The end of the LAST OF US pilot again returns to the two scenes I wrote about yesterday, which I won't mention again here other than to say that the ending is a clear response to that second one, a way of showing us how much of the old Joel is still in there, still desperate to *mumble mumble watch the pilot mumble mumble.* And there's a sense there at the end that he's invested.
The way that the ending plays out, and echoes the opening, has a certainly literary flair, but it also runs the risk of seeming a bit too pat. It's a bit convenient, really, that he'd be faced with the same situation. I love a bookend, but the danger is always that you call attention to yourself and the work in such a way that pulls the audience out of the story. You want the audience to cheer because you're that fucking good, not because you just wrote a scene in which you take a bow, basically.
But then, at the start of 102, we get Joel actually NOT all in, in fact not in at all. Like, he wants to murder the girl, and has to be talked out of it. Which feels a lot more right.
Now, from a writing standpoint the way you justify that contradiction is that at the end of the pilot he's operating on instinct. Honestly, I'm not a fan of that kind of justification; they fall into the broader category of "(s)hey crazy" justifications that writers often use basically to get what they want. (See: Almost every major plot point in OZARK.**) But given that we spent 40 minutes at the start of the pilot building that justification, it's not like Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann didn't do their best to pave that runway.
** I loved a lot about OZARK. Some incredible performances there. But the number of times the plot turned on someone completely losing their shit or the introduction of someone new who was clearly crazy was A LOT.
But the bigger thing that struck me is how the move to have Joel now refusing to help Ellie is enabled by the weekly episodic structure of THE LAST OF US. It's not uncommon for a series to end the pilot in a way that suggests a definitive direction for the main character(s), and then have that determination fall apart right away in the second episode. It can seem like a bit of a cheat, and it is a little bit like the old serials where it looks like the hero is falling into the mouth of the shark and then in the next week's film he gets caught by the heroine swinging by on a vine.
And there are definitely shows that get lost in this one beat. Like, you're in episode 4 or 5 and once again we're back to "I'm not doing this shit!" And it feels repetitive and also undermines our care in the character. It's true, nobody likes a whiner.
But if there's one point where you can almost definitely get away with it (i.e. the audience will cut you some slack), it's the top of the second episode. The way I think about it is, the end of the pilot is the promise of the show. This is what this show is going to be: Joel protecting Ellie.
But promise doesn't mean it's what every episode is going to show; it means where the show will eventually get to. So yeah, you can backtrack in the top of 102 with a good reason (and Joel and Tess definitely have one). That's a pretty classic Two Step, actually. But then that's the problem that the episode has to solve.
There can still be more room for development in that issue, too. Again, it's the promise. But you have to be careful not to get repetitive. Having played the game, I should know where 103 and 104 are headed, but I can't remember exactly how they pan out. From a storytelling standpoint, what I'd like to see happen is that, faced with another opportunity to bail, Joel makes the decision of his own to see things through, and not because he's forced to. There could be reasons for doing that which have nothing to do with Ellie. But we definitely don't want a repeat of the feet dragging, or deciding yes under intense duress. Because they've now played that card two episodes in a row.
