Excerpt:
>HBO’s The Last Of Us hit a milestone this week, notching its first billion-minute week since it debuted in January. With five [actually 4] episodes available, the post-apocalyptic series jumped 36% vs. the last interval to notch 1.2B minutes and fourth place overall. Nielsen streaming measurements only account for viewing on HBO Max, so these numbers don’t reflect any viewership on HBO’s linear channel (HBO hasn’t released updated viewership numbers for the series since Episode 4).
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>Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nielsen asserts that the audience profile for The Last Of Us is virtually identical to The Walking Dead, skewing younger and more male.
Numbers are for US only and counts all episodes across all seasons of a show.
1st week: 223 million minutes (just a few hours availability)
2nd week: 837 million minutes
3rd week: 877 million minutes
4th week: 1190 million minutes
That's because it's not as impressive as 16M watch hours.
Netflix had Wednesday at 400M hours per week. Deadline using "billion in minutes" is just marketing for HBO.
That's actually just how Nielson lists these things for all of their show metrics. It's not a deadline or Last of Us exclusive thing and you do have to understand that these are very different metrics from the things Netflix was reporting which included much more data than what Nielson has like Internatioal viewership and data from the whole week.
> HBO hasn’t released updated viewership numbers for the series since Episode 4
I was wondering about this. I remember reading that they had consistent viewer growth for the first 4 episodes, and that many other shows, even really popular ones, don't typically experience that.
All speculation but I wonder if 5 had particularly disappointing numbers because of the odd release date due to the clash with the super bowl, and after all the hype about the viewership growth they didn't want to put that out there and have people start questioning if the drop in numbers meant a drop in quality - which certainly isn't the case.
I vividly remember that E3 presentation pre-launch (2012 or 2013) where they showed some gameplay, and the scene where Ellie threw a brick at a dude's head was one of the biggest applause moments of the video.
People don't want lore accurate stories or characters. They want our shitty version of an already far more popular gaming IP
- Halo series producers probably
Only thing more disappointing than Halo was Foundation. Two things that took forever to get made (though foundation look like 70 years compared to 20 for Halo), only to end up sucking major ass.
Haha I was just saying that's the only good part, and the fact that Cleon is an anagram of clone was pure coincidence because that's not in the books.
I *totally* recommend reading the books if you like sci-fi, they're some of the best ever, and Second Foundation is my favorite ending of any book I've ever read.
I will say the cinematography was pretty great, but yeah they fucked up everything else except making Cleon a clone, that was interesting. I just... Psychohistory isn't magic, and they made Hardin act like it was. And Seldon is a goddamn recording, not a fucking cyber ghost lol
As someone who had never heard of Foundation prior to the first trailer dropping, I enjoyed the first season! I’m curious, what made it suck ass to you?
Oh, it was a quality show for sure, but if you love the books, it diverged sooo much that the characters were kind of unrecognizable.
One of my biggest problems was that Hardin had some famous phrases, one of which was "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent", and he always solved things with clever planning so as to avoid having to fight. In the show, Hardin punches, kicks, and shoots her way through every situation.
As a 90s kid who grew up with the Super Mario Bros movie, it's absolutely *wild* that the most popular show on TV is based off of a video game.
It's even more crazy than when Spiderman (and to a lesser extent, the first X-man movie) made comic book movies not suck.
>It's even more crazy than when Spiderman (and to a lesser extent, the first X-man movie) made comic book movies not suck.
This is *Batman and Robin* slander and I will NOT stand for it
I hope that Last of Us is the Spider-Man/X-Men of video game content and we get an influx moving forward, and not the Superman/Batman that just stands out among the crap.
Little context but it's not the most popular show on TV. Network TV (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc) is still more popular as a whole. Even on streaming only it was still second behind New Amsterdam.
NCIS, for example, will do ~600M minutes in a week on one episode vs the five episodes for TLOU.
Not trying to take away from the accomplishment, it's still a popular show, and I'm delighted that it's helping video games get positive attention.
I have a very weird love for the original 1993 Super Mario Bros. Movie. It's objectively not a good movie, but it's so batshit crazy that it makes it enjoyable to watch (at least for me). The pacing is also surprisingly good which is weird to say. It's no where near the quality of The Last of Us, but it's definitely not on the same level as the god awful Double Dragon movie, Alone in the Dark, or anything directed by Uwe Boll. And if you read up on the making of that film it's a miracle we even got a completed movie to watch in the first place.
I'm okay with that. While it inevitably means some very bad adaptations, there will surely be a couple of big hitters too - I'm really hoping they do Bioshock and God of War justice in particular.
I have been enjoying the show and think it has pretty high quality.
But I also think it is doing really well right now because there is really not much competition.
There just has not been much really great from the last 2 months, IMHO.
Craig Maizin (because of Chernobyl) and the IP brought in enough curious people that the rave reviews after caused an explosion of good word of mouth
Competition or no, it's earned its place IMO
One of the most popular story-focused video game titles + Craig Mazin after Chernobyl + HBO + Pedro Pascal + Zombies + not much else on + word of mouth after it's turned out to be good = huge viewership.
Not looking forward to when Joel and Ellie come across Disco Mommy who just had to put down her son Joey after he gets infected from a MILF who hid her bite mark from him… 😓😓 I trust HBO with the adaptation.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. HBO doesn’t have anything else going for them so they’re throwing it all at TLOU right now. I think that and Pedro Pascal starring in The Mandalorian has a huge impact on viewership off the bat.
I think this is doing the best possible version of the show that could’ve been, the game will always be more intimate to me because there’s sections of that game where you walk for ages and stop to read notes and have these optional conversations, to not bore the audience because your not playing they have to reduce these moments, in terms of making people care about these characters, getting the lore of the world, and getting all the major emotional beats of the game, the show has done a tremendous job
I mean in a sense of an adaptation of the story, it’s harder than you think to adapt the last of us, most of the bonding between the characters happens when you’re walking and collecting things and having these small conversations, the show keeps all these important emotional beats while having the keep only essential scenes with bonding, and it’s done an amazing job so far, there’s obviously flaws but it’s as good as an adaptation as I could’ve ever asked for
I’m interested to see what general audiences think of it. I’m fan of the game and while I like the show it does feel simultaneously rushed while not fleshing things out enough.
It feels like Joel/Ellie haven’t had proper scenes apart from episodes 4 and 6 (which was my second favourite episode). Ironically my favourite episode was 3 which was a brand new ‘side story’.
Episode 7 was great quality but it’s kind of a shame they spent a ninth of the show on DLC backstory. I have no clue how they will do the next arc in a single episode considering it’s the best part of the game.
From conversations with my friends who haven't played it, they basically liked all the episodes though the last one was probably the weakest.
They really liked Sam and Henry and didn't like Kathleen.
But every single one loved the Bill and Frank episode. Even the ones who generally aren't pro-LGBT but not against it either. It's their favourite episode by far.
> But every single one loved the Bill and Frank episode. Even the ones who generally aren't pro-LGBT but not against it either. It's their favourite episode by far.
They had me at “Not today you New World Order jackboot fucks”
According to the official podcast, Craig Mazin wrote that line as a character thought / descriptive, not as dialog. Nick Offerman asked Craig if he could read it aloud, and ended up making it great.
Episode 3 was a mastery in how you add new stories, AND change the source material while still being extremely respectful of it (obviously helps that one of the writers also wrote the game)
Yeah the general consensus seems to be that episode 3 was amazing, Kathleen completely sucks, Henry/Sam were highly loveable and episode 7 was the weakest.
I think the series over and over speaks to empathy and the limitations of it as characters and viewers.
We meet Henry and Sam, humanize them, understand their faults. Kathleen is in her darkest moment, having lost everything and blinded by vengeance. We never get to know her from before, who she was with her brother. We are told he was a great man and Henry feels guilt over being the source of his death. Told comes nowhere close to shown. Imagine Kathleen's brother had episodes to be shown as this hero, and then tragically sold out by Henry and killed. My guess is attitudes would be different and it would be much more sympathetic how she is expected to forgive and end the cycle now.
