The Crawling Chaos
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 26, 2014
- Messages
- 433
3rd episode.
Another good one, with - I think - a lot to unpack. This is by far the episode that has drifted the farthest away from the source material. For now. Most of the 75-minute runtime is dedicated to the backstory of a very minor character from the game, "Bill".
In the game he's a grumpy old man who lives in an abandoned, ransacked town with only his booby traps and a few Infected for company. Sure, that Bill also had a Frank, but Frank's already gone by the time we roll into town with Joel and Ellie, and it's only as these two are about to depart after finding a car that we discover Frank's body hanging from a ceiling after he was bitten and refused to let the cordyceps have the last laugh.
Bill's arc in the game was also quite poignant, his relationship to Frank was told in a more subtle, subdued way and there was obvious sadness in that lonely man's eyes when he found out his lover was dead. But there wasn't much in terms of character development or emotional hook for us to really get behind him or his actions. For most of the time he was just a cantankerous man joining us on a few gameplay-driven set pieces to fight hordes of Infected. Not enough to make him deserve a spot on the TV show...
So the series gives us something quite different. We see Bill, a survivalist, sitting out the mandatory evacuation at the beginning of the outbreak in his underground bunker, then reclaiming his empty town as his own little private piece of paradise. Sure, he fences it up and installs traps all over, but rather than allowing Lincoln to become the game's destroyed town with half-collapsed buildings, Bill is also a man of taste and an epicure, and he looks after Lincoln so well that the town still looks quite pristine even twenty years after being emptied.
Bill meets Frank after a couple of years of complete isolation, and he quickly welcomes the company of this man, and the two become romantically involved and end up living together for many years until... Well, let's not reveal too much.
First of all I really enjoyed that we got to see something different from the usual post-apocalyptic fare. Ruins all over, rubbish, dirt and grime, faces and unkempt beards caked with mud... There's none of that here. This episode shows us that some people choose to find a way, a way to maintain decent living conditions, a way to keep the world going even if that world is no more than their own little street in Smalltown, America. They tend to their garden, grow their food and live a quiet, unassuming existence far from the madness of the big cities and their constant struggles for food, bullets and survival. Of course they are not entirely spared and have to watch over the fence sheltering them from outside predators, but it shows you that in some secluded areas, a relatively normal life is still possible.
I also liked the portrayals of Frank and Bill and to the credit of the writers and actors, their presence still lingered on at the end of the episode, when Joel and Ellie found their empty house.
But that doesn't mean I enjoyed everything... For one I thought Joel and Tess, when they're seen in flashback, felt totally out of place in that little bubble of happiness that Frank and Bill had created for themselves. It's hard to believe that anybody who knew Bill and Frank and could join them for lunch in their sunbathed garden would want to return or much less remain in the hellish military-ruled Boston QZ, even if it meant better access to "books and medicine". I mean, come on, Bill and Frank have electricity, hot water on tap, fresh food, vehicles, protection, and as far as we can tell they only had one bad run-in with raiders ever. So if Tess and Joel can have that too, why would they ever want to return to Boston to have to burn dead children's bodies for a handful of ration cards?
So as much as I enjoyed that this episode gave us something different, I'm not sure it really fits in with the rest of the stuff we had seen so far. Or rather, it's the fact that these two worlds are linked and allow passage from one to the other so casually that I'm having difficulty buying. Had Joel and Ellie stumbled upon Lincoln in their travels, long after leaving Boston, then sure, okay. But knowing that this is just a day's walk outside the city, and that Joel knew the place well and visited frequently kinda cheapens it if I'm honest.
There was also something a bit clunky about the camerawork and I couldn't really put my finger on what. There was a lot of handheld camera in this episode and I don't remeber noticing it in episodes 1 and 2 - perhaps because it wasn't the case or perhaps the story was too gripping for me to notice. But I felt this episode looked a little cheaper than the first two. The bright sun probably didn't help, but maybe that also has to do with the fact that the sets were less impressive by virtue of being confined to a small and relatively normal town compared to the bombed out city of Boston.
Finally there were a few questionable directing decisions. Like showing Bill involved in a massive shootout against a dozen or more men while standing in the middle of the street and armed with a bolt rifle.
In any case, a good episode. The showrunners said the series throughline was Love and the different ways it connects us (hence the kiss scene at the end of episode 2) and changes us for better or worse. So this episode was definitely on point. Not a mere digression, but a development. I just hoped it would feel a little less jarring visually, to give us a better, more gradual sense of progression in Joel and Ellie's journey.
