S01.E09: Look for the Light

[Dobian]

23 minutes ago, b4pjoe said:

So would Ellie have been OK to do the surgery if she knew she was going to die? I don't think that was ever presented to her as a possibility. So you have to ask what would Marlene have done if she had given Ellie the choice and Ellie had said no?

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.

[Danny Franks]

31 minutes ago, b4pjoe said:

So would Ellie have been OK to do the surgery if she knew she was going to die? I don't think that was ever presented to her as a possibility. So you have to ask what would Marlene have done if she had given Ellie the choice and Ellie had said no?

I think Ellie likely would have said yes. Her mindset throughout the episode is quite fatalistic, and she admits at the end to survivor's guilt over Riley, Tess and Sam.

But Marlene wasn't brave enough to ask her to choose. Partly, I think, because she couldn't look Anna's daughter in the face and ask her to die, and partly because there was a very real chance she'd say no.

Marlene and the Fireflies believe this is their real shot at a cure, so I don't think Marlene would accept 'no' being the answer. She'd be left with having to order the execution of a fourteen year old girl, who she'd known since birth.

I'm sure Joel knows, too, that Ellie would likely have said yes, which factors in to why he lied to her and then doubled down on the lie. If Ellie is in this kind of mindset and learns that Joel sabotaged her chance to do something meaningful, she wouldn't only feel betrayed by him, but she might try to go back and offer herself up.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Danny Franks

[Dev F]

15 minutes ago, CooperTV said:

I deliberately ignore Joel's emotional response and actions here exactly because it's not about Joel in the end.

It's only about Joel in the end. It's his story. If the whole thing actually turns on the incompetence of a bunch of other people—one a recurring character we've seen in two episodes and dozens of other people we've never even met!—it undermines the fundamental underpinnings of the series.

I'd much rather assume that the story tried to center itself around Joel's emotional response and didn't quite pull it off to everyone's satisfaction than that it just jumped the track to randomly become an anti-Firefly screed in its last half hour.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Dev F

[b4pjoe]

2 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

I think Ellie likely would have said yes. Her mindset throughout the episode is quite fatalistic, and she admits at the end to survivor's guilt over Riley, Tess and Sam.

But Marlene wasn't brave enough to ask her to choose. Partly, I think, because she couldn't look Anna's daughter in the face and ask her to die, and partly because there was a very real chance she'd say no.

Marlene and the Fireflies believe this is their real shot at a cure, so I don't think Marlene would accept 'no' being the answer. She'd be left with having to order the execution of a fourteen year old girl, who she'd known since birth.

I'm sure Joel knows, too, that Ellie would likely have said yes, which factors in to why he lied to her and then doubled down on the lie. If Ellie is in this kind of mindset and learns that Joel sabotaged her chance to do something meaningful, she wouldn't only feel betrayed by him, but she might try to go back and offer herself up.

It might matter how the question were presented. You will be the cure to to the world vs you might be the cure to to the world is a big difference. And no one in the show claimed anything other than it might be a cure.

Edited March 17, 2023 by b4pjoe
Changed "no" "no one".

[Nashville]

12 hours ago, Dobian said:

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.

Only if you assume the doctor is absolutely correct - otherwise, you have that exactly backwards; his choice dooms humanity with his impatience.

Keep in mind this is the same doctor who (to the best of our knowledge) has never examined Ellie before, never run a single test on her - but has decided within a couple of hours after being introduced to this patient that the only course of treatment is to go Ginsu on her cerebellum.  And if the doctor is mistaken?  Oh, no big deal; just wait another 20 years, and maybe another immune will pop up for him to play with.  Maybe.

I’m not necessarily saying the doctor is wrong, even - just that with the stakes being THIS high, why the hell wouldn’t you take a few days, run a few tests?  Hell, a simple needle biopsy should be capable of collecting a testable sample without killing Ellie, or turning her into the Utah state vegetable.  I know dude’s a doctor (which pretty much dictates a moderately healthy God complex) but maybe - just maybe - try doing something which DOESN’T carry a death sentence for the human race if, shock and horrors, you might be <gasp> mistaken. 😱😱😱
 

 

[minamurray78]

The thing is, the circumstances around Ellie's immunity don´t seem like they should be so "unique", as in, after 20 years of this, has there really been no other case of a pregnant woman being bitten? Wouldn´t the doctor try to repeat the experiment with what humanity has been using forever: rats? 

I imagine the show expects us to suspend our disbelief and be must accept it all had to be rushed like this, i mean in a couple of hours using 20 years old technology in a run down hospital they couldn´t do a proper blood test to make sure she isn´t even carrying other diseases or viruses. So Joel has to go berserk right away because there's no time to waste after he's been told he can´t see the girl ever again cause she´s being prepped for surgery+death so please vacate the premises like now. 

But as a spectator, i find that whole "cure" plan to be totally quack, yes, even if it is a show about zombie fungus. 

[Dobian]

2 hours ago, Nashville said:

Only if you assume the doctor is absolutely correct - otherwise, you have that exactly backwards; his choice dooms humanity with his impatience.

Keep in mind this is the same doctor who (to the best of our knowledge) has never examined Ellie before, never run a single test on her - but has decided within a couple of hours after being introduced to this patient that the only course of treatment is to go Ginsu on her cerebellum.  And if the doctor is mistaken?  Oh, no big deal; just wait another 20 years, and maybe another immune will pop up for him to play with.  Maybe.

I’m not necessarily saying the doctor is wrong, even - just that with the stakes being THIS high, why the hell wouldn’t you take a few days, run a few tests?  Hell, a simple needle biopsy should be capable of collecting a testable sample without killing Ellie, or turning her into the Utah state vegetable.  I know dude’s a doctor (which pretty much dictates a moderately healthy God complex) but maybe - just maybe - try doing something which DOESN’T carry a death sentence for the human race if, shock and horrors, you might be <gasp> mistaken. 😱😱😱
 

 

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.]

Edited March 17, 2023 by Dobian

[Dev F]

4 hours ago, Dobian said:

[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.]

Interesting. My initial reading was the opposite: that the cordyceps mutated into a benign form when Ellie was infected, so her tissues were unremarkable (hence they couldn't just take blood or DNA samples and hope to find anything useful), while the unique strain of cordyceps buried in her brain was potentially the key to everything.

But now I'm wondering if it's actually meant to be both/neither. That is, when Marlene explains that their doctor "thinks that the cordyceps in Ellie has grown with her since birth," this means that somehow the cordyceps and Ellie's brain tissue developed together into some conjoined biological structure that confers immunity.

I don't know whether that's remotely possible biologically, or whether there's a plausible way to extract that structure and "multiply the cells in a lab" if they're not from a single biological source. (It seems like it would be vaguely like culturing a lichen—a real composite organism that's part fungus—and from a quick Google search that seems to be complicated but possible.) But within the fiction of the story, it would explain why they can't just carefully extract a sample of the cordyceps and experiment on that—because Ellie's brain tissue is an essential element of the potential cure.

[Starchild]

6 hours ago, minamurray78 said:

The thing is, the circumstances around Ellie's immunity don´t seem like they should be so "unique", as in, after 20 years of this, has there really been no other case of a pregnant woman being bitten? Wouldn´t the doctor try to repeat the experiment with what humanity has been using forever: rats?

I can think of two points about this:

1) this seems to be a form of cordyceps that attacks only humans, so animal experimentation would not be useful

2) I think it's implied that what's unique about Ellie's immunity is not just that she was born immediately after her mom was bitten, but that the timing between the bite and the cutting of the umbilical cord hit some sweet spot that conferred immunity instead of illness.  They could experiment to try to duplicate it, but that could only be done with humans, and that's too dark even for the Fireflies.

Edited March 18, 2023 by Starchild

[Constantinople]

6 hours ago, Dobian said:

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. 

You need to suspend disbelief more than just a little. You need one Deus ex machina after another after nother.

Even if you eliminate the possibility of some kind of brain biopsy, you still have to believe the Fireflies have the ability to mass produce the vaccine, distribute it and then convince people to take it. There's no evidence in the show they're capable of doing any one of those three tasks, much less all of them.  They can't even smuggle Ellie out of the Boston QZ and Tess figures the Fireflies are desperate and doing really shitty if they're trading with a scumbag like Robert for a truck battery.

And even if all these barriers were somehow surmounted, it wouldn't change things that much. Society has still been destroyed, the infected will still be infected, and the infected can still kill you by tearing you to shreds. Even if a vaccine had been administered to everyone in Kansas City the moment FEDRA was overthrown, everyone would still be dead after the infected erupted from the ground.

The showrunners can't expect viewers to grapple with the question of Joel's choice when that requires viewers to ignore the rest of the parts of the show that touch on the Fireflies competence and the practicality and utility of developing a vaccine.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

On 3/12/2023 at 8:04 PM, Peace 47 said:

I do think in showing Joel as a mass shooter in a TV medium, it hits in a way that doesn’t hit when playing a video game (where you take out hundreds or thousands of people coming at you).  I think the show runners do want you (general you) to be repulsed by Joel for purposes of setting up the moral quandary of the story.  These weren’t good, innocent people, though, that Joel was taking out:  every single one of them had a gun trained on him (even Marlene, who was setting hers down but it was not out of reach), except for the doctor, who had the metaphorical gun to Ellie’s head instead of Joel’s.  So I’m not sure (still have to think on it further) that the moral quandary is as deep as the creators think that it is.

