TV Tuesdays 19: The Last of Us
I'm obsessed
Welcome to the 19th TV Tuesday!
It’s been a long time since I’ve been so engrossed in a show that when I get up from doing yoga I just stand there staring at the screen. Now, I do love a zombie thing. Adventureland, the Resident Evils, the Walking Dead (first season, maybe first two), 28 Days Later. I honestly can’t remember if I watched Shaun of the Dead but I hear it’s good.
The Last of Us is everything good about a zombie thing but with HBO quality writing, acting, directing, sets, etc.
What, besides zombies, do I like about The Last of Us?
Well, there’s Pedro Pascal. He played my favorite character in my last action-packed workout watch, Narcos. Like a fine wine…
I also like how gay it is. And how the not-beautiful and unsexual the Ellie is. In real life, it seems like she’s fine looking.
But in the show, I’d argue that she’s not supposed to hew closely to narrow feminine beauty standards and I like that she doesn’t. Really, if there were ever a situation in which we could relax the requirement that every female person always have perfect hair and makeup, it should be for a child navigating the apocalypse.
As I’ve said before, I like it when media asks, but doesn’t attempt to fully answer, interesting questions. And it should not surprise my long-time babies to discover that “Why have a state?” is one of the questions I personally find most interesting.
Over and over, the show asks or hints at questions like, is FEDRA a fascist org or the thing keeping society from devolving into a war of all against all? In FEDRA’s absence, what separates despotic cults from peaceful communes? What do stateless groups do with their severe Cluster B babes? When is it okay to kill one person to save another?
Also, I love that it’s a fungus and not a virus or bacterium that zombie-fies people. It’s way more interesting and, in my opinion, true to life. At least, I think that fungi, like loneliness, are severely under-rated in terms of serious threats to at least health and well-being and possibly the survival of the species.
I’m not trying to scare you on a TV Tuesday, Sex and the State’s most fun day. But, do consider:
The main thing keeping most humans safe from harmful fungi is our high body temps
Average human body temps are decreasing
We only have three classes of antifungal and resistance is increasing
Something to think about when you already can’t sleep!
(Shoutout to my Longtermist babies, a few of you need to ditch AI safety and start looking into new antifungals!)
It’s also just beautiful. This show has everything — Mountains, trees, lakes, rivers, bombed out cities.
I’d be curious about what non-zombie-fans think about it. But for this zombie-fan, it’s a 10/10.
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I gave up watching after the first episode, not because it wasn’t good, but just because it was good, but also stressful and I just wasn’t in the mood to get hooked into a stressful series. Also, I’m not a huge zombie flick fan. I like Zombieland that’s about it, but then I was told by a couple of different people that episode three was one of the best episodes of TV they'd ever seen, so I decided to give it another try and they were right. Episode three is one of the best episodes of any show ever.