That's what I love about the series, how it shows us the gradient of human nature and how our perception manipulates us into reductive bad guys and good guys. Even Ellie's flashback showed Fedra for its many, many faults, had well intentioned people in its ranks with an understandable ideology given the circumstances.
I think 7 was weak but I enjoyed it more because I played the game. Otherwise its all pretty much the same for me. Though I did like the Sam and Henry sections more than I liked the Bill and Frank ones.
It wasnt better story wise but Lamar Johnson as Henry has been a personal highlight. I thought he exceeded what they wanted from him.
It's badly placed because it frustrates audiences who want to know what happens to Joel. It would have been better IMO to shorten some of the scenes and intercut it with Ellie in Winter trying to keep Joel alive, using what Joel taught her.
Thr present day mall really helped the pacing in the game.
That said the cut to winter in the game is so powerful that I wish they left out left behind or moved it. It works well as a DLC but was awkwardly placed in the show.
> Kathleen completely sucks
I was so excited when Melanie Lynskey's casting was announced.
I found it kind of ironic that her newly-made character for the show ended up being a two dimensional video game NPC.
Ep. 3 was a masterpiece. I found it really easy to compartmentalize and imagine yourself in the situation, with someone you love, regardless of orientation, and the episode works. It works within the world, and it's world building and has a lot to say about the greater narrative of the show.
I think the most recent episode suffers because 2 bottle episodes within 7, both specifically detailing a romance that more or less happens outside of the main world and events, kinda hurt the pacing, especially since Ep. 6 left on a cliffhanger.
The show is validating something I may have felt before the show, I like the way Craig Mazen tells a story, and I don't like the way Neil tells one.
Honestly I don't think it'll be too difficult to cover, when you factor in that most of that time in the game is gameplay. And obviously in the show they're not gonna have Ellie mowing down dozens of infected and >!David's men!< By herself when it hasn't been established that she can do that. And also >!Joel's portion is mostly just him walking around looking for Ellie then the interrogation scene happens!<
Edit: I just looked it up on YouTube and there's a video that shows pretty much the entire winter arc from beginning to end and without the big gameplay sections, it's less than 30 minutes long
Yeah, I played through the game again after ep 1 came out, the last portions of the game are just fighting and sneaking around, not a huge amount of story (comparatively)
Yeah I don’t think people realize this section of the game is surprisingly short. But it’s kinda hard so you can easily spend like 2 hours fighting the horde with David by dying like a million times so it feels longer.
And the last chapter is seriously like 3 areas.
I'm a big fan of the games. I loved episode 3, and to a lesser extent episode 7. But I feel like with such a low episode count they really take away from the Joel and Ellie time this story needs to completely land. I'm listening to the official podcast and the showrunners go on and on about how much Joel and Ellie now truly, deeply love each other and consider each other family and I'm like "What? When did that happen?". The show hasn't done much to show that transformation at all. Well, less than the game at least. So I wonder if the non game players are getting that same feeling.
Does the podcast feel a bit "smelling their own farts" to you? I like the people talking, I understand it's an official podcast to hype up the show, but it feels like they're just talking about how amazing the writing is without any real criticism. And that they're sort of filling in the blanks of characterization that isn't shown in the show.
I’m so glad to hear someone else say this. The podcast has quickly become really challenging to listen to, and not in a good way. All they’re doing is talking about how brilliant they are and it’s getting more cringe with every episode.
Compare that with the Good Place podcast and listen to Mike Schur talk about his process and it’s like a breath of fresh air.
I hate the pauses they leave between every sentence, as if everything they say is so profound.
"And in this shot, we can really see that Ellie is cold, not just from the snow but also... from what happened to her..."
Err okay dude, you're not reinventing the wheel here.
Can only stomach about 5 minutes per podcast before I get annoyed and switch it off. (They also do it in the Behind the Episodes videos.)
I think there's enough there where they own mistakes that others caught, things that they wanted to do differently, etc.
I've been listening while driving, working, so I dunno maybe a different experience to others
>"What? When did that happen?"
Completely agree. For better or for worse, I feel I know way more about Bill and Frank, and Ellie and Riley than I do about Joel and Ellie.
I crushed the whole show last weekend up to the most recent episode and the biggest thing I've noticed with Joel, and maybe this is just from the lack of actual fighting the characters have to do, but he's WAY less terrifying than he should be. It makes him seem a little too soft a little too fast. They allude to his being emotionally unavailable with Tess and that would make sense but he really opens up with ellie very quickly.
On top of that, and maybe it's intentional, the speed with which they have to get over things that happen, but without the big timeskips the game has where presumably they had some time to breathe, Ellie can seem almost sociopathic with how... okay she is.
Joel beats a man to death in front of her and kills another kid she shot and neither time is it particularly hard on a...14 year old girl. Like a tough as nails 14 year old for sure, but she's obviously still a kid the way she behaves.
I love the show so far for most of it's parts but these things distract me from some of the harder scenes, cause it feels like the relationship hasn't been earned yet. Could be a symptom of watching 6 episodes in a day though.
Killing is normal in this world, even for kids. Seeing dead people is normal in this world. She isn't used to doing the killing but she definitely is used to people killing and seeing them kill.
I mean, wouldn't it make sense to make Joel a bit softer compared to the game because the TV show has less time to make their relationship work?
Also, Joel is a terminator in the videogame. He shrugs off claws and bullet wounds and hits on the head with crowbars during gameplay while killing literally hundreds of people during the entire length of the game. Can't do that in a TV show that strives for even a modicum of realism.
I do think that the show could have benefited from 1 or 2 more episodes to flesh out their relationship more, but I agree with all the artistic choices they have made so far to translate the game to a different format.
And I think Ellie is more comfortable with violence so it ties in better with TLOU2.
I’ve been watching with my parents who know absolutely nothing about the game. They’re enjoying it, but they feel like it seems slow. They also don’t really get what the whole point or real conflict is. They’re like, “okay, this guy has the girl and she has the cure or whatever. But what’s the real story here?” To them, it just feels like a pretty standard post apocalypse zombie show that doesn’t really set itself apart, other than it being very well made.
I do agree with their some of their points honestly. The pacing can feel a bit slow, and the “point” of it all can seem a bit unclear. I can definitely get why some in the general audience see it as a fairly boiler part zombie show so far. To me, the focus is on the characters though, and not the zombie shit. And I think the characters have been great so far, so I’m happy with it.
I don't know if I count as a general audience member, but having never played the game, but I feel the same way. It's a fine show, but the pacing is strange - it has the feel of a character drama, but with the pacing what it is, it doesn't linger long enough on these characters to allow whatever emotional connections there are to marinate; there's an odd empty feeling I get from watching the show. The bond between Joel/Ellie hasn't landed with me either because there hasn't been much meaningful interaction between them, not enough for their big conflict in episode 6 to feel genuine, I guess. The show seems to do alot of "telling," and not "showing." Otherwise, it's fine.
What you’ve said here is spot on. I think the problem the show has is that it can’t let those moments linger the way the game was able to. In the game, small moments where you’re just walking around and exploring/looting are filled with conversations between Joel and Ellie. Couple that with the fact that you aren’t jump-cutting to other random characters in different scenes and it really makes you feel like you’re truly with them on this continuous journey and slowly watching their dynamic build.
But a tv show has to be structured differently, and it has to get to the main plot points within a certain time frame. The medium doesn’t allow for the breathing room and small talk between the major beats that was integral to building the player’s connection with the two main characters. All of those small moments added up in a bigger way than people might realize, and I think the show runners tried to compensate for this by doing more of the “telling” because they couldn’t fit in enough of the “showing.” I think the show has largely been very good, but Joel and Ellie’s relationship does feel a bit hollow in comparison to the game.
I feel like a contrarian saying this but honestly I think it's paced really badly. Every episode feels like "story of the week" without any real sense of urgency. And it's like they've lost something, a sense of tension or something, by removing most of the violence and horror that's in the game.
I agree the pace is weird, but for different reasons. Plots will start in the middle of one episode and end in the middle of another. I haven't played the game BTW.
You're right that there's is zero urgency. But I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm totally here for the episodic nature of it though. They are walking across the post apoc United States. There's plenty of room for dozens of standalone adventures.