What gets me is the whiplash among viewers, since I've had this argument via social media. Ellie kills David, and she does it pretty violently, to protect herself, which is good because David was a pedophile rapist who wanted to make her his next victim. But also Ellie is expendable and Joel is some kind of monster because doctors with all their fancy education would never lie to a little girl and the cure was "obviously" going to happen. Even though Sam had direct contact with Ellie's blood and sadly it didn't help. Joel's only the bad guy here if Ellie is expendable, and within the construct of the story she's not, at least for Joel.

 

On 3/13/2023 at 3:13 PM, Danny Franks said:

Joel chooses to save one person over the world. The thing is, that one person is his world. Is he selfish? Yeah. But is humanity even worth saving anyway? But the follow-on question is, what would Ellie have wanted? Like she said, "it can't be for nothing."

'I used to hate the world and I was happy when everyone died. But I was wrong. Because there was one person worth saving. And that's what I did: I saved him. And I protected him. That's why men like you and me are here: we have a job to do. And God help any motherfuckers who stand in our way.'

Seriously, draw a direct line between Bill's note and Joel's decision here. Bill's choice was to commit suicide, because he would rather die with Frank than live without him. Joel made Anna a promise, and yeah it's all tied into his losing Sarah when she was so young. Him telling Ellie that she and Sarah probably would have been friends ignores the part where Sarah would be an adult if she had lived, somewhere in her thirties. To him, Sarah will always be a little girl, and he doesn't really get to have that do-over with Ellie, both because Ellie isn't Sarah and because he (and us) don't know how Sarah would have turned out if she'd grown up. But he kept Ellie alive, like he promised, and maybe it doesn't matter why or how. He saved one little girl when he couldn't save another, and sometimes that's all you can hope for.

[Dev F]

On 3/17/2023 at 8:07 AM, Hanahope said:

Then Marlene has as much to blame, if not moreso, than Joel.  Assuming she knew that Joel lost his 14 year old daughter (which everyone seems to think she did because of Tommy), then she should have known that spending months 24/7 with another 14 year old girl, who likely had to be rescued/saved more than a few times during the travel (as Marlene herself had to be), Joel could have formed an attachment to her, and made Ellie his new Sarah.  she should have anticipated that, regardless of how she had previously experienced Joel. 

Why should she have assumed that? We're talking about a woman who's presumably had numerous friends die in a guerrilla war, and in response she developed an unswerving devotion to sending more people to die in a guerrilla war. Joel's history could just as easily have affected him the same way—the way it seemed to have affected him for twenty years: by making him unusually callous and pragmatic about the value of a child's life, such that he's the guy you'd call on if you needed a little boy's body dumped in the fire.

The relationship between Joel and Ellie seems inevitable to us, because that's what gives shape and structure to the story we're watching, but a character within the story isn't going to assume Joel has gone through a perfectly structured story arc since the last time she saw him.

13 hours ago, Constantinople said:

Even if you eliminate the possibility of some kind of brain biopsy, you still have to believe the Fireflies have the ability to mass produce the vaccine, distribute it and then convince people to take it. There's no evidence in the show they're capable of doing any one of those three tasks, much less all of them.  They can't even smuggle Ellie out of the Boston QZ and Tess figures the Fireflies are desperate and doing really shitty if they're trading with a scumbag like Robert for a truck battery.

And even if all these barriers were somehow surmounted, it wouldn't change things that much. Society has still been destroyed, the infected will still be infected, and the infected can still kill you by tearing you to shreds. Even if a vaccine had been administered to everyone in Kansas City the moment FEDRA was overthrown, everyone would still be dead after the infected erupted from the ground.

Why is that the metric? The classic trolley problem isn't Would you perform an act that killed one person to give millions of people long and happy lives? It's Would you perform an act that killed one person to save five people from dying right now? And a functional cure, even one that the Fireflies didn't manage to distribute on a mass scale, would do far more than that.

This is one of the main issues I have with the anti-Firefly interpretations of the ending. I understand the argument that their plan as presented seems rushed and reckless, more likely to kill their only promising lead than create a cure. But the broader arguments I've seen, that the value of Ellie's life can only be weighed against an absolute guarantee of a cure and a sure plan for its distribution to the entire population, seem pretty overstated.

2 hours ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

What gets me is the whiplash among viewers, since I've had this argument via social media. Ellie kills David, and she does it pretty violently, to protect herself, which is good because David was a pedophile rapist who wanted to make her his next victim. But also Ellie is expendable and Joel is some kind of monster because doctors with all their fancy education would never lie to a little girl and the cure was "obviously" going to happen.

I'm afraid I don't see an inconsistency in the argument that killing a pedophile cannibal to keep him from raping and murdering you is an unambiguously positive act, whereas killing a doctor who's trying to find a cure for the infection that destroyed the world is at the very least a bit more complicated.

And why on earth would the doctors be lying? Say what you will about whether their plan to find a cure is at all plausible, there's no indication in the series that they don't believe it will work. Why else would they be vivisecting a girl they just met—and be willing to die to keep Joel from stopping them?

Quote

Joel made Anna a promise, and yeah it's all tied into his losing Sarah when she was so young.

Tess, I assume you mean?

It's actually interesting that you bring this up, because Joel's hospital rampage arguably represents him reneging on his promise to Tess. She didn't particularly care about Ellie as a person; she believed in the promise of a cure ("This is real! Joel, she's fucking real!") and made Joel promise to "get her there" (to Bill and Frank's) so the Fireflies could ultimately "set everything right."

My guess is that if Tess had gotten Ellie to the Fireflies instead of Joel, her response would've been what Marlene expected Joel's to be: sadly accepting that her death is necessary and consoling herself in the knowledge that she's owed an enormous favor by the group that may be about to have the only cure for cordyceps.

Edited March 18, 2023 by Dev F

[Constantinople]

1 hour ago, Dev F said:

Why is that the metric? The classic trolley problem isn't Would you perform an act that killed one person to give millions of people long and happy lives? It's Would you perform an act that killed one person to save five people from dying right now? And a functional cure, even one that the Fireflies didn't manage to distribute on a mass scale, would do far more than that.

I never said the metric is a million, you did. But the metric isn't 5 because 

• Marlene never said they were trying to develop a vaccine to benefit a handful of people. In this episode she said "we can give it to everyone"
• Society has already answered the classic trolley problem. If you kill someone to harvest their organs to transplant them to 5 people who would otherwise die, you go to jail for murder
• The show has already answered the classic trolley problem with David's cannibal cult because they're not just eating people who die, they appear to be killing outsiders to use their bodies as food. A vaccine for hunger, as it were

1 hour ago, Dev F said:

This is one of the main issues I have with the anti-Firefly interpretations of the ending. I understand the argument that their plan as presented seems rushed and reckless, more likely to kill their only promising lead than create a cure. But the broader arguments I've seen, that the value of Ellie's life can only be weighed against an absolute guarantee of a cure and a sure plan for its distribution to the entire population, seem pretty overstated.

Once again, I never said it has to be a guarantee, but it has to be plausible. 

If a character of a book, play or television show has to choose between X and Z and the writer wants the character or the viewers or both to feel conflicted about it, both X and Z must be plausible choices. If Choice Z doesn't make any sense based on everything that's happened in the story to that point, there's no reason for viewers or readers ask themselves why the character chose X or have regrets over Z not being chosen. TLOU's showrunners aren't exempt from this merely because the choice can be characteristized as a variation of the trolley problem.

In this case Z, vaccinating everyone or some large number of people, doesn't make any sense because every step in the process -- creation, manufacture, distribution and administration -- either requires the Southpark Underpants Gnomes

Or this mathematical proof

[Peace 47]

 

3 hours ago, Dev F said:

This is one of the main issues I have with the anti-Firefly interpretations of the ending. I understand the argument that their plan as presented seems rushed and reckless, more likely to kill their only promising lead than create a cure. But the broader arguments I've seen, that the value of Ellie's life can only be weighed against an absolute guarantee of a cure and a sure plan for its distribution to the entire population, seem pretty overstated.

I really like the discussion here about it all, although I couldn’t be more anti-Firefly if I tried, lol.  I mean, do not get me wrong, I tend to agree that your interpretation is what Druckmann and now Mazin wanted us to think about it all, but “death of the author,” as someone else said here.  The Fireflies are objectively shown to suck at everything they do, as many people in this thread keep coming back to again and again, probably because the cognitive dissonance of ignoring what is onscreen is a bridge too far (over the river of death) for some of us.

The Fireflies seemingly had to quite recently hastily abandon their Colorado university base, so they couldn’t defend that adequately (although I know some will say that you could just as easily infer that they were done there and moved on).  They are recruiting child soldiers (Riley) before the kids even turn 18.  They bomb indiscriminately in Boston without making any progress against FEDRA and have to outsource getting Ellie to their own people at the capitol building a couple miles away because losing their leader temporarily to injury shut them down totally.  Then they all killed each other at the Capitol.  The doctor and/or nurses were questioning the hospital power supply before slicing into Ellie.  Marlene, with access to vehicles, manpower and weapons, couldn’t even get across the country without losing more people than Joel and Ellie did on their own. They are a mess!  And they want to be my latex salesman?  (TM Seinfeld)

As for the other point about Ellie’s life not being worth more than just the chance of a cure, I still can’t get there, for all the reasons covered elsewhere in this thread.  But setting that aside, and going with the concept that it would help, then with respect to Joel’s actions, they were made under extreme duress with an imminent threat to Ellie’s life. He killed the people who wanted to kill Ellie.  He did not kill the only people who did not have the power to kill Ellie (the nurses).  I just can’t assign him the blame for dooming humanity out of love for one person when he didn’t have any time to make rational, considered decision, other than his kid would die if he didn’t act immediately.  I know the argument is that you give him six months to make a “rational” decision, and he would do the same, but like, I don’t think he would mow down a dozen people if he weren’t cornered into such a duress-filled situation, which is part of what we are supposed to be repelled by.   I’ve heard Mazin say a couple of times that this shows the terrible things love makes us do, and I’m over here like … no?  What is terrible about doing everything in your power to stop your kid dying in 5 minutes when you are given no discussion, no consideration and the lobbing of threats that she’ll otherwise be raped, murdered or clicker-ed if you don’t let them kill her this right this second?  Who responds well to that instantaneous emotional trauma?

