Article: The Last of Us: Preaching to the Choir

I am a fan of the video games The Last of Us (Parts I and II). I don't have any tattoos, but I would consider them among the tip-top best narrative-driven video games humanity has produced to date. In Part I, Naughty Dog created a realistically dire setting and two relatable characters, then put them through an existential wringer via a tried-and-true trolley car conundrum. Part II expanded on this setup in relevant, edgy fashion, forcing players to question their conception of violence, hatred, and vengeance. Add to that brilliant soundtracks and voice acting, and the games are a major success—not only in my eyes, but the market's as well.

Naturally, I was interested in the HBO series when it came out two years ago, and watched. Season 1 captured Part 1 well. The producers (mostly) focused on the key scenes, and skipped those which, while fun in-game, were not critical to the umbrella story. They had a good CGI budget to render the world in great approximation to the game. And episode to episode progression held suspense. Season 2 came out this year, and it's clear the wheels are starting to come off, creating a different kind of trolley conundrum.

Killing Joel

To get this out of the way, I am a fan of the choice to kill the character Joel early in Part II—both the game and series. Like the death of Eddard Stark in A Game of Thrones, it escalates the drama. The player/viewer clearly understands: the stakes are R.E.A.L. Nobody is safe. Anything can truly happen. Beyond that aspect, Joel was a mass murderer. He had killed hundreds of people prior, including an innocent doctor who was doing his job, potentially for the benefit of mankind. No matter how much you enjoy the character, Joel's death is justice from a certain point of view. But perhaps most importantly, Joel's death ensures the narrative retains its relevance. Where so many video games have players occupying the roles of veritable superheroes, killing thousands without consequence, Naughty Dog showed us: not here. Here actions have consequences, including with our most popular characters.

My issues with Last of Us Season 2 stem from more fundamental areas than killing Joel. First is the acting. Or more precisely, how the acting on screen compares to the voice acting in the games.

Comparative Acting

Whether they know it or not, players were spoiled by Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson's performances in the video games. (The script also helped.) Baker's deep, gravelly voice. The subtlety of his broodings. The exasperated father tone he pulls out on special occasions. He's superb. Pedro Pascal pales in comparison to Baker's performance. He's not terrible. He gets scenes from A to B. He communicates basic emotions. He's professional. It's only that, when you've had the best bespoke chocolate ice cream, the off-the-shelf stuff tastes meh. Pascal's voice lacks Baker's masculine gruffness. He comes across as wheedling more often than brooding. And the little things, things like having to keep the guitar out of shot while Pascal was playing because he couldn't even pretend, slowly add up.

And the same applies to Ashley Johnson and Bella Ramsey. Like Baker, Johnson has a deep pool she can swim to find degrees of subtlety when delivering a performance, degrees that Ramsey lacks. Both play angsty teens, but where Johnson's version comes across as annoying but relatable, Ramsey is a whining version of annoying. Relatability is a struggle as a result. Ramsey's scenes display more extremes of emotion—here a puppy playing, there a pouting child, etc. They lack the nuance that a hardened nineteen-year old would display. Johnson, on the other hand, made the transition, from Part 1 to Part 2. Ellie in the video game Part I feels like a teen, while Ellie in Part 2 feels like an adult. Ramsey in Season 2 still feels like a child.

Wokeness

The second major issue with Season 2 is the ramping up of woke messaging. To set baseline, The Last of Us video games have woke elements. The entire DLC of Part 1 featured Ellie's lesbian relationship, something which Part II dug deeper into, for example. This was portrayed in the tv series, and on top of that the series' producers expanded on a homosexual relationship between two men that was literally scraps of paper in the game. But that episode at least brought the two men's humanity to the surface and was tied into the overarching story. Ultra-conservatives probably ran the other way seeing two men kiss, but most people could keep watching. In Season 2, the writers opted for a less concentrated, more shotgun approach. It is to the series' detriment, unfortunately.

Scattered throughout Season 2 are both subtle and overt nods to woke ideology. Regardless your political affiliation, it's painful to watch. In one scene, a redneck man berates Ellie for being homosexual, and in a following scene the same man grovels at her feet, apologizing for said insults. He's seen the error of his ways. He's a reformed man. The message 'homosexuality is ok, and it should be for you too, viewer' couldn't have been spelled out more clearly without putting subtitles on screen. I have no issues with homosexuality and I still feel patronized.

In another scene, a tiny Bella Ramsey is training martial arts with a man twice her size and three-times her muscle. But somehow—somehow—she gets a leglock on his head and forces him to submit. Really? Girl power or super hero? Two girls form a lesbian relationship, ok. Two men form a homosexual relationship, ok. A tiny teen defeats a trained man twice her size. Ok? It stretches the reality of the series, in turn stretching the lengths viewers must go to suspend disbelief. Where the game did its best to retain real-world realism, such series' scenes betray Naughty Dog's vision for foregrounding politics over realism.

In yet another scene, Ellie discovers her girlfriend is pregnant. (For those not paying attention, sperm is a prerequisite for those circumstances.) To which Ellie states “I'm going to be a dad.” Clearly not intended as a joke, the viewer is expected to understand that yes, women can be dads. Woke?  Woke. It's an idea the majority of viewers will shy away from rather than consider. A tiny teen beating up a grown man is something viewers can suspend disbelief for, but a girl being a dad is a bridge of disbelief most viewers cannot cross. And there are several other such scenes.

In short, Season 2 contains its share of woke signaling. This causes a minority of viewers to jump and cheer while the majority question whether it's worth continuing to watch, and some do stop. The crazy part about this is: nobody (and I don't often use such blanket terms) is going to watch The Last of Us and suddenly adopt leftist ideologies. That's not how humans work. If anything, it's going to make the divide wider.

But that's still not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is that it's a show producer's job to create a series that hits a Goldilocks point between niche interest and commercial success. For its presentation of woke ideologies, the producers of the Last of Us captured niche interest, but failed to keep the show's horizon broad enough to be a commercial success, i.e. appealing to more than the niche.

Conclusion

All in all, I'm curious whether there will be a Season 3. I haven't checked the numbers, but my assumption is that viewership of Season 2 was down compared to 1. Based on the noise I saw online, a lot of people were also upset by Joel's death, which doesn't boost popularity. Pile on the mediocre acting and increased woke content, and I'm not sure how much longer the series can sustain itself. The wokeness is easy to fix. Just remove it from script. The acting is more difficult. It creates a fork in the road for producers. Do we continue making a series with new actors knowing this has not been successful in the past? Regardless, The Last of Us may very well go the way the majority of tv series: unfinished.  We'll have to wait and see.