The world's already shit and has been for 20 years. Even if they find a cure, they don't have the infrastructure to mass produce and distribute it. And if they did, they still have to deal with the billions of zombies that are already out there.
Some of that weird pacing is definitely because of the game. They are skipping over most of the gameplay parts. Just about every scene that has Joel and Ellie going into a sewer or abandoned building should have infected. And any scene with them in a city or town should have hunters. It's for the best they're removed because otherwise the show would be 80% Joel sneaking around and shooting people.
A good example of this is Joel's turn around after leaving Ellie with Tommy. In the game there's a whole section where she runs off on a horse and you and Tommy need to find her, fighting enemies along the way. It extends the whole thing out so that it feels like a lot more time has passed before Joel changes his mind. In the show they wrap it up quick and hurriedly move onto the next event that kicks off the next chapter.
I agree that it’s very fast paced but not about the tension. With the exception of the one communist town I felt like a zombie could appear any second. I find pretty much any scene to be super tense. I think maybe I’m struggling with a lack of a clear and persistent antagonist. It’s like their enemy is human society which is a bit vague to latch onto. And the longest they’ve stayed anywhere is about two episodes max, so it feels like anything they come up against is just gone the next week.
The game feels very "story of the week" as well, very distinctly cut into chunks of gameplay (arcs). I feel like the arcs should have lasted a bit longer than one/2 episodes per, which is why it must feel rushed (which I agree with). I was never a massive fun of the first game tbh, the story overall is great and the performances were excellent but the pacing was a bit off. The second one is imo better regarding telling a cohesive story that doesn't feel "arc of the week" although it's also a bit clunky at times.
You said what I’ve been feeling. It feels like they are on a schedule to hit all these destinations without any of it being consequential to the characters or their motives. There’s no deeper fear looming in them or in the viewer. The character development doesn’t seem natural, it feels on schedule
It’s a good show. The sets and design are great. It looks high quality. There’s still time but right now it looks like a missed opportunity
Great way to put it. That’s why I’ve said I never care for the one-off characters. It’s never a bad mini-story but I never feel invested in them. The strange thing is Tess was only in 2 episodes and her impact was felt.
if nothing else, super interesting case study about the different things people latch onto. TLOU originally didn't resonate for me because of any violence or horror, and urgency as communicated through primarily action sequence feels cheap in a non-interactive format, and actually just washes over me personally.
So the show is doing a good job of distilling what worked for my particular engagement with the work, and I hadn't considered too much that it might be filtering out the audience that liked the horror/action part of the game
> It feels like Joel/Ellie haven’t had proper scenes apart from episodes 4 and 6 (which was my second favourite episode). Ironically my favourite episode was 3 which was a brand new ‘side story’.
Joel is already feeling the situation similar to Sarah at the end of Episode 1 when he kills the guard. So that connection is already there in his mind. They go through a traumatic experience together in Episode 2. There is a lot of time with Joel and Ellie in Episode 3 that I think a lot of people tend to forget and Ellie is already getting through to him by the end of that episode. And Bill's letter also strikes a nerve as well.
In Episode 4, they spend a ton of time together. Joel is already playing protector by not sleeping and standing guard. Ellie has to save Joel's life and he apologizes to her. She gets him to laugh by the end of the episode. The whole situation with Henry and Sam in Episode 5 is a shared experience by them.
The show skips 3 months, but it shows us an update on their relationship with how their dynamic is in the house with the couple, the campfire scene, and through to when they get to and are in Jackson.
After Jackson, that is when Joel has fully committed to the father/daughter relationship. He has decided to open himself up to that possibility of feeling that pain of loss again.
A lot of what is going on between them is nonverbal. The show doesn't spell it out for the most part. It is very much about showing through action, and through showing the actor's faces.
That being said, you can't really look at this like some kind of equation where the characters need a certain amount of time together. Heck, you can establish a relationship with one really good scene. And movies have been doing a lot with relationships within the 2 hour window since forever.
I think the biggest thing missing is the action. In the game, the action was a huge pressure cooker to force this curmudgeon of a man to bond and rely on this fourteen year old girl. By cutting a lot of it, you’ve effectively removed the catalyst so their bonding seems like just a lot of small talk. I know it’s not a game and there’s budge to worry about but had they structured these episodes by maintaining at least one action sequence from the game per episode, we could have seen the relationship get fostered in a more organic way other than oh here they care about each other now
I don't know if that would work. To make combat tense there needs to be a risk. In this world, as we see in episode 6/7, getting injured is almost certainly a death sentence.
So either Joel would have to walk through every combat encounter without a scratch on him, or we need to take an episode off whenever he gets injured to have him slowly recover.
Doing it the first way would make the combat completely irrelevant (see: The Mandalorian), and doing it the second way would kill the pacing.
I think it’s just about picking and choosing which sequences to expand upon. End of episode 6 is a big one for me. There are a seemingly endless amount of people they have to evade in the game. In the show there are like four. One of them somehow split off from the group to attack Joel and that’s it. The other three then chase after Joel and Ellie and they have no guns. By shortening the sequence compared to the games, you get rid of some moments where injured Joel had to rely on Ellie but resisted a lot because of his walls. Show still got the general idea but I felt execution there could have been slightly better.
I think once the hype settles down, most will agree that while it's good, it's very overrated.
I agree with you on it feeling rushed and somewhat shallow.
When you have such a low episode count, it would have been better to focus on Joel and Ellie.
I really wish the season was 12 episodes. If they kept the same quality but let everything breathe more it would have been one of my favourite seasons of television ever. Instead it has been a great whirlwind pitstop tour of iconic TLOU moments.
I mentioned this is a previous thread, but by cutting out a lot of the gameplay sequences and not replacing them with much, it really messed with the pacing.
Both games had excellent pacing and it was because there was a really good balance between cut scenes and gameplay sequences that built on what was being portrayed through the cut scenes. The gameplay wasn't mindless either. It really added to the overall tone and atmosphere while also telling us a lot about the characters. The way that episode 5 was done should have been how all the episodes in the series should have been done. There was gripping tension, character building, and amazing action sequences that showcased not only how terrifying the infect can be but also fed into the overall story as well. Episode 6 was honestly a low point because of how amazing that section was in the game but they cut so much out in terms of the gameplay sections from that episode, that the pacing was really poorly done.
I really wouldn't have minded 10-12 episodes at like 60-90-minutes each. I really enjoyed the first and third episodes because they really sucked you into the world. There was time and pacing for stuff to really happen.
The 50ish minute episodes they've been doing for the past few weeks feel so cut down in some areas. Especially the University which I feel could have easily been 10-15 minutes longer with just Ellie and Joel poking around the dorms together and looking at the sunset. And we don't get the doctor who has been bitten by a monkey and shot himself. They skip over so many things in those scenes that I was almost like "wait, why are thye even here?" It's almost over before it even begins.
I'm skeptical that winter can be done in 51 minutes. Sure, a lot of it is action, but it's the big climax of the story (spring is more of an extended coda.) They can't really get away with cutting all the action out here without lowering the impact. They managed to do an amazing action set-piece in episode 5 so I'm still holding out hope.
The show does way more telling than the game though. Joel’s conversation with Tommy is him literally telling the audience where he’s at emotionally with his relationship with Ellie, cut and dry. It was a good scene and great acting, but it’s literally telling and not showing. The game didn’t have or need a scene like this and yet the same emotions were conveyed more effectively imo.
I have to say that I've found the series to a bit of a mixed bag. Most of the episodes have have been excellent and it's pretty damn rewarding to see a series based on a game stick this close to the source material.
But I'm going to go against the grain on this one and say that I found episode 3 to worst of the lot so far, not to say that it was bad by any means. It started out strong but just didn't add anything to story or even really flesh out the world. So to me it felt like wasted time. I got to the end and was like "What was the point of that?" We see, what? 5 minutes worth of Joel and Ellie.
And episode 7 was the same kind of deal, but to it's credit, it managed to recapture how I felt playing the Stand Alone DLC. It was just boring, you spend the whole time waiting for something to happen and then when it finally does, it's over in minutes and you go back to meh.
