Reaction Review: The Last Of Us Season 1 Episode 4: Please Hold on to My Hand
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
EPISODE SUMMARY
Warning: major spoilers for The Last of Us season 1 episode 4, “Please Hold on to My Hand”, are throughout the entire review. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
Ellie picked up a pistol from Bill and Frank’s. She’s testing it out in a bathroom mirror, and teaching herself how to reload a clip (she’s mainly checking out how she looks with a handgun). She meets Joel outside, who is siphoning gas from abandoned cars outside so their truck (which they picked up from Bill’s) will be able to keep going. While he’s busy, he instructs Ellie not to wander far. Ellie is bored and busts out a joke book (No Pun Intended: Volume Too): this is a concept that fans of the game are very familiar with, and it’s nice to see some of Ellie’s awful, adorable jokes pop up here (will we get some more later? Who knows). A couple of terrible quips later, the truck is full of gas, and Joel and Ellie set off towards their destination. Ellie finds a Hank Williams cassette in the back (as well as one of Bill’s pornographic magazines, which brings much delight to her before she throws it out of the window). Unlike the previous episode, “Long Long Time”, “Please Hold on to My Hand” appears to be sticking much more closely to the video game for now.
Like Ellie’s previous joke about the situation “dawn[ing]”, the sun starts to set. Joel pulls over, and he and Ellie start camping. They chow down on old Chef Boyardee, unroll their sleeping bags and call it a night. Joel has warned Ellie about scavengers before they begin their snooze fest, so this is clearly a harbinger for things to come. Still, Ellie is calm and she riffles through her joke book (only to bug Joel with another joke, only this time he got the better of her with the correct response: the scarecrow was indeed outstanding in its field). There are no more jokes Ellie wishes to bring up, so instead she lets the dread set in: will those scavengers find them? Joel assures her that they won’t, so she flips over and gets some shuteye. Joel’s gaze is upon his shotgun, and he instead keeps watch.
The next morning, Ellie wakes up to some coffee brewing (a drink she is clearly unfamiliar with, since her “what the fuck is that?!” response doesn’t seem regular to Joel). They set off for the day, and Ellie keeps shitting on Joel’s drink of choice. He instructs her to get back to being their navigator. Ellie scours through the map and begins asking geographical questions before she digs into the good stuff: who is Joel’s brother, Tommy? He’s apparently a “joiner”: a soldier that enrolled in the army, only to not feel heroic for his efforts. During the outbreak, he joined a community that he wanted Joel to join. It’s where Joel met Tess. Tommy went on to join the Fireflies as well: something Joel was against. Allegedly, Tommy has quit this group as well. He may be a lone wolf now, for all we know. There is no certainty outside of Joel feeling the need to keep going for family. Ellie questions if this means that she is family to Joel. The answer is no. