S01.E08: When We Are in Need

[mledawn]

This episode was pretty emotional to watch. I have to watch it in the daytime because I am a chicken baby.

David instructing those guys to go door to door and find Joel… It’s an abandoned town with snow on the ground. Just follow the new footprints!? Finding people really would not be difficult at all.

[paigow]

The resort was going to hell anyway, because somebody hired this guy as caretaker...

[Constantinople]

9 hours ago, aghst said:

In retrospect, it was odd that David wasn't going to bury the guy right away.  What were they going to do with the corpse for months?

That scene reminded me of a scene from the Ken Burns Civil War documentary.

The body of a soldier was returned in winter to his hometown of Deer Island, Maine. The soldier couldn't be buried until Spring, perhaps even late Spring, because the ground was too frozen to dig an adequate grave.

I don't recall what was done with the body in the interim. Perhaps stored somewhere that wasn't exposed to the elements, but not heated either.

Presumably that would be less of an issue with modern equipment, but David & Company didn't have that.

[izabella]

Maybe I don't understand this world, but they were right there by a bunch of water.  Are there no fish for them to catch and eat?

And why aren't there thousands of animals roaming around?  I would have thought they'd take over after humans became nearly nonexistent.

Edited March 6, 2023 by izabella

[shelley1234]

We spent episodes talking about interactions between a grown man and a teenage girl.  I feel like the show felt that and then gave us this episode to show us what an inappropriate relationship with the undercurrent ick was and then how they manifests.   I am sure I am not the only one who felt the pastor's preference for Ellie to have as a "daughter" and what his intentions were long before he showed himself to be the gross rapist that he is.   

Bella Ramsey continues to knock it OUT OF THE PARK!   She's something else.   I can't keep my eyes off her when she's in a scene.   I haven't watched a moment of Game of Thrones, so I only knew her from the silly Netflix 'The Worst Witch' series, so my expectation have not only been met, but well surpassed.  Ellie is someone who has been through more in her young 14 years and she keeps fighting and refuses to just give up and give in to the horrible hellscape of a world around her.   She's smart and quick witted.   I love Joel, but I am much more invested in Ellie.  

Speaking of Joel, he has kind of a Jack Bauer quality about him....no matter how injured he is, he finds a way to get through and there is usually a large body count in his wake.   Those two guys thought Joel was an injured pup who would be easy to handle.  Oops.  

Eating people doesn't seem as shocking to me in this dystopian world.  There is a lack of food and once someone is dead....they are meat to put it bluntly.   

[Capricasix]

Wow, that ep went by so quickly for me - I was engrossed and happened to glance at the time, and there were only 12 minutes left!

[Starchild]

2 minutes ago, shelley1234 said:

Bella Ramsey continues to knock it OUT OF THE PARK!   She's something else.   I can't keep my eyes off her when she's in a scene.   I haven't watched a moment of Game of Thrones, so I only knew her from the silly Netflix 'The Worst Witch' series, so my expectation have not only been met, but well surpassed. 

Bella Ramsey was 11 years old when she started in GoT, and she was an absolute FORCE out of the gate.

[khyber]

I knew someone who grew up in the Dakotas in the 30s. She said they couldn't bury anyone in the winter because the ground was too hard. They stored dead bodies in an ice house until the spring.

Anyone who grew up watching Westerns is used to horses being shot out from under riders.  Its a larger target than aiming at a rider. Of course, the down side is you are loosing a valuable animal, if you could just steal it from the rider. In the old movie days they used trip wire to make a horse go down, that doesn't happen today. 

What I liked about the episode is that Ellie got herself out of the situation. Joel didn't burst in at the last moment to kill David and save her. 

 

[iMonrey]

This was a hard one to watch. I knew they were going to shoot the horse and it pissed me off. Yes I know it's just a show and they didn't really kill a horse but you have to have a willing suspension of disbelief to watch a show in the first place so you're already feeling it. I also felt bad for the horse being stuck in that garage for however long they were there, was it even getting anything to eat?

All the stuff with David and his cult was compelling but a little too much of a trope. 

Quote

Where is everyone else? The Steakhouse / Temple is on fire and nobody cares to help...

Yeah, where did all the people go? I guess maybe they were all in their own houses but that seemed a little too convenient to the plot. 

Edited March 6, 2023 by iMonrey

[aghst]

Inside the Episode showed how they set up the horse shooting scene.

It was a fake horse on a track with a stuntwoman riding it.