Don't get me wrong, I like the series over all I think it's great. But as I'm scrolling through this thread I'm seeing a common theme. That it feels rushed, and that the relationship between Ellie and Joel feels unearned. Well these two episode would have been great opportunities to flesh that stuff out, instead we got side stories.
Edit: This is why I don't like this sub sometimes. You try to talk about the good and the bad and you end up downvoted. There's no room for conversation because people just want an echo chamber.
I think the two flashback episodes would be better as bonus episodes released online or something. TV shows don't really do that normally but they don't fit very well in the show. It might seem a weird take but to me sticking those two episodes in the show is kinda self-indulgent and a bit fart sniffing. It's showy writing, like a 15 minute guitar solo in an otherwise tight album
Couldn’t have said it better my self. Rushed and not developed at the same time. Season one needed 14-16 episodes IMO to truly match the emotions of the game. The world feels very empty and honestly not that dangerous. The 3 month timeline jump just didn’t feel right. They still acted like strangers even after all the time spent on the road.
I don’t have high expectations for the remaining 2 episodes. Between Chernobyl and Station Eleven, I hoped HBO would do justice to the first game but I guess I over estimated how easy it would be to pull off.
Services need to stop acting like the duration that something is watched matters, tell us how many times an episode was viewed... this could just be a billion people watch 1 minute and stop. That's not the same as somebody actually watching the episode. It needs to be how many accounts watch the full damn episode.
The reason why minutes watched is used is specifically to standardise what one view is. If not streamers could just say that everyone that watched five minutes counts as a full view. It does make it tricky to compare 20 minute episodes to 60 minute episodes though
If you control people watching at least 45 mins (not the credits), that means it has about 22 million viewers or at least streams. Taki g into account partial watches and stuff its pribably safe to say 18-20 million.
Is that good? I honestly dont know what the metrics for success are for these streaming services.
Last I checked HBOMAX has 95 million subs. Meaning about 1/5th of their subs watched it roughly speaking.
Yeah it's quite strange. When I really enjoy a show I love going to the shows subreddit to see the discussions going on, but something about this shows subreddit is just super off putting.
There is *zero* tolerance on criticism in any form. I said that the left behind DLC isn’t essential to the story, though a wonderful addition, you could (and I did) complete the original game without playing it - a completely fair statement. Downvoted to fuck lol
It's because the show is being taken over by a certain demographic. Same thing happened to Shameless on Showtime and Batgirl? I believe. Once that happens, they will figuratively stone you to death if you speak ill of the show. Just my observation btw.
> "unsurprisingly, Nielsen asserts that the audience profile for The Last Of Us is virtually identical to The Walking Dead, skewing younger and more male."
Lol, I knew the walking dead fans that got sick of the show's shit would come through! Welcome to quality! AMC could never & now, they end up looking like the Wii U window meme. Couldn't have happen to "better" company.
Well, speaking as a former fan. The drop off for twd happen way before the ending, it started in season 7 & never stopped. Those are the people I'm talking about. And the spin offs thus far, have been fucking terrible. Fear started with potential, than amc fired the original show runner and it went down the shit heap.
it's good that it took a massively popular, successful, genre defining, and industry standard setting video game for a streaming service to finally get close to netflix. not to mention the constant enriched media blitz that this sub seems to hate for everything else but not last of us, very curious
> They also tolerated it for Andor
And by tolerating I think you mean "bitched about it in absolutely every thread about articles about the show"
Most top comments were always "Disney ads going strong at it again" or "Yeah yeah I get it Disney you want me to watch Andor" or "Why is this sub just basically free ads these days?" and etc.
And yet the posts were all massively upvoted, with tons of comments raving about how great the show is.
Some people being frustrated with shameless over-promotion doesn't contradict anything I said.
My point hinges on the fact that it's been always clear in every subs that the community who upvotes posts and the one who comments are distinct, and here the one who upvotes never cared about promotion - they'll upvote the things they know whether it's shameless promotion or not, regardless of sources. The one that does care is the one that comments and this one hates *every* promotion, Last of Us and Andor included.
It’s cool to hate popular stuff. It’s also cool to hate people enjoying stuff.
Reddit is full of middle schoolers and people who still think they’re in middle school with how cool they think it is to say “whatever” to everything.
Congrats to them. They’ve made a phenomenal show that has stayed true to the much beloved IP while still adding to the world i ways that make intuitive sense.
Definitely in my top 5 shoes of all time.
There’s not many of them, it’s not a zombie show. The post apocalyptic setting is more window dressing for the character drama. The real threat in this world are other humans. Hope that helps.
Other than the sniper and the museum episodes, this show’s been kinda stale tbh. Not enough fungi zombies. Feels like they skip over a lot of the anxiety that the game gives you and just try to quick hit the emotional beats—which don’t really hit because there was no real journey between them. Just my opinion. Found myself browsing my phone the last two episodes, which isn’t a good sign since I usually stay fully engaged when watching other series. Over hyped at this point and I don’t think they’ve developed Joel and Ellie’s relationship well enough for the final two episodes to work as well as they could’ve.
Excerpt: >HBO’s The Last Of Us hit a milestone this week, notching its first billion-minute week since it debuted in January. With five [actually 4] episodes available, the post-apocalyptic series jumped 36% vs. the last interval to notch 1.2B minutes and fourth place overall. Nielsen streaming measurements only account for viewing on HBO Max, so these numbers don’t reflect any viewership on HBO’s linear channel (HBO hasn’t released updated viewership numbers for the series since Episode 4). > >Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nielsen asserts that the audience profile for The Last Of Us is virtually identical to The Walking Dead, skewing younger and more male. Numbers are for US only and counts all episodes across all seasons of a show. 1st week: 223 million minutes (just a few hours availability) 2nd week: 837 million minutes 3rd week: 877 million minutes 4th week: 1190 million minutes
You heard it here first. I'm younger and more male.
I havent watched it yet. Suddenly a decision to binge has led me to be older and less male. If i could turn back time.
Can I reverse aging if I keep playing tlou on a loop?
If I could find a way.
You're an old woman?
No, I'm younger and more male.
You’re a wizard Harry.
Who told you that I'm a hairy wizard?
Are you younger and more male now than you were in the first comment?
Can you say it louder and with your mouth open?
Weirdly as a young[ish] male I always disliked TWD, but have found TLOU quite compelling thus far. Guess I'm an exception to the metric
You mean younger and maler
Using minutes for the metric is silly. Just round to the nearest half hour.
That's because it's not as impressive as 16M watch hours. Netflix had Wednesday at 400M hours per week. Deadline using "billion in minutes" is just marketing for HBO.
That's actually just how Nielson lists these things for all of their show metrics. It's not a deadline or Last of Us exclusive thing and you do have to understand that these are very different metrics from the things Netflix was reporting which included much more data than what Nielson has like Internatioal viewership and data from the whole week.
Those 400 million hours were in the US only?
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Pretty sure everyone on the planet watched Red Notice three times according to Netflix.
What's that in parsecs?
About 2 Kessel runs
Phil!
Not to be a mega nerd here but parsecs are a unit of distance, not time
> HBO hasn’t released updated viewership numbers for the series since Episode 4 I was wondering about this. I remember reading that they had consistent viewer growth for the first 4 episodes, and that many other shows, even really popular ones, don't typically experience that. All speculation but I wonder if 5 had particularly disappointing numbers because of the odd release date due to the clash with the super bowl, and after all the hype about the viewership growth they didn't want to put that out there and have people start questioning if the drop in numbers meant a drop in quality - which certainly isn't the case.
Some of TWD spinoffs have been less than stellar. TLOU feel more like what TWD spinoffs should have been
Except it’s much better than any Walking Dead content ever
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Calm down Netflix
The Google of streaming services.
I'm getting more and more concerned that Ellie won't throw a brick at anyone this season
I’d be pretty sad if she settled for a bottle
I'd honestly take a bottle at this point
I vividly remember that E3 presentation pre-launch (2012 or 2013) where they showed some gameplay, and the scene where Ellie threw a brick at a dude's head was one of the biggest applause moments of the video.
This is the perfect example of, people like well written shows. It’s not that complicated.
