for a while now, and I think he made his name in teen heartthrob roles. I'm watching him in The Recruit at the moment and he's very good as the charming, plucky but out-of-his-depth hero. Certainly better at the espionage stuff than John Krasinsky in the Jack Ryan series.

Yeah, dogs can be trained to smell drugs, explosives, cash and some are even able to detect cancer. There's no reason they couldn't also smell a fungus inside someone.

Well, he never complained about his upper body strength. You know what, the show is clearly sexually progressive and that's a good thing, but I think 'grooming of a minor' might be just a slight step too far.

The somewhat nonplussed First Nation couple were fun. I liked that they both seemed to immediately sense that Joel wasn't a danger, and they treated him accordingly. Bella Ramsey is getting better by the episode, and I really buy her increasing reliance on Joel being matched by her increasing feelings of affection for him. Pedro Pascal is doing a good job showing Joel unconsciously slipping back into dad behaviour. And of course Joel knows who Ellie's favourite astronaut would be. Ellie seems more and more like a fourteen year old - snarky and curious and unguarded when it comes to asking things of Joel. Even that little moment of worry when she saw Joel had someone else he cared about, as he and Tommy hugged. One of my favourite scenes in the entire game is the one with Joel and Ellie where they talk about loss. I'm glad the show version of it made me feel both of their pain just as strongly. They're two broken people who need a real connection and Joel almost fucked it up because he's so desperate to avoid feeling anything. Because he's so scared of repeating the past. The little flashes of memory of Sarah are heartbreaking, and you have to wonder how clearly he can even remember her, after twenty years. We're seeing Joel's age and potential fragility more in this episode, which is obviously a worry. Even more of a worry now he's been staked. He's talked about his knackered knees and his bad ear and you'd have to assume anyone who lived from 36 to 56 in the post-apocalypse would be a little worn down. I loved the set for Tommy and Maria's town. Gorgeous, particularly with the string lights across the streets. The undercurrent of Maria knowing that Joel meant trouble and Joel fearing that Tommy had got himself mixed up with a doomed utopia was palpable. The stinger was Tommy saying that, just because Joel stopped living, it didn't mean other people had to. It takes a special kind of pessimist to look at that town and think, 'this is bad news.' Seeing him in full dad mode when he was teaching Ellie to shoot, and then when he was patiently answering her questions and listening to her make fun of him. That was so sweet. He was even smiling.

So the show kept the pivotal Joel/Ellie scene intact, for the most part and it worked really well. Some minor changes, and I'm kind of glad they skipped the bit where she runs off and Joel has to chase after her. That worked for a game, where you need the mechanics of fighting your way to her, but the show doesn't need that. One little scene I was sad to lose was at the dam, after the attack, where Ellie rushes up to Joel, talking a mile a minute about what happened and Joel is just trying to get her to shut up so he can ask if she's okay. It's such a father/daughter moment, and Tommy seeing it is what convinces him to take Ellie. He sees what this is threatening to be, for Joel, and how much pain it could cause him. We saw Shimmer, her horse from Part 2, as a foal. I wonder if that girl that Ellie challenged for looking at her might have been a young Dina.

Unfortunately, TLOU isn't new to this kind of review bombing. TLOU Part 2 got incredibly amounts of hate from the same segment of gamers that will have review-bombed this episode. It still went on to win more game awards than any other game had, and is an incredible rich, deep and satisfying game to play, with a story that forces you to think about right and wrong, revenge and justice, and the fact that the hero of one person's story can be the villain of another's. Some gamers could not handle that sort of complexity in their black and white worlds. Also, there were queer people in it.

Xander is the worst. I've said it many times, but it's always true. He's basically Joss Whedon's voice on the show - believes he's a good guy, tries to be friendly and approachable and funny with women, but there's always the undercurrent of 'I'd totally do her, if she'd let me' and there's always resentment of any other guys who appear to threaten his status as the most important guy in Buffy's life, or Willow's or even Cordelia's. The idea of him being a strong and good person because he doesn't take advantage of one of his closest friends when she's not in control of herself just makes me think of Chris Rock's famous bit: "People* always wanting credit for shit they're just supposed to do." *Yes. I've changed that word. Chris Rock can say it, I can't.

They never actually showed us how she did that, or why anyone followed her in the first place. Sure, her brother was a great man, but she was absolutely not a great woman. They seem to have wanted it both ways - to give the denizens of Kansas City some pathos and depth, but also not to spend enough time making people actually care about them. They'd have been better off saving fifteen minutes of screen time and giving it to the four characters we actually care about instead. The end result is the same - people are happy when Kathleen is killed by the Clicker kid, people are awed at Original Tommy being beheaded by the Bloater. Why did I need to see them hanging out in Kathleen's childhood bedroom? Something else about this episode - Bella Ramsey was absolutely fantastic in it. Warm and supportive with Sam, funny and snarky with Joel and Henry, and then absolutely heartbreaking at the end. Her scream/grunt of shock when Henry shot himself was amazing.

