The Last of Us 1.4: Gun and Pun

Well, I of course knew when Ellie took the gun in episode 1.3 that she would use it to save Joel sooner or later,  so I was not surprised to see that happen in 1.4.  And I was glad, too.

[No big spoilers ahead ... ]

It was an excellent, fast-moving episode.  Kansas City, on and off the highway, was a good place to have it.  And, the coming attractions say Joel and Ellie will continue there next week.

Their relationship is developing in a realistic way.  Joel is in his 50s.  He's going to get winded climbing flights of stairs sooner than will Ellie, who has boundless young teenage energy.  And Joel is quickly getting to realize that because of that, she's an asset, in addition to her way with a gun.  Not to mention her sense of humor.

And her love of puns in that book.   Puns are a perfect punctuation to the life and death action.  In between the rounds of gunshots, it was good to hear it get so quiet you could hear a pun drop.

I have to say, as I may have said before, that The Last of Us manages to be a very different kind of biological apocalypse story (I haven't played the game).  Different from both Y and Station Eleven, not to mention the COVID pandemic in our off-screen reality which wasn't quite an apocalypse but came all too close, especially in the early days.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the episodes in this first season.  HBO announced on January 27 that they'll definitely be a second season, and I'm looking forward to that, too.   I'll definitely be reviewing every forthcoming episode.

See also The Last of Us 1.1-1.2: The Fungus Among Us ... 1.3: Bill and Frank

I talk about The Last of Us, beginning at 40mins 40secs