ONE
Ellie practices with her handgun in front of a decrepit bathroom mirror. Partly she’s watching herself look cool, but she also unloads the magazine and inspects the weapon, learning it. She reloads it and slides it into her backpack.
TWO
Outside, they’re at an overgrown gas station with cars parked nearby. Joel siphons the tanks. She’s talkative and curious, he’s curt and taciturn. From her backpack she pulls out a paperback: No Pun Intended, Volume Too. (His face is priceless as she reads the jokes with joyful comedic timing.)
THREE
As they drive down an interstate, Ellie passes him a Hank Williams cassette from her backpack. She’s sitting in the backseat. Reaching under the front, she finds a men’s magazine and starts exclaiming about the centerfold. (Remember, this was Bill’s truck.) Laughing at how flustered she’s made Joel, she tosses the magazine out the window.
FOUR
The truck continues while Hank plays, over. (It’s road music during a road trip montage.) They pass grazing buffalo, the skeleton of a roller coaster, a bridge over a river littered with capsized boats. Ellie’s on the lookout for military tanks and finds a field of derelicts. The highway, while still passable, has encroaching weeds and broken pieces of asphalt. (“Alone and Forsaken”, a song about a woman, juxtaposes with Ellie’s view of a lost America to create a different meaning.)
Joel pulls off the road, through a field, and into the woods for the evening. He uses a camp stove to heat “20 year old Chef Boyardee ravioli”. Ellie, chilled, would like a fire. No, Joel says. It’s too remote for infected; people are the fear.
They bed down in sleeping bags, the good-smelling one being Frank’s, lol. Using her flashlight, Ellie looks at the Pun book. She tries to get Joel with a joke, but he already knows the punchline. As she’s falling asleep, Ellie wants reassurance that the scary people won’t find them. Joel gives her verbal assurance, but dissolve to later when he’s standing watch with the rifle. In the morning they pack up and leave. (As an aside, it appears that Ellie’s never had coffee before. Does anyone drink coffee now, besides prepper Bill?) Joel has a thermos full of it for the road.
With 25 hours of driving ahead of them, Ellie asks to hear about Joel’s brother. Tommy, Joel says, is a “joiner”. He joined the Army out of high school; after the outbreak he joined a group that led them to Boston; he joined the Fireflies. Inevitably, Tommy becomes disillusioned and joins something else. Tommy is family, though, so Joel will pursue him to keep him safe. Tess was like family. Ellie, Joel says, is cargo.
SWITCH
Later, as Ellie naps, Joel’s forced to slow. An urban underpass is blocked by dead cars. He parks and takes a look. The road on the far side is clear. Consulting the atlas, Joel decides they can take a ramp around Kansas City and get back on track.
FIVE
The city is confusing and ominous. They can’t find the onramp. The camera focuses on a pile of burned bodies. The QZ is vacant, FEDRA nowhere in sight. A voice calls to them. A man, limping in the street, acts as a decoy while another on the fire escape drops a weight on them, smashing the windshield as Joel punches the gas. Dodging gunfire, Joel crashes into a laundromat. He sends Ellie through a hole in the wallboard while he returns fire.
Joel shoots and kills two of them, but is caught by a third during his reload. The man kneels on him, pressing the rifle over his throat. Ellie comes from the hole with her handgun and shoots the man in the back, saving Joel’s life. The attacker is still alive; he pleads for his life, crying like a child. Recovering, Joel holds out his hand for Ellie’s gun. Get back behind the wall, he says, and she scurries. With the camera on Ellie, we hear the pleading stop. They sneak out the back, but more cars come down the street toward the laundromat.
We shift to a man in a jail cell being questioned. A woman in a down coat, Kathleen, reads a list of names to see if the man will rat them out. She is threatening and he is worried. She reveals that her brother was beaten to death while in custody. However, the doctor won’t give up Henry’s whereabouts, even with a gun to his head. A honking horn distracts Kathleen..
People gather outside around the men Joel killed. Kathleen blames Henry, that he radioed for help. She goes inside and shoots the doctor, then returns. Kill who did this, she tells her people. They load up in trucks and search the city, busting down doors.
Joel and Ellie hide in a bar with newspaper over its front window. When the coast is clear they’ll head for a tall building. Joel doesn’t like that he put Ellie in a position where she had to shoot someone. He apologizes and she wipes tears away. Then she tells him it wasn’t her first time killing someone. He returns her gun and checks her grip on it. While he strips the boards over the door, Ellie slips the gun into her coat pocket. Out they go.
Cut to Kathleen at the laundromat. Her second-in-command, Perry, leads her into a building’s attic.
SIX
A child’s art is taped to the walls and empty cans litter the floor. Two people are in the superman-like drawings. Henry and Sam are out of food.
SEVEN
Perry also shows her the basement. The concrete floor is cracked and sunken. While they look at it, the floor undulates, and they run out. Against Perry’s advice, Kathleen decides to deal with this after they’ve found the trespassers.
EIGHT
At night in an alleyway, Joel hoists Ellie through a small window. They’re in the bottom floor of the tall building. Only 45 flights of stairs to go.
On a landing Ellie asks how Joel knew the “injured” guy was an ambush. “I’ve been on both sides,” he answers. He, Tess, Tommy, and others did what they had to do to survive. He won’t answer Ellie’s question, “Did you kill innocent people?”
They break into an apartment on the 33rd floor, Joel spreading broken glass as an alarm system. In the dark he asks Ellie about her earlier comment, who she hurt. Ellie won’t answer. Joel again apologizes that someone her age must deal with the violence. She replies that his right ear is hard of hearing. Then she lays a pun on him. He tries not to laugh but he can’t help himself. They giggle together in the dark.
NINE
Later, Ellie shouts his name, waking him. Someone holds a gun on her. A child with red face paint holds a gun on Joel. The boy, smiling slightly, puts his finger to his lips. Roll credits.
CRITICAL NOTES
The Two/Eight is charming. I wouldn’t say a book of puns is Trouble (well, maybe, haha) but it is the set-up for the joke at the climax. If the Eight will be contemplative and quiet, this kind of Two is very good. It’s a fun change from zombie-chasing.
The Seven decision — pursue Joel and Ellie, Henry and Sam — has a marginal outcome in this episode. The decision to ignore the pulsing concrete bulge is another thing, though. I like that the Seven beat here gives us ramifications that encompass two episodes.
Because these beats are strong, the Three and Six are identified, even if they don’t make sense. I do like the child’s artwork at the Six. It’s visually strong and mysterious. Mirroring it with a magazine at the Three is a stretch. Bill’s blue centerfold is artwork of a sort, lol, but it’s visually very different. Ellie has a childlike glee at Joel’s embarrassment, so the tone mirrors. Meh, it is what it is. I’ll count them as legitimate beats.
Great Nine and Switch.