“When your time comes, I hope you do better than me.”
Fans of The Last of Us Part ll have surely been waiting for how the HBO series tackles the game’s various flashback sequences. The Birthday chapter, Finding Strings, or even Ellie’s return to Salt Lake City, are frequently regarded as some of the game’s finest moments. It’s a hard statement to argue with, because the real purpose of the flashbacks is to harken back to the first game’s exploration of fatherhood and father-daughter relationships, which Part ll is intentionally missing.
It would not have been a stretch to expect a flashback every other episode; it is no secret that showrunner Craig Mazin is a fan of cold opens and flashbacks, but due to the pacing and length of the season, the flashbacks have been relegated to a singular episode. “The Price” has a similar feel to last seasons’ “Long, Long Time”, which details the relationship between Bill and Frank.
The episode takes on a vignette format, starting with a flashback to Joel and Tommy’s childhood (which is, until now, never delved into in the franchise), and then progressing through the various years that Joel and Ellie have spent in Jackson. While Ellie is never sidelined into a supporting role, Pedro Pascal is given the spotlight here. Other episodes usually focus on Ellie’s reaction to things, much of the focus is given to Joel and his perspective, which has not been explored this season.
Of the several iconic moments of the game (including the previously adapted “Take on Me” scene) one of the definite givens of this season was going to be the birthday flashback, which features Joel surprising Ellie by taking her to an abandoned museum, where she climbs a T-Rex statue and sits inside of an Apollo-era rocket. The scene is as much an emotional crescendo as it is within the game, and is just such an easily lovable part of the episode. The game’s other important flashback, the “Finding Strings” segment, is left out, but in its place the mystery surrounding Joel’s murder of Gail’s husband Eugene is depicted. The singular gunshot in the episode harkens perfectly back to the swift brutality of last season’s Joel. It is an exciting character moment that is immediately followed by Joel lying to Gail’s face about not killing Eugene in cold blood. It recontextualizes Ellie’s ultimate discovery of Joel’s lie at the end of the first season, yet it again gives more focus to Joel’s emotions surrounding all of this. The climax of the episode, which takes place at the New Year’s party in Episode One, depicts the final conversation between Joel and Ellie that isn’t shown until the ending of the game. Here, it is just as emotional, and is one instance where the new dialogue (not from the game) really works. The placement of the scene, more importantly the revelations, might change the course of later seasons, but it works quite well here.
In a season riddled with pacing issues, one would hardly think that the flashback-bottle episode would be one of the best paced (and placed) episodes of the season, and of the show as a whole. Pedro Pascal delivers one of his finest performances as Joel in the show, and it does serve as a bit of evidence against Craig Mazin being a poor writer. Delightful in its quiet moments, emotional in its dramatic ones, and one where the absence of Infected or nefarious bandit groups is hardly felt.
