Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
We were the LAST to watch The Last of US | Zombie Book Club #14
We dove deep into the HBO series, The Last of Us. Join us, Leah and Dan, as we discuss the compelling narrative of this show and the unique science behind the cordyceps fungus, a real-life creature that controls its host's body. Being an Xbox diehard, this was Dan and Leah's first time experiencing the story, making for some lively debate and discussion!
So, whether you’re a zombie game enthusiast, a lover of peculiar natural phenomena, or just in it for the laughs, we’ve got something for you. Tune in and enjoy the ride!
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Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club, that's it. The only one, the only one, the only book club where sometimes a book is a show on HBO, or as they call it now, max it's just Max now but sometimes that show is a video game. But that video game was on PlayStation and was exclusive, and I made a terrible decision to be an Xbox diehard and 10 years later I still regret it. I'm sorry, dan. Hi, I'm Dan. Like Leah just said, I'm a writer and when I'm not turning the world into a flat strip of hard black stuff to pay the bills, I'm talking about paving roads. I'm writing a book based in the zombie apocalypse and briefly consider to my serial based outbreak and decided against it because my other passion in life is growing mushrooms and I didn't want to villainize them more than they already have been.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mushrooms are heroes. I'm Leah, and these days people are making apocalypse jokes like there's no tomorrow. That one's great.
Speaker 1:Leah.
Speaker 2:But slow clap crickets. That is a pun from Ellie's no pun intended book. To yeah, the pun intended to from the last of us. We're going to talk about today. Yeah, so I you know you probably can deliver it better, but I tried.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to talk about the last of us this show because, as I said, I had never played the video game, even though I very much wanted to. I was just like when's it coming to Xbox? And then I learned many years later that sometimes things on PlayStation don't come to Xbox ever, but we we record these every two weeks on Sundays. This is our podcast and we're talking about the last of us. I'm going in circles. Leah, help.
Speaker 2:Speaking of circles and circles we've gone through. We're going to do a quick personal life update. Yeah, so I have disclosed to my therapist that I love very much that I have this podcast with Dan, because she was like tell me something good in your life, Because you know you don't really talk about the good things in therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, would you like some ammunition for your diagnosis? Here's some unfiltered raw, because we don't filter ourselves on the podcast.
Speaker 2:No, hi, therapist. I'm not going to say your name in case you don't want me to, but my therapist did specifically request that I ask Dan to tell a story about something that I told her about, and I'm not sure because she won't on the podcast. I'm not sure if it's because they want to psychoanalyze our relationship, which is also fine part of what I pay for or if they're just really curious to hear your take, dan, so I'll set the story up. Last episode we actually talked about our pool and swimming in it.
Speaker 1:It's the 500-mallower blow-up pool.
Speaker 2:I think it's like 18 or should be 18 feet in diameter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, if it was round and it all starts in the summer of 2021, our first summer in our property and it was fucking hot and we have terrible insulation and our house gets literally hotter than the outside and Dan and I were just suffering. So we were lying in our hammock one day and Dan said you know what? We should buy a pool, and the easiest pool to set up is one of those pools that have the blow-up ring around the outside that you just fill it up with water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you know that ring just floats right, it floats up, it's science.
Speaker 2:It's science. That's what you said. It's a four-foot should be four-foot pool, but the problem is that our land is not level, so, dan, take it from there. What happened with our first attempt at this pool?
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't even really remember the offense that went down. Very well, I famously have a terrible memory and that serves me very well in these circumstances where I totally fucked up the pool and I could just claim ignorance. I don't remember that, leah, I don't remember it the way you remember it, sorry. So yeah, we bought this pool and it showed up and I come home from work and I'm just a gross sweaty mess. But sometimes I just have extra motivation and I just decided I was just going to put it up. I'm like how hard could it be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, on the flattest part of our land.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean I don't really remember everything that happened, I just remember I tried and I failed and I was not happy about it. And and Leah comes out and she's like you know, you're supposed to level this, and and I was already in the process of like pulling the pool back off the ground so that I could like get underneath it and like start moving dirt around. We had this giant dirt pile next to our driveway and I'm just carting wheelbarrow fulls of dirt and like laying it out, trying to mitigate this disaster.
Speaker 2:And at this point, just to be clear, there's already quite a bit of water in the pool.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 2:Dan already started filling it up. Do you know what you said to me when I said I think we should stop and make sure the ground is level first?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:And I'm not joking about that.
Speaker 1:I really don't know.
Speaker 2:I believe you, I believe you Get ready for it. I said to you it's not going to work, it's going to tip, or like it's not, it's going to get lopsided and potentially like, spill all the water out and roll down the hill. And you were like no, it's not, it's science because of the, it's science, because of the, of the floating ring that would somehow just like we'll have a deep end and it'll be fine.
Speaker 1:We'll have a deep end and it'll equalize. It'll be fine. That doesn't happen. That's not science as it turns out. I'm not a scientist. I know this comes as a shock to everyone. I I didn't go to science school.
Speaker 2:No, and it did indeed start to spill over and roll down the hill.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I did my best to mitigate that, but it just wasn't enough. I I put like many, many yards of topsoil under the pool and it just like we got it up. We filled it up, but it was very, very, very lopsided. Like scary, precarious Kind of like a triangle here at the end of it until we pulled that pool up in the winter and it was in such bad condition from being crumpled into a heap and buried by ice and snow that we just bought another one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, literally animals had like moved into it and put holes in it, so we had to buy a whole new one. And then I said, you know, dan, this is one of those moments where we should probably like make a plan together so that we both fuck up. Yeah, make ownership for the fuck up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's what we did the next time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what was the result of that, dan?
Speaker 1:Well, we, we again. We did our best. Because of where I work, I do have access to some cool stuff, like I utilized our one ton dump truck, which is just it's like a pickup truck with a dump bed on it. So I went, we went and we got some sand, which isn't, you know, the material that they suggest you use, and I learned why.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did.
Speaker 1:We dug like I was. I was out there. I mean this probably took like two weeks at this point I don't even remember how long it took, but I was hand pickaxing the ground like Vermont is like nothing but rocks under under the grass. It's all rocks.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And we bought like a thing, a roller thing to try and level stuff.
Speaker 1:We used a compact.
Speaker 2:We used stakes in the ground and like strings to try and figure out where the level ground was.
Speaker 1:We were doing so much science.
Speaker 2:But to be clear, I don't think I dug at all. Oh, maybe I did. Actually I did a little bit, but you were most of the brute force in the attempt to level the ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean this is before I got my full like sleep apnea diagnosis. So like I'm out there in 95 degree heat just digging away with a pickaxe with 59 percent blood oxygen levels, Just like barely staying on my feet. And Leah was was really great because she's like you know, you should like not work so hard and like take a rest and have some. I did, yeah, you were took. He took really good care of me, but I'm like I gotta finish it.
Speaker 2:Thanks for making me sound nice.
Speaker 1:If I stop, I'll never finish If I stop or die where I stand.
Speaker 2:If anyone remembers the zombie astrology episode, dan is a tourist. It's very Torian to be like. I will not stop until this is done. Stubbornness is something you definitely have and it's for good and ill, but it is not. It's still not level, but it is yeah, and the deep end which I said there is still a deep end is like three feet and the shallow end is like two and a half feet, so we couldn't even fill it up all the way, but we do have a pool and it is good in the summertime. I'm grateful.
Speaker 1:What we discovered is that, like, because we used sand I think sand would have been great if, like, we were on a flat surface but because we were digging in on one side of the hill and then building up on the other side of the hill all of the material that we built up, especially the six inches of sand that we laid down on top of everything, yeah, and the downhill part compacted more and the uphill part didn't compact at all because it was all hard. So when we put up the pool, it was perfectly level and I'm like, see, perfectly level. I'm the best at this and then we put water in it and it settled and tipped.
Speaker 2:And still does like, when I step on the sand sometime because there's sand around the edge I can like feel it eroded. So we're going to have to redo this, probably next summer. But I have a really important question for you, because I had been into my therapist that I one of my fatal flaws as a human that I know about is that I love being right. And she, my therapist, wanted to know Dan did I say? I told you so. Yes, Well, you can have it on record publicly. But I was told that it's not nice to say that.
Speaker 1:In this house we call it being the king of right mountain, and Leah loves to be the king of right mountain. She likes to stand right up on top of that mountain and shout to her lungs capacity, I was right about this. She was the last person standing in the world so that she can say I was right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll unpack that in therapy.
