The Last of Us has seen The Last of Me

Spoilers ahead. Intentionally.

I watched the first season and was good with it (liked Fallout a lot better; loved Peripheral but it got canceled for being too smart); until Joel went on his shooting spree. I sort of got that, given his own history, etc etc but still. Pretty unredeemable.

Which the second season starts with as the daughter of the doctor he killed swears vengeance.

I’m not a big fan of revenge as a motive. It takes the person seeking revenge to the level of the person they’re going against. Revenge is different than justice.

So we fast forward five years from the end of Season 1. Ellie is still moping about because on some level she knows Joel lied to her. Joel is moping about because she’s moping about and seeing a therapist because he lied but he won’t even tell the drunk therapist, lying on top of the lie, whose husband we find out he killed, the truth (things, apparently, are complicated). And doc daughter finally makes the trek to Jackson from Seattle. Revenge is a dish best served cold. In the middle of winter. Huh?

I hate stupid and implausible in plot. The timing is both.

I mean seriously? Even driven from Seattle to Jackson Hole? Never mind walked. Getting through the Cascades? Then into the Rockies? Give me a break. I did Winter Warfare Training in the Wasatch in February and, nope, aint buying it. And she’s got a group of people with her whose only investment is their affinity for daughter? They make faces about her brutality but walked all the way there with her and never thought about what she was going to do? Talk about dumb.

Meanwhile they awaken the zombies/whatever who suddenly do a mass assault on Jackson as daughter conveniently captures Joel. I get cause and effect but this was a real stretch in all ways. Suspension of disbelief requires stronger support than this plot had.

The town had some really complicated defenses but, excuse me, couldn’t you have plundered a National Guard armory or two and gotten some M-60s and M-2s? A few .50 cal Ma-Deuces would have made mince meat of those things. Perhaps some artillery? At least some mortars? Why do people after the apocalypse, with a buffet of armaments just sitting there, always arm down? Sort of like when they rejoice in Walking Dead after finding the knife set in the trunk of a car among all the abandoned cars escaping Atlanta. Dude, you could equip and Infantry bn with the weaponry that would be in those cars in real life.

There are moments when a protagonist does an unredeemable act and that’s that. Perhaps that’s why Joel had to die at the end of Episode 2? With Ellie, of course, swearing her own vengeance. So now we’ll have more dumb stuff in the midst of the apocalypse.

I can only follow revenge after revenge so long. I need someone redeemable. I don’t know who that is in The Last of Us.