Then they probably composited CGI over the sequence they filmed of the stunt.

I imagine all the animal corpses shown were mannequins.

[shelley1234]

Many of the cemeteries where I grew up which was a cold and frigid climate had receiving tombs which were these little structures that housed the dead bodies until springtime when the ground would thaw and people could be buried again.  

[iMonrey]

Quote

Inside the Episode showed how they set up the horse shooting scene.

It was a fake horse on a track with a stuntwoman riding it.

Then they probably composited CGI over the sequence they filmed of the stunt.

I imagine all the animal corpses shown were mannequins.

Well sure but that's not really the point. Logically we also know Joel wasn't really stabbed and bleeding out, and that Ellie wasn't really being molested by David. Or that there aren't really zombies. The point is that we're buying into these things so the visceral reaction isn't "oh cool I wonder how they did that special effect." The reaction is "shit they just killed the poor horse." I mean, that's what we're meant to feel. They're doing that on purpose. Doing a little after-show behind the scenes special doesn't negate the gut reaction you get with you're involved and watching the show.

[Straycat80]

11 hours ago, paigow said:

Where is everyone else? The Steakhouse / Temple is on fire and nobody cares to help...

IKR? And how did Ellie and Joel just walk away and no one shoots at them? 
I’m relieved that wasn’t a real horse. I actually gasped when that horse went down and Ellie went flying through the air. Kudos to the stunt person. 
Also amazed how fast Joel went to comatose to action hero is a matter of minutes.

Really good acting by everyone in this episode. 

[b4pjoe]

5 minutes ago, Straycat80 said:

IKR? And how did Ellie and Joel just walk away and no one shoots at them? 
I’m relieved that wasn’t a real horse. I actually gasped when that horse went down and Ellie went flying through the air. Kudos to the stunt person. 
Also amazed how fast Joel went to comatose to action hero is a matter of minutes.

Really good acting by everyone in this episode. 

I'd like to think if I am injured and was told that people are coming to kill me I would make the super human effort to get up and be prepared rather than just lie there and wait for them to kill you.

[Hanahope]

3 minutes ago, Straycat80 said:

IKR? And how did Ellie and Joel just walk away and no one shoots at them? 

my guess is that the community already lost 6 able bodied men and maybe those that are left are more than fine with just letting Joel and Ellie leave.  

also echo a post - its been 20 years, how are there still bullets?  and people shooting as if its an endless supply?  do we really have that many bullets all over this country?

 

 

[Dev F]

28 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

also echo a post - its been 20 years, how are there still bullets?  and people shooting as if its an endless supply?  do we really have that many bullets all over this country?

I don't think bullets are that mechanically complicated, and the casings are reusable. People all over over the country have probably been making more for twenty years.

[Capricasix]

I think I actually cheered for Ellie when she broke the creep’s fingers!

As far as the bullet supply, I’m sure people could melt metal down and make bullets, just like Pa Ingalls did in the Big Woods, but they would need gunpowder too, so that’s where I run out of ideas. 
 

As to the fire, the townspeople probably don’t have running water, so how would they fight it? I don’t think snow is particularly effective at extinguishing fire - yes, it is water, but you’d need a whole lot of it to put out a fire of that size. Someone upthread mentioned the town’s proximity to a river, but it’s likely frozen over in the winter.

[maystone]

31 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

also echo a post - its been 20 years, how are there still bullets?  and people shooting as if its an endless supply?  do we really have that many bullets all over this country?

 

 

According to a 2018 survey there were 393.3 million guns in the US. I'd been hearing more recently that that number is now 400 million. Now imagine how much ammo accompanies each gun. That's a whack of bullets. I mean it still beggars the question of how they're finding all of that ammo in their travels, but yeah - lots of bullets would still be in existence.

[slowpoked]

So Ellie is technically infected, but just hasn't mutated into those zombie like creatures. How did she get the pastor infected? Was it because of the finger injury? So a wound exposure to an Infected would make someone infected?

I thought it's because she may have bit him, but I didn't see that. I only saw where she smacked his hand.

Or just a scare tactic of Ellie and pastor was never infected in the first place.

By the way, I thought it was cool to have video game Joel play a role in this episode. 

Edited March 6, 2023 by slowpoked

[CooperTV]

That penicillin gives +100 to HP, +50 to Speed, +50 to Stealth and +15 to Endurance, I see.

Joel torturing and killing those lackeys was the highlight of the episode, not gonna lie. The rebar scene was kinda darkly funny.

