While Episode 6 was slower than most of this season, it was also a touching turning point for the journey of Joel and Ellie.
The following review contains spoilers for Episode 6 "Kin" of The Last of Us.
This episode covers the "Fall" section from the game, with Joel and Ellie finally meeting Tommy before going to the university in search of the Fireflies, where things quickly go south. Like the episode title suggests, family is a big theme this time around. Just in one hour we explore a meeting of two brothers, new found love and community, grief for lost children and the big question of what Joel and Ellie are to each other. It's all very touching, with a lot of very intimate character moments, some sweet while others are heated or heartbreaking.
To lighten the mood, we again do also get a lot of great bantering between the two leads while they travel, camp and have a shooting lesson. For example the line "You going to shoot this thing or get it pregnant?" will now forever live rent free in my head, immediately becoming a new iconic Ellie joke.
I cannot stress enough how much I appreciate the new scenes the show is able to show us of the characters travelling together, something the game simply did not have the time to do. The moment where Ellie takes watch after Joel accidentally falls asleep is a great way to foreshadow the ending of the episode and what's to come, as the dynamic of the relationship slowly shifts. Joel cannot always be the protector, and Ellie isn't just a helpless little girl. It also reinforces Joel's fears that he talks about later.
Personally I really enjoyed seeing a different side to Joel this episode. More than ever, we saw him being afraid, even to the point of having multiple panic attacks. I have a feeling that some people will have a problem with this more vulnerable side of Joel being showcased. However, I feel it is important to remind that despite his hard exterior, he is still human and everyone has their breaking point. Joel's personal Achilles' heel is his trauma from Sarah's death and the fear of reliving that. And if there is anyone Joel could trust with those feelings at his lowest point, it would be the one person he has grown up with, Tommy. The one person who knows the true pain that Joel has experienced, because he was there when it happened.
That vulnerability also was necessary to believably convince Tommy. In the game the brothers only have a more heated discussion, a bit similar to the one in the bar. They almost come to blows before they are quickly interrupted by a sudden raider attack. (A fairly common occurrence in the game where a dramatic moment gets cut off by action, probably because the developers were afraid that people would otherwise get bored.) What eventually convinces Tommy to agree in the game is when he sees Joel rush to Ellie's aid and show genuine concern for the girl.
But without that raider attack, which would have immediately grown the budget cost of the episode and felt somewhat out of place, you need something else to make Tommy understand why exactly Joel asks him to take Ellie. It's not because Joel does not care enough or that he's incapable of doing it. It's because of much more sympathetic reasons: worry and fear. And in order to get that across, Joel has to crack open his tough shell for a moment.
When it comes to how the episode looked, it was once again exceptional. The sets were all believable and detailed, not to mention that they felt very faithful to the games. Jackson especially looked almost straight out of Part II, and it was fun to see little nods to the second game, like the appearance of baby Shimmer and another girl who players will no doubt recognize. Then there were the beautiful vistas of Wyoming with the snow, running rivers and mountains in the back, which were absolutely breathtaking. As someone who loves hiking, I was almost jealous of Joel and Ellie at times.
Now time for some nitpicking. Once again I felt like a very memorable scene taken almost straight out of the game felt a bit too distracting for me, as I could not help but to compare it to the original. The scene in question is where Joel finds Ellie reading a girl's diary and they argue about their relationship. Scenes like this make me almost wish I had not played the game, as I cannot objectively tell if the scene works or not. On a theoretical level it is cool to have a scene so faithful, but it simply fell somewhat flat for me on an emotional level. Maybe it's that Bella's more aggressive take on some of her lines wasn't as impactful for me as Ashley Johnson's slightly softer delivery. (I just watched a clip of the original scene to compare, and I almost immediately got teary-eyed.) I also found the line "Do you care about me or not?" a bit clumsy or too on the nose, and it seems like a weird change. That line came off as the producers being afraid that someone would not understand why Ellie was upset, so Mazin had to spell it out for everyone.
It's especially bothersome, as that scene is one of my absolute favorites from the game and gets me emotional every time I watch it. This adaptation failed to deliver on that same impact, but I do realize it is very likely just due to my own high expectations and nostalgia. It could almost be called a similar effect to the "uncanny valley" in robotics. The term usually refers to robots (or CGI images) that look almost like humans but there is just something you can tell is a bit off. Watching some of these scenes from the show is kind of like that: It's very close to the thing it's mimicking, but not quite right. Yet I do realize that people who will play the game after watching the show first will probably feel the opposite, and think the game's version is worse.
This realization does however make me a bit worried about the season's ending. (Don't worry, I won't spoil anything.) The game's last few minutes are probably among the two most iconic scenes from The Last of Us, the other being obviously Sarah's death. A part of me feels like they have to get it exactly right and that a faithful approach would be the safest bet. Another part of me fears that if they do a 1:1 recreation of that scene, it will once again ring a bit hollow for me. Which makes me unsure if I want them to surprise me with some slight variation while keeping the same broad beats and emotional core of the scene.
Regardless, this was an amazing and touching episode that was also an important step in the story. There are only three episodes left, and I can't wait to see how things wrap up.
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