Spore, seraphites and sacrifices, an impaired episode

With a duration of 45 minutes, episode 5 is simply the shortest episode of season 2 and still today, after seeing it 4/5 times since I received the 7 episodes at the end of March, I wonder why it does not exceed 60 minutes, as there are important things to approach. Be careful, it is clearly an episode that I liked in its entirety, especially in its construction, the themes that are addressed, the way things are brought, and the play of actors in general, but I think there is poor management of balance and rhythm. Among the errors that were made in my opinion, it is this mismanagement of timing and mainly within 2/3 of the episode. To start the introduction is far too long, especially for such a hard -hitting dialogue. The subject is important, it is there to introduce the spores, an element that had not been treated in the series, forgotten in season 1, but a 5 -minute dialogue for that? It’s far too long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fog_o8bqcu0

Combat spores

It is indeed an exchange between Hanrahan played by Alanna Ubach and Elise interpreted by Hettienne Park to make us understand the danger of these infectious particles which propagate in the air. We also see a heavily barricaded door within the hospital, which has now become an area of ​​quarantine, and which already teases the King rat which will undoubtedly arrive in season 3. This is where Elise admits having sacrificed her own son, Leon, leaving him in the lower stages of the hospital, Leon that we will see at the end of the episode when Ellie is walking in his sub-met. I tell you, the subject is important, but it is the way of telling it that lacks punch, potato. I would have preferred a 2 min scene which shows us that we had to sacrifice these soldiers, rather than we tell us with so little commitment and emotions.

In the same way, what follows behind would have deserved to be dispatched more quickly too, that is to say the exchanges between Ellie and Dina which is preparing to start in the streets of Seattle. This kind of implementation of the plan, the explanations on the triangulation of the positions, the fact that Ellie returns to make the guitar to remember Joel, these are important moments, especially to justify visceral hatred which will spring from Ellie’s mind when she will find herself facing Nora, but I think we could also have scratched a few more minutes to develop another sequence. And this passage is that of confrontation with the Seraphites in the forest. In the game, the fights against the scars are important, and undoubtedly the most scary, because they are tough, aggressive even and this way of hunting marked the players, especially with their whistles, scary and which marks the spirits. This is what we would have liked to see in the series, a real confrontation between Ellie and some of the seraphites, a real manhunt where Ellie would have taken advantage of the tall grass and ferns to circumvent them and eliminate some.

Scar & Fiction

The iconic moment in the game when Ellie takes an arrow under the collarbone to introduce this new injury mechanics has been changed in the series, since it is Dina who takes the arrow in the thigh. It is scripturally clever on the part of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, since it will help to immobilize Dina for the rest of the adventure and fall back on the same journey as video game. I remind you that in the game, Dina is put aside because she is pregnant and that she does not feel well. This is what will happen in episode 6, but for reasons of injury this time. It’s clever yes, but damn, why not have stretched this sequence of scars in the woods? This is what we all expected good blood! No there, we just have a rushed chase, shipped in less than 5 minutes, sequence of the event, including it is so frustrating … As a result, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann did not turn away from violence and we can feel this very dismal side of how the scars act, this need to bring out the guts of his enemies to atone for their sins. We know thanks to the making of that all these sequences of men and women hanged with their intestines outside were turned with real attached people, which brings a real feeling of additional horror.

It is not only the seraphite scene that deserved to be much better exploited, infiltration in the hospital too. We remember how complicated it was to penetrate inside the building into the game, especially with tracker dogs and the many Wolfs factions to avoid, and that would have deserved a real development in the series, may be able to minimize the fight against the Stalkers. Because even if it is cool to see infected again, the prowlers, we had already seen them and especially the Episode 4 had given us what we already wanted in terms of zombies. Personally, I would have swapped the scene of the prowlers against a well -pointed fight against the Wolf with key to key, with Jesse intervention at the end, that would have changed anything after this episode 5.

What has not been missed, on the other hand, is the confrontation between Ellie and Nora, quite close to the video game in its execution, except that the series will afford a little freedom in the chase, is to cross corridors filled with spore but especially soldiers who are dying and are being transformed for weeks, or even months. This moment is I find visually very successful, suffocating in his imagery, haunted by the organic colors and the textures of the invasive fungus. This is where we hang up the wagons with the intro scene, since Ellie will find himself in front of Leon, this soldier Wolf, son of Elise, left for dead by his own mother to save the rest of the community. Or the total opposite of what Joel did not do with Ellie. The reverse mirror in everyone’s decisions. It is very strong as an image.

Everything goes too fast

And of course, the ultimate act of episode 5 that everyone expected, very close to what we lived in video games, with this beautiful photo, plunged in this powerful red lighting, with a nora that can do nothing. Ellie finds one of the women responsible for the death of Joel and the confrontation between the two women turns to moral confrontation. Nora does not beg. She accuses. She claims. She says Joel deserved her death. And Ellie does not back down. She knows what she does is bad. She does it anyway. She will torture her to get what she wants, by mimicking what Abby did to Joel, drying rusty hose in the Beuj of Nora, who will also scream. Bella Ramsey is imperial in this sequence, both calm and determined in her gaze and freezing in the words she will pronounce. The Where is Abby posed calmly, but assured shows us a woman who is ready to do anything to go to the end of what she wants. She also gets what she wants. But at what price? She becomes Joel’s mirror. She does what would have done to her. Worse: she knows what Joel did, she knows her lie, and she continues. When Nora asks him: “Do you know what he did?” »»and that she simply answers ” I know “we understand that the truth no longer saves. She doesn’t absorge. It justifies the irreparable. And as the episode ends with a flashback where Joel appears smiling, awakening an Ellie, also all smiles, how not to go out satisfied with this episode? This is what is also going on in video games, this need to breathe, to see light after such a dark passage. The game has played with our emotions, the series too and this episode will obviously make an impression. Too bad on the other hand that it is also rushed, that it lasts so short time, it would have deserved to last at least 60 min so that the impact is even stronger.