Two men meet after the collapse of society. One of them falls into a booby trap, hidden outside the wire-fenced border of the other man’s suburban ghost town. He is bedraggled, hungry. The other man shows sympathy and invites him in for a meal. There is tension in the air. The threat of violence. And yet, the opposite happens – they fall in love. For nearly two decades, these men grow old together, away from the plague that has decimated the world. Eventually, they die together.
This beautiful, heart-pinching story is the focus of “Long Long Time”, the third episode of The Last of Us. Up to this point, HBO’s post-apocalyptic video game adaptation had been a violent dystopian nightmare. There were brutal fights. Traumatic deaths. Viscerally upsetting monsters. At the heart of it were Joel (Pedro Pascal), Tess (Anna Torv) and 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey), picking their way through a ravaged society. In “Long Long Time”, Joel and Ellie’s story is reduced to bookends. For the majority of the near-feature-length episode, we are focused on the gentle, life-affirming relationship between Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett). When we meet Bill, he is a misanthrope – a “Don’t Tread On Me” survivalist who finds himself shockingly adept at navigating life after the fungal armageddon. Frank is softer, and more open, and starts to bring out these qualities in his new partner. As the story progresses, through a series of years-long time jumps, their tentative romance evolves into a lasting, meaningful love. When you hear the phrase “zombie horror”, is this what comes to mind?