Speaker 1:You're much better now.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. My therapist was like I can actually see a good reason why for that, knowing your history, and I was like all right, I'll talk about this another day. So yeah, there you go, that's the story. Yeah, that's our story. Nothing to do with the apocalypse, other than a series of poor decisions. That if we were making poor decisions when there was actually zombies around, we'd probably both be dead?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true, before we double down on our bad decisions and we just suffer for it. But it works out anyways. Sometimes you can just be so wrong that it works. It's a good thing we need to make decisions together, because then we both accept the successor failure that's true, it was a lot easier the second time because, even though it was a failure, I could be like Leah, you had a say in this too. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's why we decided to do that, and it wasn't a total failure. We do still have a pool. We get in it, but let's dive into the pool. It's my really bad transition, yeah, of what we're here to talk about today. Folks, which is the last of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the last of us.
Speaker 2:It's good. Oh, thank God we're finally talking about something good, because the last few man I mean I did like train to Basan, but this is actually like I'm going to just rate it right out the gate. I'm going to say it's a five out of five Zeds. I fucking love it so good.
Speaker 1:Well, something that I've realized is that rating things out of five Zeds isn't enough. There's been things in the past where I'm like the highest thing I can give it is four, but then also something that's just like kind of okay is also a four, or something that's really incredible, but I'm not willing to give it a full mark is also a four. So I got to go out of 10 out of 10. I'm going to give it nine out of 10 Zeds.
Speaker 2:What? Okay, we'll get into what you, what is your one point when we get to some of the issues?
Speaker 1:but I just, you know, I just don't want, I, I just don't want to give it the full, the full Monty, you know.
Speaker 2:You're one of those teachers who would never give 100%, aren't you? Yeah, I think so as a recovering perfectionist. That would really drive me nuts as a student.
Speaker 1:I have a story about that too, Maybe. Maybe we should save that story for another time. It's a writing story.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, next episode, we can do that. So, dan, tell us, for those who have not heard much of the Last of Us, can you just give us like a simple synopsis of what it's all about, where it came from? The?
Speaker 1:Last of Us, like I said before, came from a PlayStation exclusive title called the Last of Us. It's about mainly about two characters, joel and Ellie, and their journey across the United States in a zombie-filled world. But the zombies aren't your traditional viral zombies Like these don't really resemble people that much anymore. They are infected with a strand of cordyceps that is mutated, which, as somebody who grows mushrooms, you can imagine that I love that idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really didn't want to sell them, and that is sarcasm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Dan's actually going for it. That's why it's nine out of 10 zeds Because they villainize cordyceps. I have a stack of jars next to me, within arm's reach of cordyceps, so I can mail that to your house and you'll become a zombie.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we can't say get bit, we have to get like get sport.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or yeah, or like. Have a zombie put creepy like overly sized highly activated mycelium into your mouth and make out with you.
Speaker 2:Mm, it is kind of hot. That's not what that is, but we'll get into that.
Speaker 1:It's like the guy was like trying to put spaghetti in her mouth. Mycelium does not look like that.
Speaker 2:It's like the spaghetti was more like really thin, like tapeworms, like really thin tapeworms, like a whole bunch of them coming out of his mouth into hers. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Did you talk about the main arc of season one?
Speaker 1:and like what they're trying to do in season one, yeah, I mean should we give it all away, like okay, so the basics, just to cover your ears if you haven't watched it? Also, if you haven't watched it, what's wrong with you? I mean the last ones to watch, the last of us.
Speaker 2:And that's only because we were binge watching the Walking Dead to get to season 11, which was a gigantic disappointment. So, Happy to hear.
Speaker 1:So Joel and Ellie Ellie is turns out she is immune to the court of saps, like we all are, and she's got to get to the other side of the country, where there are some doctors that want to look at her, to try to find a cure for the court of saps, and things happen. Things happen in the middle, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he's also Joel's also on the search to find his brother, who just happens to be in the same direction as people who could potentially create a cure for Ellie. So here's what's interesting, and now Dan is going to upset you a little bit. But there is some real life science, speaking of science that could potentially one day mutate, and I really love the intro of the first episode where they have the scientists from the 60s saying this is possible, where court of saps could technically use human bodies as a host, because court of saps are basically carnivorous. Is that how you described them, dan? Yeah, I mean, you make vegan, you grow vegan court of saps, but in nature, what do they eat?
Speaker 1:Well, it all depends on the strain of court of saps. But the ones that they are most likely referring to as court of saps I mean sis. And that grows in Tibet, in the Tibetan plains, and it infects a catap, a caterpillar larvae, underground, and then that, as that larvae grows, the court of saps grows with it and then eventually eats it, and then it grows a mushroom stuck up to the soil, where it can then exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen and receive sunlight.
Speaker 1:So it's slightly so it does zombify the worm then Not that one, because like those, that's larvae that's never actually been?
Speaker 2:Isn't there one where they like take over ants brains or something?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like there's other, there are other strands of court of saps, and some of them infect beetles, some of them infect ants, some of them infect ghostbots and flying zombie, mushroom zombies that's what I said.
Speaker 1:And in the case of ants, I haven't heard them really talk too much at length about the other the other insects that are infected, but ants. What it does is it grows through the circulatory system of the ant and creates hallucinogens in the ant's brain, which convinces the ant to climb to the top of a tall strand of grass and then clamp onto that grass as hard as it can with its jaws and never let go because the court of saps wants to be up higher.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I hope that it's a really good trip for that ant. I hope it was sort of like our trip in Jamaica for that ant.
Speaker 1:What if it's awful though, a whole of visions?
Speaker 2:I hope it's not. I hope it's a great psychedelic experience. That's like a fair trade, maybe. So I want to talk just briefly about another potential zombie case in nature that like could make a really good zombie story before we dive into the last of us and buckle your seatbelts, because this is the scariest thing for Dan ever. Dan is terrified by this, so there is a I found this on Instagram, a video of it. It is a I'm going to try to pronounce it a leukocloridium, a parasitic worm that invades a snail's eye stalks, where it pulsates to imitate a caterpillar, and the worm then mind controls its host. So the snail out into the open for hungry birds to pluck the snail's eyes out and the bird's guts. The worm's breed and then release its eggs in the bird's feces, which is then happily eaten by another snail to create a life, and then the cycle continues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the circle of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you see a video of this, I just want to warn you before you go looking for this. It is. It is hard to look at Like these fucking. This parasite inside this poor snail's eye stalks is just going crazy. It's like going back and forth like a, like a, like a rave disco light situation. Just like pulsating and it's, it's, it's weird and I don't like it and I feel really bad for the snail.
Speaker 2:It is sad for the snail, but again, maybe it's a good time for the snail. We don't know, are you?
Speaker 1:going to get more about it on wire. I can't imagine a worm going through your eye stalks like back and forth, like 40 times a second, and like pulsating to the rhythm of some unknown drum beat, while it's like inside your head dancing around eating your brains. I can't imagine that. That's an enjoyable experience. And then and then it's just like it's just calling a bird to eat you to finish you off, and you're like I also want the bird to eat me at this point. Please kill me, put me out of my misery. This is fucking terrible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's one of two options either it's like a really great sort of psychedelic trip, like if you were being zombified by a mushroom, or it's like the sunken place in the movie get out where, like the snails, consciousness is like present and observing all of this and suffering but can't do anything, so the worst possible, yeah, thank you. Thank you, you're welcome. I'm gonna have nightmares, so let's get into why we love the last of us. I particularly gave it five out of fives.
Speaker 1:Before we do, I just I want to. I want to lay down some Cordyceps facts. All right, let's do it. So, contrary to popular opinion, cordyceps are good for you. They they're really good for energy, it has antiviral properties Just all around really good. And you should buy them from me at $600 a pound. They're expensive. It's one of the most expensive mushrooms on the planet. One of what are they?
Speaker 2:what are their benefits?
Speaker 1:It really boosts your energy. I wish I. You know I'm not prepared for this. I'm like you know I'm going to go off on a warpath and tell you all the great things about Cordyceps and I'm like my mind's blank.
Speaker 2:Well, speaking of more science, Dan, there's six facts that Cordyceps benefits are based on science. It may boost exercise performance.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It improves. Your body uses oxygen. They give you oxygens?
Speaker 2:It has anti aging properties. It can reduce fatigue, boost strength and sex drive. Yeah, all right, that's what they use it for in China. Yeah, they did a study with using it in aged mice and helped improve memory and sexual function way to go. It has potential anti tumor effects, so it can address so it showed him the growth of many types of human cancer cells, like lung, colon, skin and liver cancers. It can help manage type two diabetes. Apparently it helps with insulin in some way. That is way beyond me. It has possible benefits for heart health, so Cordyceps are approved in China for the treatment of arrhythmia, a condition in which the heartbeat is too slow, too fast or irregular. And then last one, at least it may help fight inflammation, yeah, which can lead to diseases like heart disease and cancer. Really, interesting.
