Review: The Last Of Us, "Through The Valley" | Season 2, Episode 2
In which we did not have to wait long for blood
I had a bit planned for this. Early in the episode, I was getting annoyed at Ellie, and I realized part of the problem was that she swears too goddamn much. I was going to make some kind of joke about it, then lead into what I think is the real problem: the writers don’t know how to write a grown-up Ellie, so we’re just seeing last season Ellie at her worst. Part of being a teen is trying to overcompensate for your youth to prove yourself. But that shit gets old, and given that everyone in Jackson (besides Seth, The Town Homophobe) already treats Ellie like an equal, it makes her look pathetic and, well, annoying.
That’s how I was going to start the review. But then we get to the last fifteen minutes or so of the episode, and it’s all fireworks factory—the most depressing fireworks factory in the world, sure (they make hedgehogs drink Coke and Pop Rocks), but it nonetheless means there are more interesting points to talk about. Jackson is besieged by a mass of infected and one real big beefy bloater, and Abby catches up with the man who murdered her father, a fella we know as Joel. We already knew she had plans for Joel; what some of us may not have been expecting was just how soon those plans would come to fruition.