I also think giving Ellie the right to choose is not right here, either.  A bunch of adults whom a little girl respects telling her that she needs to die for humanity isn’t really a choice for her, plus all the depression she was already suffering.  It’s interesting to consider what Tess would have done in Joel’s place, or what Tess would have done with Joel had she lived.  I think she would have done the same as Joel.  She was bonding with Ellie very quickly, and while she did say “set everything right,” she also said to “save who you can save.”  If you can’t do both, Tess comes across as someone who would save who she could (Ellie).

Edited March 18, 2023 by Peace 47

[Starchild]

2 hours ago, Constantinople said:

the Southpark Underpants Gnomes

HAHA I thought of these guys when I was thinking about "the cure."

[Dobian]

5 hours ago, Constantinople said:

• Society has already answered the classic trolley problem. If you kill someone to harvest their organs to transplant them to 5 people who would otherwise die, you go to jail for murder

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.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Dobian

[Cobalt Stargazer]

13 hours ago, Dev F said:

And why on earth would the doctors be lying? Say what you will about whether their plan to find a cure is at all plausible, there's no indication in the series that they don't believe it will work. Why else would they be vivisecting a girl they just met—and be willing to die to keep Joel from stopping them?

For me, the question is - Did Marlene tell Ellie the truth, that what they were going to do would kill her, but it would very possibly lead to a cure. Because Ellie believed that she carried the antidote or the antibodies to cordyceps. If she didn't, she wouldn't have cut her hand and tried to use her blood on Sam's bite, in the hopes that he would survive and not turn. She was already traumatized by David, and the lingering guilt and grief over Sam and Riley and Tess can only have added to her emotional burden. Even an adult under such stresses would have difficulty making such a decision clear-headedly, and that's being armed with all of the facts, that you will die, but it could help other people.

I would add that there's always the possibility that there'd be quite a bit of glory in fully curing cordyceps. Yes, civilization was wrecked, but there are pockets of people here and there who have been able to avoid being infected, the Fireflies included. It's a common theme in apocalyptic fiction - millions of people die, and then a miracle occurs and the disease is wiped out. I don't know the games well enough because I haven't played them, but as this show has been presented, Marlene has been shown both as desperate and a bit incompetent. Why not add "If I can solve this, I'll make history!" to the list?

Edited March 19, 2023 by Cobalt Stargazer

[Starchild]

47 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

For me, the question is - Did Marlene tell Ellie the truth

Marlene told Joel that she didn't tell Ellie anything before she was sedated for surgery. She clearly didn't want Ellie to have the chance to say no.

[CooperTV]

1 hour ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

For me, the question is - Did Marlene tell Ellie the truth, that what they were going to do would kill her, but it would very possibly lead to a cure.

Marlene didn't tell anything, and from the looks of it, Ellie was sedated before they administered the major drug, as Ellie was confused about it when she came to.

Yes, Marlene in the garage said that Ellie would chose to die but it's the same Marlene that removed said choice. In her dying breathe she basically said to Joel like, why would you try and save her, she'll be taken apart by clickers or raped by raiders anyway.

I don't even going to comment on Joel's predicament, I want to point out that Marlene, this beacon of light and democracy (as if), that wanted to save all the humanity (no) said 14-year-old girl should die for "the cure" because she has nothing to live for apart from her being raped and abused.

Edited March 19, 2023 by CooperTV

[Dev F]

8 hours ago, Constantinople said:

I never said the metric is a million, you did. But the metric isn't 5

I didn't say it was. I said it was "far more than that," even if it's short of "full reconstitution of society."

Hell, think of the benefit of vaccinating just the community of Jackson, which would probably happen in fairly short order given a) Marlene's professed debt to Joel, b) her connection to Tommy, and c) the fact that it's a peaceful, highly organized settlement within a few hundred miles of Salt Lake City. That alone would help protect the lives of probably thousands of people (including Joel's own remaining family) and help safeguard a true oasis of civilization.

And I'm not saying that's an easy trade to make, or even that I personally think it would be morally acceptable to sacrifice Ellie for the benefit of the people of Jackson. Just that it represents the sort of tangible benefit to developing a vaccine that ought to factor into the debate, and not be waved away with easy assurances that a Firefly vaccine would be worthless so they shouldn't even bother trying to make one.

I mean, the premise of the story all along was the the Fireflies were trying to find a cure, and Joel needed to get Ellie to them to help make that happen. And I didn't notice many viewers insisting from episode 1 that this was stupid and they shouldn't waste their time. Which to me suggests motivated reasoning: because people (quite understandably) don't think the value of a cure is worth the cost of Ellie's life, they've decided the cure has no value. Whereas until that comparison was broached they were perfectly willing to accept the premise that it was of great value—enough for Joel and Ellie to risk their lives chasing that possibility.

And of course the prospect of sacrificing Ellie will change that equation—but it's because something of great weight has been added to the "don't make the cure" side, not because anything has been subtracted from the "do make the cure" side.

8 hours ago, Peace 47 said:

I really like the discussion here about it all, although I couldn’t be more anti-Firefly if I tried, lol.  I mean, do not get me wrong, I tend to agree that your interpretation is what Druckmann and now Mazin wanted us to think about it all, but “death of the author,” as someone else said here.

Listen, I'm all for the death of the author. There's a great moment in the podcast for this episode where the showrunners are discussing the giraffe scene with Ashley Johnson, the actor who played Ellie in the game. The writers talk about how the scene is meant to illustrate the fact that life goes on in the aftermath of trauma, and that kids who've been through terrible shit can still find moments of joy and start to heal. And Johnson totally disagrees, saying that to her the scene is about how even in this amazing, beautiful moment, something inside Ellie will never be as innocent as it once was.

And just because the writers intended for the scene to mean something different, that doesn't make Johnson's interpretation any less viable. It absolutely tracks with what's happening in the scene and the larger story; it even adds some interesting nuance, if the writers' explanation is what Joel thinks is happening in that scene, but for Ellie herself it's something much more bittersweet.

But when we're talking about this stuff with the cure, I don't think it's just that the writers are saying one thing and the viewers are seeing something else. The idea that Joel is choosing between Ellie and the world is embedded in the structure of the narrative, and I'm not sure it hangs together without it. Now, maybe I'm wrong, and there is some way to make sense of Joel's development as a character while also assuming that the Fireflies were murderous quacks whose plans were doomed to fail, but I've yet to see an argument that, e.g., explains how this doesn't just turn the season finale into a limp rehash of character beats we've already seen in previous episodes.

[paramitch]

It is interesting to note that Joel scoffs at the news that Ellie is immune back in Ep2 and does bring up that there have evidently been multiple "false alarms" on vaccines and cures already at the 20-year point. I think this is important for considering the current "trolley problem" of the finale and how much he believes the Fireflies will TOTALLY save the world.

I also want to point out the show-versus-game aspects (additions), over and over again this season, spotlight that it is understandable to save the one you love versus saving the world, finding "that one person" to protect. It was Bill's great lesson (he literally chooses not to live without Frank and tells him, "You were my purpose."). It was Kathleen's great weakness (being willing to burn down the world to avenge her brother). It was Henry's strength AND weakness -- he betrays Kathleen's brother, a good man, but we understand it because Sam is an adorable child. Even Joel is no longer angry at Henry for collaborating after spending a little time with he and Sam. Ellie's mother Anna does something similar in this last episode -- she lies to Marlene she cut the cord first -- choosing Ellie over anyone else (although, granted, the stakes are low there, and the idea of an Infected baby trying to gum people to death made me and a friend laugh when we tried to envision it, because we are absolutely going to Hell). 

I would argue that all season long, the show has subtly been both arguing that sometimes we just need to find that one person in the world that we will love and protect -- while also accepting that there may be a moral price to our consciences if we do so.

I do think that aspect of the story is what makes Joel's actions inevitable in the end, and they make this episode really impactful and profound, even if I think it could've stuck the landing a bit better.

PS -- one thing to add for discussion: critic James Poniewozik argues in The New York Times that Joel's killing spree in the hospital isn't actually the worst thing he does -- instead, it's the moment he lies to Ellie that "They've stopped looking for a cure." When, it could be argued, he takes away Ellie's hope. Which is a powerful subject in its own right.

I get why he did that (to stop her trying to find another Firefly station to sacrifice herself all over again) but it is devastating to think about, and this wasn't a thought that had occurred to me. 

In which case BOTH Marlene and Joel can be argued as taking away Ellie's agency in the end here.

On 3/15/2023 at 11:20 PM, Dev F said:

Yeah, at the point where Ellie is basically saying, I know you're lying to me and I super-duper need you to come clean right the fuck now because it's tearing me up inside, and Joel still doesn't tell her, that's definitely not an I'll just wait till she's gotten a good night's sleep situation.