Speaker 1:Thank you for bailing me out on that one. Your brain just completely blanked on a thing that I literally spend half of my day thinking about Little known fact. If you don't know, one of the things that I want to do with my life is grow mushrooms, and, as you can see, I'm doing a great job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why should I buy mushrooms?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I used to know. I don't know anymore.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's a parasitic worm, dan, it's entered you, it's taking your memory.
Speaker 1:I definitely haven't had enough Cordyceps right now. Anyways, let's get into that. Why do we love it? Why do we love the zombies? Oh my God, I just smashed my microphone.
Speaker 2:You're good, why do we love the last of us? I'll tell you one yeah, tell me, zombies are fun guys. They're fun guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what's really cool about mycelium and a lot of zombie tropes that we've been seeing around a lot lately is the whole hive mind situation, mycelium in general, when they grow, if you look under a microscope it very closely resembles the neural pathways of a human brain or animal brain. Any brain really Brains Doesn't have to be human, that's speciesist. Other animals have brains. Who said they didn't Wasn't me, don't put me on record? So yeah, so it's thought that possibly mycelium has consciousness. It grows underground and it can communicate with plants. So plants will use mycelium networks to communicate with one another. If they're infected with disease or parasites, they'll communicate that information through the mycelial network and other plants will be able to defend themselves against those diseases and parasites based on that information that they get through the mycelium networks.
Speaker 2:Pretty badass and in the case of zombies that are made of mycelium, what's cool about it is they have an actual we talked about hive mind a couple of times on this show. But they literally have a hive mind because they explain in the show that if you step on part of the mycelium network or a zombie is connected to it in one place miles away, it will summon all of the zombies to that one location because they know you're there and they want to eat you. But what also really makes us really different in the show is that because they are connected physically in some way, it seems they seem to be mostly confined to cities and populous areas. So it's not like a constant zombie horror defense situation, like most zombie movies and shows are. It's only in certain circumstances that they show up. So I really enjoy that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was very different take on the zombie apocalypse situation. It's just like most most of the country I mean, I don't know if we, if we, talked about this, but it takes place 20 years into the zombie apocalypse situation. So like this is after like a lot of the worst zombie stuff has already happened and then like it's kind of on a decline. There's still zombies around, but a lot of them don't last as long as the ones that are around at this point, so there's like a lower amount of them. And it's kind of a cool take on the zombie apocalypse because it's like what happens when, when there aren't so many zombies in the world and all that's left are people that have been starving for 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a very different take and I just think it's. It's interesting too, because it really passes the test that you talk about about Dan, which is like, would this still be a good series if there were no zombies? And there would be, because there are lots of episodes where zombies are not the main discussion point. Like they're present. It's a concern, but people are living their lives. Which brings me to the second thing that I fucking love about this show is that we were genuinely afraid, like I. We obviously watch a lot of zombie stuff and I do have jump scares sometimes, but I literally put my phone down. You know, this is a big, an impressive thing for me. I stopped doodling. I've been trying to doodle instead of use my phone for a few of the zombie scenes, because when there were zombies, I was fucking scared. What about you, Dan?
Speaker 1:I was uneasy. I would say, of course, yeah, on the topic of Leah paying attention to, to an action scene, another another thing that's worthy of note is that as soon as we finished watching the last of us the entire way through, we tried to watch something else, and then Leah was like I just want to watch the last of us again, and we went back and we watched the entire series again.
Speaker 2:It's really good, and I wanted to have that opportunity to sort of think about it without having all of the suspense too, because you see new details. It's the kind of show that reveals more to you every time you watch it. I had so many insights I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about the last of us.
Speaker 1:Watching it a second time through, really with the context of where it goes, there's all these clues that you don't see at first, because you're just like I don't know, that's a weird thing to say, why did Ellie say that? And then you watch it again. You're like, oh, that's why she said that. It makes so much sense now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really well thought out, like everything, and just you can see how it ties together and when you don't, when you can't see it, it's still excellent, but when you can, it just makes the beauty of the writing and the filming incredible. But back to the scary things. We found our top four scariest zombie moments, according to me mostly. So number one and we're going to do it like not necessarily the order of scariest, but order of operations. I believe this is in is the clicker zombies in the library in Boston, dan, what's a clicker zombie?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the clicker zombies are zombies that have mushrooms growing out of their face that don't resemble cordyceps at all. In fact, it looks a lot more like a turkey tail or or kind of oyster to me. Yeah, some kind of like oyster mushroom, or maybe I can't remember the name. Anyways, I'm going, I'm going off on a mushroom tangent. But yeah, they got all these mushrooms in their face instead of eyes and a nose, so they can't see. So they make these clicking sounds, which we learn later is how they like echo locate.
Speaker 2:They're basically like bats. Yeah, they find you by clicking and seeing what like where you bounce off.
Speaker 1:If you make any noise.
Speaker 2:Literally they were so silent and they were trying to get. There were only two of them. Also, they're fast, if we have not said that yet they're lightning fast zombies, very agile, and they were trying to get through this one floor the zombie zombie I'm getting excited. This one floor, the library, and there were these two zombies and one was walking right by the three of them. At this point, it's Ellie, joel and Tess, who dies later spoiler and all Ellie does is intake, breath, she goes and that's it. It's over. They're getting chased all over the fucking place. It's wild and just disgusting at the same time. So that's one of the scariest moments.
Speaker 1:And also like one headshot usually isn't enough to kill these zombies. Like, they shoot them like multiple times and, like one of these clickers, joel shoots it like twice in the stomach and then drops it to the floor, shoots it in the head and it's still moving and he shoots it again. He unloads his entire revolver into one clicker to make sure it doesn't get back up again. Yeah, also, there's this like kind of like a like a mythology around these types of zombies, because most people know that they're zombies but they're like, but Ellie's like. What about the ones that like don't have eyes and they can? They see like bats, and when they mention that they've seen one of those to other people, they're like and you're still alive because these clickers are super tough, like they're tougher than a normal zombie.
Speaker 2:Yeah them. Being blind is not a it's not an advantage. Any sound is bad. The second one was for me was the high.
Speaker 2:It wasn't actually the zombies doing anything scary at this point, but it was seeing them all on the ground like I don't know, hundreds of them, sort of like moving like a like rippling, writhing on the ground, and that was when, I believe, tess explained to Ellie that they are all connected and you can like, if you touch a piece of the Mycelial Network somewhere else, all of those will get activated, which is really important because later that entire cluster of hundreds of zombies that are writhing on the ground over these buildings that they've successfully avoided Actually that's why they went through the library Get called upon because somebody steps on something that then gets single strand of mycelium and like hundreds of fucking zombies come after them.
Speaker 2:So that is horrifying and definitely the scariest hive mind, I think the only.
Speaker 2:Well, it's between that and World War Z, where they like make a hive mind ladder. Both of those things are very scary. I'm going to do D, dan, you can do the next one. So this is the one that scares me the most is there is a acrobat zombie that is maybe like six years old it looks like a six year old little girl who's chasing after Ellie in this really epic scene. Also a clicker and a fight scenes. Oh, was she a click? Oh yeah, she was. She didn't have eyes, yeah, and she was literally doing like backflips and all kinds of gymnastic shit to get to Ellie. It was like through a car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, horrifying, Horrifying and like I think what's what's really upsetting about that scene is that like this, the zombies moving through the car in a very unorthodox fashion, like instead of just climbing through forwards like we would, it's like climbing through backwards and like kind of flipping over the seats and just like it doesn't. It doesn't move like a human being would move.
Speaker 2:No, it's definitely not human anymore. And in that same, that same scene is when I wanted you to talk about Dan, because I still don't get it the giant head ripping zombie. What the fuck was that thing?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, so first of all, all these zombies were hiding underground Like mycelium.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like mycelium. The people of Kansas City brag about how they had pushed all the remaining zombies underground and they haven't had to deal with them since then. They're just like yeah, they're underground now, we don't have to worry about it, we win. But there's all these areas where they're kind of like pushing up the ground and it's kind of like pulsating and like it's clear that like this is going to become a problem and they come out of the ground. A truck falls through the ground that exploded and like hundreds of zombies come flying out of this hole Top speed.
Speaker 2:They're going 100 miles an hour. They're running faster than people, unless you're like an Olympic runner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're all Olympic runners.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And acrobats. So one of the zombies that comes out is like eight feet tall and like, honestly it's like this is this would be me as a zombie, that that zombie is the zombie version of me. I love that idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you're two feet taller?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I don't. I think I was a big person that was infected, but I don't think it was that big. I think I think that's like further mutations. Like it's like it doesn't even show like any of its human skin left.
Speaker 2:It's all covered in in much but it does have like a face and it's almost I don't want to say demonic, because I don't think that there's any magic in it Like, but it's. It's not a human face, but there is a face, yeah, and it's kind of like angry. Like instead of just trying to bite people to spread the spores and spread the mushrooms, it literally just rips people's heads off. It's pissed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it grabs a guy and tears his head off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm curious if we'll see more of those in future seasons.
