(Spoilers) If you’re here, I’m guessing you watched The Last of Us episode 3 on HBO max last night. Here’s my review: It was quite simply a giant waste of time. That’s an hour of my life I want back. Now the title of the episode was perfectly titled: “A long, long, time” for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is how long this side quest of an episode felt. That’s what it was. A side-quest, a giant self-indulgent side-quest that adds nothing to the actual story other than Joel and Ellie now have a truck. Oh! And Ellie has a gun. Want to know why none of this is in the game? Because ultimately it doesn’t matter. When you release the show on Blue Ray you edit down to the last 2 minutes. Joel and Ellie find the suicide note and drive away. Tada!

So, why bother to spend the time and money to produce this episode? For real. Why? I’m guessing the writers and producers felt the need to teach the world that gay couples are ‘just like us’. Did we need that? Really? Hasn’t that been done to death? Couldn’t we have watched a couple of episodes of Will and Grace? Or maybe Dawn dish soap commercial? Or any of the thousands of commercials on TV that feel the need to feature gay couples that turns out are ‘Just like us’? We get it. I’ll speak for entire straight community. We get it. You are now going beyond beating a dead horse. You are beating a live horse to death. It’s predictable and boring and waste of time. Please concentrate on moving the story forward. The main characters. The ones we signed up to watch.

As for the episode overall? It was fine. The cast was good. They did their job. The real crime of this episode was the predictable twists that everyone saw coming a mile away. There was zero Suprise in this script. Zero. Hey look! The prepper is lonely and found a person in one of his traps! And he’s gay! Twist! And the prepper is gay! What?! Nick Offerman playing a gay guy!! Won’t that be interesting? No. We all saw it coming. Hey look! the gay guy wants to play piano, but he sucks. Twist! The prepper can play! Yes. Yes, he can. It’s his piano. Hey look! The prepper is sad he’s older than his boyfriend! Twist! The boyfriend is the one who gets sick! Yes. Of course, he is. See? That’s the twist. It goes on and on like that. Hey look! The boyfriend is going to commit suicide! Twist! They both will! Shock? Suprise? Not at all. Here’s the big takeaway: The direction was good. The acting was good. The music was good. It was all just a waste of time for the show. Unless you wanted someone to convince you that somehow murder/suicide is somehow romantic? And that gay couples are just like us. Whatever, none of it matters. It could all be on the editing room floor, and you would never miss it. Ever. Let’s get back to the actual story next week, shall we? That’d be great.