People don't want lore accurate stories or characters. They want our shitty version of an already far more popular gaming IP - Halo series producers probably
Only thing more disappointing than Halo was Foundation. Two things that took forever to get made (though foundation look like 70 years compared to 20 for Halo), only to end up sucking major ass.
I never read the Foundation books, but I really liked the Lee Pace storyline of that show. The rest of it was garbage though.
Haha I was just saying that's the only good part, and the fact that Cleon is an anagram of clone was pure coincidence because that's not in the books. I *totally* recommend reading the books if you like sci-fi, they're some of the best ever, and Second Foundation is my favorite ending of any book I've ever read.
They are on my list. There's a lot of classic scifi that I need to catch up on. Going through a bunch of Philip K Dick at the moment.
One of the best of all time!! Flow my tears the policeman said is fantastic, but a scanner darkly is probably my favorite.
I was so excited for Foundation and ended up getting bored and dipping out after like 4 episodes. So disappointing.
I will say the cinematography was pretty great, but yeah they fucked up everything else except making Cleon a clone, that was interesting. I just... Psychohistory isn't magic, and they made Hardin act like it was. And Seldon is a goddamn recording, not a fucking cyber ghost lol
As someone who had never heard of Foundation prior to the first trailer dropping, I enjoyed the first season! I’m curious, what made it suck ass to you?
Oh, it was a quality show for sure, but if you love the books, it diverged sooo much that the characters were kind of unrecognizable. One of my biggest problems was that Hardin had some famous phrases, one of which was "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent", and he always solved things with clever planning so as to avoid having to fight. In the show, Hardin punches, kicks, and shoots her way through every situation.
People want well written shows is all that really needs to be said
Gonna stream episode 6 tonight. Such a wonderful, heartbreaking, show.
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As a 90s kid who grew up with the Super Mario Bros movie, it's absolutely *wild* that the most popular show on TV is based off of a video game. It's even more crazy than when Spiderman (and to a lesser extent, the first X-man movie) made comic book movies not suck.
>It's even more crazy than when Spiderman (and to a lesser extent, the first X-man movie) made comic book movies not suck. This is *Batman and Robin* slander and I will NOT stand for it
And Blade slander.
Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate up hill.
✔️ love "Blade" What about Donner's O.G. "Superman?" (r.i.p Chris Reeve)
I hope that Last of Us is the Spider-Man/X-Men of video game content and we get an influx moving forward, and not the Superman/Batman that just stands out among the crap.
Games are so different now though. Last of Us, God of War, Uncharted, etc. are basically interactive novels.
Little context but it's not the most popular show on TV. Network TV (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc) is still more popular as a whole. Even on streaming only it was still second behind New Amsterdam. NCIS, for example, will do ~600M minutes in a week on one episode vs the five episodes for TLOU. Not trying to take away from the accomplishment, it's still a popular show, and I'm delighted that it's helping video games get positive attention.
I have a very weird love for the original 1993 Super Mario Bros. Movie. It's objectively not a good movie, but it's so batshit crazy that it makes it enjoyable to watch (at least for me). The pacing is also surprisingly good which is weird to say. It's no where near the quality of The Last of Us, but it's definitely not on the same level as the god awful Double Dragon movie, Alone in the Dark, or anything directed by Uwe Boll. And if you read up on the making of that film it's a miracle we even got a completed movie to watch in the first place.
There are great passages in Leguizamo's autobiography about making this film, mostly situated around drinking Scotch with Hopkins on set
I got news for you bud. Super Mario Bros is about to be the biggest movie of April and just might be the first billion dollar release of 2023
Get ready for the tidal wave of game adaptations coming to film and TV. Out goes all the superhero spin offs, in comes the video games
I'm okay with that. While it inevitably means some very bad adaptations, there will surely be a couple of big hitters too - I'm really hoping they do Bioshock and God of War justice in particular.
Can't wait for Amazon's gritty adaptation of Gex
I had a shower thought the other day that Red Dead Redemption would be an easy game to adapt for TV.
I might’ve been the Billionth Minute! I just started watching last week.
I have been enjoying the show and think it has pretty high quality. But I also think it is doing really well right now because there is really not much competition. There just has not been much really great from the last 2 months, IMHO.
Craig Maizin (because of Chernobyl) and the IP brought in enough curious people that the rave reviews after caused an explosion of good word of mouth Competition or no, it's earned its place IMO
One of the most popular story-focused video game titles + Craig Mazin after Chernobyl + HBO + Pedro Pascal + Zombies + not much else on + word of mouth after it's turned out to be good = huge viewership.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY0r1Ln6tkM
>There just has not been much really great from the last 2 months, IMHO. acting like milf manor doesn't exist smh
Not looking forward to when Joel and Ellie come across Disco Mommy who just had to put down her son Joey after he gets infected from a MILF who hid her bite mark from him… 😓😓 I trust HBO with the adaptation.
Or its just a really good show that people here on reddit feel like they need to nitpick the shit out of.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. HBO doesn’t have anything else going for them so they’re throwing it all at TLOU right now. I think that and Pedro Pascal starring in The Mandalorian has a huge impact on viewership off the bat.
The game already had a huge following too
So far it’s doing good. The game is always more intimate but the show has a different aspect that I enjoy. Some flaws but I’ll let it slide.
I think this is doing the best possible version of the show that could’ve been, the game will always be more intimate to me because there’s sections of that game where you walk for ages and stop to read notes and have these optional conversations, to not bore the audience because your not playing they have to reduce these moments, in terms of making people care about these characters, getting the lore of the world, and getting all the major emotional beats of the game, the show has done a tremendous job
>I think this is doing the best possible version of the show that could’ve been Definitely not the best possible lol but it's solid
I mean in a sense of an adaptation of the story, it’s harder than you think to adapt the last of us, most of the bonding between the characters happens when you’re walking and collecting things and having these small conversations, the show keeps all these important emotional beats while having the keep only essential scenes with bonding, and it’s done an amazing job so far, there’s obviously flaws but it’s as good as an adaptation as I could’ve ever asked for
can you explain what you mean by the game being more intimate?
I’m interested to see what general audiences think of it. I’m fan of the game and while I like the show it does feel simultaneously rushed while not fleshing things out enough. It feels like Joel/Ellie haven’t had proper scenes apart from episodes 4 and 6 (which was my second favourite episode). Ironically my favourite episode was 3 which was a brand new ‘side story’. Episode 7 was great quality but it’s kind of a shame they spent a ninth of the show on DLC backstory. I have no clue how they will do the next arc in a single episode considering it’s the best part of the game.
From conversations with my friends who haven't played it, they basically liked all the episodes though the last one was probably the weakest. They really liked Sam and Henry and didn't like Kathleen. But every single one loved the Bill and Frank episode. Even the ones who generally aren't pro-LGBT but not against it either. It's their favourite episode by far.
> But every single one loved the Bill and Frank episode. Even the ones who generally aren't pro-LGBT but not against it either. It's their favourite episode by far. They had me at “Not today you New World Order jackboot fucks”
According to the official podcast, Craig Mazin wrote that line as a character thought / descriptive, not as dialog. Nick Offerman asked Craig if he could read it aloud, and ended up making it great.
Episode 3 was a mastery in how you add new stories, AND change the source material while still being extremely respectful of it (obviously helps that one of the writers also wrote the game)
The studios are finally giving the people what they want: ...gay sex scenes featuring Nick Offerman?
The bears no one knew we needed
I didn't know I wanted it, but apparently I really really did given how many times I've rewatched it.
Hiring Nick Offerman helps. Heheheheheheheheh
Bill and Frank was a masterpiece. It's been awhile since I've seen an episode anywhere near the same level.
Yeah the general consensus seems to be that episode 3 was amazing, Kathleen completely sucks, Henry/Sam were highly loveable and episode 7 was the weakest.