Speaker 1:And it's. It's clearly like super strong, like it's like throwing cars out of the way, like it's, and like they fire hundreds of rounds at it and it just does not slow down at all.
Speaker 2:Yes, the granddaddy of the zombies in the show, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it seems to have like a different type of intelligence than the other zombies, where they're like trying to spread the virus and this one's just trying to kill people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And then I think last one at least, kind of like a bonus, because it's not really the zombie that's scary, but it's the way they build up to the eventual zombie bite is they have they explain how it is that Ellie, you can not. You know that. Ellie knows that she's immune to the virus or not virus, the mycelium, because she gets bit in the mall and she's with her best friend, riley and it's obviously an abandoned, not obviously like it's a 20 year abandoned mall, if you can picture that. Yeah, and it's a really slow burn of tension throughout the entire episode Because you know something bad is going to happen but you don't know when it's already creepy as fuck, because imagine a 20 year old abandoned mall. There's actually a lot of those all over the country that are abandoned, you can check out these days yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was one in Augusta where he used to live in our post apocalyptic society that we currently pretty much yeah, but what did you think about that one Dan?
Speaker 1:I loved the whole idea of that and, yeah, there was a lot of tension. There wasn't just like scary tension, though there is sexy tension, love tension, what, what? Like. I think this also goes into my nine Zed rating because one thing that bothered me was that Riley, her friend, was like living here in this mall for like three weeks, or I don't know how long, but she's been gone for three weeks, but it's clear that she's living there.
Speaker 1:She has all of her stuff there, she's been exploring, she's been playing video games in the arcade, she's been turning the lights on and it's not until she's there with Ellie that this zombie that's like been dormant inside of a doll shop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And they're making lots of noise. But it takes this thing a long time to wake up. It takes even even more hours after that for the zombie to discover them. And I feel like, especially considering it seems like the mall was cleared at some point yeah, nobody noticed the zombie, nobody went from door to door clearing this place. I mean, maybe they didn't. I mean Riley Riley was a firefly, so I mean maybe they're just like hang out here, be quiet, and Riley's like I'm going to play video games, fuck you.
Speaker 2:We should explain what a firefly is in a moment, but just briefly, here's how I rationalized that, because I did think the same thing. Malls are large, I know. You know we have not spent any time in the mall, given that we live in Vermont now and there was a pandemic, so we don't go to malls anymore. But malls take fucking like a long time to walk through. So I can imagine a world where they you know, maybe the arcade where there's a lot of loudness happening is further away and the zombie didn't hear it. And then there was actual like dialogue, people talking, which is what activated them, the zombie and it was closer to the zombie and there were no noise that ever been made before. That is my hypothesis and that's why I still give it a 10.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think it's still feasible. I just think it's kind of it's it was a weird choice narratively to do it that way. Like maybe, maybe if they revealed that like it was just hanging out in one of the the office areas or something and like just happened to hear the like the last thing that they were doing, or maybe they just never explained where it came from, all of a sudden it's just like hey, there's a zombie over there, holy shit yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just yeah, I think I think they're, I think through their over explanation of where the zombie was from, and then like the period of time between discovering that as the viewer and where it shows up like literally, like almost 15 minutes later in the story.
Speaker 2:Well, they had to develop sexual tension and have there be a kiss first. Dan, Is that what the zombie was waiting for? Yeah, the zombies definitely a homophobe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's like I'm just going to wait here and see if they kiss.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, so you mentioned the fireflies. I think we should talk about a third thing that we really love about the show, which is the world building. So tell me about the world.
Speaker 1:Well, the world building, I think, is my favorite. Like I said before, this is 20 years in the future, but the first episode they start off in 1968, explaining, explaining all the things about courtesepes and already debunking all of the the articles on online and all the questions on Quora that people ask about whether or not somebody can get infected with Cordyceps. They explained it all in the first episode, first five minutes, Then it goes to 2003,. We see Joel and then it's 2023. And it's like whoa, that's a big jump.
Speaker 2:But it's really fun because it's literally set the year that it's released, which is always fun to see like an alternate universe than what we have.
Speaker 1:And I was worried at first because I'm like, oh, come on, we're going to jump 20 years ahead and we're just going to breeze over the whole outbreak. That's everybody's favorite part. But I'm now glad that they did that, because the things that they reference back to in Joel's past it was important that we didn't know those things right away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true and I really loved like their commitment to staying in the technological and music and cultural world of like the 90s to very early 2000s, like the fact that they still had tapes and the music they were playing was like Linda Ronstadt.
Speaker 1:The hottest game out is Mortal Combat 2.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very nostalgic in that way. It's both present day and alternate present day, while also feeling nostalgic and like this recognition of like time stops when it comes to technology and Ellie doesn't know how to use things, like when she goes to the mall. Like what, how do you use an escalator? She?
Speaker 1:didn't know what it was. She's like electric stairs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like she asks Joel about what it's like to fly in a plane, he's like it sucks, it's cramped. And she's like, dude, you were in the sky. And then at one point he gets mad at her for being bad at doing directions and she's like this is my second day in a car, like it's really fun that way Nature reclaiming the world, it's.
Speaker 1:It was cool to see like a future version of an apocalypse where you all of the cities are just overgrown with plants and trees and nature was taking it back Like you know. Honestly it's, it's. I mean, I know it's supposed to like weave this tale of a dystopian future, but I honestly kind of felt like maybe there's hope. If only zombies would come and kill us all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess that is the sad truth, because I've always found those. I think there was a street like a show too, and there's definitely images out there of like what would the world look like if humans disappeared tomorrow? Oh, after there were people. Yeah, and I've always loved that show. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They're like. They're like if birds shit on the statue for 20,000 years, it'll turn into a tree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's like there is something really soothing about the idea of well, I mean, I guess I'm sorry I'm holding back for, like I wanted to say, of nature, kind of reclaiming the world, but then that's like that sort of leaves lives in the dichotomy of this idea that there's like nature versus civilization, which is not true. Cities are also nature, because we're nature, we're nature, humans are nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 2:But I feel like there's. I think what it's more metaphorically about is that, like the way that we live today is so disconnected, even though we are still 100% I hate to break it to you folks reliable on the earth for all the things that we need to survive. It doesn't feel like that because we all go to our little jobs and, like me in particular, I don't even leave my house. I just talk to people in little boxes on my computer, and then dollars, a certain number, appears in my bank account, and then I go buy food.
Speaker 1:You don't even touch the dollars.
Speaker 2:No, it's just some numbers in there that goes up and down. Let's get more numbers. Yeah, like it feels so detached that I think that that's what it is about. It For me is that those moments feel like there's just a little bit more connected with what it actually takes to live, instead of this very abstracted world that we live in today.
Speaker 1:Which, honestly, I think, explains my obsession of a zombie apocalypse or just generally apocalypse as a whole. If you take society away from the equation and we're all forced to go back to nature, it feels more honest. It feels better, even though there's an apocalypse and a lot of death and destruction. It's like also, there's all of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think maybe a story from another town, but I'll just say briefly that Dan and I we tried. Our dream was to make a little farm for ourselves, grow food for ourselves in our community, build an earthship. If you don't know what an earthship is, you should google it. They're pretty fucking cool. Basically, live way more connected to nature, feed ourselves, feed other people, consume a lot less, significantly less, because we are actually in the participating in the natural cycle of life.
Speaker 2:But when we started to look into what it would actually cost for us, with numbers in a bank account somewhere, to start that it was impossible. It's way easier to buy a house with a septic tank and all those things than it is to actually try and live more connected to the actual things that we need to survive, because that's how the system set up, Literally to the point that this house we live in now needed a new septic tank. I was like why don't we just not do that and put in composting toilets? Because that's what I wanted anyways. And then we were informed we wouldn't be able to get a mortgage if we just have composting toilets. Yeah, it's really hard to get back to nature and I feel like that was quite a sidebar so.
Speaker 1:I'm rather enjoying our septic tank.
Speaker 2:I'm definitely pro-incinerating or composting toilet. That'd be my preference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like it. The thing in water is stupid.
Speaker 2:Okay, can we just have a moment? Yeah, the big water is really dumb.
Speaker 1:I mean our dogs. Don't do it.
Speaker 2:No, only fish should be pooping in water. That's really it.
Speaker 1:I think the fish could be getting out of the water to poop.
Speaker 2:Hey, maybe that's how we you know like evolve to be on land. Some fish was like I'm sick of swimming in my own shit.