Otherwise that was pretty generic "serial killer/rapist/psycho/cannibal/all of the above" episode every show in existence tend to make to create drama.

[b4pjoe]

4 minutes ago, slowpoked said:

Or just a scare tactic of Ellie and pastor was never infected in the first place.

This. And to try to turn the other guy against him.

[DigitalCount]

28 minutes ago, slowpoked said:

So Ellie is technically infected, but just hasn't mutated into those zombie like creatures. How did he get the pastor infected? Was it because of the finger injury? So a wound exposure to an Infected would make someone infected?

I thought it's because she may have bit him, but I didn't see that. I only saw where she smacked his hand.

Or just a scare tactic of Ellie and pastor was never infected in the first place.

By the way, I thought it was cool to have video game Joel play a role in this episode. 

Ellie did bite the Pastor when they were dragging her out of the cell, and he screamed and kneed her in the ribs in return before hauling her up onto the table with Minion #1. It was unclear whether she had successfully transmitted her infection to him--my guess is, probably not--but it gave her the moment of confusion she needed to turn the tables.

[paigow]

2 hours ago, shelley1234 said:

Speaking of Joel, he has kind of a Jack Bauer quality about him....no matter how injured he is, he finds a way to get through and there is usually a large body count in his wake.   Those two guys thought Joel was an injured pup who would be easy to handle.  Oops.  

And he did it while conserving ammo... CTU playbook... Torture... Interrogate... Lie...

[paigow]

52 minutes ago, Capricasix said:

Someone upthread mentioned the town’s proximity to a river, but it’s likely frozen over in the winter.

The river is rapidly flowing in the background while Joel & Ellie WALK away...

[cmfran]

If I ever have to survive an apocalypse, I will make a point to not trust any religious zealots. It never ends up well on these types of shows.

[Hanahope]

31 minutes ago, cmfran said:

If I ever have to survive an apocalypse, I will make a point to not trust any religious zealots. It never ends up well on these types of shows.

Don’t think you need an apocalypse for this viewpoint 

[Capricasix]

1 hour ago, paigow said:

The river is rapidly flowing in the background while Joel & Ellie WALK away...

Well, *slaps knees* guess I’ll just have to watch it again to see what I missed!

[Starchild]

Since I haven't played the game I don't know if Ellie's infection status been explained, but if I think about how infection works, I don't believe she's infected right now.

I suspect that when she was bitten, she was indeed infected, and the fungus began to tunnel under the skin of her arm, but her body was able to manufacture some kind of immunity to it, and the infection was eradicated. She probably still has that immunity right now, but over time it would fade. If she were infected again, her body would respond in the same way.

I think at this the point marks on her arm are simply scarring from the initial activity of the fungus, which is now gone, leaving only the scars behind.

Now, if cured fungal infections are different than most bacterial/viral infections, and the fungus is still lying dormant in her arm, someone who knows more can correct me.

[wanderingstar]

What a brutal episode. I can't say I enjoyed it, but I did find it gripping. 

Bella Ramsey is phenomenal in this show. 

Edited March 6, 2023 by Gillian Rosh

[Msample]

3 hours ago, Dev F said:

I don't think bullets are that mechanically complicated, and the casings are reusable. People all over over the country have probably been making more for twenty years.

 

One other subtle touch was that that many people seem to carry bolt action/single shot rifles. These are easier to fabricate bullets for, esp since they don't fire a bunch. Remember in an early episode where Joel ditches the assualt rifle ? He said ammo was hard to come by.  Even in recent years, there have been periodic shortages of military caliber ammo like .223 and 9mm , whereas hunting rifles like carried by the cannibals in this episode use different ammo . If you're facing waves of infected I can see all the rapid fire ammo like .223 being used up and the stuff left being hunting rifle type stuff. 

[Helena Dax]

Wow, I loved this episode!

At first I didn't understand why no one was trying to stop Joel and Ellie, but I guess that they weren't actually in the place where those people lived... The men took Ellie to the place where they "process the meat." I doubt anyone lives nearby. Either Joel found the meat storage by accident or the man he tortured knew that the evil guy wouldn't take her straight to the residential area

[Capricasix]

1 hour ago, Capricasix said:

Well, *slaps knees* guess I’ll just have to watch it again to see what I missed!

Turns out I did *see* it, but I was so focused on Joel and Ellie that I didn’t really *notice* it.

[grawlix]

3 hours ago, paigow said:

The river is rapidly flowing in the background while Joel & Ellie WALK away...