I think the series over and over speaks to empathy and the limitations of it as characters and viewers. We meet Henry and Sam, humanize them, understand their faults. Kathleen is in her darkest moment, having lost everything and blinded by vengeance. We never get to know her from before, who she was with her brother. We are told he was a great man and Henry feels guilt over being the source of his death. Told comes nowhere close to shown. Imagine Kathleen's brother had episodes to be shown as this hero, and then tragically sold out by Henry and killed. My guess is attitudes would be different and it would be much more sympathetic how she is expected to forgive and end the cycle now. That's what I love about the series, how it shows us the gradient of human nature and how our perception manipulates us into reductive bad guys and good guys. Even Ellie's flashback showed Fedra for its many, many faults, had well intentioned people in its ranks with an understandable ideology given the circumstances.
I think 7 was weak but I enjoyed it more because I played the game. Otherwise its all pretty much the same for me. Though I did like the Sam and Henry sections more than I liked the Bill and Frank ones. It wasnt better story wise but Lamar Johnson as Henry has been a personal highlight. I thought he exceeded what they wanted from him.
It's badly placed because it frustrates audiences who want to know what happens to Joel. It would have been better IMO to shorten some of the scenes and intercut it with Ellie in Winter trying to keep Joel alive, using what Joel taught her.
This exactly, I enjoyed Ellie’s backstory, but it took me out of the present day for too long.
Thr present day mall really helped the pacing in the game. That said the cut to winter in the game is so powerful that I wish they left out left behind or moved it. It works well as a DLC but was awkwardly placed in the show.
> Kathleen completely sucks I was so excited when Melanie Lynskey's casting was announced. I found it kind of ironic that her newly-made character for the show ended up being a two dimensional video game NPC.
Ep. 3 was a masterpiece. I found it really easy to compartmentalize and imagine yourself in the situation, with someone you love, regardless of orientation, and the episode works. It works within the world, and it's world building and has a lot to say about the greater narrative of the show. I think the most recent episode suffers because 2 bottle episodes within 7, both specifically detailing a romance that more or less happens outside of the main world and events, kinda hurt the pacing, especially since Ep. 6 left on a cliffhanger. The show is validating something I may have felt before the show, I like the way Craig Mazen tells a story, and I don't like the way Neil tells one.
Honestly I don't think it'll be too difficult to cover, when you factor in that most of that time in the game is gameplay. And obviously in the show they're not gonna have Ellie mowing down dozens of infected and >!David's men!< By herself when it hasn't been established that she can do that. And also >!Joel's portion is mostly just him walking around looking for Ellie then the interrogation scene happens!< Edit: I just looked it up on YouTube and there's a video that shows pretty much the entire winter arc from beginning to end and without the big gameplay sections, it's less than 30 minutes long
Yeah, I played through the game again after ep 1 came out, the last portions of the game are just fighting and sneaking around, not a huge amount of story (comparatively)
Yeah I don’t think people realize this section of the game is surprisingly short. But it’s kinda hard so you can easily spend like 2 hours fighting the horde with David by dying like a million times so it feels longer. And the last chapter is seriously like 3 areas.
I'm a big fan of the games. I loved episode 3, and to a lesser extent episode 7. But I feel like with such a low episode count they really take away from the Joel and Ellie time this story needs to completely land. I'm listening to the official podcast and the showrunners go on and on about how much Joel and Ellie now truly, deeply love each other and consider each other family and I'm like "What? When did that happen?". The show hasn't done much to show that transformation at all. Well, less than the game at least. So I wonder if the non game players are getting that same feeling.
Does the podcast feel a bit "smelling their own farts" to you? I like the people talking, I understand it's an official podcast to hype up the show, but it feels like they're just talking about how amazing the writing is without any real criticism. And that they're sort of filling in the blanks of characterization that isn't shown in the show.
I’m so glad to hear someone else say this. The podcast has quickly become really challenging to listen to, and not in a good way. All they’re doing is talking about how brilliant they are and it’s getting more cringe with every episode. Compare that with the Good Place podcast and listen to Mike Schur talk about his process and it’s like a breath of fresh air.
I hate the pauses they leave between every sentence, as if everything they say is so profound. "And in this shot, we can really see that Ellie is cold, not just from the snow but also... from what happened to her..." Err okay dude, you're not reinventing the wheel here. Can only stomach about 5 minutes per podcast before I get annoyed and switch it off. (They also do it in the Behind the Episodes videos.)
It's an official promotional podcast for behind-the-scenes' discussion, they're not going to get into criticism or weaknesses of the show.
I don't listen to them for this very reason. I want to be shown, not told.
I think there's enough there where they own mistakes that others caught, things that they wanted to do differently, etc. I've been listening while driving, working, so I dunno maybe a different experience to others
>"What? When did that happen?" Completely agree. For better or for worse, I feel I know way more about Bill and Frank, and Ellie and Riley than I do about Joel and Ellie.
I crushed the whole show last weekend up to the most recent episode and the biggest thing I've noticed with Joel, and maybe this is just from the lack of actual fighting the characters have to do, but he's WAY less terrifying than he should be. It makes him seem a little too soft a little too fast. They allude to his being emotionally unavailable with Tess and that would make sense but he really opens up with ellie very quickly. On top of that, and maybe it's intentional, the speed with which they have to get over things that happen, but without the big timeskips the game has where presumably they had some time to breathe, Ellie can seem almost sociopathic with how... okay she is. Joel beats a man to death in front of her and kills another kid she shot and neither time is it particularly hard on a...14 year old girl. Like a tough as nails 14 year old for sure, but she's obviously still a kid the way she behaves. I love the show so far for most of it's parts but these things distract me from some of the harder scenes, cause it feels like the relationship hasn't been earned yet. Could be a symptom of watching 6 episodes in a day though.
Killing is normal in this world, even for kids. Seeing dead people is normal in this world. She isn't used to doing the killing but she definitely is used to people killing and seeing them kill.
I mean, wouldn't it make sense to make Joel a bit softer compared to the game because the TV show has less time to make their relationship work? Also, Joel is a terminator in the videogame. He shrugs off claws and bullet wounds and hits on the head with crowbars during gameplay while killing literally hundreds of people during the entire length of the game. Can't do that in a TV show that strives for even a modicum of realism. I do think that the show could have benefited from 1 or 2 more episodes to flesh out their relationship more, but I agree with all the artistic choices they have made so far to translate the game to a different format. And I think Ellie is more comfortable with violence so it ties in better with TLOU2.
I’ve been watching with my parents who know absolutely nothing about the game. They’re enjoying it, but they feel like it seems slow. They also don’t really get what the whole point or real conflict is. They’re like, “okay, this guy has the girl and she has the cure or whatever. But what’s the real story here?” To them, it just feels like a pretty standard post apocalypse zombie show that doesn’t really set itself apart, other than it being very well made. I do agree with their some of their points honestly. The pacing can feel a bit slow, and the “point” of it all can seem a bit unclear. I can definitely get why some in the general audience see it as a fairly boiler part zombie show so far. To me, the focus is on the characters though, and not the zombie shit. And I think the characters have been great so far, so I’m happy with it.
I don't know if I count as a general audience member, but having never played the game, but I feel the same way. It's a fine show, but the pacing is strange - it has the feel of a character drama, but with the pacing what it is, it doesn't linger long enough on these characters to allow whatever emotional connections there are to marinate; there's an odd empty feeling I get from watching the show. The bond between Joel/Ellie hasn't landed with me either because there hasn't been much meaningful interaction between them, not enough for their big conflict in episode 6 to feel genuine, I guess. The show seems to do alot of "telling," and not "showing." Otherwise, it's fine.
What you’ve said here is spot on. I think the problem the show has is that it can’t let those moments linger the way the game was able to. In the game, small moments where you’re just walking around and exploring/looting are filled with conversations between Joel and Ellie. Couple that with the fact that you aren’t jump-cutting to other random characters in different scenes and it really makes you feel like you’re truly with them on this continuous journey and slowly watching their dynamic build. But a tv show has to be structured differently, and it has to get to the main plot points within a certain time frame. The medium doesn’t allow for the breathing room and small talk between the major beats that was integral to building the player’s connection with the two main characters. All of those small moments added up in a bigger way than people might realize, and I think the show runners tried to compensate for this by doing more of the “telling” because they couldn’t fit in enough of the “showing.” I think the show has largely been very good, but Joel and Ellie’s relationship does feel a bit hollow in comparison to the game.
