I think your proposed way of breaking it is one of the best I've seen so far. The power of that flip in perspective is that you already hate Abby (and her friends but it was hard to remember any of their names from the first half) because of what she did to Joel and then you gradually come to realise that actually maybe she has as much of a case as Ellie and, personally, by the end I thought she was a more sympathetic character.
But I agree, doing that structure in a season of TV is a huge risk because you need their buy-in week-to-week rather than taking advantage of the fact that you've already got them to drop $70 for the complete story.
The other option I thought of was maybe you start the first episode with Abby's story and the end of episode 1 twist is when hurricane Joel storms through her life. Then you do Abby and Ellie's stories in parallel from then on and preserve sympathy for both characters and also that tension of wanting the two characters not to meet.
Thanks for doing this. While I managed to stay relatively unspoiled for season 1, somehow the damn YouTube algorithm began showing Last of Us game videos... Including the 'Joel dies'. Considering the next season is not due until 2025 this was probably unavoidable. It is somewhat reassuring to read that it was kind of foreseen while waiting for the second game to come out.
To be clear I have not read beyond the second warning, but would like to ask if you feel that the second game provides more opportunities to go beyond the somewhat disjointed road trip narrative of season 1? While I liked season 1, at times it felt a bit incoherent (as noted by Zack).
The second game opens things up considerably with different factions and backstories so the scope to tell more stories and build the world is pretty huge. The difficulty they're probably going to have is threading the main story into TV in a satisfying way. The road trip first game fit pretty naturally in terms of being somewhat episodic anyway so my concern is that there's a risk of it being even more incoherent.
I hadn't read much about the first game at all (or if I did it was so long ago), so not really.
I think I expected the Joel/Ellie relationship to be more developed, given how much the second game hinges on it, but I guess they have another five years together that we haven't seen yet.
I appreciate this post. I am in a third category. I have had enough of the show and don't plan to watch Season 2 but I was mildly curious to find out what happened next. If it really goes along with Game 2, we won't get much of Pedro Pascal, who was the brightest part of the show. I feel more confident about my decision to end watching this show with the Season 1 finale.
I think your proposed way of breaking it is one of the best I've seen so far. The power of that flip in perspective is that you already hate Abby (and her friends but it was hard to remember any of their names from the first half) because of what she did to Joel and then you gradually come to realise that actually maybe she has as much of a case as Ellie and, personally, by the end I thought she was a more sympathetic character.
But I agree, doing that structure in a season of TV is a huge risk because you need their buy-in week-to-week rather than taking advantage of the fact that you've already got them to drop $70 for the complete story.
The other option I thought of was maybe you start the first episode with Abby's story and the end of episode 1 twist is when hurricane Joel storms through her life. Then you do Abby and Ellie's stories in parallel from then on and preserve sympathy for both characters and also that tension of wanting the two characters not to meet.
Thanks for doing this. While I managed to stay relatively unspoiled for season 1, somehow the damn YouTube algorithm began showing Last of Us game videos... Including the 'Joel dies'. Considering the next season is not due until 2025 this was probably unavoidable. It is somewhat reassuring to read that it was kind of foreseen while waiting for the second game to come out.
To be clear I have not read beyond the second warning, but would like to ask if you feel that the second game provides more opportunities to go beyond the somewhat disjointed road trip narrative of season 1? While I liked season 1, at times it felt a bit incoherent (as noted by Zack).
The second game opens things up considerably with different factions and backstories so the scope to tell more stories and build the world is pretty huge. The difficulty they're probably going to have is threading the main story into TV in a satisfying way. The road trip first game fit pretty naturally in terms of being somewhat episodic anyway so my concern is that there's a risk of it being even more incoherent.
I haven't played either game, but I read a bunch of articles spoiling TLOU2 back in 2020 as loads of people on my timeline were talking about it.
Did you find that colored your experience with the show at all?
I hadn't read much about the first game at all (or if I did it was so long ago), so not really.
I think I expected the Joel/Ellie relationship to be more developed, given how much the second game hinges on it, but I guess they have another five years together that we haven't seen yet.
I appreciate this post. I am in a third category. I have had enough of the show and don't plan to watch Season 2 but I was mildly curious to find out what happened next. If it really goes along with Game 2, we won't get much of Pedro Pascal, who was the brightest part of the show. I feel more confident about my decision to end watching this show with the Season 1 finale.