And what did I really think of The Last Of Us’s celebrated 3rd episode??
A HUGE reminder to everyone here that we’ve got the year’s SECOND Logline Showdown coming up this Friday. For those who don’t know what the Logline Showdown is, anyone can send me a logline at carsonreeves3@gmail.com. It has to be a logline for a completed script.
I choose the 5 best submissions and place them up here, on the site, for you to vote on, over the weekend. Whichever logline gets the most votes, I review that script the following Friday. We’re doing 12 of these, once every month. My goal is to find at least one impressive script and one double-worth-the-read script. And with the talent level of the people who read this site, I know we can achieve that.
If you want to enter, which is 100% free by the way, here are the instructions:
Send me your title, genre, and logline. Nothing more.
Send it to this e-mail: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Send it by 10pm Pacific Time, Thursday, February 16th.
Can’t wait to see what you’ve come up with this month!
Okay, there’s literally NOTHING going on in the entertainment world at the moment. February is the deadest time of the year. So there isn’t any good scripted entertainment to watch. Which is why, against my better judgment, I’ve decided to go back and watch the third episode of The Last Of Us.
My gut tells me this episode isn’t going to do anything for me. However, as a screenwriting enthusiast, I can’t say I’m not intrigued by the claims that this is one of the best written episodes of television ever. That’s a pretty big claim. So I’ve got my “great screenwriting” checklist out and let’s see if this puppy lives up to the hype.
For those of you who don’t follow the show, it’s another zombie apocalypse series. The two main characters, Joel and Ellie, are traveling across a zombie-infested world to get somewhere. But that’s not what this episode is about.
In this episode, we meet Bill, a lonely prepper, who is more than ready for the apocalypse. After his town is evacuated, he goes right back into his house and starts putting together a defense system for his home and the town. No zombie or soldier will ever get anywhere near him.
But then one man does get near. His name is Frank. He’s headed to Boston and gets caught in one of Bill’s traps. Bill reluctantly saves him and lets him clean up. That clean up turns into dinner. That dinner turns into piano time. Piano time turns into a kiss. And from there, well, it’s clear that Frank is staying for good.
A year passes, then three, then five. It’s not always perfect. The two argue about things. Bill doesn’t want anything to do with the world whereas Frank wants to clean up the neighborhood and even make friends. Which leads to one of the more surprising moments of the episode, where Joel and Tess (Joel’s girlfriend who died in the previous episode) stop by as their younger selves.
Five years turns to ten, then ten to twenty, and now Frank is sick. They never say with what but it looks like cancer. Frank is sick of being a burden and decides one morning that this is going to be their last day together. One last trip around town then down some cyanide. At the last second, Bill downs some cyanide as well, and they go to bed and die together (although we don’t see that part).
As it so happens, Joel and Ellie show up a few days later. Over time, Bill and Joel became frenemies. And Joel was hoping to get some supplies before he and Ellie really set out on the road. Of course, he finds out that Bill and Frank are dead. But Bill left him a note. Take whatever he wants, he says. And that’s the end of the episode!
Okay, so let’s ask the question. Is this the greatest episode of television ever written?
No, it is not.
That’s silly talk.
It is a good episode of television. And it’s well-written.
Love stories can be tricky because the temptation is always to lean hard into the love part. But the love part isn’t where we invest in the couple’s story. We invest in the conflict, in the resistance, in the challenges, in the external pressure. And then you want to mix little moments of love in there.
Which is exactly what this episode does.
It also gets the “love story” formula right. The love story formula is simple. But it’s also something writers screw up all the time. And the formula works like this.
We need to like him.
We need to like her (or other him).
And we must want them to be together.
The biggest risk the show takes is making Bill this cantankerous dude who hates everyone and the world in general. Those characters can easily become unlikable. But this is offset by the fact that Bill is so darn good at surviving. Audiences love capable people. One of the first things Bill does after the apocalypse is go steal generator parts from the local electrical substation and build his own generator. He then starts building sophisticated defenses and traps. We love people who can do things that nobody else can do. We admire expertise. And so even though Bill is cantankerous, we love him.
Frank’s character is much simpler. He’s just a sweet guy with a good heart. So we like him immediately. This is a good screenwriting tip. There’s typically one person in the relationships who’s really complex. And then the other person is simpler. Look at Titanic. Rose is super complex whereas Jack is about as simple as they come.
Another thing a lot of writers get wrong is that they get blinded by screenwriting books that tell them there MUST BE IMMENSE CONFLICT in a relationship or else the relationship will be boring.
While it’s true that you need to spice the relationship up to keep it interesting, you don’t want to overdo things. You don’t want to make two people scream at each other all the time for no reason just so you can have conflict. Instead, the better option is to give each person in the relationship different worldviews. This way, the characters will organically butt heads every once in a while. But not in an over-the-top forced manner.
Bill wants to keep the world out. He has zero faith in humanity. Frank wants to bring the world in. Frank still has faith in humanity. That simple difference in worldviews provides just enough conflict in the relationship so that it’s not lovey-dovey all the time.
Which is important. Cause if it’s lovey-dovey all the time, it becomes grating (see Attack of the Clones).
So why don’t I think this is the greatest episode of television ever, like the internet would have you believe? A few reasons. But the main one is they kinda botched the ending.
We’re ten years into their relationship and, one night, they get attacked by a militia. Bill, our apocalypse survival superstar, stands out in the middle of the road, no cover anywhere, to shoot at the militia. Of course, they easily shoot him and Frank is able to pull him back into the home.
We think Bill is going to die. But then, as he’s struggling to stay alive, we smash cut to 10 years later, and Bill is fine… but Frank has cancer?????? What a weird jarring cut. You set up this one person to look like they’re going to die only to cut to a decade later and the is now going to die? With no context or setup at all? It was sloppy enough that I was pulled out of the episode for the first time.
And then Frank says he wants to have his last day together, AND GET MARRIED. Nooooooo! I rolled my eyes. That’s the schmaltzy stuff the writers of this episode did so well to avoid the whole time. That’s something the bottom writer in the Grey’s Anatomy writer’s room comes up with. You’re supposed to be writing the sophisticated version of this story.
That bothered me because, if those two things didn’t happen, this rates a lot closer to the praise it’s getting.
Another strange thing about this episode is that I realized I liked Joel and Ellie much more (they have a cameo at the beginning of the episode and also come in at the end) in background roles. When they take center stage, they’re not compelling enough for me to care.
And nothing proves that more than how strongly we feel about Frank and Bill – two characters who actually resonate with leading men qualities. I would much rather be watching these two try to get through the zombie apocalypse than Joel and Ellie.
So I guess that leads us to the final question: Will this episode inspire me to keep watching? Well, probably not. Because Bill and Frank are dead. They were your two best characters on the show so far and you killed them off. So why would I keep watching? Joel is still boring. Ellie is still annoying. What’s the incentive to continue?
Either way, I’m happy that I checked this episode out. It was much better than I thought it was going to be.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Find the mistakes in moments to bring some authenticity to them. A great little moment in this episode is when Frank sees the piano after their first dinner and goes over to play. Normally, in these scenes, Frank would sing a surprisingly stunning loving version of a song that would make Bill’s heart melt. No. Frank is terrible. To the point where Bill has to pull him away from the piano. That’s smart writing. Those mistakes always feel more authentic than somebody delivering the perfect response in the perfect moment.