One of the things I really love about that scene, which I think is very well-written, is that I can absolutely see both sides and understand why each of them speaks as they do. Ellie has to ask. Joel has to lie. Sadness ensues.

Especially when it goes that tiny bit further -- to Ellie's "okay." In which she is visibly wary, not convinced, but willing to accept Joel's answer -- for now -- because she is traumatized AF, tired, she loves him, and she knows he loves her. And she is not prepared to push further right now.

On 3/16/2023 at 6:41 AM, b4pjoe said:

Maybe I missed it but when did Ellie agree or say that "she was willing to sacrifice herself"?

My point has never been that "Ellie agreed," but rather that it is very very likely Ellie would have agreed. She very strongly implies that to Joel when he gives her the chance to turn back, especially when she outlines the body count to get them there, which is obviously on her mind. She does not say "I would die to save the world," but to me it is definitely implied, or at least likely. Ellie is a brave badass. I do not think she would have said no.

On 3/16/2023 at 11:12 AM, CooperTV said:

Marlene at least has to know Joel was a father and that his young daughter was murdered in front of him by authorities because they thought it was the right thing to do.

I definitely think Marlene was aware of this fact from Tommy.

On 3/16/2023 at 11:16 AM, Dev F said:

Yep. Marlene knew Joel as the guy who murdered innocent people to steal their stuff, didn't flinch from dead-child-dumping duty, and spent fifteen years with a woman who was in love with him without ever opening his own heart. Marlene had no reason to believe that six months with Ellie would do what a decade and half with Tess never could.

Especially since Marlene was looking at him through her own lens as a ruthless pragmatist who sent Fireflies to their deaths, and whose idea of honoring her best friend's dying wish was to dump her daughter in an orphanage and keep tabs on her from afar. She probably assumed that the difference between her and Joel was that she was ruthless in pursuit of social change and he was ruthless in pursuit of self-interest, not that she was a committed pragmatist and he was a heartbroken softie.

I feel like this is oversimplifying things a little -- Joel was disposing of bodies because it was his job (and he was able to do it dispassionately because he was specifically shut down inside). Meanwhile, Joel was still visibly caring with Tess and they were also shown to be affectionate and respectful of each other. Tess saying she accepted that he "didn't feel like she did" doesn't mean he didn't care for her or show that -- to me, it means she loved him and felt he probably didn't love her as much or in the same way. I never got that Joel did not care for Tess, and the irony is, I think he DID deeply love her, but didn't allow himself to recognize it until Bill's letter.

I do agree with you to some extent on the Marlene/Joel dynamic -- I just think that the scene's writing and direction is problematic as she seems to want to have it both ways, and that's what confuses me. She starts out acting like he's "callous Joel" but then with zero affect pivots to "I care about her too," yet she continues forward by not attempting to empathize, soothe, or comfort him in any way. She's almost goading, and then just cruelly sends him off and tells the soldiers to shoot him at the slightest signal, etc.

It's just such bad communication and leadership when a different approach could have saved a dozen or more lives.

On 3/16/2023 at 12:37 PM, CooperTV said:

So she thinks Joel is 1) cold-blooded killer who doesn't care, 2) she thinks he cares as much as she is (so, not much) or 3) she thinks he cares for Ellie as her father because he can bond with people in such a manner? And every option should have cause the unique response from smart!Marlene.

Yet what we got in the show is Marlene screwing over the known stone-cold smuggler, saying she understand how he feels but she'll kill a girl anyway and kill him if he refuses to go.

Enter Marlene's forever Pikachu face.

Yeah, see my response above this to @Dev F. I agree -- the scene feels like it's trying to cover all the bases, and I just question that Marlene is this stupid. Especially when she was able to be both tough, kind, and empathetic with Ellie in the earlier episode when she was discovered. I can't help but feel Marlene reacts as she does here because the plot needs her to do it, and that's an issue for me.

On 3/17/2023 at 12:26 AM, conquistador said:

* It is mentioned that FEDRA have factories that produce bullets and drugs. So that is in itself a pretty large and technical infrastructure - requiring energy, material, labor and so on. 

* Most importantly, we see in the first few episodes usage of handheld cordycepts detectors. They may look like no more complex than the  thermometers used in the Covid pandemic, but that is very sophisticated and advanced technology, the like of which we don’t in our present times. It must have taken a lot of R&D to pull together - especially in a post-apocalyptic world. 

I agree with this -- I wish the summary of the medical situation to Joel had included even a hint of this kind of technology and assurance.

On 3/17/2023 at 6:41 AM, minamurray78 said:

Marlene was stupid on many accounts. If Ellie wouldn´t stop asking about Joel, she should have wisened up to their bond. I believe she knew Joel's history and what he's capable of. If I had been her, about to sacrifice a girl without telling her and without allowing her very dangerous protector to see her or say goodbye, I would have been sneaky enough to put him in a vehicle while unconscious and dump him outside the city. Either she felt she owed him that truth or  she really underestimated the depth of feelings and capabilities of a man who survived a trip across the country with a teenager in tow.

Yeah, this. ESPECIALLY if they weren't even going to let Joel say goodbye. Why let him wake up at all in a scenario where he could harm them? It just makes them look incompetent (and they already looked incompetent for most of the show).

On 3/17/2023 at 10:12 AM, CooperTV said:

I think the fact that Marlene doubled down on her "Ellie would have agreed to committing suicide" in the end, when Marlene was the one who robbed her of choice and ordered to put her under without a warning just "to not scare her" is the answer enough by itself.

Yeah, this is the thing that will always bother me the most. IF the show had convinced me of its moral rightness (and that the science was genuine, and yes, they had to take Ellie's brain RIGHT THIS MINUTE, facepalm), then Ellie deserved to be able to choose.

On 3/17/2023 at 10:20 AM, Dobian said:

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.

I agree that this is the likely outcome. Marlene lied to Ellie because it was easier on HER emotionally, not on Ellie. And I still think it's better that Ellie die informed versus lied to (they didn't even give her a choice about being drugged -- she had no idea they were going to do that). 

On 3/17/2023 at 10:27 AM, Dev F said:

It's only about Joel in the end. It's his story. If the whole thing actually turns on the incompetence of a bunch of other people—one a recurring character we've seen in two episodes and dozens of other people we've never even met!—it undermines the fundamental underpinnings of the series.

I'd much rather assume that the story tried to center itself around Joel's emotional response and didn't quite pull it off to everyone's satisfaction than that it just jumped the track to randomly become an anti-Firefly screed in its last half hour.

You're right that yes, this is Joel's story, but I also do think the Firefly stuff is relevant because its weakness means that instead of trying to process and respond to what Joel did here, many of us are instead responding to whether those actions were more defensible given the fact that the Fireflies are corrupt, incapable, and cruel, and supporting a "take her brain NOW" scientific conclusion that feels shaky at best.

On 3/17/2023 at 10:40 AM, b4pjoe said:

It might matter how the question were presented. You will be the cure to to the world vs you might be the cure to to the world is a big difference. And no one in the show claimed anything other than it might be a cure.

Right. The doctor thought it might be. Add to that the fact that in episode 2 Joel scoffs at cure rumors because there have always been tons of them and they never worked out.

On 3/17/2023 at 12:13 PM, Nashville said:

Keep in mind this is the same doctor who (to the best of our knowledge) has never examined Ellie before, never run a single test on her - but has decided within a couple of hours after being introduced to this patient that the only course of treatment is to go Ginsu on her cerebellum.  And if the doctor is mistaken?  Oh, no big deal; just wait another 20 years, and maybe another immune will pop up for him to play with.  Maybe.

I’m not necessarily saying the doctor is wrong, even - just that with the stakes being THIS high, why the hell wouldn’t you take a few days, run a few tests?  Hell, a simple needle biopsy should be capable of collecting a testable sample without killing Ellie, or turning her into the Utah state vegetable.  I know dude’s a doctor (which pretty much dictates a moderately healthy God complex) but maybe - just maybe - try doing something which DOESN’T carry a death sentence for the human race if, shock and horrors, you might be <gasp> mistaken. 😱😱😱

This is 100% where I am on the science aspect. I just can't get past the conclusion "we must kill our golden goose IMMEDIATELY" to add that artificial ticking countdown to Joel's scorched-earth reaction. (Also, LOL on "Ginsu on her cerebellum.")

On 3/17/2023 at 2:46 PM, Dobian said:

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."

Oh, definitely. I just think what we got feels a bit simplistic and unsuccessful on that front. And I think this is where the videogame origins show most clearly across the entire season. Mazin (who has said he would have done what Joel did, FWIW), has even made good-natured comments in interviews after the finale that they were so focused on the moral quandary of Joel vs. Cure that they didn't more carefully examine or nitpick the scientific or other aspects TV viewers have focused on, admitting that in the game those aspects were more believably handwaved due to game mechanics.

On 3/17/2023 at 9:29 PM, Constantinople said:

Even if you eliminate the possibility of some kind of brain biopsy, you still have to believe the Fireflies have the ability to mass produce the vaccine, distribute it and then convince people to take it. There's no evidence in the show they're capable of doing any one of those three tasks, much less all of them.  They can't even smuggle Ellie out of the Boston QZ and Tess figures the Fireflies are desperate and doing really shitty if they're trading with a scumbag like Robert for a truck battery.

And even if all these barriers were somehow surmounted, it wouldn't change things that much. Society has still been destroyed, the infected will still be infected, and the infected can still kill you by tearing you to shreds. Even if a vaccine had been administered to everyone in Kansas City the moment FEDRA was overthrown, everyone would still be dead after the infected erupted from the ground.