Speaker 1:Are you serious, Jeff? This is where we live. I was just swimming through here mining my own business and guess what gets sucked up into my gills? Your shit, I'm trying to breathe over here. You're shitting inside of me, Jeff. Go on the land. If you want to do that. You should be ashamed. And that's when we started having shame of our poop. What the back foot here when?
Speaker 2:were we? We're a lot of animals. Okay, world building, world building, that's what we were talking about, yeah, yeah, yeah, nature reclaiming the world.
Speaker 1:That'd be great. The, the DZs are the danger zones. What are the DZs?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, the DZs.
Speaker 1:It is the DZ. Anyways the DZs are the safe zones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to Google it while you're chatting.
Speaker 1:Where one faction is in charge, f-ck. What is it called Fedra? Fedra is the one that's in charge in the DZs. I'm going to have to add it that later.
Speaker 2:It's a QZ QZ. I knew it was a DZ. They're called QZs, qz, yeah.
Speaker 1:We have wrote D-militarized zone instead of the quarantine zone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, makes way more sense. Qzs yeah.
Speaker 1:So the QZs are the cities or towns or the quarantine zones where most people live, and Fedra is in charge of those areas. Fedra is supposed to be like FEMA, the government agency that is now in charge of everything, because it's all that's left. But what I really loved is that, unlike a lot of other shows, the Walking Dead, especially in season 11, these places feel big and full of people Instead of just showing us the same street over and over again and the same 10 people interacting with each other, and as soon as you get into town, you're introduced to the fucking mayor and the mayor makes you their personal assistant. It's not like that at all. It's this big place where Joel is basically a nobody. He has reputation, but he can walk down the street and Fedra is not coming up to him asking him to solve their problems or anything.
Speaker 2:No, in fact he's taking all of the shittiest jobs to make the most money. Like you see him having to literally burn bodies of survivors who finally make it to the QZ, who test positive for the court of steps he signs up to clean shit. I don't really understand. It was like a sewer cleanout job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he had to shovel a sewer, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's not living large, yeah, and you just get this feeling that this place is big and so many shows that I've watched really fail in this capacity. Like you know, the Walking Dead even with their small towns, where it's only a couple of streets, they still make it only feel like a couple of houses sometimes and they've really made it feel like a full, alive place. You know, it's not like they put a million people in one spot and they're like look, there's a million people, like there's still. Like there's still like limitations on how many people are on set and on screen in these places and they don't really show like everybody but they show enough to make it feel like it's alive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it feels. It feels it doesn't even feel unrealistic. Like something about the Walking Dead season 11, with that society felt incredible. Well, not something. We already talked about why it felt unrealistic. Go back and listen to that episode if you don't know why. But in this one I'm like. I believe that they were disorganized, I believe that they figured it out, especially because of the type of zombie that exists, Like I could see 20 years in the future having that level of organization and an entity called Fedra that is running on quarantine zones in cities across the country.
Speaker 1:Which brings me to the next one. The totalitarian government feels real and oppressive. Yes, like it, really, like they don't have to show us the people at the top or the people doing the murders or the torturing to make it known that the people of these places are being oppressed by Fedra. And then the opposition to Fedra are the fireflies, the freedom fighters or the terrorists or whatever. Whatever side you're on, whichever side you choose, because you have to choose a side. That's a rule I just made up. They also feel like they are real, but it also feels like they might be not perfect, like kind of a little bit unhinged in their goal to bring freedom to everybody.
Speaker 2:And they've got a great catchphrase Like I would totally have been sucked into being a firefly. For sure, because their catchphrase, which is graffiti all over the towns, is when you're lost in the darkness, look for the light. Yeah, because they're fireflies. But they call themselves fireflies yeah it's smart, it's very smart, it's smart, it's very smart.
Speaker 1:Also, they apparently have better flashlights than Fedra. And I feel like if you're going to be a firefly, you got to have quality flashlights. If your flashlights go out and your catchphrase is about following the light and shit like, you got to make sure that works. If nothing else works, you got to have your flashlight work. You got to have your flashlight work.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. I just want to say that we see multiple cities, or we at least hear about multiple cities, and what's interesting is that Fedra they make it really clear that Fedra is some sort of federal. We don't know what Fedra stands for. I don't think Some sort of federal thing that is uniting all of these quarantine zones across the country here about Atlanta, kansas City, obviously, boston, pittsburgh, baltimore, yeah, and almost everywhere. There are also fireflies, like Riley, who is Ellie's love interest, who ultimately ends up getting bit and becomes a zombie, is intended to go as a firefly to Atlanta because she's been assigned there, and so it just feels like the tension and the battle between these two parties is very real, and it also feels very real that neither side seems to be wholly good or bad. Like there's some Fedras that are incredibly brutal, like apparently the Fedra in Kansas City.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Horrifyingly brutal, whereas in Boston it seems like they're oppressive but not as bad. There's not like tons of rape and murder happening every day Not every day but then you know like Ellie critiques Riley and says you know like fireflies are blowing up civilians all the time too, and so it's not really like a perfect. There's no clear hero. Clear hero which actually leads us to our next thing about relatable characters. Dan didn't even realize it.
Speaker 1:Relatable characters? Yeah, so no one seems to clearly be a hero or a villain, except the obvious ones. Is the is the QZ any better or worse than the rebels? Yeah, I think Ellie is probably one of the only people that you can clearly say is good, and I think that's mostly just because she's young and hasn't had time to do some bad shit. Yeah, and then there. But there's also very few like purely evil characters either.
Speaker 2:I think there's really only one purely evil character.
Speaker 1:Yeah, where even was that guy? I don't think we know.
Speaker 2:Oh it was. This is this is a little bit further into the season Colorado, I guess. In Colorado, where they encounter a religious cult and the religious cult leader is definitely in the pure evil, and I, dan, I actually had a healthy discussion, slash debate, about whether or not he was always evil or became disgusting and despotic, but having just rewatched that episode, I think he always was, because he says he's this cult leader. He makes people call him father, he likes to rape little girls and at least one that we know of, yeah, at least one. And he says to Ellie that, like he always knew that he was violent and wanted to harm people and basically he's like leading his flock, quote unquote. He's making them eat people, including people that they loved and would not want to eat if they didn't know. Yeah, I mean, he justifies it with survival, which we could debate. That in a minute.
Speaker 2:But it then becomes very clear that he's evil because he could have just killed Ellie. Stepping back a second, they encounter this group because they were trying to find the Fireflies who were supposed to help find the cure with Ellie, right, and instead they find this group and there's three men who try to attack them with baseball bats, and one of them is stabbing them with stabbing Joel with the broken piece of a baseball bat. So they see them and then Ellie and Joel run away. Long story short, they re-encounter each other again and instead of killing Ellie, which would have been, I think, the more logical conclusion or at least everybody else in his group wanted to kill Ellie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this guy wanted to save her so that he could like convert her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he wanted to convert her and also make her his girlfriend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, super creepy. Ellie's like 14, if we haven't said that, and this man's solidly 40.
Speaker 1:Or at least 40.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:At least he might have been 40 when the outbreak started.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's creepy as fuck, and what's interesting, though, is because we've already talked to Ellie being this innocent person because she's young, but I think that there's some foreshadowing in that experience, because he says to her like I see a leader in you. It's the second time that somebody says that to her. Another time is a QZ leader says to her I see a leader in you, I want you on my side. I see that there's violence in you. We could rule the world together, essentially. So I'm very curious to see where they take that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know, because I didn't play the games. No spoilers. It was nice. It was nice going into this fresh. I gotta say yeah, like it would like. I would have loved to play the games way back when, but not knowing any of these things, I feel like it's a. It's a fresh new experience and I love it.
Speaker 2:It is, and Joel is also not clearly good or evil, but some people have decided that he's bad. A lot of people say that he's not a good guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it is. I think it is a constant battle with Joel. Whether or not he's he's not, he rides the line of good and evil. He's never one or the other. Like he cares all a great deal about Ellie and for anyone that he cares about, he will do anything to protect them. And that's also where his evil comes out, is he will do anything to protect the people that he cares about, including horrible, horrible things to other people, and he doesn't give a fuck about them and what they have going on.
Speaker 2:Old bloodedly murdering them. Yeah, he doesn't seem like when he kills I don't even know dozens of people to save Ellie, towards the end he does not seem to care. But I am curious to have some kind of crisis about it. Do you think you see any like moral conflict in him when he does those things?
