![]() ![]() He also provides a soothing hot shower, and an even smoother piano rendition of Linda Ronstadt’s “Long Long Time,” from which the episode gets its name. ![]() Okay, perhaps it’s not exactly classic, and it's not all happy, but it’s certainly a “meat” cute, as Bill provides Frank with a delicious warm meal of roast rabbit. It’s the classic meet-cute: boy falls into an anti-zombie trap, another boy frees him from said trap, and they live happily ever after. ![]() Joel’s heartbreaking answer: “Dead people can’t be infected.”įour years later, Bill’s solitude ends, when a charming stranger named Frank (Bartlett) strolls into town. “Why kill them? Why not just leave them be?” Ellie asks, not understanding why these folks had to die. They talk about theories surrounding the Cordyceps outbreak, with Joel throwing his lot behind “ the big bread theory.” They reach a makeshift graveyard littered with the bones of uninfected individuals, executed for fear of overcrowding the quarantine zones-ironic, given humanity’s current place on the endangered species list. They walk past the ancient wreckage of a plane crash, busted and overgrown like everything else in the greater Boston area. (Not just any gas station, mind you, but a Cumberland Farms! Consider it one last tip of the Red Sox cap to the New England faithful.) Despite no imminent danger, ghosts lurk throughout Joel and Ellie’s trek. No explosions, no deaths, unless we’re counting the clicker Ellie examines and then stabs in the head at a local gas station. The journey to Bill and Frank's is a relatively peaceful one. Of course, by the episode’s end, “Long Long Time” also manages to leave the audience completely wrecked. While their origins are very much rooted in the game, Bill and Frank’s HBO debut (tragically short-lived as it may be) imbues the TV series with something that not even the fungus-free Ellie ( Bella Ramsey) has managed to instill in Pedro Pascal’s Joel quite yet: hope, in an otherwise hopeless world. Driven forward by powerful performances from TV treasures Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, “Long Long Time” marks the biggest departure from the Last of Us source material to date, offering a very different look at the video game characters of Bill and Frank, to the point that they may as well be show-only inventions. But! Is it too soon to declare it the best episode of 2023 and The Last of Us, so far? Not from where I’m standing.įollowing an opening two installments that demonstrated astounding fidelity to the video game it’s based on, The Last of Us breaks the mold with its riveting third episode, a 75-minute meditation on life and love in the not-quite-a-zombie apocalypse. It is way too soon to talk about The Last of Us’s third episode, “Long Long Time,” as the best episode of 2023, let alone the best episode of The Last of Us, right? Right. ![]()
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