Yeah, I think what's interesting is that in adapting the game for TV, the showrunners contribute to this with the fact that we really don't see THAT many Infected. Sure, they are dangerous and terrifying, but based on what we saw this season, a well-organized human group/force could handle them 9 times out of 10. So "Should Ellie die to save the world?" isn't really the question, if plenty of humans are already showing they are able to flourish quite well, barely having to deal with Infected in many areas.

For me the ultimate message of this season of "The Last of Us" is that people were a far bigger threat than the Infected. Which also dilutes the urgency of Marlene's actions in the final moments (and strengthens the case for Joel's response).

Edited March 19, 2023 by paramitch
Added NY Times comment instead of double posting

[Kel Varnsen]

5 hours ago, Dev F said:

Hell, think of the benefit of vaccinating just the community of Jackson, which would probably happen in fairly short order given a) Marlene's professed debt to Joel, b) her connection to Tommy, and c) the fact that it's a peaceful, highly organized settlement within a few hundred miles of Salt Lake City. That alone would help protect the lives of probably thousands of people (including Joel's own remaining family) and help safeguard a true oasis of civilization.

That makes me wonder though, if there was a vaccine and it worked and there was a way to actually get it to people around the world, would enough people accept it for it to be effective? It's not like there isn't a real world equivalent of that situation. And there are probably a lot of people out there who wouldn't trust anything from the fireflies.

3 hours ago, paramitch said:

Yeah, I think what's interesting is that in adapting the game for TV, the showrunners contribute to this with the fact that we really don't see THAT many Infected. Sure, they are dangerous and terrifying, but based on what we saw this season, a well-organized human group/force could handle them 9 times out of 10. So "Should Ellie die to save the world?" isn't really the question, if plenty of humans are already showing they are able to flourish quite well, barely having to deal with Infected in many areas

That is always my big suspension of belief with these types of stories. Sure infected would seem scary. But it feels like once humanity accepts that they are there then fighting back again shouldn't be that hard. They can't seem to use tools or weapons and it doesn't seem that they can organize into an army or do any kind of coordinated group attacks.

[conquistador]

2 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

That makes me wonder though, if there was a vaccine and it worked and there was a way to actually get it to people around the world, would enough people accept it for it to be effective? It's not like there isn't a real world equivalent of that situation. And there are probably a lot of people out there who wouldn't trust anything from the fireflies.

Getting a functional vaccine would be an absolute monumental achievement in and of itself, regardless of the numbers of adopters. But I have to think that among the people who already survived 20+ years of cordyceps, there would be few left to argue that it’s ”made up”, ”comparable to the flu” or some such. Also this vaccine would assumably not be reliant on herd immunity, which should also be a big deal.

Quote

That is always my big suspension of belief with these types of stories. Sure infected would seem scary. But it feels like once humanity accepts that they are there then fighting back again shouldn't be that hard. They can't seem to use tools or weapons and it doesn't seem that they can organize into an army or do any kind of coordinated group attacks.

FEDRA were able to trap all of those infected in episode five, so even larger quantities seem manageable under the right conditions.
 

My solution would be: full body armors with helmets - no visible skin allowed. That would guarantee no risk of being bitten as long as the armor is not compromised. Then send out extinction forces with groups of soldiers wearing these armors - they should also be equipped with sniper rifles, machine guns, grenades and flame throwers. The biggest threat then would honestly be human raiders…

Edited March 19, 2023 by conquistador

[Starchild]

Extinction of the infected isn't enough.

We have to remember that cordyceps is still out there. Still capable of infecting the food supply. Could even mutate again.

Developing a vaccine is really the only way to win.

[CooperTV]

5 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

But it feels like once humanity accepts that they are there then fighting back again shouldn't be that hard.

I mean, humans have been apex predators for hundreds of thousands of years and has been hunt megafauna for resources way longer than that.

The writers did themselves a big disservice by removing the main source of danger of the infected from the game. The show's infected are easily disposable by common sense and fire, I think.

ETA:

  

41 minutes ago, Starchild said:

Still capable of infecting the food supply.

Yet Ellie was eating white-bread sandwich in the episode 2, for reasons.

  

40 minutes ago, Starchild said:

Developing a vaccine is really the only way to win.

In our reality vaccine from fungal infection doesn't exist. That's just not a thing. Anti-fungi chemicals reduce growth of fungus.

Edited March 19, 2023 by CooperTV

[conquistador]

1 hour ago, Starchild said:

We have to remember that cordyceps is still out there. Still capable of infecting the food supply. Could even mutate again.

We don’t know much about the food supply. Are grains still contaminated, or was it only that one occurrence?

The survivors have gotten by for twenty years, so whatever they do seems to be working (except for the cannibalism…).

[Peace 47]

12 minutes ago, CooperTV said:

The show's infected are easily disposable by common sense and fire, I think.

This is such a funny way to phrase it, haha.  It also reminds me of Manny from “The Good Place”:  "I'm telling you, Molotov cocktails work. Anytime I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem."

16 minutes ago, CooperTV said:

In our reality vaccine from fungal infection doesn't exist. That's just not a thing. Anti-fungi chemicals reduce growth of fungus.

The show also went to the trouble in episode 2 of showing that the preeminent fungal scientist in Malaysia (and perhaps the world) had zero hope for a cure or treatment and recommended bombing the place into oblivion, so it makes it harder to believe this one doctor with subpar facilities and less resources than that woman can crack the code (and Ellie’s skull 🙁).

11 hours ago, Dev F said:

The idea that Joel is choosing between Ellie and the world is embedded in the structure of the narrative, and I'm not sure it hangs together without it. Now, maybe I'm wrong, and there is some way to make sense of Joel's development as a character while also assuming that the Fireflies were murderous quacks whose plans were doomed to fail, but I've yet to see an argument that, e.g., explains how this doesn't just turn the season finale into a limp rehash of character beats we've already seen in previous episodes.

The thing is, and tell me if I am wrong:  it seems like if one is saying that the finale has no emotional resonance without the acceptance that this time (unlike all the other times he protected Ellie), Joel consciously, deliberately damned mankind to save one person, one also is probably of the belief that whether the cure had a 1% chance of success or a 100% chance of success, it was no choice at all for Joel, who would choose Ellie no matter the odds.  So the real point is:  be uncomfortable with Joel’s automatic prioritization of Ellie when it’s also not what she would have chosen.  The argument being that the story itself wants to hold up an uncomfortable mirror to those of us who would choose our own loved one(s) over the certainty of making the world a more livable place.  That the point of the story is accepting the moral quandary (not fighting against it) and letting it be discomfiting.

But if Joel was always going to pick Ellie in that hospital, and he damned all of humanity in doing so, we can still talk about how much we damn him for it, and I don’t think that makes the story less impactful.  I do agree that it was no choice for Joel, but I don’t think it was character development in the finale that got him there.  I don’t think that it was ever a choice from the time he dragged Ellie away from Tess at the capitol building.  Joel is basically the same person who told Tommy to pass the family by the side of the road in Texas because he didn’t want to risk Sarah’s life; the same person who beat that FEDRA soldier to death because he had a trauma response that made him defend Ellie without thought; the same person who repeatedly defended her on their journey, first for Tess, then for Ellie herself.  Therefore, the only thing that changed in his character over the series was the consciousness of his acceptance of her as a loved one in her own right, as he did it subconsciously early on (like putting her seatbelt on her or staying up all night on watch when she expressed concern about people finding them in the woods).  So for me the story is actually not about his own moral development or degradation (depending on how you view his final actions), per se, but about the beauty of finding love and connection at the end of the world, not the tragedy of it.  (And that’s why his lie at the end poisons all of it.)

And as always, the hill (over Jackson) that I will die on is that I just think you have to lessen his moral culpability in the finale by (1) yet another trauma response for him (holding his new daughter in the same way he held Sarah, while being held at gunpoint, again), (2) the duress of the situation (that they were literally seconds from slicing Ellie open) and (3) the moral/ legal justification of “defense of others” when he had a reasonable belief of her imminent death.  

[Starchild]

1 hour ago, CooperTV said:

Yet Ellie was eating white-bread sandwich in the episode 2, for reasons.

It could have been gluten-free.

Which, honestly, I would not want to live in that world.

[Peace 47]

6 minutes ago, Starchild said:

It could have been gluten-free.

Which, honestly, I would not want to live in that world.

For sure, I would be out, too.  And showers as an extreme rarity?  I look like Seinfeld with the low-flow shower head after just 24 hours.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Peace 47

[Ziggy]

On 3/13/2023 at 10:25 AM, iMonrey said:

Wow, I can't believe they aren't related. At first I was confused because I thought it was Ellie running through the woods, that's how much they look alike. Then I thought the actress had to be either Bella's real life mother or older sister. Or else they used some sort of CGI to make Bella look older. The resemblance was that uncanny.

When I first saw Bella's picture, I thought, "Wow, she looks just like Ashley Johnson!"  Then I learned that Ashley Johnson is the voice of Ella in the game.

When this episode opened, I thought, ok, now I know why they did that!  I think Bella is great!  But I also thing it's cool that she looks like Ashley and it worked to give Ashley the role of Bella's mom.

[paramitch]

17 hours ago, conquistador said:

My solution would be: full body armors with helmets - no visible skin allowed. That would guarantee no risk of being bitten as long as the armor is not compromised. Then send out extinction forces with groups of soldiers wearing these armors - they should also be equipped with sniper rifles, machine guns, grenades and flame throwers. The biggest threat then would honestly be human raiders…

THANK YOU.

