The Last of Us — thoughts on the show
It’s fun to get hooked on TV shows. But getting hooked on too many and you end up sucking a lot of time out of your week just watching the tube. So my wife and I have always been judicious about getting too addicted to too many television shows.
Our current roster includes the drama 9–1–1 because we like the characters in the show. We are also watching Yellowstone and it’s prequels 1883 and 1923. We are also waiting for the next season of the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon.
We are big fans of Master Chef and Master Chef Junior when they have their seasons on the screen.
In the past, our viewing included Game of Thrones, Person of Interest. I enjoyed the sci-fi Fringe and Battlestar Galactica (the 2004–9 version). Joni was hooked on Tru Blood.
When people raved about Breaking Bad, we demurred as we didn’t want to get another hour a week locked in. Plus, the premise just didn’t capture my interest enough.
We were in a similar situation recently as people raved about “The Last of Us” series. Another zombie show- really? We never got into Walking Dead and with its spinoffs Walking Dead is literally a zombie show.
From what I have heard, the show is based on a video game. I do not play video games, but it must have sparked someone as the germ of an idea to elaborate on.
But I read Michelle Goldberg’s review of the show which focused on episode 3 and it caught my attention. So we began to watch the series and catch up on the episodes last week. We are now current through episode five.
First, we both like Pedro Pascal as an actor. He was awesome in Game of Thrones until his character met his skull crushing end. And then there’s Bella Ramsey who plays a young woman Pascal is taking out west. She is the perfect person to play the spunky Ellie since she brought the same fierceness to her role as young Lady Mormont — also in Game of Thrones.
I was also quit pleased to see Anna Torv on TV again, though she wasn’t in the series for long. She was the lead character on the series Fringe I mentioned earlier.
The show has the usual dystopian elements: Societal breakdown, marauding gangs, government tyranny and people linking up on their own to form their own social structures.
But fascinating for me is the origin of the zombie-ness: Fungus, Mushrooms- more specifically ophiocordyceps unilateralis which apparently can zombify ants.[2]
I actually seriously dislike mushrooms as a food. I do not like the taste nor the texture. Never have. I used to tell waiters at restaurants when I ordered a dish that normally include mushrooms, but which could be excluded, that I was allergic to them so added are would be taken to not accidentally put the mushrooms in out of habit.
I also use to, as a vegetarian, say not quit jokingly that mushrooms are halfway to being animals- all they needed was legs and they’d be walking. I was actually right in this regard, as the National Library of Medicine published a report titled “Animals and fungi are each other’s closest relatives: congruent evidence from multiple proteins.”[3]
So the premise is different for this zombie version from other versions in which the culprit is usually a virus or some chemical.
[1]
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/opinion/the-last-of-us-conservative.html?searchResultPosition=1
[2]
[3]
