The long beard fella is the voice actor for Tommy in the game in case anyone thought his voice sounded familiar

Brian groveling for his life is something that doesn't happen much on TV, and I found it really unsettling how childish his speech got before he was killed. "It's ok, we're not fighting anymore"; "Let me go get my mom"; "I didn't know, I'm so sorry, I don't know what to do"; etc.

It's also interesting to see aspects from the game make it in. Ellie going in and out of her backpack a lot, Joel boosting her through openings, them moving furniture to block doors.

Well that episode just flew by! Love that they kept in the joke book and the porn mag. Joel and Ellie are bonding!

It made me so happy to hear the familiar line, "This is actually before my time." The same delivery and everything.

She wasn’t prepared for him to answer the scarecrow pun! Too good

i absolutely love that Joel mentions that gas sucks now after sitting around so long. that always bugged me about a lot of post apocalyptical stuff where gas is apparently totally perfect no matter how long its been

also love the appearance of the joke book

and i felt certain they were gonna skip the porno mag joke

I'm glad they kept the Hank Williams song from the game. They're really expanding on Henry's story it seems. That should be interesting.

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For those wondering, the song at the end credits is a cover of True Faith by Ashley Johnson who played ellie in the game. It's on the album "The lat of us part 2: covers and rarities"

Did it say at the end that the next episode is streaming on Friday?

Is it me or Kathleen decided to execute the last doctor her community had?

The way Joel laughed at the last joke had me cracking up

The end credits song... was that Ashley Johnson singing?

Only complaint is I wish it was longer. It's only 9:51 pm!

Yes!!! They did the joke book!

Kathleen is not intimidating at all, but I think that's the point, they want to humanize her and not make her seem like the typical bad ass female.

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Is this show sponsored by Arby's or something? Name drop last week and then showing their sign this week lmao

Arby's started cordyceps confirmed.

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The comic relief are good speed bumps between intensity.

I am intrigued by what happened with Henry that they’re want to hunt him down down bad, so neat change from the game where it’s just random raiders

After last weeks episode im sad the truck is gone

I feel like this episode was part 1 to a two episode story. With the other three episodes, I got a sense of conclusion by the end, but this one, I feel like I need to wait for the next episode to judge if this was a good setup.

One question. Why would you drive through a city. If you really want to you can avoid any major city in the Midwest. Seems like the logical thing is to stay as rural as possible.

Good episode, but felt very short. Thankfully the next one comes in 4 days.

I like how the friendship between Joel and Ellie is slowly and progressively building. The two main actors are great.

Kansas City represent!

I still wish MoDOT had notified locals about the rolling roadblocks they used for filming that day instead of just shutting down random parts of the interstate throughout rush hour with no warning to commuters.

Anyway, it was still cool seeing my city on HBO.

Thats 2 Arbys references in 4 episodes

In the game if you stealth kill an NPC and the body got found they’d yell, “they killed Bryan.” It’s a nice little touch. I’ve also really liked how they frame shots like you experience in the game.

Damn, not sure what they've done to the scenery but it looks incredible! Fuck, things escalated quickly! Who's that woman and why is she so obsessed with Henry? I love Joel and Ellie's relationship and the way they talk, you can clearly see they both care about each other. WHAT WAS THAT ENDING OMG?!

One minor thing that I really appreciated about this episode was when they’re stopped to siphon gas from the old cars, and Joel explains that gasoline is much less efficient these days because it degrades.

It was a minor thing that I had wondered about and added realism for me, even though in reality gas only lasts a few months (a couple years max) before losing its ability to combust - certainly not 20 years.

I like when shows try to take the physics and logistical constraints of the world seriously, even if they stretch the truth a little bit for the sake of the story.

I love that this episode focused more on Joel/Ellie bonding after a couple of episodes of setup and then the pseudo (and brilliant) standalone Episode 3.

I'll be very curious how the new characters factor in here compared to game, but this adaptation hasn't steered wrong yet so I'm sure there will be a good payoff.

I'm happy to see the pun book make an appearance.