I have been yelping to my friends and family who watch this with me (and all the way back to the period when I was still watching "The Walking Dead") about the fact that people don't cover up!

If it was me out there, for every time I ventured out of a safe area, I'd have been wrapping all of my extremities (arms, legs, neck) in duct tape then covering up in durable, tough materials all the way up to my neck.

No duct tape? Bandages. Strips of clothing. There are a ton of ways to make yourself bite-resistant in this universe. Doing so could have changed the outcomes for Anna, Ellie, Riley, Tess, Henry, and Sam based on our direct observations.

On the other hand, I get that it wouldn't be the most telegenic look ever, but it does irritate me that it's never even brought up.

[Baltimore Betty]

Ok, I am going to confess something to you all, I had no idea that this was originally a video game.  There I said it! I was this many days old when I learned that fact. 

Since this was a game, is there an end of the story in the game or is it endless depending on the way it is played by the player(s)?

I do love the back stories of the characters, Nick Offerman was amazing, (I was sort of hoping that his real life fabulous wife would show up somehow, lol) I was shocked when I realized his lover/husband/everything was Murray Bartlett, he was so good in White Lotus!

The holes where the hoards of infected people came out of was confusing to me, do they live underground or what?

I understand fully why Joel went to get Ellie from certain death in the OR, I do not think it dooms the entire population, where are all of the infectious disease scientists, surely there are other labs somewhere, right?

Cataclysmic or apocalyptic stories generally make me depressed and I do not watch them but I really like this story and now that I know it was a game I get all the shooting.

Futures where personal hygiene is iffy scares me more than getting bitten, lol.

[izabella]

4 hours ago, paramitch said:

THANK YOU.

I have been yelping to my friends and family who watch this with me (and all the way back to the period when I was still watching "The Walking Dead") about the fact that people don't cover up!

If it was me out there, for every time I ventured out of a safe area, I'd have been wrapping all of my extremities (arms, legs, neck) in duct tape then covering up in durable, tough materials all the way up to my neck.

No duct tape? Bandages. Strips of clothing. There are a ton of ways to make yourself bite-resistant in this universe. Doing so could have changed the outcomes for Anna, Ellie, Riley, Tess, Henry, and Sam based on our direct observations.

On the other hand, I get that it wouldn't be the most telegenic look ever, but it does irritate me that it's never even brought up.

I would have expected bikers to be more of a presence in this world.  With their heavy leather jackets, pants, helmets and gloves, they would have lasted longer against the infected than others. 

[Peace 47]

2 hours ago, Baltimore Betty said:

Since this was a game, is there an end of the story in the game or is it endless depending on the way it is played by the player(s)?

Regarding how the first game (which is the basis for Season 1), ends:  

Spoiler

There is only one possible ending to the first game, and it is the ending portrayed in the show, right down to Ellie and Joel’s last lines. You can watch the video game cut scenes on which the show is based on YouTube (individually or in supercuts of everything, or just Joel and Ellie scene compilations, or whatever you have time for), and it’s definitely a quality production in its own right.   There is one other game that they have announced will be seasons 2 & 3 of this show, but I read that won’t be anytime soon (probably a couple of years away).

 

Edited March 20, 2023 by Peace 47

[CooperTV]

4 hours ago, izabella said:

I would have expected bikers to be more of a presence in this world.  With their heavy leather jackets, pants, helmets and gloves, they would have lasted longer against the infected than others. 

There's a recent zombie apocalypse game called Days Gone where the main character is a biker from a biker gang, and everyone is getting around via bikes.

Not that those bikers wear anything sensible either to protect themselves against the infected, though.

[Nashville]

On 3/18/2023 at 12:48 PM, Dev F said:

And why on earth would the doctors be lying? Say what you will about whether their plan to find a cure is at all plausible, there's no indication in the series that they don't believe it will work. Why else would they be vivisecting a girl they just met—and be willing to die to keep Joel from stopping them?

Not necessarily lying, per se - but more like planting their flag on the hill of their hypotheses, and willing to die on that hill.  For some people, being right (or being perceived as being right, at least) is more important than being correct; the plaudits of external validation are their entire raison d'etre, and they will not - cannot - view dissenting opinions as anything other than personal attacks upon their own authority, credibility, and/or integrity.

So, we have a doctor who gives us a grand total of two sentences - “How did you get in here?” and “I won’t let you take her” - from which we are apparently intended to extrapolate his entire view of the meaning of his life.  The doctor definitely believes he is correct - hard to view his bringing a scalpel to a gunfight as anything other than a certainty in his own position - but on what basis? Testing?  Observation? None of which we are apprised, to be sure - but what does that leave, other than a host of hypothesizing discussions within one’s own immediate circle of allies?

And over time, THAT is a perfect recipe for creating one’s own personal echo chamber - a communications environment where supporting arguments are lauded as evidence, and dissenting opinions are ignored or outright attacked.  All agreement is reinforced, all dissent is dismissed, and critical analysis is a casualty of the process.  And anybody who thinks such worship at the altar of self-validation is a rarity is welcome to join me for a week or two of my work conference calls; you won’t run across more than a half-dozen or so examples on a given week, I promise.  😁

 

5 hours ago, Baltimore Betty said:

The holes where the hoards of infected people came out of was confusing to me, do they live underground or what?

They do now. 😆  

The onscreen story line hasn’t really done much other than drop the odd clue here and there, but the story line as I think I understand it is this:

1. At some point (~10 years or so) after the initial cordyceps outbreak, Kansas City had reached an uneasy quasi-stasis: the infected had largely been eliminated from the ground-level portions of KC - but whatever passed for KC’s “underground” (mass transit, water, sewer, public works, etc.) was still terming with them, and Infected incursions into the human living spaces were not uncommon.
2. Probably as much to justify its continued existence as for any other reason, KC FEDRA then chose to focus on clearing Infected from the underground spaces as well - and (initially, anyway) making sure everybody in KC knew about their efforts.
3. The underground cleanup fails to be the quick PR “win” FEDRA had hoped for, however, as the Infected are a stellar example of that old Kids In the Hall adage “Easy to beat up, hard to kill”.  Progress on the cleanup slows to a crawl and the KC rumor mill (boosted by the local resistance, no doubt) starts whispering the FEDRA cleanup project is a bust, which isn’t entirely true - FEDRA has simply run up against the hardcore 20% of Infected which embody 80% of the remaining threat.
4. After a while on the underground eradication program, the “normal” happens: bureaucratic inertia sets in, and FEDRA’s goal shifts from eradication to extraction - i.e., finding a quick and successfully executable exit strategy.
5. Since the Infected are just as easy to divert as they are hard to kill, some FEDRA brain trust (who probably got battlefield promotions for their efforts) comes up with a solution: draw all the underground Infected into a “backwater” section of the underground, wall them off (engineered cave-ins, maybe?) into an underground time capsule of sorts, and leave them to decay and feed off each other in the dark.  Quick, easy, and requires a minimum of effort and resources - in other words, a bureaucratic wet dream.
6. The time capsule approach is successful, in the short term at least; the Infected are walled off from general access to the KC underground, FEDRA does their “Mission Accomplished” photo ops and sound bites, and the grunt soldiers get to crawl out of the sewers and pull back to daylit spaces.  Funny thing, though; FEDRA never really gets around to detailing its criteria for “accomplished”, so most civilians don’t know FEDRA’s eradication was actually encapsulation.
7. Rumors of infestation still persist among the general population, though, so few take advantage of the cleared underground areas - with the exception of those people wanting (needing?) to avoid contact with FEDRA, or others.
8. And years pass…
9. …until Kathleen’s Last Stand, when the heavy truck went through the floor of the house it had crashed into / set in fire.  The truck doesn’t stop there, though; it goes clear through the basement floor and cracks the top of the time capsule into which FEDRA had herded all those KC Underground Infected so many years ago.
10. Now, these are not your momma’s Infected; they have only gotten bigger and stronger with age, like distilled spirits in a barrel, and after years of germinating in the dark they have spores to spare - not to mention, they are HUNGRY.  These supercharged spore spreaders come BOILING out of the hole cracked in the roof of their time capsule prison, and Kathleen’s ragtag bunch doesn’t stand a chance - nor, as it turns out, does Kathleen.

Purely surmises on my part - but I think it sounds pretty good.  😉

ETA: I realized after posting the 2nd part of my reply was more responsive to Ep5 events than Ep9; the question was raised in this thread, though, so this is where I responded.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Nashville

[Baltimore Betty]

I am impressed that all the infected mutants still have really good bite patterns, seems that the infection does not deteriorate their gums or teeth! Imagine no cavities, no broken teeth, no gum disease...I guess that is a silver lining for living as a mutant! 

[Hanahope]

On 3/19/2023 at 4:40 AM, paramitch said:

Sure, they are dangerous and terrifying, but based on what we saw this season, a well-organized human group/force could handle them 9 times out of 10. 

 

Except that you'd think that is what they would have done during the first few years or so, when they had a larger military and serious weaponry, and clearly that didn't work.  

 

On 3/19/2023 at 1:40 PM, CooperTV said:

The show's infected are easily disposable by common sense and fire, I think.

If they were that easily disposable, they would have been eliminated within the first few years.  clearly they are not so easily disposable.  despite numerous bombings, Boston still had infected in their city.

and also, despite years of dealing with and having infected around, no one created good enough "armor" or other clothing/protection to actually fight the infected and prevent new bites.  

