Broadly: Another Doomsday Prepping Zombie Apocalypse TV show that’s derivative of, and very likely will turn out to be, an ersatz Children of Men.


Ep. 3 – “Long Long Time”

Here we go: Structurally, LoU Ep3 dives deep into a parallel plot that provides the audience a snapchat of one example of a Very Meaningful Thing that happened off-camera within the greater Last of Us Universe. We are meant to infer that there are many more Very Meaningful Things occurring similar to this example, and we are meant to fill in for ourselves whatever texture, depth, and details we might ascribe to such other analogous ‘modern love’ events that must have occurred/be occurring in the postapocalyptic fungi world. Fair.

But this episode was predictable to the point of saccharine sentimentality. For example: who among us needs to be beaten over the head with a metaphor as blunt as trading-the-gun-for-strawberry-seeds, followed by the predictable strawberry patch euphoria?—yeesh. Linda Rondstadt’s eponymous “Long Long Time” bookending the episode is almost as boilerplate as using the uninventive, overplayed, Max Richter wise-sad-resignation-heartstring-tugging cello piece. And who among us was surprised when they both drank the wine, a trope so predictable, so formulaic, that Fred/Armond seems to almost mock it when he tells Bill/Ron that the act is “from an objective point of view… incredibly romantic.” Friends, nothing makes romance romantic like telling us it is so—what a manufactured moment. The joke of Fred and Bill respectively “trapping/catching” one another in holes of sorts?—fine ok that was clever enough.

Prepper Takeaway (also pretty boilerplate): Self-sufficience, independency, self-reliance, there are all prepper virtues, and prepper myths. Even in the most ideal examples of these virtues (Bill before Fred arrives) living alone is only fun for a little bit, before it become profoundly unfun and lonely. Sure, you might survive the Zombies, but can you survive being utterly alone? Depression/Suicide, one could say, is one of the effects of the Zombie apocalypse, if you can’t survive that, then what? Unless, of course you have built some sort of community, which Bill barely does, then you can live for a long long time… and still commit suicide, having learned, as he does, that life doesn’t have meaning without other people to anchor one’s sense of purpose.

As much as I really wanted to love this episode (because who doesn’t love Ron and Armand), I give this contrived prepper-romance two thumbs down.

Onto the next episode.