The Last of Us
Episode 3 Long long time
The much anticipated 3rd episode of “the Last of Us” has arrived. Critics and reviewers who had access to the whole show prior to the season airing had been saying that this was THE episode, this was where the show really got good and would draw people in. From the perspective of many viewers they’re probably right, and the episode is certainly well executed, but the bizarre sexual politics of “the last of Us” ultimately dominates. And instead of advancing the story the audience is treated to more of the general existential nihilism that has come to characterize almost everything in contemporary liberal media.
(Spoilers ahead)
To recap briefly for context, this was a bottle episode of sorts, it interrupted the main narrative by focusing on the backstory of two characters who barely mattered in the video game, and who hadn’t appeared in the show yet and won’t appear again. They won’t appear again because both characters commit suicide at the end of the episode. But they do get a whole episode dedicated to them because they’re homosexuals. This is not new, it’s part of the game, but as with most attempts to create “representation” in the game version it was a mild form of tokenism at best. But here, in the televised adaptation, homoeroticism is front and center for the better part of an hour.
The two characters in question are Bill and Frank. Bill is surprisingly portrayed by Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson of Parks and Rec) and Frank by Murray Bartlett. Both give wonderful and nuanced performances. It’s clear why they were picked for these roles, but the reasons are very different. Bartlett is homosexual, and a veteran of TV acting. Offerman is essentially playing the character he became famous for on Parks and Rec, Ron Swanson, a libertarian individualist who thinks everyone in government is a NAZI. It’s an obvious bit of meta commentary via casting. He’s a queer version of Ron Swanson living in a zombified world.
Bill (Swanson) hides out during the Pandemic in his nuclear survival shed, filled with guns, while everyone else in the town is taken away by government soldiers. He cautiously emerges and begins to create his own little defensive compound in the abandoned small town. He puts up a fence with numerous traps to take care of the zombies. Starts to grow his own vegetables and prepares his own meat. He makes very high quality meals and pairs them with fantastic wine. It's sort of a Randian individualist paradise (at least for an introvert). Then Frank stumbles into this rigorously isolated life and after some initial tension they come together in homoerotic bliss.
The rest of the episode basically tells their love story over the course of two decades, culminating in drinking poisoned wine in what is supposed to be a beautifully romantic act of self realized euthanasia. Frank is dying of some kind of unspecified degenerative illness. The creators say either MS or ALS on HBO’s official podcast (which you should always listen to after watching that week’s episode). But Frank wants to go out on his own terms, and Bill decides to go with him because he’s satisfied with the life they’ve lived together. Bill was Frank’s faithful protector and Frank was the one who brought color and companionship.
Two things can be true at the same time. It is possible for a piece of art to be both beautifully executed and morally repugnant. This episode is one of the more powerful single stories of TV I have ever witnessed, and yet the underlying morality of it, especially within the context of a sci-fi dystopian drama, is deeply troubling.
There are numerous problems here, and it can be attacked from various angles. For instance if I were a homosexual who bought into the ideology of intersectionality this kind of story would be deeply disturbing to me. Hollywood, from the beginning, has been a “queer” city that has consistently made money off a very straight world by mostly acquiescing to the general sexual normalcy of the free market. But in order to keep their consciences clear they occasionally throw a bone out to homosexuals, and other sexual minorities, and then pretend to be brave. My favorite instance of this is the lesbian kiss at the end of Rise of Skywalker, or JK Rowling having Dumbledore come out of the closet years after the books were bestsellers and blockbusters.
Most viewers who haven’t played the games may not be aware that Ellie, the second overall lead who barely appears in this episode, is a Lesbian. This wasn’t revealed during the first game (until an expansion), and doesn’t have a large impact on her character till the second installment of the franchise. So far in the show her lesbianism hasn’t been hinted at, but there’s zero chance that HBO has “straightened” a formerly queer character. After this episode it seems like her sexuality will become a large part of the story. So maybe this tokenism argument isn’t particularly devastating, but her sexuality was controversial in some segments of the LGBTQ community because it fell into stereotypical tropes that straight people tend to use when attempting to tell “intersectional” stories. But it just seems obviously insulting to bring in two homosexuals for one episode, where the whole point is for them to be euthanized in the end. As a Christian the celebration of immoral sex and the romanticism of chosen death being connected has a moral logic to it, a sad and disturbing logic. But within Christian metaphysics, making choices against the grain of the universe does lead to death. And it just seems like, from the perspective of an intersectional ideologue, creating two gay characters destined for a “beautiful” death should be repugnant, not enlightened. A meaningful death, of sacrifice for others, would be different. Episode 2 ended with such a death when Anna Torv’s character blows herself up along with a bunch of the fungus zombies, so that Joel and Ellie can get away.
