The Last of Us

I resisted watching The Last of Us for nearly a year. I got about 20 minutes into Season 1 and decided to pause it. I guess I was not willing to make space for a pandemic / zombie apocalypse series in light of real-world distresses.

Golden Globe nominations for the show and its two stars -- Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey -- piqued my interest, and I re-started it.

Pushing through my initial concerns, I opened my mind and eyes to what has captured the imaginations of viewers and critics around the world. Three episodes in, I have discovered a few things that are quite refreshing.

Pascal's wounded warrior Joel is, paradoxically, a three-dimensional cipher. We know he carries the death of his beloved daughter with him 20 years after she was killed by militarized police, but he doesn't seem like a run-of-the-mill anarchist. He's something more, fighting for something more abstract perhaps than overthrowing the fascists regime that has bombed American cities to smithereens. I am fascinated by this guy.

Another is Ramsey's pugnacious orphan Ellie, whose spirited interactions with the taciturn Joel give the series wonderful tension without playing so obviously to Joel's stymied paternalism, deadened after his daughter's death. I love Ellie's profane glibness and that the narrative invests so much in her survival.

Lastly, I think it was counterintuitive of the series creators to place the tender love story about Bill and Frank (Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, respectively) titled Long, Long Time so early in Season 1. While the move might be read by some as pandering to the woke generation, I prefer to see it as a model of what under the best circumstances within an apocalyptic scenario we are capable of, i.e., finding our humanity and our purpose, as Bill writes so wonderfully, in caring for someone else.

I'm hooked.