FIRST TIME WATCHING: TLOU S2E6

The reason the solar system at the museum could still light up despite there being no apparent working electrical infrastructure in the building is because the crank produces the electricity through a spinning copper winding. You didn't miss what Ellie saw - you said fireflies. That was the significance - it reminded her of Salt Lake City and her doubt about Joel's honesty about what happened there with the Fireflies he massacred.

They built the museum set. It looks pretty much just like the game. They even built some other sections we didn't get to see. The space capsule was also built to spec (more or less) by the props dept. Attention to detail above and beyond :).

The death of Eugene, he was turning and most likely wouldn't have made it to the town, when he said he didn't expect cordyceps to feel cold he was feverish and getting confused. Joel shouldn't have made the promise but it was doomed to begin with he never really had a chance to make it to Jacksonville

The drawing with the moths, her greater purpose is her death! This show is so freaking well done.

“I only noticed a tree, some moss and some fireflies!?” 😭😭😭 NATALIE! 😂 FIREFLIES!!! It took me a second too, and I gasped. A moment of beautiful subtlety that shows when Ellie began to really question what happened in Salt Lake City, and she lingered with that for almost 4 more years. The weight of her knowing but not being able to bring herself to ask him, and Joel sensing that she knows but his fear and guilt and love for Ellie forcing him to take the pain she harbours because of him☹️ Painfully human moments like that remind me of why this show/franchise is so good. Pedro’s face in that final conversation… incredible acting, I miss him so much 😭 both Ellie and Joel know that what he did was selfish, but it was also out of love - that strange, indescribable love that only a parent could have for their child. And so, what else could she do going forward, if not TRY to forgive him for what he did. To acknowledge it, try to rectify it in some way, and try to move forward together. Painful because it mirrors a lot of Parent/Child dynamics, where se usually inherit the best of our parents, but often times we get some of their pain too. Some of that trauma and fear and guilt that they pick up along the way finds itself in us, and the cycle continues. It doesn’t excuse what he did of course, but I believe Joel’s father WAS a better dad than his grandpa was, and in turn Joel WAS a better dad than HIM. But he still managed to hurt his child, even through actions he thought were justified. Raising a kid is tough, and all we can ever do is hope that when the time comes, we do a little better than them

The fact that that Joel’s shadow was back in the title sequence 😭

Okay, this episode kills me and I already know how Nat is going to react because it's how I do when I even think about it. Last Patreon I'm watching on this episode.... I may be using my anxiety bear.

On the positive side of things, she will have a fun time on Friday with Tremors and will not need a Tissue.

Even if you took the infected out of this show, it still would be a great emotional drama, as Nat would say Sound design 10/10, Production 10/10, Acting 10/10, Story 10/10 a definite GOLDEN RATING 💛💛🥇