Speaker 1:I think I think he does have moral conflict, because it seems to be something that he has a hard time talking about when it's things in the past. Yeah, because he they allude that in his in the past he has had to kill innocent people. I assume for Fedra there's this whole thing about how some people were taking to take into QZs and the ones who weren't taken to QZs were told they were going to QZs. Like if there was not enough room for them. They were told that they were going there and then they would just take him out to a field and shoot him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not clear, because then I don't know if he worked for Fedra, because he also gets really upset at anybody being a collaborator with Fedra. So either he changed because of that, who knows? We don't know totally his backstory, but it's totally not clear whether he's not good or bad. He's both. And it's clear right from the very beginning, because in the very first episode, when he's trying to escape with his daughter, who ends up getting being the first person to die, there's a family on the side of the road that they drive past and she's like please stop, we should stop, and he's like no somebody else can. So it's already clear that that's kind of the person that he is. But I think it's like one of the central conflicts in the show overall, which is just like what's more important the personal relationships you have, the deep love and care you have for a single person or a family or a few people or the rest of the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there are times where I definitely agree with Joel, like I wouldn't have stopped for the people that needed help.
Speaker 2:And I would have lined you to stop.
Speaker 1:Yep, and you know, even though he rides that line between good and evil, like those instincts are probably what kept him alive, as long as he's been alive.
Speaker 2:It's true, and that's what makes it really complicated. And there's like so many examples beyond just Joel of that. Another one is speaking of a collaborator that at first he was really upset learning about. This is in Kansas City. When the rebels who are not fireflies in this case take over the city, they are basically hunting out and mass killing all of the collaborators that ratted out on the rebels to Fedra. And there's one set of characters, henry and his little brother, whose name I'm not remembering, sam, yeah, who is a collaborator that they're specifically trying to kill, and Joel gets really offended by it. But then at some point I think he sees himself in Henry, because all Henry cares about is saving his little brother against all odds. And the reason he collaborated in the first place was because his brother and he's like maybe seven in the show had leukemia and the only way for him to get drugs was to collaborate with Fedra and turn in one of the really amazing men who was a part of the rebel faction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which then triggers the rebellion. So bad day to be a collaborator when you're like you know what? I'm finally going to be a collaborator, finally going to do it, and it's going to start the revolution that'll make people hunt me down and kill me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and my brother, who I tried to save. So this is like one of those what would you do moments that, dan, I've already discussed a little bit, but I'm curious what folks think is like. What would you do? Would you choose to sacrifice? I don't know if I can use the word innocent because, again, nobody's entirely innocent, although Henry does describe this rebel as like a quote unquote good man, one of the best man he's ever known. Would you sacrifice someone that you know is a good person and trying to do good things, so that you could save someone you love?
Speaker 1:That's. Those are hard questions that I don't have answers for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think you really know what you would do until you're in it. That's what I believe. I think that's the truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, there are a lot of moral boundaries that I would be perfectly willing to cross if it meant the life or death of somebody that I care about. That lifts is very short, basically the people who live in this house.
Speaker 2:Including Nero and Ziggy Nero and.
Speaker 1:Ziggy and Leah. That's about it. I have other family members, but like they get a second set of rules and those moral boundaries become a different barrier at a different space in the moral tapestry of like what am I saying? I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore.
Speaker 2:You're just saying you have degrees of things you're willing to do based on how much you love somebody. But it's true because for you and I, you and the dogs are my world. There are obviously other characters in my world that are important to me, but the three of you and then my horse. Like when my horse died, it fucking ruined me for a long time. I'm still mourning him and that's my world. So when you think about what does it mean to save the world of the people that you love in it have to die? That means your world has to die. That's like a truly selfless act to make that kind of decision and it's actually like the whole situation with Henry and Sam Sam being Henry's whole world foreshadows what Joel has to do. So I'm curious, dan, if you could give like a quick rundown of Joel's decision. That sort of rides, the same tension when they get to the hospital and Ellie is like really excited to help, like Ellie wants to be able to be a part of creating a cure for the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was confused. I thought you were talking about Joel at the beginning of the show and I'm like what. I don't think you had to. I don't think you had any decision to make. His daughter got shot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, not that time.
Speaker 1:No, okay. So yeah, I was. I was drawing a different comparison. So yeah, at the end of the of the of this season, joel has Joel's face with the fact that Ellie will have to die for the people. The doctors at Fedra, not Fedra, the Firefly doctors, go take two. Firefly doctors. They're trying to make a cure based on something that they think is inside of Ellie's brain, like a certain chemical that her brain is producing. That's telling courtesep not to grow there, basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because her mom just very briefly, her mom was bit while she was giving birth to Ellie, but she cut the umbilical cord really quickly, and so the theory being that Ellie got just enough of the mycelium to become immune to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in order to do that, that means that they'll have to operate on her brain and that'll kill her, but it would mean that they would possibly have a cure. It's not even like. They don't even give us a percentage of like how likely it is that they can do this. They're just like, yeah, we're going to open up her brain.
Speaker 2:And Joel and Ellie don't know that this is the what the quote unquote solution is for saving the world when they show up at this hospital, and I didn't have any idea that it would mean Ellie's life.
Speaker 1:So so once Joel learns this, they they're going to send them on his way and they're not nice about it. And he ends up deciding to, instead of leaving and going on his way and minding his own business, that he's going to go back into the hospital and kill every last person there except a couple people, and and he does that. And then he, when he takes off with Ellie and tells her, tells her a lie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I don't think you mentioned that Ellie is. I don't know what they said to her to drug her, but they must have said something to her and she was being prepped for surgery on her brain. So she's not conscious while Joel's killing everybody. Yeah, you have no idea.
Speaker 1:It's clear that there's no. There's no consent. Like she did not give consent to have her brain opened up, like she doesn't know that she's giving her life. But it's possible that she would have wanted this to happen anyway, because she was very like this was her. Her purpose in life was to do this. Yeah, but he decides for her because he tells Marlene of the fireflies, the leader of the fireflies. He tells her that it's not the she, she can't make that decision for Ellie, and Marlene tells Joel that neither can he.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but she only says that after she already made the decision for Ellie. Yeah, I was a little pissed at Marlene, the leader of the fire, but also so did Joe True True, because he killed everybody instead of just saving her. So this is like there's a couple things here, I think, for me. I and it is really like ethically a quagmire, but I do think that you should, you should be able to consent to whether or not you're going to die, have parts of your body used to save other people Like we have to sign up to be a organ donor, for example. I just don't think it was appropriate or okay, especially a child, to not even tell her that this was what needed to happen.
Speaker 1:I have an argument against against the fireflies at this point, because they act like this cure is going to fix the world, and the reality is that this should have been going on for 20 years and their problems are not based around zombies anymore. Like sure, they exist, and that makes it hard for people to live outside of the quarantine zones, but you already have an oppressive government in place. You already have freedom fighters that are fighting them and also killing civilians in the process.
Speaker 1:You have people in the middle that are just running rampant and being like I don't want to be, either I'm going to kill everyone, and just curing people of being susceptible to the mycelium of cordyceps isn't going to solve the world problems that you have. So I don't think that that's worth killing somebody who doesn't deserve it, especially without informing them of the risks that they are about to face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is pretty much a certain death. You know something that made me think of something that you said that I hadn't thought about, which is when we learn, when you leave the cities, there's really rarely zombies at this point. And then you had said that the QZ basically just lives on this concept of fear, that people are afraid to leave the city. They're also living in places where there are more zombies nearby than if you go into the countryside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it occurred to me. I'm like, why are all these QZs located inside of cities At this point? If you leave and you go into the Midwest, you might never see another zombie again. If you stay in one place, Like the place where Joel's brother lives, he every now and then has to go up into the watchtower and shoot a zombie a half mile away with his rifle.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's about it. But what I think is the truth here is that the QZs remain in the cities because they want people to be afraid. They want people to think that they can't leave. Yeah, because they want to be in power. They want to be in control of people. So they keep them in the cities, even though they've pretty much wiped out all the zombies in the surrounding area, minus a few small pockets. And they probably don't wipe out all of the zombies just because they want some to be out there, so that people know who's in charge. Still, they know who's keeping them safe.
Speaker 2:So that is an argument for the fireflies, because I think if people knew that they were immune would they have a need for Fedra. I think that that might be the rationale of like you're going to get more people to join in with Fedra and rebel, or not Fedra joining with the fireflies and rebel against Fedra. If you know that you're not going to be like, you can leave, you can leave. There's no reason for you to stay there. I don't think people have any idea that. Like what was it? 25 miles out of the city which suddenly became Alberta, because that's where they filmed it was living near Boston, I got to say the landscape is not right for 25 miles outside of Boston.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they show some really mountainous terrain outside of Boston yeah you get to the countryside and it's like fucking nothing.
Speaker 2:Nobody's there. There's no zombies, or if there are, they're very, very rare. So it's interesting for sure. And there's other. There's other like moral quagmires of just people who it's clear like are they bad or good? So there's in. Yeah, I think that was still in Kansas City at the very beginning of that episode. They have to kill someone who tried to ambush them because they thought that they were collaborators. Yeah, and you know, this brings up.
