Yeah… I’ll still watch the season, but I was also surprised by how sloooow this episode was, especially how it chooses to end itself.
With Part 1/Part 2, the one game ending on a tense note, the other starting addressing that tense note (Joel/Tommy opening scene) and then giving us a final cutscene of “normalcy” between Joel and Ellie before the time skip where things feel more isolating and drastically changed, there’s purpose to the unease it throws you, and fits the game’s depressing tone very well. (You only hear vague details about the Dance night, off-screen plans with Joel to look forward to, a clear “rugged survivor” tone to Ellie to show her evolution in being independent and more mature)
The game’s opening scene with Joel explaining his secret to Tommy, up until the Title Card for the game, is absolutely 10/10 peak, “Oh no consequences are gonna happen!” regarding Part 1. The TV show doesn’t hold a candle especially since it offers too little characterization of Abby’s group for it to have that same oomph before the time skip.
With the show, in terms of Joel and Ellie, the tone feels all over the place and way too casual or normal for most of the runtime, and only finally gets interesting by the end when it starts to reveal its cards regarding the pair’s strained relationship. Then it just ends.
- I like how it incorporates Joel’s construction background in showing how he supports Jackson day-to-day (something the game barely touches), but it could have benefitted from showing him still stuck in his ruthless, dark survivor ways, either in a brief excursion, or conflict with a character.
- Ellie’s scenes are all over the place. Her behaving incredibly recklessly while on patrol with Tommy, then acting incredibly immature with Dina when tracking Infected later… even doing a whole ‘charades’ bit with a knife while sneaking/hiding from incredibly dangerous clickers around a corner…!! It feels hokey. The pair had a silly dynamic in the game for levity, but not to a life-threatening degree in a clearly dangerous situation.
Apart from that, Bella Ramsey is great at being more distant and angsty to Joel, clearly holding something back behind those eyes the show will reveal later. - I don’t mind shifting some of the end-game scenes of Jackson to early on here… It makes sense chronologically, and establishes the new norms of character relationships, while still being vague as to the root of their issue.
- Speaking of Root, the reveal of mushroom tendrils in the construction pipe was a freaky reveal, and I think is HBO setting up both a cool way to explain a massive herd of infected finding their way to Jackson, and a way for Joel and Ellie to be pushed out of Jackson, confronted with the Horde, and bump into Abby without it feeling like 3 coincidences happening at the same time on a random tuesday afternoon…
Honestly I found the premiere great at expanding on and featuring scenes that either the game didn’t or couldn’t show, because it’s a stealth-action game and it could have disrupted the pacing. (I still believe we needed more Jackson scenes in-game before the Big Moment, really flesh out the world and “new normal”)
And the show does that! It really remixes when certain Jackson scenes take place, putting a lot of the late-game flashbacks to That Fateful Day by the end of the episode, and takes its time with letting us soak in these beloved characters. (Also it has a TENSE AF Stalker infected scene, I didn’t know they’d pull off their spookyness so well, and expands on characters like Eugene from the game with a new related character…)
But Episode 1 could definitely have been 30 minutes longer. Give the audience a bit of a bigger cliffhanger. Reveal more about Abby’s group showing up at the end for a darker impact. Or something more interesting as a hook than just “hey the guys from the opening scene showed up”.
Season 1 had a packed 90 minute premiere, and took its time establishing the world, but also some character mysteries, the main inciting incident, and a neat bow tying together the depressing opening with Sarah to Joel’s trauma coming back to haunt him with Ellie suddenly under his protection.
I’m not sure how else Episode 1 could have ended, other than Golf being a very clear hard-cut major moment, but I know why they might not want to play that hand in the very first episode – especially with Pedro Pascal on the payroll…)
6 Episodes after this. Wow. Really.
From what I can gather from trailers, I bet we’re getting one more Jackson episode, a full Flashback episode on the WLF/Seraphite conflict like the Bill Episode in S1, then the rest for Ellie’s Seattle Quest and a sprinkle of Abby’s Motivation Reveal somwhere in there…
For some reason I have a hard time believing it’ll have enough time to get to The Theater Confrontation as the final scene, but Craig and Neil have mentioned they’ll be playing around with and adapting parts of the Game script in entirely new ways if it serves the TV format better.
