HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Episode 4 Review - Baby, I Am Pregnant

Episode 4 of The Last of Us Season 2 has a shocker of an opening. A vehicle carrying Fedra soldiers comes in contact with a crowd of WLF members. Isaac, a Fedra commander, gets down from the vehicle, orders a soldier to follow him, and starts talking to Hanrahan, a WLF member. What happens next is probably best left unspoiled - feel the shock for yourself. Oh, remember that weird sign Ellie and Dina saw towards the end of the third episode? It turns out that those people were Seraphites - a primitivist cult that worships someone whom they refer to as "Her." One of the cult members is brutally tortured by Isaac. You can't help but wonder what's worse: Getting attacked by Clickers or suffering at the hands of a psychopath like Isaac. The jungle-like setting, with greenery stemming from every building and every vehicle, makes sense. There are violent animals in every corner.

In this wilderness of Seattle, Ellie and Dina arrive to get revenge. They run from soldiers as well as an army of Clickers in a well-shot scene set in a tunnel. But something is missing from this moment. It's not a terrifying scene, and you don't hold your breath as Ellie and Dina escape from the tunnel. One can admire the technical skills of the filmmakers, but this weekly release format obliterates any sense of investment and tension. This is why I started playing the video game: to write more about The Last of Us by making comparisons. The episodes themselves, when taken in isolation, don't have much meat, much pleasure. It's the kind of problem that has infected many modern TV shows that follow the weekly release pattern. While watching such shows, you feel as if the decision to drop one episode per week is the result of a desperate attempt to keep the show in conversation for as long as possible.

People tend to discuss a show for a long time if it is truly remarkable; whether the episodes are released weekly or all at once is irrelevant. Adolescence and Severance have left a huge impact on us because of their quality, their style, and their vision. On the other hand, something like The Rings of Power is instantly forgotten because it's utterly mediocre. The Last of Us, I think, lies somewhere between fabulous and passable. If you truly want to enjoy this world, play the video game on your laptop or PlayStation. But then, the series often brings splendid changes in its episodes by deviating from the source, and you appreciate the efforts of the creators. There is a sweet scene here involving Ellie playing the guitar, and the sex starts happening so suddenly and at such an unexpected moment that your first instinct is to chuckle. Anyway, speaking of the video game, when I first saw Dina puking in The Last of Us, I thought something bad was going to happen to her (has she caught a deadly disease?). Dina pukes in the series as well. What's the reason? She's pregnant. I guess I could have gotten this information from the game before watching this episode, but my save file - my hours of progress - has gone to dump. So, I have uninstalled the game and will get my juice from the show. Moving forward, there will be no more game-series comparisons from this viewer.

Final Score- [5/10]