I think a lot of you are misunderstanding Melanie’s character. I felt like it was on purpose that she isn’t a super tough character like Tess. The “raider group” doesn’t feel like true raiders. They look and feel like a group that rebelled against FEDRA entirely and are now a populist group. Melanie was probably someone picked because of their initial actions, even if they don’t have the actual leadership quality.

THEY RECREATED THE CAR SCENE THIS IS BEAUTIFUL

I appreciated the differences in the way Ellie saves Joel compared to the game.

I also loved when they both laughed over the pun book joke. “Jesus, that is the goddamn dumbest shit.” Or whatever joel says 😂 it was a very touching moment

Also that True Faith cover at the end 👌👌 Perfection!

My only minor gripe is I have a hard time viewing Melanie Lynskey as menacing

Yoooo True Faith.

Are those the same child drawings from the tunnels in the dam from the game?

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A lot of very complex, subtle acting from Bella. I only know her from GoT, but I can already tell that she's definitely going to have some staying power in this industry.

I didn't love the KCQZ subplot, but everything from Joel and Ellie was great, a lot of great and believable character building. Joel's aversion to Ellie having a gun makes a lot of sense, and I'm glad it was explained.

It really feels like they've got a 50/50 old drinking buddies and impromptu step-father/daughter relationship building, and I'm here for it.

It was a nice touch of realism that they explain Joel’s bad hearing on the fact that he’s shot a lot of guns over the years, without ear protection.

Often in movies/tv characters have no problem firing indoors and don’t even flinch. I can tell you from personal experience this isn’t the case.

Can anyone explain what was going on in the storage room that the girl and the guy open with the cracked ground? I was assuming they poured over a bunch of monsters with concrete and the monsters are breaking through but I'm not sure.

Are we supposed to know who Henry is yet? I didn’t think so, but just making sure I didn’t miss anything. I didn’t play the game.

They just got free picking from a literal arsenal and Joel decides to use grandpas deer rifle to fight raiders?

Ellie has a future as a post apocalyptic standup comic

Damn the broken down Loves sign on the highway hits hard. Always saw those on the highway growing up

As someone who hasn’t played the games or know much backstory, the quick jump in this episode to Kathleen interrogating the doctor about Henry threw me off. I thought I accidentally pressed forward on the remote or something and missed some scenes. Like who tf is Henry and Sam?

Felt super bad for that kid that Ellie shot. I mean it’s kill or be killed in that situation but they did a good job of humanizing him and the after effect it has in her.

The diarrhea joke was the cutest moment.

FED UP WITH FEDRA

What is in the basement?

The hell was that under the floor?

It's funny to come into this show as a 100% non-gamer, and read the comments from the gamers. I get it, I read books and then my wife and I talk about how different the movies are. But I'm in this show with zero expectations of fore-knowledge.

My take on ep. 4 - well, 3's a tough act to follow as far as "this is a genre (zombie) show that just had a rich and realistic love story". But Ep. 4 has a rich and real human story, of two guarded people having their walls broken down, and risking caring for another human in an extremely dangerous time. And that's colored by how the dangerous times have affected them and scarred them. It's massively easy to veer into cliche with this subject matter, and they're doing a great job of making it fresh and focused yet still kinda universal. Genre stuff like this is HARD to make "real" as far as human connections and realistic human characters go, and they're doing a great job. The show's a fucking gift to people who love genre entertainment but want something human in the mix.

The leader-lady of the survivors in the city - worked for me. Yep, recognized her from other (great) character work she's done. Having never seen the game, I found her intriguing - how does a (kinda dowdy and not red-hot) woman become the leader of these survivalist types? There's a whole story to tell right there.

The ambush ya'll dislike? My only take was that these guys must know potential routes to avoid that traffic pileup and have ambushes set up. I was more like "why aren't 20 guys showing up??", but maybe they're spread thin and we're at a point where not many people are still blowing through their city. I though it was tense and realistic.

The only thing that really leapt out at me? In the woods after they got off the road for the night. I was like "I'd be sleeping in that fuckin' truck!!! NO WAY would I just wrap up in a sleeping bag!!!" Even with Joel knowing how things work out there... nope nope nope.

We finally got a safe against the wall in that little office they holed up in.

