The Last Of Us Might Be The Most Uneven Television Show In History

Christopher Khoury. Shutterstock Images.

(Warning: This contains spoilers from Episode 4 of The Last Of Us.)

Last night's episode of The Last Of Us brought to light some of my worst fears about this show. It wasn't the zombie attack in the subway or people doing evil things to each other in Seattle. Instead, I'm talking about something far more frightening: Bella Ramsey and Isabela Merced trying to be the emotional core of this show.

I get Ramsey is an easy target and I'm not trying to pile on. It's not her fault that she's been left doing the acting equivalent of learning to swim while being thrown into a 20 foot deep pool. She doesn't write the show. No one watching a show about zombies taking over the world wants to see major storylines about teenagers in love. Just like I'm sure people who read Nicholas Sparks books don't want zombies to start eating characters in those books.

The wild part of this episode is the juxtaposition between something out of DeGrassi High with Jeffrey Wright's incredible acting in his scenes as a militia leader. Wright isn't just a good TV actor. Check out American Fiction. He's one of the best actors working today. His scenes in this episode were brilliant and exciting. But because of the Ellie/Dina stuff, it felt bizarre. It was like watching two different shows at exactly the same time.

Is this the show moving forward? We have to sit through these odd romantic scenes like Ellie playing Take On Me on an acoustic guitar and therefore ruining one of my favorite 1980's songs? I guess that's the struggle we have to endure just to get the cool zombie shit.

This is different then the Dr. Melfi scenes in The Sopranos or Skyler fucking Ted in Breaking Bad. You can have whatever opinion you want about those not being as entertaining. But, you can't say they weren't well acted. They felt like they at least belonged in the show.

I have this ranked as the worst episode of the season so far. The Jeffrey Wright scenes were excellent. The zombie stuff with the subway and turnstiles especially were fantastic. The other stuff was just…bad. Watching Ellie take down a trained soldier holding an automatic weapon was laughable. The people who create this show are obviously very talented. What do they think when they are watching that scene? They think that looks even remotely possible?

I'm still going to keep watching because I do feel invested in this world but oddly, not in any of the characters. The show does do a good job of introducing new people so hopefully we get more Wright and other interesting people. But it is odd to watch a zombie show where you kind of root for the zombies.

SEASON 2

Episode 4: C

Episode 3: B

Episode 2: A

Episode 1: B-