The Last of Us has made no qualms about its ethos; find someone to love, and cling to them with every single goddamn fiber of your being, ’cause it ain’t gonna last. Set against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic world, it becomes a very bleak, unsubtle message, this idea of love being both a finite resource and the only thing really worth living for. Through the lens of its first five episodes, the results are decidedly depressing – which is what makes the snow globe of Jackson such a fascinating setting for “Kin,” an hour that’s hardly the low-key, quiet endeavor it seems on the surface.
Though the familiar explosions of anxious gunfire are absent from the episode’s first 55 minutes, “Kin” is as loud as any of the The Last of Us‘s first half-dozen hours, trading in bullets and gunpowder for feelings as Joel and Ellie step into a magical snow globe in the Colorado mountains. The setting alone is a massive shock; with the veneer of constant danger noticeably absent inside Jackson (one telling sign: there isn’t a group of people walking around in full body armor at all times), “Kin” immediately establishes a different audio/visual texture (directed by Jasmila Žbanić, in her American TV debut), one it uses to full advantage to look inward, making it easily the most tonally unique hour of the series so far.
And for the most part, it works really well; it certainly helps having Pascal and Ramsay’s performances as the focal points, as their consistently great work smooths some of the rougher edges found within the writing (for example – “We’re in a commune… we’re communists!”). This is Pascal’s hour, in particular: as we watch the shock roll over his face seeing a happy, thriving Tommy, Pascal’s performance continues to plumb the depths of Joel’s mortally damaged soul – from his restrained refusal to talk about Sarah, to the frustrated tears he sheds in front of Tommy, “Kin” really grounds The Last of Us in Joel’s emotions, in ways that add some much-needed depth to the series’ pathos and its observations on humanity.
Powerhouse performance aside, Joel’s 24 hours inside Jackson – after three months on the road following the horrific events of “Endure and Survive” – give voice to the power of community, perhaps the one thing The Last of Us convincingly portrays as something worth saving. From the ignorant bliss of Marlon and Florence, to the hopes and dreams of Jackson’s growing next generation (one where a Diva Cup is a free membership perk), The Last of Us sheds its nihilistic individualism for just a moment, to show the benefits of a community invested in not only its own survival, but its own evolution: with electricity, movie nights, and a well-developed trading system, the 300 or so people who’ve been lucky enough to make it into Jackson have stopped looking over their shoulders, and have started to look forward – not quite as forward as Ellie’s dreams of becoming Sally Ride are, but aspirational all the same.
Despite delivering these ideas with the usual lack of nuance – besides the communist quote, we also get a “Joel sees the ghost of his dead kid projected on a child” sequence to really nail down the idea of Ellie becoming his surrogate daughter (if the kids watching The Goodbye Girl wasn’t subtle enough for you) – “Kin” is rather effective in how it compares Joel and Tommy’s perception of themselves and each other. Though they bear similar scars, Tommy’s tried his hardest to move on – making the difficult decision to leave Joel and all the family pain behind, a sacrifice that undoubtedly paid benefits for him, now that he’s married, expecting, and (mostly) no longer just trying to survive a world enacting its force on him.
That dichotomy makes Tommy and Joel’s scenes together some of the most interesting in the entire series; and though it is obvious The Last of Us doesn’t prescribe to Tommy’s idealistic view of the post-apocalyptic world, it provides a much-needed reprieve from the repetitive narrative functions seen in the trio of preceding episodes. Jackson is not just a beacon of hope for its community; it serves a thematic purpose, in providing an example where the vicious cycles of the world can possibly be broken for the better, even if a true utopia is not a reality (don’t forget – they do still have the “you smell infected and our guard dog will rip you to shreds” welcome party, and an odd reputation for leaving dead bodies laying around). There’s not a lot of hope in The Last of Us that isn’t quickly resolved by violence; so when Jackson remains intact when Joel and Ellie depart at the end of the episode, it makes it a holy place of sorts, one rightfully chosen as a place of reflection for our protagonists.
Dreams can’t last forever, of course; five days after they leave idyllic Jackson with new clothes and full bellies, a group of raiders jumps them while they’re discovering an abandoned Firefly base, and the episode ends with Joel bleeding out in the snow and Ellie nervously looking over him. This moment would work without the events of “Kin” before it – but after seeing Joel’s vulnerability and Ellie’s nihilism, and how they’ve discovered resolve and purpose in each other, gives such immense weight to the episode’s final shot, perhaps the single most frightening, anxiety-inducing moment the series has produced yet.
Despite a few small bumps along the way, “Kin” is still probably my favorite episode of The Last of Us (even more than “Long Long Time”), an hour willing to challenge its own overwhelmingly depressing views on humans through Tommy’s conflicted motivation, and how it contrasts with Joel’s broken, battered soul. The good times may not last (no spoilers there, I think), but for a moment, “Kin” offered a glimpse of a more three-dimensional, contemplative series, one I hope it embraces as it heads into the home stretch of its freshman season.