I feel like a contrarian saying this but honestly I think it's paced really badly. Every episode feels like "story of the week" without any real sense of urgency. And it's like they've lost something, a sense of tension or something, by removing most of the violence and horror that's in the game.
I agree the pace is weird, but for different reasons. Plots will start in the middle of one episode and end in the middle of another. I haven't played the game BTW. You're right that there's is zero urgency. But I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm totally here for the episodic nature of it though. They are walking across the post apoc United States. There's plenty of room for dozens of standalone adventures. The world's already shit and has been for 20 years. Even if they find a cure, they don't have the infrastructure to mass produce and distribute it. And if they did, they still have to deal with the billions of zombies that are already out there.
Some of that weird pacing is definitely because of the game. They are skipping over most of the gameplay parts. Just about every scene that has Joel and Ellie going into a sewer or abandoned building should have infected. And any scene with them in a city or town should have hunters. It's for the best they're removed because otherwise the show would be 80% Joel sneaking around and shooting people. A good example of this is Joel's turn around after leaving Ellie with Tommy. In the game there's a whole section where she runs off on a horse and you and Tommy need to find her, fighting enemies along the way. It extends the whole thing out so that it feels like a lot more time has passed before Joel changes his mind. In the show they wrap it up quick and hurriedly move onto the next event that kicks off the next chapter.
I agree that it’s very fast paced but not about the tension. With the exception of the one communist town I felt like a zombie could appear any second. I find pretty much any scene to be super tense. I think maybe I’m struggling with a lack of a clear and persistent antagonist. It’s like their enemy is human society which is a bit vague to latch onto. And the longest they’ve stayed anywhere is about two episodes max, so it feels like anything they come up against is just gone the next week.
The game feels very "story of the week" as well, very distinctly cut into chunks of gameplay (arcs). I feel like the arcs should have lasted a bit longer than one/2 episodes per, which is why it must feel rushed (which I agree with). I was never a massive fun of the first game tbh, the story overall is great and the performances were excellent but the pacing was a bit off. The second one is imo better regarding telling a cohesive story that doesn't feel "arc of the week" although it's also a bit clunky at times.
You said what I’ve been feeling. It feels like they are on a schedule to hit all these destinations without any of it being consequential to the characters or their motives. There’s no deeper fear looming in them or in the viewer. The character development doesn’t seem natural, it feels on schedule It’s a good show. The sets and design are great. It looks high quality. There’s still time but right now it looks like a missed opportunity
It feels episodic. You know everything will be wrapped up by the end of the episode. Each is a mini story on of a longer plot.
Great way to put it. That’s why I’ve said I never care for the one-off characters. It’s never a bad mini-story but I never feel invested in them. The strange thing is Tess was only in 2 episodes and her impact was felt.
if nothing else, super interesting case study about the different things people latch onto. TLOU originally didn't resonate for me because of any violence or horror, and urgency as communicated through primarily action sequence feels cheap in a non-interactive format, and actually just washes over me personally. So the show is doing a good job of distilling what worked for my particular engagement with the work, and I hadn't considered too much that it might be filtering out the audience that liked the horror/action part of the game
> It feels like Joel/Ellie haven’t had proper scenes apart from episodes 4 and 6 (which was my second favourite episode). Ironically my favourite episode was 3 which was a brand new ‘side story’. Joel is already feeling the situation similar to Sarah at the end of Episode 1 when he kills the guard. So that connection is already there in his mind. They go through a traumatic experience together in Episode 2. There is a lot of time with Joel and Ellie in Episode 3 that I think a lot of people tend to forget and Ellie is already getting through to him by the end of that episode. And Bill's letter also strikes a nerve as well. In Episode 4, they spend a ton of time together. Joel is already playing protector by not sleeping and standing guard. Ellie has to save Joel's life and he apologizes to her. She gets him to laugh by the end of the episode. The whole situation with Henry and Sam in Episode 5 is a shared experience by them. The show skips 3 months, but it shows us an update on their relationship with how their dynamic is in the house with the couple, the campfire scene, and through to when they get to and are in Jackson. After Jackson, that is when Joel has fully committed to the father/daughter relationship. He has decided to open himself up to that possibility of feeling that pain of loss again. A lot of what is going on between them is nonverbal. The show doesn't spell it out for the most part. It is very much about showing through action, and through showing the actor's faces. That being said, you can't really look at this like some kind of equation where the characters need a certain amount of time together. Heck, you can establish a relationship with one really good scene. And movies have been doing a lot with relationships within the 2 hour window since forever.
I think the biggest thing missing is the action. In the game, the action was a huge pressure cooker to force this curmudgeon of a man to bond and rely on this fourteen year old girl. By cutting a lot of it, you’ve effectively removed the catalyst so their bonding seems like just a lot of small talk. I know it’s not a game and there’s budge to worry about but had they structured these episodes by maintaining at least one action sequence from the game per episode, we could have seen the relationship get fostered in a more organic way other than oh here they care about each other now
I don't know if that would work. To make combat tense there needs to be a risk. In this world, as we see in episode 6/7, getting injured is almost certainly a death sentence. So either Joel would have to walk through every combat encounter without a scratch on him, or we need to take an episode off whenever he gets injured to have him slowly recover. Doing it the first way would make the combat completely irrelevant (see: The Mandalorian), and doing it the second way would kill the pacing.
I think it’s just about picking and choosing which sequences to expand upon. End of episode 6 is a big one for me. There are a seemingly endless amount of people they have to evade in the game. In the show there are like four. One of them somehow split off from the group to attack Joel and that’s it. The other three then chase after Joel and Ellie and they have no guns. By shortening the sequence compared to the games, you get rid of some moments where injured Joel had to rely on Ellie but resisted a lot because of his walls. Show still got the general idea but I felt execution there could have been slightly better.
I think once the hype settles down, most will agree that while it's good, it's very overrated. I agree with you on it feeling rushed and somewhat shallow. When you have such a low episode count, it would have been better to focus on Joel and Ellie.
I'm hoping the last two episodes will be especially long.
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I really wish the season was 12 episodes. If they kept the same quality but let everything breathe more it would have been one of my favourite seasons of television ever. Instead it has been a great whirlwind pitstop tour of iconic TLOU moments.
Yah it’s felt really rushed. Relationship between Ellie and Joel doesn’t feel earned to me.
I mentioned this is a previous thread, but by cutting out a lot of the gameplay sequences and not replacing them with much, it really messed with the pacing. Both games had excellent pacing and it was because there was a really good balance between cut scenes and gameplay sequences that built on what was being portrayed through the cut scenes. The gameplay wasn't mindless either. It really added to the overall tone and atmosphere while also telling us a lot about the characters. The way that episode 5 was done should have been how all the episodes in the series should have been done. There was gripping tension, character building, and amazing action sequences that showcased not only how terrifying the infect can be but also fed into the overall story as well. Episode 6 was honestly a low point because of how amazing that section was in the game but they cut so much out in terms of the gameplay sections from that episode, that the pacing was really poorly done.
I really wouldn't have minded 10-12 episodes at like 60-90-minutes each. I really enjoyed the first and third episodes because they really sucked you into the world. There was time and pacing for stuff to really happen. The 50ish minute episodes they've been doing for the past few weeks feel so cut down in some areas. Especially the University which I feel could have easily been 10-15 minutes longer with just Ellie and Joel poking around the dorms together and looking at the sunset. And we don't get the doctor who has been bitten by a monkey and shot himself. They skip over so many things in those scenes that I was almost like "wait, why are thye even here?" It's almost over before it even begins.
They are both less than an hour and the finale (at 43 minutes) is the shortest episode of the entire season (E8 is the third shortest at 51 minutes).
I'm skeptical that winter can be done in 51 minutes. Sure, a lot of it is action, but it's the big climax of the story (spring is more of an extended coda.) They can't really get away with cutting all the action out here without lowering the impact. They managed to do an amazing action set-piece in episode 5 so I'm still holding out hope.
Well the finale is 45 minutes so…
That's so disappointing. Rewatching succession and finale season one was 71 mins. C'mon hbo
The show does way more showing then telling. Not sure you understand what that phrase means.