This episode might have redeemed Season 2 for me. Joel didn't need to be killed off — I will NEVER agree with that narrative choice and the unforgivable betrayal of the original characters — but at least this episode wasn't a complete character assassination of Joel, like the episodes that preceded it. The last scene with Joel and Ellie played out differently than in the game, combining two pivotal scenes into one, which worked in this episode... but might deprive a future episode of its emotional impact. Since the TLOU show changed and compressed things to give the porch scene more emotional drama, it's so disappointing that they changed Ellie famous lines: "I was supposed to die in that hospital. My life would’ve f^cking mattered. But you took that from me." Unnecessarily ADDING "You took that from everyone," to demonize Joel and blame him for depriving the world of the cure. I also disliked that Joel just nodded that the cure was real -- that's just what Maureen told him and the quack doctor believed. Real doctors NEVER guarantee outcomes; they always qualify their predictions with less than 100% odds of success. The cure was a long shot at best, and infeasible given the Fireflies apparently only had a single doctor and their numbers had dwindled to under 30 people. In comparison, it took tens of thousands of doctors and scientists, and every government and private sector resource, to create the COVID-19 vaccines. Neil Druckman wants us to believe that one quack doctor would've successfully made a cure from killing Ellie, the Fireflies had the capability to mass produce it, and Maureen would've shared it freely with everyone on Earth. NO, I don't believe that for a second. I don't care that it's Neil Druckman's story, so he can say whatever he wants; that doesn't make it good writing. By that logic, Druckman could've made Ellie the next messiah and given her the ability to cure people with her magical touch. Would the Neil Druckman cultists have zealously supported that alternate version? If they were going to make a change to Ellie's lines, it should've been Joel telling Ellie that her life mattered to him, and her purpose wasn't to sacrifice herself to cure everyone, rather the two of them to become the family they lost. Also, a cure would just prevent more people from being infected. There are still MILLIONS of Infected in the world that will bite and tear people apart. The Infected horde's attack on Jackson still would've happened. My takeaway from this episode was that the problem with Season 2 has been Ellie's mischaracterization as an adult. The early flashbacks showed that Joel and Ellie's surrogate father-daughter relationship didn't sour immediately after he lied to her at the end of the first season. They were happy and had a good relationship up until her 17th birthday, when everything seemed to unravel. Joel was portrayed as the greatest dad in the world for his amazing gifts for Ellie's 15th and 16th birthdays, and Ellie was wonderful at those ages. The FIRST HALF of this episode was PERFECT. I think this proves that it's the writing and direction of 19-year-old Ellie that is the problem. They made Ellie unlikeably angry and insufferably arrogant by choice. It's not Ellie's character or Bella Ramsy's performance, because she was great in the first half of this episode. I also thought it was structurally flawed to skip past Ellie's 18th birthday and go to 19. At the very least, there should've been an impetus for Ellie to compose the list of questions about Joel's fake story, especially considering that Ellie admitted in Episode 3 that it's not like her to write things down or think before she speaks. Also, Ellie's ultimatum was to give Joel one last chance to tell her the truth, which implied that she asked him about it before, but Joel stuck to his lie. Why not show that in a segment on Ellie's 18th birthday instead of skipping it entirely? I disagree with Joel's decision regarding Eugene, but Ellie's decision to out Joel's well-intended lie to Gail was 100% wrong, because Ellie traumatized Gail even worse. It was Ellie's FIRST patrol and she wasn't taking it seriously. It shows how arrogant Ellie was to disagree with how Joel handled Eugene when clearly the patrols had an established protocol for handling people who got infected, to protect everyone in Jackson. Ellie herself told Dina that she knew how ridiculous her immunity claim was and that everyone who gets bitten will say anything to avoid getting put down. So Ellie should've understood that Eugene couldn't be trusted -- especially after he tried pulling a gun on Joel to get his way! Also, if Eugene wanted Gail to be the last person he saw before he died, that would've meant shooting Eugene with Gail to witness it -- or risk Eugene turning infected and Gail's last memory of her husband being a twitching, ravenous zombie trying to kill her. Joel could've handled it better, but his caution protected people. Overall, this was a good episode and a return to form after 3 sub-par episodes. I'm looking forward to the finale, but I really dislike there are only 7 episodes this season. It's such a cop out after the critical and commercial success of Season 1. HBO knew they were splitting the story from TLOU2 game in half, and everyone knows the POV shifts to Abby for the latter half, so WHY didn't they film them concurrently? Except for episode 2 (and probably 7), Ellie and Abby's stories run parallel to each other, so it would have been easy to film them during the same production, just like Game of Thrones, which was filmed in multiple locations around the world. Or begin filming Abby's episodes immediately after production wrapped on Season 2, to reduce the wait between seasons. Instead, we have to wait 2 YEARS because they haven't even started filming the other half yet.

No tissues for this episode? “That a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for her.”

I think that was one of Joey Pant's best performances and as a cameo too.

Rookie move! Always bring tissues to a TLOU reaction.

"If I were to lose you, I'd surely lose myself." - is also the lyrics Ellie said when she picked up that guitar in the store. There's a part in the museum where Ellie tries hats on the other dinosaurs in the game that they filmed for the episode but didn't put it in.

You always need tissues if Pedro's in it 😭

Happy Thursday Nat. Not an episode to forget your tissues for 😭 The museum scene in the game is definitely one of the highlights and the show did a good job of recreating it, even if it was slightly shorter. You'll maybe also recall that Ellie put some coffee beans on Joel's grave. This is a call back to this moment which we hadn't seen at that time ☕ Season Finale episode next week. Looking forward to seeing what they do with it. Thanks for your reaction today Nat 💛

Natalie the thing you missed was that she noticed the Fireflies and it brought her back to that Hospital, and thinking about it.

What's up with the early posts? Loveing it👍💯

This season hasn’t been my favorite, but this episode was beautiful. It was nice/heartbreaking seeing the ups and downs of their relationship. The porch scene in the game is my favorite scene in all of TLOU and I was looking forward to seeing it in the show. I really appreciate how they adapted it - Pedro and Bella were both great.

Mental health check for nat. What’s the over under on total minutes spent crying?

Bought a subscription for this one) let's go