I thought it looked more like a lake than a river -- the resort was named "Silver Lake".

Either way, it begs the question, why would the cult resort to cannibalism?  Wouldn't it be easier to fish for food with a body of water being so close?  Even if it was frozen over, ice fishing is a viable option.

Edited March 6, 2023 by grawlix
realize the name of the resort was Silver Lake

[Constantinople]

Looking back on it, it's interesting, and odd, that the 4 men from David's "resort" that were at the campus at the end of Episode 6 were not armed with guns. As far as I can tell, they only had bats or clubs, but no guns. It's not if there were no guns at the resort.

When Joel is in the lab room and spots the 4 walking around outside, it doesn't look as if they're carrying any guns. And when Ellie fired at them as she and Joel fled on the horse, they didn't return fire.

I'm not sure what they were trying to do without guns. It can't be easy to hunt an animal without a gun, particularly if you must get so close you have to hit it with a club or a bat. 

Alec almost got Joel anyway, but if Alec had a gun, Joel would be dead and Alec would look likely still be alive

So why did David send out 4 men without guns? And why did they agree to go?

We'll probably only be able to speculate since I doubt we'll find out.

Edited March 7, 2023 by Constantinople
Typos - Thanks autocorrect!

[jane1978]

Well, lucky for Joel this was a cannibals resort so all the killings are justified. Because when he started murder the other guys who came for him I was like "this will be hard to explain, maybe they are someone´s fathers too."

I don´t understand the constant lack of food and things in this world. Bilions of people are dead and more are dying every day. I would expect the exact opposite, just abundance of abandoned things of all kinds everywhere and the animals slowly taking the world back. But I quess hunting people is easier??? There were three human corpses but no animals except the fresh horse in the "storrage".

What happened with Joel´s brother? Is that part of the story fully done? When the hunting party arrived and had like 6 strong men and Joel was still comatose I expected he will be the last minute save, not Joel himself. That was a quick recovery.

And I agree it was weird how everybody disappeared at the end. I thought Allie will get out and the whole village will be there panicking. Instead she a Joel just meet and go towards the river, not covered and clearly visible from everywhere, and there is no one. 

Edited March 6, 2023 by jane1978

[meep.meep]

16 hours ago, aghst said:

In retrospect, it was odd that David wasn't going to bury the guy right away.  What were they going to do with the corpse for months?

Put him in a box in an unheated building.  It's a plot point in Lonesome Dove.

The real insanity is both David and Joel being out in those conditions without a hat!  One of the other guys was wearing two.

[aghst]

6 minutes ago, meep.meep said:

Put him in a box in an unheated building.  It's a plot point in Lonesome Dove.

The real insanity is both David and Joel being out in those conditions without a hat!  One of the other guys was wearing two.

They said it was a cold shoot in Calgary.

Maybe the actors stayed in some heated trailer between shooting scenes.

 

I saw a screen shot from the game of David, no hat either so maybe they wanted to stick to the game.

Or the writers and director didn't know about dealing with cold weather.

[PurpleTentacle]

9 hours ago, Uncle JUICE said:

Like if you play as Ellie, this is where you start doing so.

You are very correct.

9 hours ago, Uncle JUICE said:

I mean can't there be ONE genuinely nice religious guy in any of these stories? It was like the show couldn't find enough ways to make this character villainous, when it's a far more complex story if you back off on a couple of these fronts. Does he have to slap the girl? Does he have to be a cannibal leader AND a child molester? How is the character served by being a preacher?

To be fair, he is not religious or a real preacher. He started playing one in the apocalypse, because he found that that made it easy to control people. That realisation isn't particularly new. I mean just ask Karl Marx.

Also I don't know why people here or even Ellie have such a big problem with them being canibals. Didn't seem like they killed people to eat them, just ate people who were already dead. If I'm starving, you bet your ass I'll eat your dead ass.

9 hours ago, Haleth said:

And it occurred to me the guys that attacked Joel and Ellie at the college were hunting anything that moves, whether it was a deer or a human.  

That didn't seem clear to me. If they were actively hunting humans that of course makes them worse. Although not worse than the people from the fallen QZ we saw 1-2 weeks ago. I don't think murdering and eating people is worse than just murdering them for their stuff. ymmv.

That being said. Are monkeys really that hard to hunt? There were a bunch at the college...