In the game he's a grumpy old man who lives in an abandoned, ransacked town with only his booby traps and a few Infected for company. Sure, that Bill also had a Frank, but Frank's already gone by the time we roll into town with Joel and Ellie, and it's only as these two are about to depart after finding a car that we discover Frank's body hanging from a ceiling after he was bitten and refused to let the cordyceps have the last laugh.
Bill's arc in the game was also quite poignant, his relationship to Frank was told in a more subtle, subdued way and there was obvious sadness in that lonely man's eyes when he found out his lover was dead. But there wasn't much in terms of character development or emotional hook for us to really get behind him or his actions. For most of the time he was just a cantankerous man joining us on a few gameplay-driven set pieces to fight hordes of Infected. Not enough to make him deserve a spot on the TV show...
So the series gives us something quite different. We see Bill, a survivalist, sitting out the mandatory evacuation at the beginning of the outbreak in his underground bunker, then reclaiming his empty town as his own little private piece of paradise. Sure, he fences it up and installs traps all over, but rather than allowing Lincoln to become the game's destroyed town with half-collapsed buildings, Bill is also a man of taste and an epicure, and he looks after Lincoln so well that the town still looks quite pristine even twenty years after being emptied.
Bill meets Frank after a couple of years of complete isolation, and he quickly welcomes the company of this man, and the two become romantically involved and end up living together for many years until... Well, let's not reveal too much.
First of all I really enjoyed that we got to see something different from the usual post-apocalyptic fare. Ruins all over, rubbish, dirt and grime, faces and unkempt beards caked with mud... There's none of that here. This episode shows us that some people choose to find a way, a way to maintain decent living conditions, a way to keep the world going even if that world is no more than their own little street in Smalltown, America. They tend to their garden, grow their food and live a quiet, unassuming existence far from the madness of the big cities and their constant struggles for food, bullets and survival. Of course they are not entirely spared and have to watch over the fence sheltering them from outside predators, but it shows you that in some secluded areas, a relatively normal life is still possible.
I also liked the portrayals of Frank and Bill and to the credit of the writers and actors, their presence still lingered on at the end of the episode, when Joel and Ellie found their empty house.
But that doesn't mean I enjoyed everything... For one I thought Joel and Tess, when they're seen in flashback, felt totally out of place in that little bubble of happiness that Frank and Bill had created for themselves. It's hard to believe that anybody who knew Bill and Frank and could join them for lunch in their sunbathed garden would want to return or much less remain in the hellish military-ruled Boston QZ, even if it meant better access to "books and medicine". I mean, come on, Bill and Frank have electricity, hot water on tap, fresh food, vehicles, protection, and as far as we can tell they only had one bad run-in with raiders ever. So if Tess and Joel can have that too, why would they ever want to return to Boston to have to burn dead children's bodies for a handful of ration cards?
So as much as I enjoyed that this episode gave us something different, I'm not sure it really fits in with the rest of the stuff we had seen so far. Or rather, it's the fact that these two worlds are linked and allow passage from one to the other so casually that I'm having difficulty buying. Had Joel and Ellie stumbled upon Lincoln in their travels, long after leaving Boston, then sure, okay. But knowing that this is just a day's walk outside the city, and that Joel knew the place well and visited frequently kinda cheapens it if I'm honest.
There was also something a bit clunky about the camerawork and I couldn't really put my finger on what. There was a lot of handheld camera in this episode and I don't remeber noticing it in episodes 1 and 2 - perhaps because it wasn't the case or perhaps the story was too gripping for me to notice. But I felt this episode looked a little cheaper than the first two. The bright sun probably didn't help, but maybe that also has to do with the fact that the sets were less impressive by virtue of being confined to a small and relatively normal town compared to the bombed out city of Boston.
Finally there were a few questionable directing decisions. Like showing Bill involved in a massive shootout against a dozen or more men while standing in the middle of the street and armed with a bolt rifle.
In any case, a good episode. The showrunners said the series throughline was Love and the different ways it connects us (hence the kiss scene at the end of episode 2) and changes us for better or worse. So this episode was definitely on point. Not a mere digression, but a development. I just hoped it would feel a little less jarring visually, to give us a better, more gradual sense of progression in Joel and Ellie's journey.
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