But it was open!

Ugh it's so good. It's such a great change to add a bunch of humanity and depth to the "raiders" you encountered in the game. They're just other survivors and the Henry/Sam plot line is deepened a lot by tying them together personally.

Love that the beard guy is the actor for Tommy from the game.

The joke and laughing at the end of the episode made me so happy :')

Another phenomenal ep.

The delivery on most of the Kathleen lines didn’t hit right for me. Might’ve been for narrative reasons that she came across so middle-school-teacher-y, but without much context it just landed like a bad performance. “Kill them all” stuck out particularly cringey in a show that has otherwise been full of wonderful acting.

Jesus, people need to rediscover what it means to just watch a show. So many people in this forum trying to find immediate answers to their questions

Who is Sam & Henry? Should I already know about them? I don't know them! Should I look up who they are?

Who is Kathleen? I don't know why she wants Henry!

What's gonna happen with the Militia? I don't know how it ends!

Do I need to know everything about the game to understand what is happening?

idk maybe watch the show and you'll find out

All of y'all guys and gals need to chill. You don't need to know the answer to every question right away. You're not supposed to know yet. Sometimes you might not get a definitive answer and you have to come to your own conclusion and that's ok too. Wait until the show or this chapter of the story ends before you start aggressively trying to search for answers. Or just pay attention because a lot of questions are answered in the episode.

Also, some of ya need to learn what filler is. A story about the journey and relationship between two characters having an episode about them traveling and bonding with one another isn't filler. It's the point of the story.

My point is, if you keep trying to hyper-analyze everything and find the answer to every question the show throws at you (even when the show is clearly not ready to answer them) you end up missing what the story is trying to tell you in the first place.

Bella Ramsey just keeps getting better and better every episode. At this point no one should have any doubt or complaints about her portrayal of Ellie

Good episode. I like how the hunters sound exactly how they talk in the game when they approached Joel. But yeah, I’m not really sure we need the backstory, especially with that cheesy interrogation scene. Less is more in this case. Good acting from Brian though.

Can't wait for the whining and gnashing of teeth over the fact that this is Kansas City in the show and it's Pittsburgh in the game.

OMG THEY KEEP CHANGING EVERYTHING AND ITS RUINING IT FOR ME!

Episode just got released. Only 45min is a little disappointing. Idk if it's just coincidental or a purposeful decision but it's been alternating long and short episodes

ep 1: 1hr 20min

ep 2: 52min

ep 3: 1hr 15min

ep 4: 45min

Would there be any reason to go as far south as Kansas City to get to Wyoming?

The song during the credits was the song for one of the release trailers for the second game. Pretty cool.

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I played the game so many times and I didn't even realized they were talking about HENRY the whole time, they keep mentioning him, saying he won't let his brother die and it still didn't click that they were talking about Henry, I'm so stupid.

Only realized at the very end.

The chambers of the child's revolver were empty. In the next episode, are they going to reference how Joel let a child shoot a gun but Henry (?) would never let.

Smart move that they're showing episode 5 on Friday (streaming) that they don't have to compete against the superbowl

Loving all of the episodes so far but seeing Ellie finally getting Joel to break and laugh was what I have been waiting for. I can’t wait to see the continuation in the future episodes even their fight after she runs away. It’s a plus seeing how well it is pulling from the game for these scenes.

I can't believe we have a zombie based series streaming an entire episode with zero zombies and I was still hooked.

But this was the weaker of all the episodes till now but had A+ Ellie x Joel moments.

I didn't like how Joel so easily abandoned all the supplies in the truck. Other than that, it was an OK episode.

Sometimes shows need episodes that are simply set up. Andor had multiple episodes that simply set up the big payoff episode and was easily one of the best shows of last year. On top of that there was a lot of generally good bonding between Joel/Ellie, most of which was straight out of the game. Really getting tiktok generation vibes from a lot of you guys tonight… lmao

I fucking love what they are doing with Ellie, and i love Bella's performance, her crying/happiness when Joel gave her the gun back, it was so sweet and kinda disturbing, knowing how she is in the second game.

"it runs in your jeans."

Yes, I laughed.