The Last of Us (2023)

Written by cineast78 on February 7, 2023

Had the potential to be great. But it is just mediocre HBO stuff and sometimes really bad.

I can't say that the show is bad in general. But it is far from living up to its potential. And episode 3 has show us that it can really suck (no pun intended) at times.

I am going to loosely address some reasons for why I think this show is disappointing and not as good as it could be:

• Bad casting of main characters, unnecessary type-switching.

Though I think that most of the actors are good, a lot of them and especially the main characters are not matching their counterparts from the game and the game (at least TLOU, Part I) just nailed it. The actors are good, but the casting choices still are just bad. Especially Ellie is just miscast all the way.

• Bad chemistry between the characters.

There is no matching chemistry between the actors of Joel & Tess or Joel & Ellie.

• Pointless deviations from the original story (see episode 3).

Those deviations don't add anything good to the story, they are just annoying distraction at best and derailment at worst.

• Sometimes just stupid, boring or pointless.

There is more examples than just the bigger part of episode 3 for that.

• Mediocre storytelling.

When it sticks to the main plot, it's not bad. But it's not really good either.

After episode 3 I decided to take a break from watching the show and before I would continue to watch, I will wait till the whole season has aired and the reviews came in. If according to the non-shill and non-cheerleader reviews the show will give us more crap in the direction of episode 3, I'm out for good.