But this is by far the least interesting angle by which to interpret this episode. Intersectionality is a contrived ideology ultimately divorced from reality, and it’s almost impossible to predict where it will and won’t find offense in twitter world especially. The lack of reality in intersectional storytelling is completely belied by the fact that two white homosexual men could find each other when roughly 60% of the world’s population has died, and that’s just the initial death toll at the beginning of the outbreak. It’s estimated that less than 5% of the population of the liberal west is in the LGBTQ community, and that’s after decades of decriminalizing laws and celebrations of queer sexuality. If the world’s population and infrastructure was decimated the way “The Last of Us” portrays, this community would essentially not exist anymore, yet the storytellers decided not only that they are still around but to magically bring them together to celebrate that. In this episode of dystopian TV there were 5 speaking parts and 3/5s (assuming Ellie is still a lesbian, which again, how could she not be?) were sexual minorities?
That is an agenda, and a not so subtle one at that. Of course it is their story so they can put whatever agenda they want into it. It’s also not surprising that the romanticization of non reproductive sexuality would be part of the agenda of HBO or essentially any form of western mainstream media. Because in many ways this is the progressive gospel, to be liberated from whatever is actually normal and healthy (hence the constant refrain what is normal anyway?). This is proselytizing, very well done but still a message is being told and sold to viewers.
If common sense or reality were any grounding on “The Last of Us” non reproductive sex would be probably the least important thing in this society. Repopulation would be key and given how many people died it would be highly unlikely that many homosexuals survived, or if they did survive could ever find each other. Yes it’s fiction, yes Cordyceps can’t live in humans, etc. But the Cordyceps mutating to live in humans is a rule about this universe, is another rule that homosexuals will somehow miraculously survive the plague and find each other? My guess is that the plausibility structures at play here are that sexuality is fundamentally queer from the show creators’ point of view, so removing societal strictures might actually decrease heterosexuality. In any case it strains credulity.
The genre of dystopia always deals with the present, or more precisely values or fears of the present. Romero’s zombie films were mostly concerned with deconstructing materialism. Mad Max: Fury Road was essentially a stab at a feminist action film. The Matrix came out right before the internet took over everything. Terminator is a response to the computing revolution of the early 80s. What’s strange about “the Last of Us” isn’t that it’s an attempt at a queer story, it’s that it’s set within a dystopian future. Homosexual rights, at least in the west, have never been more secure than they are right now. Yet this episode implies, Offerman practically says it outright at one point, that it would be good for society and government to disappear in order for homosexual love to thrive.
These are complex questions, like the question of whether or not someone doomed to die should be euthanized. But the episode presents them with the simplicity of a child-like faith in the progressive gospel of individual expression. It’s just assumed that two gay men being together is wonderful, and that their dual suicide is beautiful.
What would have been more beautiful, and more interesting, would’ve been the story of two friends who needed each other and drove each other crazy in an odd couple sort of way. Non sexual relationships form the majority of our lives and often end up being the most impactful. Friendship in the face of a world gone wrong is much more important and powerful than sex. But maybe even more disappointing is the fact that this episode didn’t advance the narrative, we learn all this stuff about two disposable homosexuals and then that’s it. They’re done. 50 minutes wasted.
This show is trying to be about life and not death, it’s trying to be the opposite of the walking dead. But it can’t do that if it’s going to romanticize suicide and non reproductive love. Yet to the progressive mind these are sacred and beautiful. I’m here to say that they are not. This massively hyped episode was powerful, but in many ways vapid as well. The praise has been hyperbolic and near universal. It’s almost as if it’s the Brokeback Mountain for TV. I can’t lie, this episode was very well done, but the effusive praise seems to be driven by a bizarre existential romanticism that simply makes no sense to me. This episode purports to be about love, but really it’s about death.