Genre: Post-Apocalypse/Zombie
Premise: Set 20 years after a zombie outbreak, an alcoholic teams up with a young girl to find his brother.
About: I have not seen HBO go more all-in on a new show, maybe, ever. They have been promoting the heck out of this thing. As a point of reference, they didn’t tell anyone The White Lotus Season 1 was coming. They just dumped that on the service. For this, they’re blanketing every real, virtual, and conceptual space with ads for THE LAST OF US. Which indicates to me that they think they have something great on their hands. The show is spearheaded by Chernobyl’s showrunner, Craig Maizen. As well as Neil Druckman, who wrote all the video games the show is based on. It stars Pedro Pascal. They’re hoping this is the next big pop culture hit. With a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it just might be.
Pilot Writers: Craig Maizen and Neil Druckman
Details: about an hour long
Okay, just to give you some backstory here.
I’ve never gotten more recommendations to play a video game then I’ve gotten to play this one. Tons of people have told me to play it.
I think that’s because this is supposed to have the best story to a video game ever. So, obviously, that intrigues someone like me, who loves storytelling in all its forms. I don’t care if it’s a script, a book, a short story, a poem, a video game, an oral recounting – if it’s a good story, I want to hear it.
Funny enough, when I heard that a Last of Us project was in development, I decided not to play the game. Cause I figured: I’ll just watch the story instead! I won’t have to have put forth any effort. Little did I know it would take ten years for me to see a Last of Us show. But better late than never.
The Last of Us starts in 2003 for some odd reason. That’s when the worldwide plague hits. Joel Miller, who seems to be some small-town worker guy, is a single parent to his tween daughter, Sarah. Sarah is sweeter than a brownie sundae which means her lifespan is probably the same as the time it takes for that ice cream to melt.
When zombies start popping up like a whack-a-mole game, Joel, Sarah, and Joel’s brother, Tommy, make a run for it. But the army moves in and shoots Sarah dead. We then cut to 20 years later, aka, 2023, and the world looks a lot different. Our story is focused on a walled-in version of Boston that can best be described as, The Town Where Nobody Showers.
It’s here where we go from exciting story to Setup City. We start meeting characters, fast and furious, and hear about something called “FEDRA,” which I think is the current national government. A lot of people living in this quasi-Boston town, including a now gray-haired Joel, are part of a rebellion trying to take FEDRA down.
This Boston place is pretty brutal, by the way. When a poor little feral kid comes in from the outside, they take him in, tell him he’s going to be just fine, then EUTHANIZE THE MOTHERF—-ER. And they don’t even get canceled for it! This is a very different 2023 than I’m used to.
The story shifts to focus on the rebellion crew, who I think Joel is a part of. It’s a little confusing. The crew is obsessed with this teenaged girl named Ellie, who they are both intrigued and terrified by. We get the sense that Ellie may be special. When the rebellion’s current mission falls apart, they call on Joel, his girlfriend, and Ellie, to go outside the walls and grab them some drugs. Or weapons. Or both. Again, it’s a little confusing.
But off they go!
There are so many interesting storylines here.
It’s inspiring to see a video game writer upgrade to a huge Hollywood project. That almost never happens and says a lot about the value of writing a great story in the video game universe, as opposed to what normally happens, which is that the story is the least important thing to game developers.
You’ve also got this show trying to exist in a space that is, arguably, beyond dead. No pun intended. The Walking Dead has done everything within their power to suck the last millimeters of life out of the melodramatic zombie genre, leaving no other avenues to tread. How do you come into that space and bring a fresh perspective?
Then you have the video game curse itself. Video games never make good adaptations. Mainly because video games are about interacting and their stories are conceived for such. TV is a passive viewing experience and requires a completely different approach.
So what does this all add up to?
Well, the opening 20 minutes of the show are amazing. I was already dusting off the “genius” stamp, which has been packed away in the back of my closet. When things start going south and they have to escape town? There was some A-grade studio-level production value. I was on the edge of my seat. And then we get that whopper of a shocker where Sarah’s killed. Oof! That was one hell of a first act.
But there was definitely a shifting of the gears once we jumped to 2023. We started bouncing around to a lot of different people – probably too quickly. I wasn’t really getting to know them. I wasn’t caring about them. Which was surprising because the opening of the show does such a great job setting up the characters.
When you’re writing a pilot, the bulk of your focus should be on creating the best characters possible. Cause we’re going to have to watch these characters over the course of 60 episodes. So, if you lose that battle of creating strong characters in your pilot, your show is dead before it’s even started.
Another high profile show that came out last year – La Brea – It pretty much got every single character wrong. And the show was dead from that point forward. It had no hope.
So it was good to see that we got Joel down. I’m onboard with him. I like the brother (who, by the way, played the most recent Terminator). I think I like Ellie. I’m still trying to figure her out. I don’t really like this girlfriend character (who, by the way, was the lead in Fringe). So I guess I’ve got one foot in and one foot out right now.
I know that when a pilot ends, I need to be dying to see the next episode. I was not dying to see this next episode. It didn’t even have a good cliffhanger. They just panned up to a night shot of a dilapidated city. I don’t know about you but that seems mighty unimaginative to me.
I’m not even clear what the overall hook of this show is. I think in Walking Dead, Rick had to find his family? I guess Joel is looking for his brother here but it’s not nearly as compelling because his brother isn’t lost due to the apocalypse. He’s been doing just fine for 20 years. He only recently hasn’t come back to town. Is that a big enough hook to keep watching?
There’s a minor twist where we find out Ellie might be sort of infected but not really? So maybe she’s the secret to the cure? Didn’t Walking Dead do that like a dozen times during its run?
I don’t know, guys. I was hoping for a lot more. There’s some fun stuff if your’e paying attention, like the opening nod to Dawn of the Dead. But it’s far from must-see television. And since that’s what it wants to be, it’s got a higher bar to clear. At least for its pilot, it came up short of that bar.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The opening of the pilot went full exposition mode, as newscasters debate what it would take to create a worldwide zombie pandemic. Unknown screenwriters can’t do this. Not enough is happening to keep the reader reading. Maizen can do it because he knows the show will be on television no matter what. So he can open with a guy taking a ten minute nap if he wants to. But you can’t. You have to write a scene more like the opening of Dawn of the Dead, which had a similar exposition first act, but then the news station starts violently falling apart in the wake of the zombie uprising.
