‘The Last of Us’ Episode 2 Review: ‘Infected’ Was the Perfect TV Directorial Debut for Neil Druckmann
Anna Torv (Tess), Bella Ramsey (Ellie), and Pedro Pascal (Joel) in HBO’s The Last of Us.
The Last of Us is back this week with a less nerve-wracking episode that doesn’t really take off until the third act.
Infected starts with one of my favorite remnants from cable TV: the cold open that takes a detour from the main storyline and characters, and makes you wonder “Am I on the right channel?” Back in the day, you had to patiently wait to see if the episode had started already or if you were watching an entirely different program. Now, you can just hover your mouse and check that you clicked on the right icon. Nevertheless, the flashback to September 2003 works on so many levels, not the least of which is the philosophical question that it poses to the audience — would you bomb an entire city to contain an infection that could decimate the human race?
A credits sequence later we cut to present day, where Tess and Joel are dealing with the revelations from the end of last week’s episode — they might be smuggling the first survivor to a bite from an infected being. Following last week’s brilliant episode, having a slightly slower second episode felt very much in place. The tension does ramp up through the end of the second act, with the show’s first intense sequence featuring the “clickers” (human hosts that have been infected for over a year and can no longer see, but have, in turn, developed acute hearing). And finally, we receive an emotionally beautiful third act that sets up an intense third episode.
Spoilers ahead for The Last of Us episode 2, Infected.
Bella Ramsey (Ellie) and Anna Torv (Tess) in HBO’s The Last of Us.
As I explained last week with the recap for the first episode, I’m just vaguely familiar with the story of the game, so I’m going into this show with very little knowledge of what’s going to happen. However, much like I anticipated Joel’s daughter not to make it past the first episode, since I knew this story was focused on Joel and another young girl named Ellie, I also expected Tess not to be part of the entire adventure. I did not know when she would leave them or how, and from all the alternatives (being killed off, staying behind with other people, or maybe even running into a disagreement with how to handle Ellie), having her bit by an infected was the most traumatic — and arguably the best — choice from a character and story point of view.
Perhaps more than ever before, we now fully understand the consequences of being not too careful, and we can also see how much Joel has progressed in 20 years. He is now aware that it’s all about survival and not getting too attached to anyone around you, so it’s going to be interesting how that faith in humanity and himself is restored with his upcoming adventure with Ellie. She is now the key to curing the entire human race, but perhaps most importantly to us, to healing Joel. His arc is now laid out in front of our eyes, and I cannot wait to see how it plays out.
Bella Ramsey (Ellie) and Anna Torv (Tess) in HBO’s The Last of Us.
The second episode of The Last of Us is also Neil Druckmann’s directorial debut outside of the video game world. This was probably the perfect one for him, as it balanced both emotionally-driven scenes (the cold open, Tess’ sacrifice), long trekking sequences (the first half of the second act), and some action that was not overloaded — the script never attempts to overstate the importance of the story of the episode, and while we feel the stakes of every scene, we never have the sense that this might be it for our characters. As a downside, though, the scene with the clickers felt a bit underwhelming, particularly since it was the first one and had a major impact on one of our three main characters. At the time, it felt less important than it should have been, mostly because it was done through simple, hand-held camera shots and a couple of well-placed edits.
The biggest drawback for The Last of Us continues to be the second act; it was arguably the weakest part of the first episode, and once again, Infected features a low-stakes mid-section. That being said, one of the highlights of the episode was probably the first one-on-one scene between Joel and Ellie, where the dynamics between the two characters were quickly established; a massive advertisement of what to expect next week.
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann will be back next Sunday with a new episode, which promises to be a doozy one — Joel and Ellie are now on their own against a world filled with zombies, and HBO has even confirmed an 80-minute runtime! Stay tuned for more on The Last of Us next week.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