Edited March 6, 2023 by PurpleTentacle

[paramitch]

One interesting aspect: this show gives us several standard horror/zombie apocalypse tropes that we've seen before several times in other fiction, but what I like about what TLOU is doing is that it is not interested in the tropes so much as how they affect Joel and Ellie (especially) and their relationship. So yes, what the cult was doing was horrifying, but this was more about Ellie's journey, about watching her use her intelligence, quickness, wit, ferocity, and agility to get out of a terrible and nearly hopeless situation. On the down side? She's not okay. Look at her face as Joe finds her, as they stumble away. She is understandably in shock.

While the violence both she and Joel committed here was understandable and in service to their own survival, it was really hard to watch. Joel has tried so hard to move on from that violence. The fact that he didn't want to shoot the sniper a few episodes ago until he had to was a stark contrast to his brutally torturing and killing those two henchmen here. Now, did he have to do that? Arguably, yes. He could not leave them alive. But was it disturbing as hell? Yes. 

So yeah, it was a really tough episode -- brutal, disturbing, and borderline nihilistic. But I also felt okay about that because of what Mazin and Druckmann are doing here. While I would have been unhappy if the whole show had just been a repeated theme of "people are the true monsters," we have instead gotten a ton of texture and nuance across the whole season about love and hope and people in shades of grey (Joel and Tess) as well as people at their best (Frank, Bill, Tommy, Karen, Riley).

TLOU is unquestionably pretty dark, and it is certainly showing us both the redemptive and toxic aspects of love. But while this was people at the absolute nadir (I mean, in one character we had the worst villain of all time -- an abusive cannibalistic cult leader pedophile rapist!), I appreciate that it was one more facet of the whole, not a reinforcement of hopelessness, if that makes sense. This episode ending on that real moment of beauty and love -- of Joel hugging Ellie and saying, "Baby girl. I got you. I got you" as she cried was incredibly moving to me, and made all of that ugliness worth it.

8 hours ago, Uncle JUICE said:

The formula for this episode to me was (2X Apocalyptic Cliche) +Video Game Plot. For clarity, I've never played the video game, and maybe it's me projecting the knowledge that video games are the source material onto the episode, but it feels like a side mission. Like if you play as Ellie, this is where you start doing so. But I guess that's sort of to its credit. As you mention, the performance particularly by the guy who played the preacher and of course by future Emmy winner Bella Ramsey were fantastic, but the plot was rote for me.

I had a little trouble last week when I saw the previews featured a very 'pastoral' character, because I find very few fresh looks at the nature of religion and the religious in post-apocalyptic shows. I mean can't there be ONE genuinely nice religious guy in any of these stories? It was like the show couldn't find enough ways to make this character villainous, when it's a far more complex story if you back off on a couple of these fronts. Does he have to slap the girl? Does he have to be a cannibal leader AND a child molester? How is the character served by being a preacher? Even the part where the one guy has the nerve to proffer a theory on what God's will might be, if you take that out, I don't think you lose anything. What if he's a nice guy preacher, but their circumstances have forced cannibalism on them, and he hates it but can't tell anyone...or if he's not a preacher at all, he's just a guy who's a community leader, maybe like a former mayor. 

I'm looking forward and expect a big time recovery next week, but anyone who is lauding this episode as great, I just have a disagreement with. 

I definitely get this -- I agree to an extent as noted above that this was one of those Zombie Apocalypse Cannibal Episodes 101 in some ways, but I also felt like the show turned that formula on its head in many ways, so I was okay with it.

I do agree that the evil cult leader is a tired trope, no matter how well it was accomplished here. To me it might have almost been more interesting if the main leader was the good man he seemed in that first talk in the shed -- but his second-in-command (who was doing a lot of the hunting) was killing and butchering people without his knowledge (and the main Big Bad). It would have been more unexpected and I would have liked the cult leader to be genuinely surprised that his people were being evil and ruthless under his nose, etc. I also agreed with @Dev F's critique earlier that the cult leader openly hitting the child in the dining room was over the top (it would have been more effective for him just to put a heavy hand on her shoulder and see her subtly wince or something.

I think what elevates this episode isn't the cannibalistic cult stuff but what it shows us about Ellie -- and Joel -- and their resilience and strength and (ultimately) their love for each other. So I did think it was successful for that reason. The journey was complex, harrowing, and rewarding by the end.

5 hours ago, izabella said:

Maybe I don't understand this world, but they were right there by a bunch of water.  Are there no fish for them to catch and eat?

And why aren't there thousands of animals roaming around?  I would have thought they'd take over after humans became nearly nonexistent.

