what's left of us

The Last of Us, The Leftovers, and loving in the face of certain doom

(spoilers for The Last of Us s1e3)

(and also The White Lotus now that i think about it)

(The Leftovers is discussed but i don’t think i’ve actually spoiled anything)

there will be far superior reviews written about this episode by people who have loved and lost better than i have. your time would probably be better spent seeking out those. but if you’re not already reviewed-out, here’s another!

DISCLAIMER: this is solely an evaluation of the show as a standalone entity, not as an adaptation. i’ve never played the game because i’ve never had a playstation. why isn’t every game available on every console? feels like leaving money on the table. but i don’t know anything about the economics of gaming (please DO NOT explain it to me!!! there are many things i’m very content knowing nothing about and if you try to change that i will come to your house and smack you across the mouth).

most viewers seemed to love last night’s meditative episode of The Last of Us, a shockingly tender love story between Frank & Bill (Nick Offerman & Murray Bartlett: i’ll admit i didn’t think it would work!!!) woven through the twenty years since the pandemic’s outbreak. it’s a fantastic piece of television, and to me, the reception’s totally warranted, though it’s already been cheapened by the influx of nauseating 2010 headlines like “We Just Watched The Last Of Us And We Are NOT Okay” (‘we’ = three AI algorithms in a trenchcoat) and “Not Murray Bartlett Making Us Feel All The Things!!!” and “Nick Offerman Could Mow Down My Family With That Shitty Chevy S-10 And I Would Testify In Court On His Behalf".

the acclaim hasn’t been totally universal, though: there have been (very) few detractors, especially from some queer viewers who felt it played into the “kill your gays” trope, reducing Frank & Bill to mere sacrificial lambs for Ellie & Joel’s main storyline.

not everyone’s going to like everything. but when so much media now is plastic, performative allyship — convenient onscreen nods to marginalized groups often papering over ruthless antilabor treatment behind the scenes — i do think it’s important to consider the perspective of the people who are supposed to feel represented by these stories. some of the harsher analysis of this episode has been done thoughtfully, but i find myself disagreeing with most of it.

for one thing, people becoming collateral damage for a messianic figure — in this case, zombie-immune Ellie — is a totally standard element of dystopian fiction. take Children of Men, a pretty perfect movie that rests, much more viciously, on the exact same thing: wanton sacrifice in service of an impossible hope.

the main difference here is Frank & Bill don’t actually know about Ellie’s condition, so their death isn’t really a sacrifice. their final day together is one great exhale, a sense of finally going home to rest. particularly after Anna Torv (where are my fellow Fringeheads!!!!) met her sickening end in last week’s episode, i was happy these characters, who’d managed to gain my love and trust in under an hour, were getting the peaceful end they deserved — a kindness denied to almost everyone in this world. their deaths also have agency, which softens the edge of tragedy. it’s a more generous ending than a lot of queer characters enjoy (including Murray himself in The White Lotus!!).

as for the burly, flannel-clad elephant in the room — nick offerman playing gay — i’m not going to wade too deeply into the “should straight actors play queer roles” discourse for two reasons. ONE: i don’t think that many actors are actually straight. take three-time onscreen lesbian cate “i will fight to the death to play gay roles” blanchett. anything you want to tell us, babe?? and TWO: i think there’s a difference between perpetuating offensive mockeries (like casting a straight person to play ‘flamboyant’ or whatever; that’s lazy and gross and people will rightfully call that out) and this strange new genre of queerbaiting like whatever the fuck is going on with daniel craig. is it problematic? probably. is it hot/fun? i think two things can be true. he and cate have the same publicist and it’s Lazlo.

but i don’t think this performance falls into either of those categories. nick offerman did a great job. for a lifelong closeted character who uses isolation to mask his own desire and capacity for love, a man who desperately wants something to protect but is terrified to pay the price of vulnerability, you could do a lot worse than ron swanson.

