The Last of Us S2 E6 "The Price" Review

Put your ear to the streets of Hollywood, and the message you'll be hearing is that The Last of Us hasn't been doing so well for the last few weeks. I'm already seeing brash and histrionic articles and video essays about how it's "getting worse" and even about how it's "falling apart." And I understand and even agree with the sentiment on some measured level, but episode 6 of the second season, The Price, shows exactly why I'm hesitant to criticize TV shows before they come full circle. Forget Through The Valley. This new episode of HBO's increasingly divisive adaptation isn't just the best of Season 2. The Price is quite possibly the best episode of the whole series.

There's a flashback at the beginning of this episode where a young Joel has a talk with his abusive father, portrayed by Tony Dalton. Dalton gives what I am convinced is one of the best acting performances I've ever seen in any medium, be it movies or television. His facial expressions subtly and clearly portray so many conflicting emotions simultaneously that I was legitimately floored. What's more, the rest of the episode somehow matches and even exceeds the heights of this phenomenal opening scene, chucking the plot thread about Ellie and Dina's quest for revenge in favor of one following Joel and Ellie in the years before Mr. Miller's untimely death. I knew I missed Pedro Pascal, but wow, did The Price ever make me realize how much. In some ways, this episode lays bare many things that aren't working for the second season of The Last of Us, but only because it's utterly triumphant as a feat of performative storytelling when much of what came before it was passable.

This episode is basically a series of Ellie's birthdays, one after another, in the years between the show's two seasons. Some of these birthdays are ethereally beautiful, and others do nothing but expose and expand on a growing divide between Joel and Ellie. This contrast was powerful, and how it's portrayed to us is nothing short of brilliant. The Price is an intelligent but oh-so-heartbreaking portrait of a once-beautiful father-daughter relationship falling apart, and its relative independence from the rest of the show gives it the freedom to tell its own contained story. And in every last way, it more than delivers.

I didn't think I had the words to describe what The Price did to me, but I nevertheless wanted to try. Season 2 of The Last of Us has hit a slump since the death of Joel and the absence of all of Pedro Pascal's talent and range as an actor, and I think that HBO would have been better off trying to fit The Last of Us: Part II into one long season instead of this two-season format. But The Price breathes fiery new life into a show that has been floundering for the last few weeks, and is likely my favorite episode of either season to date. Actions, even actions most would see as right and just, have consequences, and The Price is about those consequences. In many ways, it feels like the episode the whole series has been leading to. It is a heartbreaking, big-thinking, and brilliant episode of television, one that nearly brought a tear to my cynical eye.

Nevertheless, if somehow the Lord gave me a second chance to watch it for the first time, I would do it all over again.

Ephesians 6:4