I Watch TV: The Last Of Us

 

The Last Of Us

Twenty years ago (2003) the cordyceps fungus mutated to infect humans. It takes over brains and nervous systems, creating grotesque zombies, and it spreads fast. Joel lost his daughter on the first day.

Twenty years later he’s a smuggler in Boston, run by FEDRA, the brutal surviving remnants of the emergency US federal response. He’s trying to get the parts for his truck to look for his brother who disappeared out west. Talking to the Fireflys, a resistance movement, he and his partner agree to take Ellie, a 14 year old girl out the city to a rendezvous.

It turns out Ellie’s immune to the cordyceps and being bitten by the fungus zombies. Joel and Ellie go on a roadtrip across America, to the Firefly’s medical facility to find out if they can make a cure.

Along the way we find various people and how they’ve adapted and reacted to the fungus. How they find love and connection in a broken world, and how they react to that. Ellie, an orphan whose best friend died, and Joel, a father who lost a child, bond.

It’s based on a video game and Joel is a violent, dangerous man, whose choices will be heroic and monstrous.

Watch This: The central pairing is good, the action sequences solid and the devastated world brilliantly created
Don’t Watch This: Violent parents in a zombie apocalypse, again, and you can play the game instead if you want