I do think this is a great point, but the Evil Rapist Preacher Dude did say that it was an unusually hard winter, which is why there was little to no game (or at least, not enough to feed a town of their size). They're also hampered since they don't have horses (unlike Tommy's town). They would've been far smarter not to shoot Ellie's horse because it could have been a huge resource to them in giving them a much wider area in which to hunt, and an easier way to drag back large game.

5 hours ago, shelley1234 said:

We spent episodes talking about interactions between a grown man and a teenage girl.  I feel like the show felt that and then gave us this episode to show us what an inappropriate relationship with the undercurrent ick was and then how they manifests.   I am sure I am not the only one who felt the pastor's preference for Ellie to have as a "daughter" and what his intentions were long before he showed himself to be the gross rapist that he is.   

Bella Ramsey continues to knock it OUT OF THE PARK!   She's something else.   I can't keep my eyes off her when she's in a scene.   I haven't watched a moment of Game of Thrones, so I only knew her from the silly Netflix 'The Worst Witch' series, so my expectation have not only been met, but well surpassed.  Ellie is someone who has been through more in her young 14 years and she keeps fighting and refuses to just give up and give in to the horrible hellscape of a world around her.   She's smart and quick witted.   I love Joel, but I am much more invested in Ellie.  

Yes! I love this. While we had someone seeing something improper in Ellie and Joel's relationship before now (I have never seen even a whisper of anything but familial love there), this episode was certainly a depiction of "You want to see an inappropriate/predatory adult male? HERE YOU GO," with David the creepy cult leader cannibal guy. Starkly bookended with Joel in full protective Daddy mode at the end.

One thing that I found so disturbing in retrospect is that David mentions to Ellie that he was a teacher who taught children just her age. So it's chilling to think about how many children he probably preyed upon during that time. Ugh.

And I agree, Bella Ramsey is fricking amazing. Seriously -- just give her all of the awards. I was so knocked out by her on GoT years ago and now here she is, doing this even more incredible work. She had so much charisma and presence even as this tiny 11 year-old girl. I'm so proud of her and so happy she has continued to show her absolutely staggering talent.

Quote

Speaking of Joel, he has kind of a Jack Bauer quality about him....no matter how injured he is, he finds a way to get through and there is usually a large body count in his wake.   Those two guys thought Joel was an injured pup who would be easy to handle.  Oops.  

Joel DEFINITELY has a Jack Bauer vibe! I wasn't a fan of the show's politics or constant torture, but I did get a kick out of it as pure escapism. I remember getting my Mom into it after the first few years, and watching it with her for the first few episodes, she would go:

Mom: "How can he go into that room of 20 armed bad guys?"

Me: "Because he can! He's Jack Bauer!"

Then a few minutes later: "Is he really going to make that impossible escape?"

"Yes, Mom! He's Jack Bauer!"

So I still laugh remembering, a few episodes later, Mom just rolling with all the drama and at a certain point she turned to me and said, "I get it! He can do anything! Because he's JACK BAUER!" It was really cute.

Joel definitely has those same "I am unstoppable" aspects (although I appreciated that he was felled momentarily by this wound, until the super penicillin and rest). And while Joel does not have Kiefer's (tm) Velvety voice, Pedro does bring his own unexpected softness to Joel that I just love. (Also, Pedro needs to call me, but of course, sigh, he never will.)

Quote

Speaking of Joel, he has kind of a Jack Bauer quality about him....no matter how injured he is, he finds a way to get through and there is usually a large body count in his wake.   Those two guys thought Joel was an injured pup who would be easy to handle.  Oops. 

 Joel at full strength is absolutely terrifying. This episode was such a stark reminder of what he is capable of at his darkest, and, like Ellie, he is an unstoppable force. The scariest part was when he looked at the second henchman with real sympathy and said he believed his friend -- and then bashed the man's head in.

5 hours ago, Starchild said:

Bella Ramsey was 11 years old when she started in GoT, and she was an absolute FORCE out of the gate.

She was amazing. She had incredible charisma and stage presence even as a young child. And I loved her genuine stagecraft -- she had this fantastic presence, great speaking voice and sense of command. Just wholly believable as a child noble/ruling leader.

5 hours ago, khyber said:

I knew someone who grew up in the Dakotas in the 30s. She said they couldn't bury anyone in the winter because the ground was too hard. They stored dead bodies in an ice house until the spring.

Anyone who grew up watching Westerns is used to horses being shot out from under riders.  Its a larger target than aiming at a rider. Of course, the down side is you are loosing a valuable animal, if you could just steal it from the rider.

