The Last of Us (Season 1), Episode 3: There are a lot of superlatives that can be used to describe ‘The Last of Us,’ both the game and now the show. Yet ‘beautiful’ is an adjective that requires caution when being used since so much of its world is built on precarious foundations.
The third episode, ‘Long, Long Time,’ named after the aching Linda Ronstadt’s song, is a truly beautiful love story, a mini-movie that can be watched entirely on its own. If the game saw Bill as a jumpy survivalist living on his own in an abandoned, fenced-off town, Nick Offerman turns him into a complete human being, confrontational and tough on the outside though really just a soft and protective man on the inside.
And he’s complemented gorgeously by Murray Bartlett’s tender portrayal of Frank. No longer can this show be accused of being the cutscenes from the game stitched together – it’s an entirely different powerhouse of its own. All praise goes to the creators for making this point evident in an episode that is primarily a tale of two lives brought together by love.
The Last of Us (Season 1), Episode 3 Recap:
Following Tess’s death, Ellie and Joel manage to make it 10 miles away from Boston into the woods. Ellie clarifies to Joel that his need for a truck battery made him carry out this dangerous assignment of taking Ellie to the Fireflies. So, he shouldn’t blame her for Tess’s death. Joel understands, perhaps even appreciates, Ellie’s candor. The two start heading for Bill and Frank’s place.
On the way, they stop at a rundown Cumberland Farms store so Joel can pick up some stashed gear he left there two years ago. As he’s trying to figure out where he left it all, Ellie finds an entrance into a basement. Upon climbing down, she discovers an Infected that’s alive but unmoving due to the weight of the debris it is stuck under. She gets close and toys with it using her pocket knife before stabbing it in the face. Joel leaves his automatic rifle behind in the store, stating that the ammo for it is hard to come by. But still, he doesn’t let Ellie carry a gun. On the road, they come across an airplane that crashed long ago. Ellie, who has never had the opportunity to be on one, expresses her fascination for the vehicle.
On being questioned about the origin of the Cordyceps infection, Joel tells her about the most commonly believed cause. It’s believed that the Cordyceps fungus mutated and entered the food supply through essential items like flour or sugar. Some items like bread or cereal (or pancake mix, something Joel states with a pause because he remembers Sarah making them on his birthday), which are consumed worldwide, were contaminated. Hence, in one go, a concentrated consumption of these items allowed the fungus to enter the human body and infect it, causing the outbreak in a concise amount of time.
Subsequently, Ellie comes across an entire field full of human skeletons, and Joel tells her about the brutal practices the military adopted in the early days of the pandemic. When small towns were being evacuated, people were promised to be taken to QZs. But since the QZs were already filling up, a large number of them were brutally gunned down, and their bodies were left in the open. Moreover, killing them meant they couldn’t be infected and further the spread.
The action shifts to the 30th of September, 2003, four days after the outbreak. Bill, a paranoid survivalist, manages to evade getting picked up by the military during the evacuation of Lincoln, Massachusetts. He hides in his heavily armed basement. When his town is completely deserted, he leaves his house, robs everything he needs from the stores around him, and encloses his own territory by setting up fences. Furthermore, he booby-traps his surroundings to prevent the stray Infected from entering. Cooking himself delicious meals and pairing them with the right wines, he leads a utopian existence on his own.
In 2007, a man named Frank fell into a hole he set up outside his fence. He says that he left the Baltimore QZ with ten men, heading for the Boston QZ. His companions are now dead, and Bill is satisfied to see that he isn’t infected after using the scanner on him. Frank negotiates a meal since he hasn’t had anything to eat for two days. Frank has a shower, puts on some fresh clothes, and enjoys a sumptuous rabbit dish paired with a glass of Beaujolais. On discovering the piano, the two bond over it, and Frank kisses Bill upon realizing that he’s gay. The two make love, and Frank asks to stay for a few more days. This marks the beginning of a new life for Bill and Frank.
In 2010, Frank tells Bill that he started speaking with a friendly woman on the radio and invited her over to lunch, much to Bill’s chagrin. That woman is Tess, who visits them with Joel. Frank and Tess immediately bond and become good friends, while Joel and Bill have an uneasy friendship. Joel tells Bill that a symbiotic relationship can exist between the two couples as each has access to materials the other doesn’t. It’s not something Bill readily agrees to. At the end of their meeting, Frank suggests the radio code to Tess using music from different decades to indicate what’s out there. Joel warns Bill that he should anticipate invasions by Raiders – violent groups of scavengers.
In 2013, Bill started to get old and slow down. Frank surprises Bill with some strawberries he grew using seeds he traded for a ‘small’ gun with Tess and Joel. Bill gets emotional on tasting that fruit after ages and admits to Frank that he’s afraid of losing him. One night, a group of Raiders reaches the fence and tries to break in but suffers heavy damage from the traps that are in place. Frank goes out to find Bill shooting at the Raiders without any cover and, naturally, gets shot in his torso. He takes Bill inside, who expects to die from the wound, and manages to cure him.
In 2023, both Bill and Frank are now old and feeble. Frank is wheelchair-bound, spending his days painting. One day, he admits to Bill that he has a terminal disease, which isn’t named. He doesn’t wish to prolong the suffering and wishes to die by Bill’s hand that night. Frank wants the two of them to get married, have a delicious final meal cooked by Bill, and then have the latter mix a large number of sleeping pills in his wine so he can fall asleep and die in Bill’s arms.
A despondent Bill agrees to do it out of love. After their dinner that night, Bill mixes the sleeping pills in Frank’s drink, who, after finishing it, is suspicious of Bill having already poisoned both their drinks. Bill admits to it, stating that he’s satisfied with the life the two of them shared and does not wish to live on any longer after he’s gone. The two of them go to bed together.
The Last of Us (Season 1), Episode 3 Ending, Explained:
Joel and Ellie reach Bill and Frank’s place. Joel is unsure of what to make of the neglected state of the place. He finds the bedroom door locked. Ellie comes across a letter left ‘To whomever, but probably Joel’ and a key. In the letter, Bill states that he never liked Joel, but he had respect for him. Bill lived his own life because he had someone to live it for, in order to save and protect him, that being Frank. In the letter, Bill wishes that Joel would do the same for Tess. He left behind his truck, his guns, and his equipment to Joel and requested him not to open the bedroom door where the two of them were lying dead.
Dejected at the loss of more allies, Joel pulls himself together and makes a truck battery. He tells Ellie that they’re heading out to find his missing brother, Sam, who is probably in Wyoming. Since Sam was once a Firefly, he’ll probably have information about the location of the camp where Ellie is to be taken. He sets up some ground rules for Ellie to keep in mind during their trip, which Ellie neatly summarizes as being whatever Joel says is what goes. However, Ellie slips in a gun from a drawer into her backpack without Joel’s knowledge. After the battery is charged and they have both freshened up, Joel and Ellie leave for their trip out west in Bill’s truck, and Ellie is totally elated at being inside a car for the first time.
