Josh Vallejo Content

these were some brief notes I took on my second rewatch of episode one, season two of the last of us. poorly transcribe.

Why did they add the weird cut at the beginning of the iconic okay shot? Joel guilt?
We know they went to jackson, to show the parallel of Salt Lake Crew?

 Salt Last Crew! YAY!

Is it implied that this is all that survived? Why is Owen so old?!?! Why did they call Joe(L) handsome? is it impplied they didn’t know what surgery jerry was performing? they don’t know about ellie? HUGE CHANGES BEING IMPLIED HERE
SLOWLY?! Abby…WHAT!?😳

Same intro……no noticeable difference in the graphics, very interesting!

JACKSON 😱 

I love seeing the community and the working city of Jackson; it looks fantastic. 

Jesse you are already perfect!!!

😑Um, excuse me, kiddo is Ellie exclusive, but okay Joel 😑 Joel in therapy is kinda weird but okay, let’s see where this leads 😑

Ellie would never yell about her immunity, but I understand we gotta establish Tommy knows and he’s uncomfortable with the estrangement currently happening okay 😑 fine, I’ll deal with this finding string erasure 😑 (No, I’ll never recover from losing ‘That was you all shooting out there‘🙃) 

Love this family together. Excellent interactions. Adorable child. Grandpa Joel in action 👍

Joel Miller in therapy was just plain weird. It’s a weird narrative choice to include Gail. It’s an even stranger character choice for the character of Joel miller. I hope we get more of Gail and an explanation of Eugene’s death (we should because of shots indicated in the trailer). But Joel Miller, the one I have come to know and love, would never call himself ‘a good guy’ and ask ‘what have I done?’.

Joel is acutely aware of what he has done and why he is estranged from Ellie. He is exteremly aware that he is NOT an innocent man before the end on Part One, and that his actions in the firefly hospital make him irredeemable (stay tuned for his admission of this!) and he WOULD NOT change any of his actions – therapy is not needed for any of this – but it WAS for some reason needed for a TV audience. blerg. Boring. lazy writing. Moving on. 😑

(Such a huge crush on Carathine O’Hara, though. literally, she is perfect.)

The chemistry here is AMAZING. And adding some real moments with them was just beautiful to see. Dina, my most beloved and cherished, SO happy to see this you deserve the entire world. Their relationship is pretty critical to the entire show and extremely happy to see how well it works throughout the entire patrol sequence. 

Extremely dissatisfied with the line “ya know, cause she’s the other one” in regards to Cat and Ellie. Please do better next time writers. 

A BOTTLE????? A DISTRACTION!?!?!?! 😱😱😱😱😱😱

This is good boy erasure and I WONT STAND FOR IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Loved the fall, thought the floor was a subtle nod to gamers in the supermarket, then of course the stalker! WOW, fantastic sequence. 

RUN AT ME MOTHER FUCKER – Ellie so real for that one. Me in any stalker encounter frfr

Felt very meh about this entire thing, I felt the inclusion of this was just to show the audience how Jackson is run, and it was nice to see but for me not nessacary. hopefully its more important in upcoming episodes.

Wow, this is straight outta the game!

This scene played so well! Everything worked! Shout-out to Gustavo Santaolalla having the time of his life at this party! 💃
The Ellie and Dina chemistry was perfect again. And then there was Seth, and THE BODY SLAM! YAS JOEL! 🙌

I’ll admit I gasped out loud when I saw this. I legit thought we were about to get THE scene. But faking it out for audiences was exciting, and the emotional payoff will ultimately be more rewarding I hope for new audience members. 

overall, the changes felt a little strange when it came to joel. but I am excited to see moving forward what they may offer in terms of storying telling and his journey into grandpa joel. I will try and keep an oopen mind with it as i understand its a different joel (i am just protective)
very worried about my beloved abby. she appeared more hell bent on a different form of revenge here. and it felt so different than abby anderson of the games. I sincerely hope we get the exposition the game lacked with abby at the beginning so her revenge and her choices are made more clear from the beginning