Speaker 1:Something that I love about this series so far is that like like when you stab somebody in this show or you shoot them, like they don't die right away. It's not like other shows where, like you pop off around at somebody and they just fall over. Like they shoot this Brian guy and Ellie shoots him in the back and he's just like dying slowly and he starts pleading with them like like it's okay, I'll just give up, I'll tell them that you're nice, and Joel's like no, I'm gonna stab you with this knife, yeah, and then he just hear him screaming for his mom while Joel is stabbing him. And I'm like I love how realistic this world is for things like that, because, like these are the types of psychological torment that people are rattled with when they have to do these things to survive. And I think so many shows just gloss over this whole thing by just like making guns an on-off switch for humans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also like good guy, bad guy tropes. Again, no character in this show except for, I think, the cult leader is clearly bad. Everybody is doing what they need to survive in one way or another and has different lenses on what that should be.
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Speaker 1:Fedra's Totalitarian Takeover Resort and Spaws, because who needs freedom when you can have security? Disclaimer Fedra's Totalitarian Takeover Resort and Spa is not lightable for the inevitable restriction of individual liberties, pressing or discerning opinions or widespread surveillance that may occur upon participation. Under our regime, free thought, self-expression and democratic values are considered contraband and will be dealt with accordingly. Regular compliance checks or will be performed without prior notice. Any signs of rebellion will result in immediate re-education. Use of unnecessary force by Fedra personnel should be considered part of the package. Remember Total Illumineness and not just expected, but enforced. Fedra, suppressing you for a better tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Suppressing you for a better tomorrow? Are you going to say back to the pun? I opened with people making apocalypse jokes like there's no tomorrow. I don't want to go to that spawn resort, sorry, let's go to Sedona instead.
Speaker 1:Or honestly.
Speaker 2:Let's just go to episode three of the Last of Us. That was honestly an emotional vacation. An island of beautiful made me cry all three times we watched it my favorite part of the whole show episode three.
Speaker 1:You know my favorite part about episode three, what it gave Tucker Carlson a mega trigger. He had a whole episode devoted to how woke the Last of Us was and I kind of want to go back and see if I can find that episode and just sit down with some popcorn and just soak in all of Tucker Carlson's whining.
Speaker 2:I don't know why you would ever find that fun. Absolutely not.
Speaker 1:That's the special type of hate that I have for him.
Speaker 2:So let me set the scene of this queer and wonderful moment in this show. So I want to remember that the apocalypse happens. It starts in 2003. In 2003, I'm pretty sure, nowhere in the United States was legal for there to be same-sex marriage. It was highly homophobic.
Speaker 2:I grew up in a place I think I started university in 2003, where people were just saying that's so gay as like a normal thing to say as a way to insult people, and I remember before I'd even fully grappled with my own sexuality, being like I don't think we should say that, but it was very much that era, Like it was. You know, there was in my school where I grew up. There was one out guy and he was brutally fucking bullied. So it was not a great world for the LGBTQIA community in 2003. And that is where the story starts. It's complicated, but at the end of the day, I think the broader. The point here is that broader society is not cool with queer people, period. It's definitely on the fringe, Like. I remember meeting the first person who was an out lesbian in my first year of university and being like oh hello. And then I learned later that a girl had a crush on me in high school, but it was too late because it was like underground.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like a friend of a friend gave me a poem that she wrote about me and I was like, why didn't they tell me Whatever? Anyways, so it was definitely not a time that was safe for people and, frankly, it is not a time that is safe right now, in 2023. There's a lot of terrible things happening but there has been a lot of change also. But I want to set that backdrop because the two main characters in episode three are Frank and Bill, and Bill is the person you meet first in 2003.
Speaker 2:He is a super survivalist. He calls himself, doesn't want to be called the prepper, and he is fucking ready for the apocalypse. You meet him when Fedra or whatever it is at the time the military is like going through his town and he is in his house and he is hiding in the basement of his basement. The secret cellar that he's made, that's like filled with guns, filled with food, has a wild security system that he can see everything that's happening above him. He is fucking ready and probably hard for the apocalypse, like he's like. Yes, this is why I have been preparing.
Speaker 1:He's ready to shoot some government Nazis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he thinks they're all Nazis and he's played by. What's his name? Again, I forget his name. He's in Parks and Recreation. He loves steak and Parks and Recreation. He's like the quote unquote man's man, nick Offerman. Yes, like really wonderful actor, somebody. That doesn't fit the quote unquote stereotypes of what a gay person would be like, which is another reason why I love it. So then, fast forward. I think it's like six years into the apocalypse I think four, but close enough.
Speaker 2:Frank, four years into the apocalypse, Bill appears or no? Not Bill, sorry Frank. And what you see between the beginning of the apocalypse and four years in that, like Bill has fucking tricked his little community out. He has electric fencing around it, he has holes people can fall in, he has trip wires. What else does he have, dan?
Speaker 1:Well, when, when Frank shows up, he's Bill is making this device from a grinder that we later learn is a grinder setup that has like it's like a side grinder, like has a grinding wheel and he's put a. He's welded a little pipe to it so that he can put a bolt in it and the whole purpose of this is to just spray sparks. And the reason that it sprays sparks is that he just wants to flip a switch, turn a whole bunch of grinders on that spray sparks and ignites propane tanks that get opened up and just makes flamethrowers around the entire perimeter of his neighborhood.
Speaker 2:He hasn't just fenced around his house, he's fenced around an entire neighborhood. He's loving living his life alone, and we see him like making these incredible gourmet meals that he's, you know, hunted and garden for. So then Frank happens to fall into one of his holes and he sees, it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he sees him obviously on his camera as he goes out to get him. Obviously this man, bill, does not immediately trust Frank and Frank's like look, I'm just trying to get to the Boston QZ. Clearly he has no idea how bad it is there.
Speaker 1:He left the Baltimore QZ because it fell, so like we know that after four years of the apocalypse, boston has already collapsed, or not possible, baltimore has already collapsed.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so Frank is like, please, like, I'm one of 10 people that survived. I'm just trying to get to Boston, but I haven't eaten in two days. Like can you please feed me? And then what happens, dan?
Speaker 1:He feeds him braised rabbit yeah, he feeds him the most delicious dinner he's ever had and pairs it with a really fancy wine that I couldn't begin to tell you what wine it was, but you know there's a lot of. I guess there's a lot of.
Speaker 2:I think I know what you're trying to say. Yeah, please help me. There's a lot of hints that he is more cultured than what you might assume. A survivalist who thinks that the government's Nazis. In 2003, which, I mean to be fair, george Bush was in power and you were at war, dan, but not really a great time for the US, but anyways, he thinks all the world is Nazis and he seems like the super rough and tough guy. But he also knows a lot about wines and really beautifully cooked meals and his house is beautifully appointed. Now, dusty is not Dusty, but Dusty recently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he has like crystal glasses, like really nice, like plateware.
Speaker 2:Serving chargers. Yeah, he has an antique piano.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he positions the plate in a very specific way for him to see his meal that he's serving to Frank. So there's these clues that maybe he's more refined than we assume, like a quote, unquote man's man would be. And then he lets Frank take a shower and you can tell he's like super awkward because Frank has to go through his bedroom to take a shower and there's just like this little bit of weird tension. But what's interesting, the first time I watched it I was like is Frank going to try and murder Bill?
Speaker 1:Like I knew that there was tension, but it wasn't Right to the end of the episode, like when's the other shoe going to drop?
Speaker 2:When does he?
Speaker 1:try to take everything. When do his friends show up to murder Bill?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could feel this tension and, like probably other people, picked up on it, sooner maybe than I did, but I didn't really pick up on it until the moment at the piano where Frank is like before I go, please let me play this piano, and he digs through Bill's what are they called, the books that have music in them? Oh, music books, music books yeah, those. And finds Linda Doronstad and plays this beautiful song, but badly. And Bill gets really upset and is like get out of here, I'm going to play it. And you can just like feel this repressed, like seemingly repressed, emotionally stunted man like show his heart in this moment.
Speaker 2:And Frank is just watching him. And Frank looks at him and he says who's the girl that you're singing about? And Bill goes there is no girl. And then Frank just gently puts his hand on his shoulder and that moment is like the sexual tension is so high. They finally kiss and it's like Bill is. You can tell Bill's never kissed a man before. Probably like, maybe like one girl once in high school. It's been a real long time since this man has been touched, okay. And then Frank is like go have a shower.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's all in all, it's a beautiful love story and I think they really nail love stories in this series. And I've noticed this. I've noticed this with a few movies out there that focus on LGBTQ love stories. They tend to be like really emotionally charged, whereas if you watch a romcom with, like a heteronormative couple, it's really cringy because, like it's always the guy that's like it's like I noticed you were looking my direction, wink, wink, and I think you're hot or whatever. And it's something that, like Romcom or romance writers really need to like figure out and LGBTQ writers have figured out a long time ago because they've lived this world which is that this idea of forbidden love was always the thing that created these highly charged emotional Moments, because it's like they can't be together because society says no, but they're gonna do it anyway and they're gonna listen to Linda Romstad.
