golf and infected, many infected

Broadcast April 21, 2025

Duration: 56 min – Realization: Mark mylod

Remember, the last plan of episode 1 ended on this rod of cordycers which came out of an evacuation pipe in the middle of Jackson, and it is exactly this fortuitous appearance which will trigger chaos within the city, yet shown as an impenetrable fortress. A nonexistent sequence in video games, created specially for the needs of the TV series and which is integrated in a completely valid and intelligent way, since it will serve the story and strengthen another precise scene … but we come back in a few moments. For the time being, we must return to the start of episode 2, which begins with a strong sequence also, and that the players know well, since it is the moment when Abby goes up the famous corridor which leads to the operating room. A sequence which comes much later in the game, but which will allow this episode 2 to again introduce the character of Abby and this trauma that she lived a few years earlier. Moreover, if we find the same anxiety -provoking atmosphere, both visual and sound with this strident alarm, Neil Druckmann, Craig Mazin and Halley Gross added this additional hallucination where Abby crosses the path of another Abby, older and above all already aware of what we find in the room at the end of the corridor. Again, the series will not play on the unsaid or suggestions, it will go Franco by detailing the corpse of the surgeon, and therefore of the father of Abby. We press this detail of brains that lies on the ground to precisely mark this emotional shock that Abby will live and generate in her an immeasurable hatred. What could be more painful than losing a family member, so violent and especially so unfair?

On the green

Abby wakes up, realizes that it is a nightmare and we immediately hang up with Abby’s intro scene in the game when it was embodied for the first time. She is with her friends, in this chalet perched in the mountains and located several tens of kilometers from Jackson. The opportunity obviously to talk about the physique of actress Kaytlin Dever which suddenly appears frail and far from the well -bleaze physique of the Abby that we knew in video games. I have always told you that it is the performance that primaeled before physical resemblance, but I find that to withdraw the bodybuilded aspect of Abby is to subtract an inherent part of his character, from her character and especially from this feeling that she is invincible, untouchable limit. Because that was the goal of the game, to offer a totally different character from Ellie, capable of getting rid of the infected just by the strength of her points, the concrete blocks she sends. Nobody knows the real reason why Kaitlyn Dever did not go to the room to push melting, and they can be multiple: it can be the lack of desire on the part of the actress, the fact may not be she could do because of her filming calendar, if she was running a film just behind the series, spotted weight in a very short time, it is not obvious, in short, we don’t know. But suddenly, there is a gap, especially in his scene with Joel, but that, I come back in a few moments …

In any case, the series avoids the frontal confrontation between Abby and the infected in the snow that served as a tutorial in the game, since it was the first time that we took control of Abby. There, the showrunners have opted directly for the direct chase which will lead to this now cult scene from the fence which increases the tension, because the wire palisade gives way more than in the video game, that the infected are even more aggressive, where we see fingers that try to catch Abby, and especially this plan with a hand ready to be mutilated. I already feel the pain just talking about it. Then, we find this scene where Abby struggles against an infected who managed to follow her just behind and it will take the intervention of Joel so that Abby can get out of it.

Mulligan granted

From that moment, my little viewer’s heart was tightened because if these sequences exist, which will also follow and this is where I realized that the series did not turn away from its destiny, that this famous fateful moment was going to happen. But how? How? Will it be the same execution that we suffered in the video game? Will there be changes? A completely legitimate question that can be asked when we see that the series does not hesitate to make significant changes. For example, there, when Joel saves Abby, he is not accompanied by his brother Tommy, but he is with Dina and that changes things a lot. Tommy, he is busy protecting Jackson from this invasion of infected who arise from nowhere in the middle of the snowstorm. And this parallel where each brother must fight for his survival, I find it super interesting, there is a mirror effect, and there is also this thing that we say: Tommy will not be able to come and save Joel, given what is happening in Jackson. Joel is delivered to himself, but this time accompanied by Dina. Does it have a chance to get out of it? Maybe it is Dina who will ultimately be stubborn? So many questions that I asked myself and in real life, it was plausible, and it could have generated the same feeling of hatred in Ellie. But God is rented, the series followed the reasoning of the game, gets rid of Dina via an injection that puts her sleeping, while Joel dies under the blows of Abby. A death very close to that of the video game besides, with obviously the famous golf club that the camera does not hesitate to enhance, especially as that which Abby chosen has a very sharp, very blessing side.

Overall the torture session is more or less the same as in video games, but there are some changes. There is indeed the shotgun in the knee and this notion of going to treat him to keep him alive, or at least conscious, but there are these club strokes in the perforated knee that are not in video games. Likewise, when Ellie arrives: at that time, Abby is behind Joel, not with the golf club, but with her fists. Joel’s face is well started, well swollen too, but what will finish it is not the golf club on the temple, but a piece of the golf club which has undoubtedly broken under the blow and that Abbyi plants at the neck of Joel.

The scene is cruel, quite gore too, and of course shocking, even if I find that that of the video game remains above, a little more impactful, probably because at the time, nobody expected it, because we have taken this scene in the face. On the other hand, where the series will go and get another emotion, this is this moment when Ellie will join Joel’s body, take off the golf club piece, take her hands and hug him. It is a moment of tenderness that does not have video games, simply because in the game, Ellie receives a kick in the face which makes her lose consciousness. And then this image where we see Jesse, Dina and Ellie going back to Jackson with the body of Joel wrapped in a fabric and dragged on the ground by the horse, obviously that it hurts the heart, but it is part of the emotions that the series seeks to create in the spectator.

AIR SHOT & BACKSPIN

So yes, season 2 does not turn away from this compulsory moment in the construction of the story, and also amplifies it with this attack of infected within Jackson which makes it possible to make things even more dramatic. Because if Joel loses life on one side, others also die under the attack of these ultra-annoyed zombies, capable of coming to shatter against Jackson’s wooden barricades, despite the impeccable defense led by a Tommy to the best of his form and a Gabriel Luna who transpires the Bad-Assitude at every moment. And of course, how not to talk about this confrontation between Tommy and a colossus, the famous Bloater, which Tommy provokes to prevent him from attacking Maria. A scene full of tension too, with a flame thrower that offers striking images, but which limits Tommy in his field of action. Besides, the passage where Tommy tries to flee and finds himself stuck in the middle of the Batîment and other stores, it reminded me of the ‘without return’ mode which was added in the remastered version of The Last of Us Part 2 on PS5.

Anyway, a masterful episode that Mark Mylod was able to sublimate, and coming from his part, he who signed major episodes of Game of Thrones and succession, it could not be otherwise …