What I liked about the episode is that Ellie got herself out of the situation. Joel didn't burst in at the last moment to kill David and save her. 

Yeah, it reminded me a lot of LONESOME DOVE and other similar stories like that, where the ground was too frozen to bury anyone in winter.

I noted above that shooting the horse was the wrong move -- that horse was worth its weight in gold to the town if it had been captured alive. It would have added a huge amount of hunting area for them as well as the ability to transport big game far more easily.

And I 100% agree. Loved that Ellie saved herself, although I would add that Joel provided the emotional salvation she needed in that moment, since she was visibly going into shock.

4 hours ago, b4pjoe said:

I'd like to think if I am injured and was told that people are coming to kill me I would make the super human effort to get up and be prepared rather than just lie there and wait for them to kill you.

I found it believable for that reason as well. Especially after a few days (and huge doses of antibiotics) of recovery. And Joel's unstoppable will. Like Ellie, Joel is one of those people capable of pretty much whatever he puts his mind to, and it is impressive.

3 hours ago, Capricasix said:

I think I actually cheered for Ellie when she broke the creep’s fingers!

I did as well. I loved it when she was luring him closer, just so she could hurt him. Even caged, Ellie is amazing.

3 hours ago, CooperTV said:

That penicillin gives +100 to HP, +50 to Speed, +50 to Stealth and +15 to Endurance, I see.

This made me laugh out loud -- thank you.

3 hours ago, paigow said:

And he did it while conserving ammo... CTU playbook... Torture... Interrogate... Lie...

Yeah, it definitely was. (Sigh) However -- I definitely felt that torture was his only option in this case. Knowing that they were horrible raiding murderous people also makes it easier for me to condone it.

1 hour ago, Starchild said:

I suspect that when she was bitten, she was indeed infected, and the fungus began to tunnel under the skin of her arm, but her body was able to manufacture some kind of immunity to it, and the infection was eradicated. She probably still has that immunity right now, but over time it would fade. If she were infected again, her body would respond in the same way.

I think at this the point marks on her arm are simply scarring from the initial activity of the fungus, which is now gone, leaving only the scars behind.

I 100% think you're right and this is what we're seeing. I agree that she's not actually carrying the infection anymore (just the antibodies).

4 minutes ago, Helena Dax said:

At first I didn't understand why no one was trying to stop Joel and Ellie, but I guess that they weren't actually in the place where those people lived... The men took Ellie to the place where they "process the meat." I doubt anyone lives nearby. Either Joel found the meat storage by accident or the man he tortured knew that the evil guy wouldn't take her straight to the residential area

It's interesting because we can see that the "prison" is directly adjacent to the "butchering area," and when she flees them, she then goes directly through the kitchen, and he chases her into the big communal dining area. I *think* it's the same one as the opening scene? The "cold storage" shed appeared to be attached to the other side of the building with a separate entrance.

The entire kitchen/dining/storage does appear to be a completely separate building from the rest of the resort, and given the weather and the sparsity of people, it was believable to me that since they'd just had a mealtime recently, the other townspeople are off huddling in their own living quarters and probably not aware yet of what's happening outside. Add to that the fact that almost all of the henchmen/active muscle were off searching for Joel, and that the entire dining room burning/confrontation took only 3-4 minutes, I can see the residents being slow to respond.

[Hanahope]

38 minutes ago, jane1978 said:

I don´t understand the constant lack of food and things in this world. Bilions of people are dead and more are dying every day. I would expect the exact opposite, just abundance of abandoned things of all kinds everywhere and the animals slowly taking the world back.

i too would have expected there was more animals to hunt.  sure, they might not have fresh veggies and fruit, especially in the mountains, but animals should be around.  i would think canned food is likely very sparse after 20 years.

makes one wonder who attacked the fireflies at the college?  the 'friendly cannibal cult?'  no other raiders are shown to be around and how numerous can they be either?  if there is nothing to 'raid' they have to go elsewhere?

[jrzy]

18 hours ago, cardigirl said:

Maybe I missed it, but were the people being harvested? In other words, were they eating only people who died of "natural' causes or were they killing people for food?

I felt bad for the horse. 

I wondered that too,  they definitely were going to chop up Ellie but she was too tough.  I felt so badly for that horse,  I was wondering how that poor animal was going to fare without food and water and leaving her saddle on all day and night. 

