Review: The Last Of Us, "Long, Long Time" | Season 1, Episode 3
In which we pause for a moment to break our hearts
I knew The Last Of Us would be sad at times, even devastating. But even knowing that, I wasn’t prepared for “Long, Long Time.”
Part of that is due to the episode being the biggest deviation from the source material we’ve seen so far, but I’ll save that for the strays; the main reason this broke me was that it’s simple, straightforward, and gentle. We only see two infected the entire hour: One is already half-buried under rubble before Ellie kills it; the other gets downed by a shotgun blast from a survivalist trap. A group of raiders attacks at one point, but they’re quickly removed from the equation.
This is not an episode about suspense or terror, and apart from a brutal scene early on it’s not an episode about the horrors humanity commits upon itself in extreme circumstances. It is, instead, a love story. A low-key one, and occasionally snappish, but sweet for all of that, and it ends the way most of us hope our own love stories might end. Which, god help me, makes it tha…