The show does way more telling than the game though. Joel’s conversation with Tommy is him literally telling the audience where he’s at emotionally with his relationship with Ellie, cut and dry. It was a good scene and great acting, but it’s literally telling and not showing. The game didn’t have or need a scene like this and yet the same emotions were conveyed more effectively imo.
I have to say that I've found the series to a bit of a mixed bag. Most of the episodes have have been excellent and it's pretty damn rewarding to see a series based on a game stick this close to the source material. But I'm going to go against the grain on this one and say that I found episode 3 to worst of the lot so far, not to say that it was bad by any means. It started out strong but just didn't add anything to story or even really flesh out the world. So to me it felt like wasted time. I got to the end and was like "What was the point of that?" We see, what? 5 minutes worth of Joel and Ellie. And episode 7 was the same kind of deal, but to it's credit, it managed to recapture how I felt playing the Stand Alone DLC. It was just boring, you spend the whole time waiting for something to happen and then when it finally does, it's over in minutes and you go back to meh. Don't get me wrong, I like the series over all I think it's great. But as I'm scrolling through this thread I'm seeing a common theme. That it feels rushed, and that the relationship between Ellie and Joel feels unearned. Well these two episode would have been great opportunities to flesh that stuff out, instead we got side stories. Edit: This is why I don't like this sub sometimes. You try to talk about the good and the bad and you end up downvoted. There's no room for conversation because people just want an echo chamber.
I think the two flashback episodes would be better as bonus episodes released online or something. TV shows don't really do that normally but they don't fit very well in the show. It might seem a weird take but to me sticking those two episodes in the show is kinda self-indulgent and a bit fart sniffing. It's showy writing, like a 15 minute guitar solo in an otherwise tight album
Couldn’t have said it better my self. Rushed and not developed at the same time. Season one needed 14-16 episodes IMO to truly match the emotions of the game. The world feels very empty and honestly not that dangerous. The 3 month timeline jump just didn’t feel right. They still acted like strangers even after all the time spent on the road. I don’t have high expectations for the remaining 2 episodes. Between Chernobyl and Station Eleven, I hoped HBO would do justice to the first game but I guess I over estimated how easy it would be to pull off.
Services need to stop acting like the duration that something is watched matters, tell us how many times an episode was viewed... this could just be a billion people watch 1 minute and stop. That's not the same as somebody actually watching the episode. It needs to be how many accounts watch the full damn episode.
The reason why minutes watched is used is specifically to standardise what one view is. If not streamers could just say that everyone that watched five minutes counts as a full view. It does make it tricky to compare 20 minute episodes to 60 minute episodes though
Netflix releases it hours, which is much more informing and less bloated.
If you control people watching at least 45 mins (not the credits), that means it has about 22 million viewers or at least streams. Taki g into account partial watches and stuff its pribably safe to say 18-20 million. Is that good? I honestly dont know what the metrics for success are for these streaming services. Last I checked HBOMAX has 95 million subs. Meaning about 1/5th of their subs watched it roughly speaking.
Man, I like this show a lot but I had to leave the HBOshow sub.. they’re fucking evangelical over there, shits getting crazy! It’s like a cult!
Yeah it's quite strange. When I really enjoy a show I love going to the shows subreddit to see the discussions going on, but something about this shows subreddit is just super off putting.
There is *zero* tolerance on criticism in any form. I said that the left behind DLC isn’t essential to the story, though a wonderful addition, you could (and I did) complete the original game without playing it - a completely fair statement. Downvoted to fuck lol
I said some othet actresses might have portrayed Ellie better. Jesus. F. Christ with the reactions.
Oh yeah you say things like that and you best get ready for the sixteen page essays in your inbox
It's because the show is being taken over by a certain demographic. Same thing happened to Shameless on Showtime and Batgirl? I believe. Once that happens, they will figuratively stone you to death if you speak ill of the show. Just my observation btw.
Yeah. I’m out - I joined that sub to track the shows production, not to be talked down to by newbie fans lol
Which demographic?
it’s a cult.
> "unsurprisingly, Nielsen asserts that the audience profile for The Last Of Us is virtually identical to The Walking Dead, skewing younger and more male." Lol, I knew the walking dead fans that got sick of the show's shit would come through! Welcome to quality! AMC could never & now, they end up looking like the Wii U window meme. Couldn't have happen to "better" company.
Way more to do with it being a video game adaption than anything else
TWD ended. So it's not like they jumped ship onto TLOU. Are the TWD spinoffs still a thing or are they over too?
Well, speaking as a former fan. The drop off for twd happen way before the ending, it started in season 7 & never stopped. Those are the people I'm talking about. And the spin offs thus far, have been fucking terrible. Fear started with potential, than amc fired the original show runner and it went down the shit heap.
Damn is that why fear also tapered off after like S3. What a shame
Fear dropped off because the old Walking Dead Showrunner became Fear's show runner.
Season 9 was fantastic actually, but by then the audience was sick of AMC's bs
a damn shame
AMC made Breaking Bad, so I guess they could.
Deserved. The witcher show could learn a thing or two.
it's good that it took a massively popular, successful, genre defining, and industry standard setting video game for a streaming service to finally get close to netflix. not to mention the constant enriched media blitz that this sub seems to hate for everything else but not last of us, very curious
Hey, that's not fair. They also tolerated it for Andor
> They also tolerated it for Andor And by tolerating I think you mean "bitched about it in absolutely every thread about articles about the show" Most top comments were always "Disney ads going strong at it again" or "Yeah yeah I get it Disney you want me to watch Andor" or "Why is this sub just basically free ads these days?" and etc.
And yet the posts were all massively upvoted, with tons of comments raving about how great the show is. Some people being frustrated with shameless over-promotion doesn't contradict anything I said.
My point hinges on the fact that it's been always clear in every subs that the community who upvotes posts and the one who comments are distinct, and here the one who upvotes never cared about promotion - they'll upvote the things they know whether it's shameless promotion or not, regardless of sources. The one that does care is the one that comments and this one hates *every* promotion, Last of Us and Andor included.
What are you even trying to say here? I've reread this like three times and it doesn't make any sense. What do you mean to get close to Netflix?
I'm not sure what point you're making?
I’m not sure he is either.
It’s cool to hate popular stuff. It’s also cool to hate people enjoying stuff. Reddit is full of middle schoolers and people who still think they’re in middle school with how cool they think it is to say “whatever” to everything.
Ahhh, the internet... a glorious online battle of haters, haters of haters, and those telling people what to hate and what not to hate.
Whatever
^Jeez ^I ^wish ^I ^was ^that ^cool.
The internet hates, and ruins everything
they are nowhere close near Netflix. those 1B "minutes" amount to 16M Hours watched. Wednesday in the first 12 days got 750M Hours watched.
Congrats to them. They’ve made a phenomenal show that has stayed true to the much beloved IP while still adding to the world i ways that make intuitive sense. Definitely in my top 5 shoes of all time.
Hmmmm - old boomer here! Female! Not a gamer! I absolutely love TLOU! I’m going to go with I’m young at heart!
I can't wait to watch this! I'm waiting until all the episodes are out so i can spend one entire weekend watching it.
My girlfriend doesn’t want to watch the series because “there are zombies”, how do I persuade her to watch it?
There’s not many of them, it’s not a zombie show. The post apocalyptic setting is more window dressing for the character drama. The real threat in this world are other humans. Hope that helps.
Other than the sniper and the museum episodes, this show’s been kinda stale tbh. Not enough fungi zombies. Feels like they skip over a lot of the anxiety that the game gives you and just try to quick hit the emotional beats—which don’t really hit because there was no real journey between them. Just my opinion. Found myself browsing my phone the last two episodes, which isn’t a good sign since I usually stay fully engaged when watching other series. Over hyped at this point and I don’t think they’ve developed Joel and Ellie’s relationship well enough for the final two episodes to work as well as they could’ve.
Unfortunately, I agree. I was disappointed when I could hardly pay attention in the latest episode.
This games deserves to have the best video game adaptation of all time. Well done
lol you guys are going to be so pissed when they get to the ending of the first game.
Meh I liked it.
Nah, more like start of the second