 

[b4pjoe]

23 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

i too would have expected there was more animals to hunt.  sure, they might not have fresh veggies and fruit, especially in the mountains, but animals should be around.  i would think canned food is likely very sparse after 20 years.

makes one wonder who attacked the fireflies at the college?  the 'friendly cannibal cult?'  no other raiders are shown to be around and how numerous can they be either?  if there is nothing to 'raid' they have to go elsewhere?

In pre-apocalypse there was conservation of hunting. Before there was conservation some animals came dangerously close to being extinct like the American Buffalo. With no animal conservation during the apocalypse people might have virtually wiped out the animals in the first few years making them more scarce than before the apocalypse.

[Capricasix]

1 hour ago, meep.meep said:

Put him in a box in an unheated building.  It's a plot point in Lonesome Dove.

The real insanity is both David and Joel being out in those conditions without a hat!  One of the other guys was wearing two.

And it gets really frickin cold in Alberta in February 😄

[magdalene]

6 hours ago, Straycat80 said:

I’m relieved that wasn’t a real horse.

They are not allowed to endanger real animals on film and TV sets. This kind of thing is always going to be fake. It still upset me to watch it though.

David certainly was an overkill of EVIL, wasn't he?  A cannibal, a pedo and a cultist all in one sickening package. I agree though that for all the people convinced that Joel and Ellie give off the wrong vibe David might be educational.

Luckily even wounded and functioning on 50% ability at most Joel is still a force to be reckoned with to anybody who gets in his way.

It sounded very much at the end like Ellie is on her way to sacrifice herself for the "greater good".  There is no way in hell Joel is down with that.

[conquistador]

Of the episodes we have seen so far, this one was probably burdened the most with genre tropes and also some plot contrivances. However, I think the directing sells it anyway - there are some wonderfully tense moments, my favorite being the scene where Ellie is about to get cut up. 

6 hours ago, slowpoked said:

Or just a scare tactic of Ellie and pastor was never infected in the first place.

Most definitely. It bought her a few valuable seconds.
 

3 hours ago, Starchild said:

Since I haven't played the game I don't know if Ellie's infection status been explained, but if I think about how infection works, I don't believe she's infected right now.

I suspect that when she was bitten, she was indeed infected, and the fungus began to tunnel under the skin of her arm, but her body was able to manufacture some kind of immunity to it, and the infection was eradicated. She probably still has that immunity right now, but over time it would fade. If she were infected again, her body would respond in the same way.

I think at this the point marks on her arm are simply scarring from the initial activity of the fungus, which is now gone, leaving only the scars behind.

Now, if cured fungal infections are different than most bacterial/viral infections, and the fungus is still lying dormant in her arm, someone who knows more can correct me.

The biggest worry in this scenario was probably that Ellie had turned into an asymptomatic carrier, so that even though she herself was fine and recovered, that she would pass on the disease to people in her vicinity. We would have seen evidence of that by now though (*airborn spores* are kind of a big deal in the video game, that concept seems to have been omitted entirely).

Perhaps what Ellie has is a newly mutated form of autoimmune disease, with an overactive immune system that targets her own tissue, incidentally damaging the fungus that is trying to control her body. Hence why it’s more effective than regular innate immune system responses.

Edited March 6, 2023 by conquistador

[wanderingstar]

The more I see of this show the more it reminds me of Children of Men, one of my favorite films.

[paigow]

1 hour ago, PurpleTentacle said:

That being said. Are monkeys really that hard to hunt? There were a bunch at the college...

They are too small and quick... you would spend a lot of bullets for a small return... Impossible to get close enough for baseball bats or knives.

[Capricasix]

8 minutes ago, Gillian Rosh said:

The more I see of this show the more it reminds me of Children of Men, one of my favorite films.

I’m going to have to watch that one of these days (I read the book years ago so I hardly remember it) - plus Clive Owen is in the movie 😍

[dshgr]

5 hours ago, cmfran said:

If I ever have to survive an apocalypse, I will make a point to not trust any religious zealots. It never ends up well on these types of shows.

It usually doesn't end well in real life, either.

[shelley1234]

1 hour ago, PurpleTentacle said:

 

That being said. Are monkeys really that hard to hunt? There were a bunch at the college...

With a gun, probably.  If you built and set traps....now that might work.  

I'm with you on not being incredibly bothered by the eating people angle.  Meat is meat.  Now I'm a vegetarian so I don't want to eat any of it, but I'm also not living in a fungus zombie dystopian nightmare, so who knows how my morals would shake out about what I would or would not eat if I was.