Review: The Last Of Us, "Please Hold To My Hand" | Season 1, Episode 4
Joel and Ellie are waylaid in Kansas City by some unhappy people with guns
So, last week was good, eh? We’re not going to relitigate it here (I think most, if not all, of the comments on that review were positive, so there isn’t anything really to relitigate), but I thought I’d mention it because the thing about standalone episodes is, they aren’t that hard to get right. Comparatively, anyway. Yes, the writing and acting and casting and direction still have to work together to make something powerful, and I’m not trying to diminish that or underrate it. Hell, while I don’t think “Long Long Time” was “the best television episode ever,” I dug it a lot and I think everyone involved should be proud.
It’s just that standalones—or “departure episodes”—gain a lot of power from context. It’s one of the strengths of smart television, knowing how individual episodes can be used to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. And it’s especially effective when a standalone shows up in a string of serialized episodes. The novelty makes it stand out, and pro…