3 hours ago, Nashville said:

 

until Kathleen’s Last Stand, when the heavy truck went through the floor of the house it had crashed into / set in fire.  The truck doesn’t stop there, though; it goes clear through the basement floor and cracks the top of the time capsule into which FEDRA had herded all those KC Underground Infected so many years ago.

but before that last stand, Kathleen's lead guy showed her a basement room that was clearly another time capsule top that was dangerously close to breaking.  Kathleen would have had to deal with the infected regardless of whether she continued her vendetta against Henry.  

[paramitch]

15 hours ago, Baltimore Betty said:

Ok, I am going to confess something to you all, I had no idea that this was originally a video game.  There I said it! I was this many days old when I learned that fact. 

I do love the back stories of the characters, Nick Offerman was amazing, (I was sort of hoping that his real life fabulous wife would show up somehow, lol) I was shocked when I realized his lover/husband/everything was Murray Bartlett, he was so good in White Lotus!

I think it's great that you didn't know. It shouldn't be required knowledge for watching the show.

The changes from the game for Episode 3 with Bill and Frank (Nick Offerman and Murray Barlett) were by far my favorites for the show. The game story of Bill and Frank is much bleaker and sadder. The show's version is so much richer.

Also, after this and "White Lotus" and "Welcome to Chippendales," I am a little in love with Murray Bartlett in the "he is so talented that he can do ANYTHING" kind of way.

14 hours ago, izabella said:

I would have expected bikers to be more of a presence in this world.  With their heavy leather jackets, pants, helmets and gloves, they would have lasted longer against the infected than others. 

You're not wrong! Leather has been great armor going back millennia now.

9 hours ago, Nashville said:

The onscreen story line hasn’t really done much other than drop the odd clue here and there, but the story line as I think I understand it is this

Purely surmises on my part - but I think it sounds pretty good.  😉

ETA: I realized after posting the 2nd part of my reply was more responsive to Ep5 events than Ep9; the question was raised in this thread, though, so this is where I responded.

Absolutely fantastic rundown of the events that led to the Infected surge in E5!

8 hours ago, Baltimore Betty said:

I am impressed that all the infected mutants still have really good bite patterns, seems that the infection does not deteriorate their gums or teeth! Imagine no cavities, no broken teeth, no gum disease...I guess that is a silver lining for living as a mutant! 

I laughed out loud. This was also something I kept wondering about in "The Walking Dead," darn it.

5 hours ago, Hanahope said:

1. Except that you'd think that is what they would have done during the first few years or so, when they had a larger military and serious weaponry, and clearly that didn't work.  

2. If they were that easily disposable, they would have been eliminated within the first few years.  clearly they are not so easily disposable.  despite numerous bombings, Boston still had infected in their city.

3. and also, despite years of dealing with and having infected around, no one created good enough "armor" or other clothing/protection to actually fight the infected and prevent new bites.  

(Note: I added #s to yours above so I could respond to each)

1. I disagree. I'd argue that the first few years would have been the absolute worst and most difficult. The entire world population would have transitioned to majority Infected within 2-3 days. Civilization falls. Whatever remaining official/FEDRA elements worldwide there were would have been concentrating on elimination and containment.

We also know that FEDRA was also unfortunately performing mass executions during this period -- not just bombing major cities (decimating human as well as Infected populations) but also eliminating entire small towns by emptying and them killing all their people.

Which leaves more potential locations for people to return and build protected communities over the years -- sure, some raiders and evil folks, but hopefully many others like those in Jackson -- decent people.

So it seems clear to me that there would be the potential for several safe zones -- especially small/tiny ones. Look at what Bill was able to accomplish with his entire small town. Multiply that by 100 (which I think is pretty conservative) and I think there are a lot of people left in pretty Infected-light areas.

2. See above. However -- by 20 years later, we saw from Boston (and, later, KC) that the Infected can also go dormant for long periods, which would make them potentially easier targets. The irony of KC is that FEDRA was KIND OF effective -- they did manage to pretty much empty the city of Infected and contain them down below, they just didn't finish the job (or didn't get to, because Kathleen's people overthrew them).

I definitely think it would be easier to eradicate or severely decrease Infected populations now at the 20-year-mark versus upon the start of the apocalypse.

3. As to why nobody in the story is covering themselves with duct tape or homemade "armor," my feeling is, frankly, it's not telegenic. It's the same reason the showrunners removed the "spore" aspect of infection (which exists in the game) because the logical reaction to that is masks. And -- again -- that's not fun to watch.

I absolutely do think however that things like leather, denim, duct tape, etc., would in reality be pretty effective for regular folks when dealing with life with potential Infected.

 

 

Edited March 21, 2023 by paramitch

[Kel Varnsen]

7 hours ago, paramitch said:

disagree. I'd argue that the first few years would have been the absolute worst and most difficult. The entire world population would have transitioned to majority Infected within 2-3 days. Civilization falls. Whatever remaining official/FEDRA elements worldwide there were would have been concentrating on elimination and containment.

The first little while would also be the worst because you would have people completely freaking out about how there are now walking mushroom people. Once that settles down I would think the survivors would realize they have a ton of guns and infected aren't really that smart. I mentioned in the mall episode how one infected in the mall would be like if there was a bear loose in a mall.

[Baltimore Betty]

1 hour ago, Kel Varnsen said:

the mall episode how one infected in the mall

Yes and Ellie's friend also was living in that mall and the two never met until that moment? Also, if that mall was walled off, boarded up and could have been considered safe why weren't there more people who knew that because it seemed like a safe place well, until it wasn't but judging how dismal housing was and no electricity, etc...the mall looked like a better option for a home than the other places we saw.

[Nashville]

7 hours ago, Hanahope said:

but before that last stand, Kathleen's lead guy showed her a basement room that was clearly another time capsule top that was dangerously close to breaking. 

Yup - definite foreshadowing of what was to come. 
 

7 hours ago, Hanahope said:

Kathleen would have had to deal with the infected regardless of whether she continued her vendetta against Henry.  

Kathleen had a definite need to deal with the Infected, true, but I don’t think she had the ability - unless, of course, somebody were to suggest Henry was leading the Infected hordes.  Then Kathleen would be all over it.

[paramitch]

3 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

The first little while would also be the worst because you would have people completely freaking out about how there are now walking mushroom people. Once that settles down I would think the survivors would realize they have a ton of guns and infected aren't really that smart. I mentioned in the mall episode how one infected in the mall would be like if there was a bear loose in a mall.

Yeah, and in Riley's case, if it hadn't been a dormant/percolating almost-Clicker, they probably would have found/encountered it sooner.

2 hours ago, Baltimore Betty said:

Yes and Ellie's friend also was living in that mall and the two never met until that moment? Also, if that mall was walled off, boarded up and could have been considered safe why weren't there more people who knew that because it seemed like a safe place well, until it wasn't but judging how dismal housing was and no electricity, etc...the mall looked like a better option for a home than the other places we saw.

See above. It was a dormant Infected basically chilling out and percolating to become a Clicker (which it doesn't seem like it quite was yet? but close). 

Still, it does make sense that its hearing was elevated, so when Ellie and Riley were making a lot of noise (versus the regular little noises of the mall), it noticed, woke up, and tragically wreaked havoc.

I think the mall was a smart move by the Fireflies, they just missed a back room and a snoozing Infected, which is understandable to some extent.

Although I still don't know why Riley was sleeping on the floor when she could have (as others pointed out) slept on a bench (or better yet, a bed of multiple benches) from the clothing stores.

2 minutes ago, Nashville said:

Kathleen had a definite need to deal with the Infected, true, but I don’t think she had the ability - unless, of course, somebody were to suggest Henry was leading the Infected hordes.  Then Kathleen would be all over it.

I would argue that Kathleen had a fantastic eye for management and probably COULD have dealt with the Infected. But she refused to even consider it. She refuses so many times there -- she just won't even consider addressing the problem even when it is threatening to break through the floor before her. Why not send people in with incendiaries to that basement location, positioning grenades/incendiaries around the building? The concentration means they could have nuked a TON of Infected very very quickly.

But of course, her brother's life was worth more than those in her care, because that is where her head was at, at the time. So frustrating.

[MrWhyt]

22 hours ago, Nashville said:

“Easy to beat up, hard to kill”.

To Reg!

[Constantinople]

On 3/18/2023 at 9:31 PM, Dobian said:

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'm unaware of any country where it's legal to kill someone to harvest their organs to save 5 people who would otherwise die, nor am I aware of anyone calling for this to be legalized. So society has solved, or at least answered, the version of the trolley problem that is most comparable to the situation in this episode.

And governments deal with moral absolutes all of the time. Their decrees might lack legitimacy if the government in question isn't a democracy, but few people have a problem with outlawing people from walking up to someone from behind and blowing their head off or having sex with a 10 year old.

In this episode all we know is that Ellie will die if Marlene gets her way. Marlene implied the vaccine might not work, and there's no evidence in the show that the Fireflies can manufacture, distribute and administer a vaccine. So "in universe" there's no justification for killing Ellie.

It doesn't matter if the showrunners intended for there to be a justification, or they want the viewers to accept they did when they did nothing to establish that in the show. They put less effort to show how a vaccine would be even remotely feasible than they did to show how Joel miraculously recovered from being stabbed with a shattered bat and then took out 3 or 4 guys from David's group. 

That's a big storytelling problem.

[Dev F]

On 3/19/2023 at 3:40 AM, paramitch said:

It is interesting to note that Joel scoffs at the news that Ellie is immune back in Ep2 and does bring up that there have evidently been multiple "false alarms" on vaccines and cures already at the 20-year point. I think this is important for considering the current "trolley problem" of the finale and how much he believes the Fireflies will TOTALLY save the world.