Yeah, Kathleen wasn't a good character. The whole 'timid woman snaps and becomes a monster' thing is lame. The actress was too one-note to convince me she could be in charge of as bunch of murderous rebels. This is the first episode that I felt didn't do justice to the game, which is a real shame. They crammed too much in, with too little set up. Spending just one episode with Henry and Sam gives the show too much of a 'tragic deaths of the week' feel. The Infected emerging just as Henry was about to be shot was an amazing sequence but far too much of a deus ex machina writing choice. The Bloater was terrifying, but the little girl Clicker was way worse. Ellie and Sam were cute together. Seeing kids being kids, while Joel refuses to let anyone see how much that affects him. Of course Joel wouldn't see Henry as the bad guy for betraying Kathleen's brother. We already know he puts his people before anyone else.

Henry and Sam in the game absolutely gutted me. The fact they spent weeks with Joel and Ellie made what happened so powerful, and so painful for Ellie, in particular. The way they adapted it here felt, for the first time, so much less than it was in the game.

So this episode was the first one where I didn't like the changes from the game. Humanising the Pittsburgh group made them far, far less effective as a threat. The game made them terrifying from the off, but in the show they were just a hapless bunch being ordered around by a woman with the air of someone who's had enough of bad customer service. But all the Ellie and Joel stuff was great. The parts lifted from the game and the new parts.

Oh, Ellie's joke book! That made me so happy. One of the great, tension breaking features of the game was her cracking terrible jokes from that book. And Bill's magazine. Loved it. The production values of this show continue to be incredible. The scenery on their way to Pittsburgh and then the city itself, it all looks so good. I liked Bella Ramsey a lot in this one. Confident and cracking wise with Joel, but then you saw her nerves and how much she needed reassurance. She was obnoxious but in an endearing way. And it definitely brings out Joel's fatherly side, as much as he tries to resist. The scene where he taught her how to hold the gun was cute, although she of course refused to listen and put the gun in her pack. I didn't buy the leader of the bad guys at all. I guess they were going for something different with her, but it didn't work for me. Miscast and just not convincingly scary. I don't believe for one second that she'd be in charge of an armed militia.

I can't watch her. Then again, I can't watch most of the rest of them either. An utterly loathsome, repellent bunch of characters. Meredith is almost as self-centred as Sandra Oh, and is utterly boring on top of it. Same goes for Katherine Heigl, though at least she has some natural charisma. Alex, the guy who seems to be dating a different woman in every episode, has no redeemable qualities whatsoever, and seems to be perpetually angry and contemptuous of anyone who isn't him. Especially women. Just watched him apparently try to coerce a rich, elderly patient into giving him money, which is something that any doctor would lose their job over. The guy who has the misfortune of being Meredith's love interest is just a walking non-entity, whose only defining trait is a smug half-smirk that he wears all the time. Then there's the middle aged lothario who is apparently irresistible to women but is almost as unpleasant and casually chauvinistic as Alex. He apparently has a true love romance with a woman who looks a good twenty years younger than him. This show is the absolute opposite of good television, and I'm getting seriously annoyed that it's on my TV all the time.

As long as it isn't like the Rat King, from TLOU Part 2. That thing still gives me the shivers.

The voice cast of the game did a playthrough a couple of years ago, and Annie Wersching was so much fun on that (they all were). I was sure I'd read that she had a role in the show as well, but perhaps her illness meant she couldn't film and they had to recast.

I'm getting less sure that I like the way they're writing Ellie in this. Precocious is fine, but sneaking into an unknown cellar without telling Joel is a bit much. She shouldn't be that dumb. I get her interest in what the Infected are, but that was a weird moment. I really like all the remnants of the old world, as horrifying as they may be - old arcade machines, crashed planes, massacre sites. Seeing Bill set up his town and his traps was fun. Talk about doomsday prepping. The story of Bill and Frank was really sweet and heartfelt. The idea that these two guys found each other and were able to build something together, while everything else fell apart. Of course it had to end tragically, because everything does in this world, but at least they were happy. And man, Nick Offerman is a good actor. The extrovert vs introvert, "we're going to have friends over" taken to the Nth degree was hilarious. I've had those conversations. The end of their story genuinely made me tear up. Although I thought the note to Joel was a little heavy handed. I loved Ellie's excitement over being in a car. "It's like a spaceship!" Aw.

