i have a Lot of problems with tlou s2 and itās coming more from a point of loving how the game is such a good, mostly tight story whereas this season and especially last episode was very bad storytelling. but i think many of the issues from this season stem from pacing issues, especially how much time passes between joelās death, and ellie and dina (+tommy and jesse) going to seattle. long rant ahead. and no, I do not hate bella ramsey and think they are great as ellie, and i do not think they dumbed down ellie in the show.
in the game things move fucking fast. abby does joel in one. tommy takes off after abby. ellie and dina go to save himāwith ellie having the opportunity to track down abby too. jesse goes to help. there is no time to think, to process. tommy wants revenge, and ellie does too.
in the show abby et al break ellieās ribs and kill joel; ellie goes to jackson and recovers plus gets therapy from gail. dina gets back together with jesse and gets pregnant. tommy is hanging out. theyāre twiddling their thumbs, because with ellie, the main character of the show, incapacitated they have to. then after the council says no ellie decides to leave anyway and dina comes with. and then jesse and tommy go after them.
one thing i really chafed against both as a viewer of the show and the game was gailās character. i fucking love catherine oāhara and her performance was great. but it felt almost anachronistic to have her character there. obviously therapy has been around for Forever but it felt like they were shoehorning it in, like they were making an au fanfic: what if these characters had access to therapy? would they be better people? could be an interesting theory. but if i were to guess therapy wasnāt as prevalent/discussed back in 2003āwhen pandemic starts in the showāversus 2013 when it started in the game. gailās character doesnāt exist in the game. she didnāt need to exist! we donāt need someone telling feelings.
and itās just frustrating because it slows down the story without revealing anything about the characters. in the finale episode especially we get it shoved down our throats that ellie wants to kill abby but help other people, that she has morals, and the universe keeps trying to stop her from reaching abby. we understand these things about ellie simply from 1. her clear regret after accidentally killing mel and 2. the horrible weather as she sets out in a boat in choppy waters to find abby, and the boat capsizing. there was no fucking point in her landing on scar island. there was no point in her getting mad at jesse for not saving the scar kid captured by the WLFs in the garage. itās overcomplicating an already jam-packed story.
i do not think ellie is dumb in the show. i donāt think sheās dumb in the game either. she has tunnel vision in the game. in the show it reads more as naivety which is wild given what we see her go through as a 14-year-old. and a lot of emotional processing of grief when ellie has hardly any time to do that in the game, in an unforgiving world, in a cycle of violence. we can get that later, it will happen. and also in a complex fashion. we donāt need the show to shove down our throats that ellie is a morally gray/complicated character. we know this. we saw this in joel. and she is becoming like joel, her main example of a loving parental figure.
i think bella ramsey had great moments as ellie but the writing failed them. i liked all the other performances! i just fucking hated the writing. and no hate to kaitlyn dever, i can see that she has the chops to play abby, but like many people have pointed out already, it is integral to her character to be super buff. it is so rare for appearance like that to matter but it feels like they are trying to make ellie and abby perfect parallels rather than foils. do they have ellie land on scar islandāwhich they admittedly cut from the gameāto mirror how abby had something very similar happen (we see the rope burn around her neck in the theater)? they already changed ages so they were the same ages when their dads dies. Etc.
i have no problem with adaptations deviating from source material when it adds to the story, like melās deathāor like all of season 1, which in some ways surpassed the game. but it seems tlou is going down the game of thrones route. a path i cannot follow.
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