Speaker 2:But in this case there is no society, there's just like the reality that probably Bill living in the place that he lived, growing up like I think he's got to be in his I want to say 50s when they meet. So he's older, yeah, so that means he grew up in the fifth, like 19, who's born in the 1950s probably, and so his whole life Like, did he ever even meet an openly gay person? Yeah, not where he lived. No, I'm like. So you know, he channeled all of his sexual frustration I think it's preparing for the apocalypse, because he probably hated the fucking world he knew it wasn't made for him in the way that he really wanted to be, and so, out of this moment of like, there's societal freedom right there alone.
Speaker 2:They, they Create a beautiful love story, they stay together, they have incredible fights, like perfect marital spats.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my favorite part that makes me laugh every time I see it is when Frank is storming out of the house and and he's, and he's screaming at Bill and he's, and he's like oh, I forgot, you live in an alternate reality when 9-11 was an inside job and the government's full of Nazis, and then Bill's like the government is full of Nazis.
Speaker 2:It was super great. Yeah, you know cuz cuz Frank's wants to make the neighborhood nice for this friend he's been talking to on the radio, which when Bill finds out not very happy that he's talking to Tess and Joel on the radio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a pretty big security breach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's just like this really gorgeous one-off story that made my heart like just fucking blossom. I Will. Honestly, it's like a little mini movie. You could watch just that episode, nothing else, and I think you would get a lot out of it. And now what I would say is what it reminded me of a lot was Brokeback Mountain, which I'm kind of curious. When that came out? I think it came out in the early 2000s as well, which is a tragedy yeah it's a tragic love story.
Speaker 2:I think it was the first like major motion picture that was solely focused on a love story between two gay men that ended tragically because it was set in a time where it was completely unacceptable to the world for them to be together. And this one they get to be together and even though they die in the end which we'll share about that in a minute it feels like they got to live a life together that maybe wouldn't ever have happened, literally for Bill, if not for the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So thank God for the apocalypse.
Speaker 2:Yep, love story out of it and it's a really beautiful ending because his, because Frank gets. I think it might be like MS or some other kind of Disease that is degenerative in terms of your ability to use your body and he can't do things anymore and he decides that he wants to die and has Bill help him and Bill chooses to also take some drugs, not letting Frank know, and they die together. Yeah and it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't realize. It was probably a mass or like Parkinson's or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought it was cancer.
Speaker 1:It was, you know, the really bad kind that makes you paralyzed. I don't know. I guess I just don't know much about cancer unfortunately types about it yeah it sucks and it kills you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we don't know what it was, because obviously there's no doctors, but it was some sort of degenerative disorder. Something that you can take medication for, though but it doesn't matter, because their last day together they choose to get married and, like it's just ugh, it made me so happy, I loved it so much, everything about it. Seriously, if you don't watch any other part of last, it was just watch episode 3. Yeah, I promise it's worth it.
Speaker 1:And also I like that later on in the series there's there's a little bit of a parallel there with Ellie and Riley. Yeah, say more about that. Much younger of course, but like Ellie and Riley were roommates and you know, it's, it's, it's, I think it's this thing that I mean. I wouldn't know, but I, I imagine young people who are Gay and growing up and attracted to somebody have this conflict in their head with their friend who they're attracted to of. Are they also into whatever my genitals are? And it's like, should I just continue being best friends or is this more and like they don't? They don't know that until, like, literally, they're Riley's last day on earth, last minutes on earth.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:You know, like if they discovered that sooner, you know they were, they were roommates. That could have been.
Speaker 2:That could have been a great time, oh my god, yes but it's really like it's just nice to have so much queer representation on the show. There's no trans people so far, so it's not like all across the board, but this is some of the best Queer love stories that I've seen in recent memory, particularly Frank and Bill, and what I just was thinking about as we're talking about this is that what's not clear to me is that I don't think that society in this parallel universe evolved when it came to same-sex relationships, queer folk at all, because it's almost like that also got stopped in time because people are too busy surviving and those kinds of things Don't seem to be discussed in any way. Like the only time it's ever really discussed out loud is when Joel kind of like References Frank as Bill's partner, but like you can tell that Joel feels awkward about it, like he's okay with it, but he's also kind of like I don't really know to call him, but I know like important to you and stuff.
Speaker 1:Your wife, but then he's like your. What's the word for that? Yeah, Joel is also, you know, like societally cut off at 2003.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that's everybody, and so it's interesting To be thrown back into that world. It's not clear like they. They don't make that reality clear very well, except for these two stories, and I like that because it shows that no matter how much society does or does not approve, this is part of the human experience and people are having these experiences, who are queer. Regardless of whether or not people broadly think it's a okay or not, in the period, it is okay, it's more than okay. It's just like it really sucks when this is a part of who you are and you don't get to express it in the wider world To the point where I was glad there was an apocalypse for Bill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I'm always glad there's an apocalypse.
Speaker 2:It was lovely I could talk about that for like a whole hour, but I think we should keep keep moving. Fair warning folks If you haven't already noticed this, this episode is gonna go a lot longer than our usual hour because we're pretty passionate about the last of us. Yeah, I Think we should just get into it. We are recording this out of recording recording, recording from the future, leah.
Speaker 1:The future, but there but the when. They're also the past, also the past.
Speaker 2:It's yesterday today, but the future from yesterday it is exactly 12 hours before we usually launch our podcast on Sunday mornings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what happened was we continued talking about the last of us for an additional 45 minutes to an hour possibly, and and if you can't tell from the very beginning where, like I can't even remember what mushrooms are I Was kind of tired and the rest of the podcast just didn't go well. We, I was just too tired and Leah had to carry the whole thing herself, basically, and me just being like, yeah, that's, that's cool, leah.
Speaker 2:It was. It was. I actually made the offer to end, but then Dan was like, let's keep going and I Think next time I'll just say we need to end it, but I am not to be trusted speaking of ending it. This is our new end, many weeks later, after recording the original end, that was never an end because it was 45 minutes. So hope you, like the last of us, would love to hear what you think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's things that you think are missing from the last episode about the last of us.
Speaker 2:Let us, let us know there probably is, because there was 45 minutes. I Didn't talk with the Bechtel test and all that stuff, but I might do that in the next episode maybe, which is Dan is also very tired right now. You can't pick it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we Pending horses all day today. I know it's hard work putting a horse and pigs and cows and look at them and did I say goats?
Speaker 2:Yes, and we're gonna talk about that more next time in two weeks, when you get to hear from us our take on Pride and prejudice and zombies by Jane Austin and Seth Graham Smith, which is a mashup, and you already right awful.
Speaker 1:I'm reading it right now yeah, everybody's everybody did their homework right so that we could talk about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's not spoiler.
Speaker 1:You know, if somebody had some opinions about pride and prejudice and zombies, you know where they could tell that to me, this newfangled internet craze called threads it's Twitter, but not.
Speaker 2:It's. It's basically Zuckerberg's fuck you to Twitter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love it.
Speaker 2:We. Choosing between threads and Twitter is like choosing between Walmart and Amazon. It's terrible options, but one is slightly better.
Speaker 1:Come to the Walmart of Twitter.
Speaker 2:Where's it? The Amazon? I'm not sure. I think it's the Walmart.
Speaker 1:It's the Walmart. Yeah, but yeah, I'm local shop Walmart. I'm on there. Our podcast is on there. Leah's on there.
Speaker 2:Shockingly, I am with a public account. I never do that. It's mostly climate despair.
Speaker 1:So if you're into that genre of feeling sad, yeah, check the the link tree link in the description, which is definitely there at the time of upload this time, unlike Previous episodes where I say it's there and it's not actually there until a few hours later when I realized I forgot to put it into the show notes.
Speaker 2:We keep it classy here. Professionals, hey, it's a book club, it's volunteer and also don't forget to subscribe. Would love to also. Speaking of threads, yeah, tell us what you think about the book. If you have read it, I did learn it was a bestseller, which actually surprised me.
Speaker 1:That's a prize, is me too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a bestseller, Dan, and also, if you can follow us on Instagram, that's the place that we're hanging out, but otherwise we'll see you in two weeks for pride and prejudice and zombies and and get bit but don't don't get bit, avoid being bit. Is that what we want? But if you get bit by others, bite them first Destruction we're all biting each other now. Returning to our toddler era of biting. Okay.
Speaker 1:We're gonna add this bye. Bye, bye, bye.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:How do I stop? How do I stop you? You should keep this part, oh.