So they did a 180 with Bill and focused on the happiness of his life with Frank, and how Bill was able to change and be less dogmatic. In the game, Bill is the guy who tells Joel that caring and trusting will get you killed. He drives Frank away and is surely going to die alone. He's what Joel could be, if he doesn't let anyone in. In the show, he's an example of what Joel could be if he does let people in. Yes, it's going to hurt, but it's worth it. I did miss Bill and Ellie bickering like they do in the game, but this was powerful television.

That was typical of most of their job related stories, really. None of them behaved professionally. Chandler used to talk about doing no work, took absolutely nothing seriously and acted like he didn't even know what his job was. He had an affair with a subordinate then lied to everyone, including her, to ensure she stayed in her job. Joey slept with all the female extras on Dool. Ross slept with a student, changed student grades to suit himself, used museum facilities out of hours (including having sex in an exhibit). Phoebe sexually assaulted one of her customers (possibly more than one, I can't recall). The most annoying thing about Monica's job storylines was when she didn't just fire all the restaurant staff who were bullying her even though she was the boss. She had to fake hire Joey just to fire him, instead of firing one of the people who was committing genuinely fireable offences. That, plus the nonsense over Rachel being fired for taking a job interview just confirmed that none of the Friends writers ever had to work in the real world at all.

I don't watch Grey's Anatomy, but my girlfriend does so I'm sometimes sitting reading or doing something else while it's on. That has been enough for me to utterly loathe the character played by Sandra Oh. Fucking hell, she is the most unpleasant character on a show that is packed with arrogant narcissists (is that all Shonda Rhimes knows how to write, or something?). Every episode I've seen, she's going through some self-involved crisis that apparently means she's allowed to be deliberately rude, cruel and insensitive to other people. Still, as I said, there's barely a single character I've seen on this show who even approaches normal humanity. Even the patients are complete dicks most of the time.

I finished the series yesterday, and can't wait for season two. This show is how you revive and reboot an old show/movie properly. Get a charming cast and witty writing that doesn't try to be smarter than the audience, hit a load of nostalgia and remind people why they love these characters. Jenna Ortega could be a Zendaya level star, in my opinion. She's just so captivating to watch. Wednesday is a character that requires a lot of an actor, while not letting them do much at all, and Ortega is more than a match for it. The scene where she's watching Fester revive Thing was so, so good. That was the first time she truly let her guard down, that she wasn't able to hide from the fear and grief that losing Thing would bring. Emma Myers was so much fun as Enid. A neurotic, fun-loving, gossip queen who can break through Wednesday's strongest shields. They are such a fun odd couple, and I'm definitely a fan of the romantic subtext between them. I think Catherine Zeta-Jones was fine as Morticia. No Angelica Huston, of course, but she embodied that cold, patrician austerity that Morticia shows everyone except Gomez. Speaking of, I think Luis Guzman was badly miscast. He had none of the suaveness of Gomez, none of the charm or wit. Those things aren't in Guzman's wheelhouse. I can't help thinking that John Leguizamo or Benjamin Bratt would have been better. The dream would be Miguel Angel Silvestre, even if he's a little on the young side. I really liked Fred Armisen as Fester. They played up the creepy factor with him, emphasising that he's a dangerous, unstable criminal and not just a goofy, bald weirdo. But I really liked that he and Wednesday have a very special bond that's built on mutual respect as well as love.

It was Faneuil Hall that they look down on, and see the swarm of Infected just kind of hanging out. They're walking along the I-93, I guess. I think they double back and go through the Old State House, heading for the current State House.

So we're going to get more of the 'before' stuff, setting up the outbreak. That's cool. I enjoyed the opening scenes in Indonesia, with the scientist being so immediately panicked by the revelation that cordyceps can infect humans. And I really liked Tess and Joel arguing over Ellie's fate. Tess has some shred of optimism that Joel just does not, and just a bit more humanity than Joel, with the way she started connecting a little with Ellie, started being protective of her. That didn't last long, though. You can see Joel's determination to keep his distance - emotionally and even physically, from a teenage girl. Probably the first teenage girl he's had any real interactions with since Sarah died. I like all the performances in the show, but still don't see Pedro and Bella as Joel and Ellie. The game versions are too indelibly marked on my brain. Bella has flashes where I hear and see Ellie, particularly when she yells at someone. The visuals of the show continue to be incredible. Decayed, abandoned Boston looked great, and I've always loved the juxtaposition of the greys of the old world and the vivid, vibrant greens of nature reclaiming it. Seeing Faneuil Hall was pretty cool, and seeing it overrun by fungus zombies? Kind of similar to when I was last there, to be honest. The veiled panic and terror that Joel and Tess felt when they saw the Clicker victim was palpable. Just like playing the game, those things are fucking scary. That sound they make... But wait... you kill one Infected and the rest can feel it? That's not good.