“I’m old. I’m satisfied. And you were my purpose” - Frank
I think we, as humans, are attracted to end-of-days, apocalypse-style stories, in part because we like to imagine ourselves (romantically if that’s the right word) at the outer edges of existence. At the beginning of the end. As heroes in the desolation. As the last beacons of hope. As the main characters in a time that involves few others.
There’s a reason these types of stories span multiple demographics: it’s easy to insert ourselves into the narrative as a survivor. Could any of us really pull off what Frank (or Joel) does in The Last of Us? No, that’s why fiction is fiction after all. But wrapped up in that narrative arc is also a question about what it means to actually survive.
Episode 3 of The Last of Us, was so much more than a survivalist or even a relationship story. It was a love letter to humanity about what it means to endear and push forward in the face of a bleak (and deadly) reality.
It was a reminder that living for (only) yourself has a definitive shelf-life. It simply isn’t good enough to continue on when the rest of the world perishes if it’s just you living off of your non-perishables. And sometimes the reason for your actual human survival falls right into your lap, or at least one of your dug-out perimeter traps.
The story of Nick Offerman’s Bill and Murray Bartlett’s Frank is going to end up being an hour of television and that’s going to be it. We got the beginning, middle, and end all in one episode. The larger narrative aspect of their story will be in how it eventually pushes Joel and Ellie out into the world. But the lasting effects of Bill and Frank will be significantly more, likely becoming a touchpoint for how we talk about true love.
It was so gorgeous, painful, beautiful, emotional, tragic, uplifting, redeeming, and crushing all at once. Few other productions could pull something like this off and give it true emotional stakes in such a short period of time. In short: this episode was a masterpiece.
A show about a deadly fungal outbreak that devastates humanity and civilization is going to deal (a lot) with death. The Last of Us already has done just that, effectively losing plot-driving characters in each of the first three episodes. Episode 1 was Sarah, Episode 2 was Tess, and now it’s Bill and Frank. There is definitely more heartbreak to come.
But the essence of the series is that with each character's death, there’s a push towards making survival that much more important, that much more crucial. Living for the sake of living and surviving for the sake of surviving will never be good enough. And with each person lost there’s more and more reason for Joel and Ellie to make it.
This episode told its story over decades, in the life of Bill and Frank who came together at a piano and went out on their own terms. But in the middle, they showed that the reason we, as humans, endure, is that when it’s said and done we need to find purpose. And the purpose can’t be us and us alone. It has to be to protect, to grow, to make friends, to paint things even if the world is fucked, to grow things just to taste them, to stack cars up around the perimeter because what’s happening inside is of the utmost importance. And the best of those things are simple.
To survive the outbreak, ward off raiders, get shot, not starve, beat all the odds, and essentially “win” only to “lose” because of fucking Parkinson’s is one of those cruel ironies that can only happen in television. But lying down in bed one last time with your love (with the window open), as a general middle-finger to the circumstance that the rest of the world endured is, as Frank said, “...incredibly romantic.”
The Last of Us is about survival, sure. But it’s less about the mechanics of survival and more about the purpose. Living just to live works, but only kind of. Living *with* others works a lot better. Living *for* others, though, that’s the real recipe.
And like Bill and Frank, when you can say you did that with great purpose, well then you can spend a day buying a nice suit, getting married, having one last glass of wine, and looking across the table knowing that this it, it’s the end. But the reality is you’re going to go on loving each other for a long, long time.