To me that scene was more about setting a starting point for Joel's subsequent development. Episode 2 draws a stark distinction between Joel, the man who's lost all hope, and Tess, the woman who never gives up even when she's being frenched by a fungus zombie. He's initially motivated by Tess's sacrifice and his feeling that he owes it to her to carry on her mission, but his sense that she might genuinely represent a new chance for humanity seems to grow alongside his paternal feelings for Ellie.

By episode 6 he's proclaiming her immunity to Tommy in the same tone of wonderment that Tess once proclaimed it to Joel. Compare "Look, Joel. This is real. This is fucking real" to "Tommy. Tommy, I saw her get bit myself. That was months ago. Months. She's immune." It doesn't even occur to him that the most straightforward answer to the question How can I keep her safe from all the dangers between here and the Fireflies? would be Don't take her to the Fireflies. Confessing his weakness and fear to his brother and turning Ellie over to him, though deeply painful, is easier to contemplate than giving up their mission.

And, obviously, some of that is a psychological defense: he's not yet ready to contemplate that he and Ellie could have a life together as father and daughter, so he can only parse their relationship in terms of How can I keep her safe till she gets where she needs to go? But that's a big part of why it's meaningful that the save Ellie and save the world missions are finally decoupled in episode 9. It's not because he's believed all along that the immunity thing might be a wet fart; it's because he's finally considering the possibility that he could be her father, not just her protector.

Quote

I also want to point out the show-versus-game aspects (additions), over and over again this season, spotlight that it is understandable to save the one you love versus saving the world, finding "that one person" to protect.

True, but it also goes out of its way to make some of their decisions in the name of love really quite bad, morally speaking. In trolley-problem terms, all Joel does is stop the Fireflies from pulling the switch to kill one person instead of five; Henry, on the other hand, pulls the switch himself to kill five people instead of one! So by adding that collaborator element to Henry's story, the show is analogizing Joel's actions to something much worse. And that's before we even get to Kathleen, whose drive to avenge her brother dooms an entire city full of people who were counting on her to save them.

And then there's the recurring imagery that compares love to the cordyceps infection, and the song choice ("Never Let Me Down Again") that analogizes Joel and Ellie's relationship to drug addiction. And the light-and-darkness imagery in episode 1 that's all about people looking in the wrong place for hope and redemption.

Honestly, given all those pretty dark elements the show added to the story, I was half expecting Druckmann and Mazin to double down much more than they did on the negative aspects of Joel's final choice. But the last episode ends up going right up the middle the same way the game did.

Quote

I do agree with you to some extent on the Marlene/Joel dynamic -- I just think that the scene's writing and direction is problematic as she seems to want to have it both ways, and that's what confuses me. She starts out acting like he's "callous Joel" but then with zero affect pivots to "I care about her too," yet she continues forward by not attempting to empathize, soothe, or comfort him in any way. She's almost goading, and then just cruelly sends him off and tells the soldiers to shoot him at the slightest signal, etc.

To me that seems in keeping with Marlene's character. She's a woman of action and she knows what needs to be done, so why would she waste time trying to convince Joel when she can just have him marched out at gunpoint? Obviously, she underestimates Joel's ability to turn the tables on her men, but I don't see why she would put more faith in her own persuasive abilities.

At the same time, she just doesn't kill him where he stands, and she tells her men to give him Ellie's knife as a memento. Which to me seems consistent with someone who's trying to be as thoughtful as she thinks she can be within her cold pragmatism.

And, of course, when she encounters Joel later in the parking lot and doesn't have the ability to just toss him out, she does make a more significant argument for why Joel should let the Fireflies sacrifice Ellie. Narratively speaking, I think it works to save the moral debate for after the fireworks (though at no point was I ever fooled into thinking that maybe Joel was persuaded by Marlene's argument and left without Ellie).

The reason I think it works is because it outlines a progression in Joel's deliberation regarding his choice to save Ellie at the cost of the world. At first he's running all on instinct, gunning down any motherfucker who stands in his way. Then he has to listen as Marlene lays out the stakes, and makes a more conscious choice to gun her down—which he then compounds by going back to finish her off. And finally he makes the choice to lie to Ellie, selfishly depriving her of a choice in her own fate the same way Marlene did.

21 hours ago, paramitch said:

See above. It was a dormant Infected basically chilling out and percolating to become a Clicker (which it doesn't seem like it quite was yet? but close). 

Still, it does make sense that its hearing was elevated, so when Ellie and Riley were making a lot of noise (versus the regular little noises of the mall), it noticed, woke up, and tragically wreaked havoc.

Yeah, as I believe I mentioned in the episode 7 thread, we've seen at least two infected people who haven't yet become clickers but are more fungal and apparently more sophisticated than the "run around crashing into things and biting people" newly infected. There's the one guy in the mall, and the guy in the state house building who "kisses" Tess.

For whatever it's worth, in the game (minor infected lore SPOILERS) . . .

Spoiler

. . . there is a distinct second stage of the infection between the initial "runner" stage and the blind, echolocating "clicker" stage. They're called "stalkers," and they're distinguished by their ability to hide in the shadows, sneak around silently, and pounce on their victims unawares. The infected man in episode 7 seems stalker-inspired, especially in the way he's growing into the wall when we first see him, though obviously he's not exactly silent.

[CooperTV]

I think the writers should have maybe create a universe where killing children for greater good is okay, and anyone going on a rampage to prevent that is a bad guy. I feel like they wanted it to be so, for the sake of "ambiguity" or "discourse".

But the same writers consistently, from the episode one, showed us that killing children for whatever reason is horrific thing to do. Their bad guys of the week systematically either put no value in children's lives (Karen of KC QZ) or were outright child abusers (David the Cannibal). 

This is a massive writing issue that became even more obvious in the finale, where we, as viewers, are supposed to sympathize with known terrorists, child murderers and medical hacks over a father that wants to save his child from said terrorists.

Rule of the thumb, supported by mankind everywhere: killing children is 100% off limits. Experimenting on said children that would result in their demise to create a medicine is a crime punished by at least prison time.

Case closed.

[Dobian]

On 3/21/2023 at 11:00 AM, Constantinople said:

I'm unaware of any country where it's legal to kill someone to harvest their organs to save 5 people who would otherwise die, nor am I aware of anyone calling for this to be legalized. So society has solved, or at least answered, the version of the trolley problem that is most comparable to the situation in this episode.

And governments deal with moral absolutes all of the time. Their decrees might lack legitimacy if the government in question isn't a democracy, but few people have a problem with outlawing people from walking up to someone from behind and blowing their head off or having sex with a 10 year old.

In this episode all we know is that Ellie will die if Marlene gets her way. Marlene implied the vaccine might not work, and there's no evidence in the show that the Fireflies can manufacture, distribute and administer a vaccine. So "in universe" there's no justification for killing Ellie.

It doesn't matter if the showrunners intended for there to be a justification, or they want the viewers to accept they did when they did nothing to establish that in the show. They put less effort to show how a vaccine would be even remotely feasible than they did to show how Joel miraculously recovered from being stabbed with a shattered bat and then took out 3 or 4 guys from David's group. 

That's a big storytelling 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.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Dobian

[Constantinople]

On 3/22/2023 at 8:15 PM, Dobian said:

You are drawing a false equivalency.  Your example involves premeditation.  The trolley problem does not

Then by your own definition what happened in this episode isn't an example of the trolley problem.

Over two and a half minutes elapse between the time Joel tells Marlene "Find someone else" in his hospital room and the time he attacks the guards in the stairwell.

Two and a half minutes is a very long time.

On 3/22/2023 at 8:15 PM, Dobian said:

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. 

Dion of Syracuse knew Plato personally and if I remember correctly, studied under him and was one of his better students at that time.

He was a disaster.

Marcus Aurelius left the Roman Empire to his son Commodus. That was a terrible decision.

It's a lot easier to be a deep thinker in the abstract when you're not the one making the decisions that affect people outside of a thought exercise in a classroom.

Not that the issue facing Joel or the viewers requires deep thinking because the showrunners provided no evidence to suggest a vaccine is remotely feasible. Therefore there's no choice to be made, no conundrum. Nothing.

On 3/22/2023 at 8:15 PM, Dobian said:

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. 

Philosophers and their students can discuss the trolley problem all they want, but "the trolley problem" isn't a magic phrase that excuses substandard writing in a television show, particularly about an event that's been building up in the show for the entire season.

[CooperTV]

As much as you can use "trolley problem" as a shield from any criticism, either from the writing standpoint, or from the ethical standpoint, it's not going to be correct.

From the writing standpoint the author created rushed and barely thought-out scenario where the fate of an immune person is decided by a third party to the actual government in more or less an hour of real time. And if loved ones object to the murder of said child, they're killed as well.

Then the writers are bewildered why viewers refuse to connect emotionally to the apparent bad guys' POV. Even though the same writers created the same problem ten years ago in a different medium and it was at best ambiguous then, and they even did a little bit of study on the subject.

From the ethical standpoint again, trolley problem is a thought experiment with no variables or outside information present. But the most important part of ethics as a tool that it its presenting sufficient information in its complexity for every individual solution.

We, as viewers, see all the details Joel is unaware of because he has limited POV. But his decision, even if it could be done for variety of reasons, is still consistent with the viewers' own ethical standpoint, which is "don't experiment and kill children after kidnapping them and attacking their guardian".