“The Last Of Us” is about The Best and Worst Of Us

Dystopian stories are the deep cuts

When the world is falling apart around us, people show their true colors. They show us what they’re made of. They show us what their true nature is.

I’ve always been fascinated with dystopian stories, if only because the things people do when society collapses on itself are mighty interesting. The awful and beautiful things humans are capable of never cease to amaze me.

Call me sick and twisted, but there was something interesting about the COVID pandemic for the same reason. You got to see who people really were. What they believed, who they believed, who they were. Relationships ended over this thing, and it wasn’t exactly the zombie apocalypse. Friendships were ruined over masking and vaccines for crying out loud. It was a tiny fraction of what is actually possible and even likely when the world eventually falls apart.

Not to mention that to some sick and twisted people, change — any kind of change — is interesting. Compelling. Novel. Like when a heavy snowfall blankets the earth and things go silent. Or when a massive tragedy occurs and people come together. When people are forced into collective action of some kind, interesting things happen.

My wife and I started watching The Last Of Us, and I can’t get enough. It’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Last night we watched the third episode, and I couldn’t sleep afterwards. Not because it was sad or scary, which it was, but because it was so human.

*If you haven’t watched episode three yet, beware of the spoilers ahead.

We are taken back to 2003, when the pandemic first struck. We meet Bill who is played by Nick Offerman, who is apparently a doomsday prepper/survivalist. He hides in his basement bunker when the authorities come to “relocate” the town’s population. Being the only remaining resident of the town, he takes measures to secure it and build a life on his own.

A few years go by. Frank, played by Murray Bartlett, comes along. Bill reluctantly welcomes Frank into his fortress of solitude, and the two share a meal. They eventually find love amidst unspeakable tragedy and loneliness, and spend their lives together. They fight, they argue, they build and rebuild, they enjoy life and love the best they can. Sunny days and cold nights, living out the years in isolation.

As they age, they encounter sicknesses that cannot be treated. They garden, they care for each other, they make art, they live a beautiful life. Having no way out of the suffering of cancer, Frank asks Bill to overdose him with drugs. They spend their last beautiful day together in August of 2023. They get married, and have one last meal together.

Instead of only putting the drugs into Frank’s drink, Bill has already put enough drugs in the bottle of wine to kill a horse. They both drink, they smile, and Bill wheels Frank back to the bedroom where they will die in each other’s arms.

In just these few episodes, you see more emotion and more attention to the human condition than you typically see in a post-apocalyptic thriller. The writers go out of their way to show that there’s a beauty underlying all the tragedy, and this episode shows it.

It demonstrates that a show about the apocalypse can be multi-faceted. It can be deep and sweet, because the nature of love isn’t always the same. It shows us that there are amazing stories left to be told, even at the end of the world.

I can’t wait to see what other subplots and themes about the human condition emerge. This may have been the best hour of TV I’ve ever seen.

The kind that I’ll be thinking about far into the future.

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