are parts of the episode imperfect/overly saccharine? sure. i think it could’ve done without the wedding. the Arby’s exchange was funny but felt shoehorned in (the handwritten “hehehehehe” was a much better laugh). the “twist” that Bill also drank the poison was a bit too Shakespearean for my taste. when the first strings of ‘On The Nature of Daylight’ hit i moaned “oh, not this.” that song is a controlled substance scientifically engineered to make people cry (and i did!), but it’s also a genuinely stunning piece of music. something often lost in the hyper-ironized cynicism of media criticism: just because something moves many people to tears doesn’t make it bait. not everything is This Is Us!!!!

i haven’t stopped thinking about this since i watched it, which was only twelve hours ago. (like Frank saying he hasn’t eaten for two days, doesn’t sound very long out loud. but it feels long.) it left me feeling fulfilled and bereft, this life-affirming heartbreak that was somehow familiar. then i remembered the last time something moved me in this way: the final season of The Leftovers.

the best way i know how to pitch The Leftovers — like Industry, a criminally underseen and underappreciated HBO drama i spent my days hawking long before i was employed by the same network — is that it conjures up a feeling in me that i can only otherwise access when thinking about death. this is, understandably, not a selling point for everyone.

like The Last of Us, The Leftovers deals with humanity’s fallout after a sudden, unthinkable tragedy: 2% of the world’s population disappearing in a rapture-type event known as “The Departure.” In The Leftovers, the world is able to keep on spinning, though everyone left is predictably a little broken forever — some, depending on who you lost, more than others.

the shows have a lot of other overlaps, too: incredible casts full of people you know from that thing getting to flex their full muscles. flashbacks that flow seamlessly with the plot. perfect singalongs and needle drops. (i hope Linda Ronstadt makes a million dollars off of last night’s episode. continue the trend of women whose art peaked in the 80s making a surprise mint in their golden years. also, is it TLOU canon that Linda Ronstadt and Kate Bush both died of Cordyceps? probably!)

The Leftovers is at its best when it’s at its most impossible. among the best episodes are the ones in which Justin Theroux enters an alternate universe / dream-state to play an international assassin. HE DOES THIS TWICE. AND IT TOTALLY WORKS BOTH TIMES. it is impossible to overhype this show. it’s almost infuriating how much the audacity pays off.

but, in a series about impending apocalypse and death cults and multiverse assassinations, the most impossible thing is how these characters keep showing up for one another. they fail each other in increasingly unforgivable ways. and yet they cross oceans and decades and universes to find one another again. if “bleak optimism” is a genre, this show is its bible.

there is already a ton of excellent writing about The Leftovers, and it’s too early to decide what The Last Of Us is really about. but, at least last night, the heart of these stories was the same: they’re about continuing to love when you’ve been given every reason to stop trying. they’re about what you decide to leave behind.

“blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit.” this is what i think about when i think about dying. i’ve had a wonderful life and if i were hit by a bus tomorrow (very possible — there’s not a crosswalk on my street and there really should be), it would be okay. i’ve been happy and lucky and loved. the only thing that would make me sad is missing out on those trees, not getting to see all the people i cherish grow and flourish and enjoy the full lives they all deserve.

but that’s the whole thing, isn’t it? you don’t refuse to write the story because you might not get to see how it ends. i have never been in love with anyone, but i’ve been in love at people, and vice versa. it’s not a nice feeling, to love without equilibrium; to hold out your heart with open palms and have its intended recipient politely press your fingers closed. we keep doing it anyway. love is a currency with no guaranteed return on investment. we give it away for free.

(the human instinct to relentlessly pursue love, for all its inefficiencies, is the boldest rebuke of the “capitalism is human nature” argument i can imagine. terrible prospects! very bleak market outlooks! yet we’re all in.)

i didn’t see the end of Frank & Bill’s story as some trite queer tragedy. i saw it as an act of radical, selfless love: not just for each other, but for the world they left behind. i’ve never known a love like theirs, but i’ve grasped it in other forms. when you have the privilege of knowing love on earth, any kind of love, it dims the parts of you that are cynical and selfish and scared. it forces you to live beyond yourself. you write a sweet goodbye note for some guy you didn’t even like. you surrender your possessions, your home, for the benefit of people you will never know. you leave the window open. someone in the world breathes a little easier because you were in it.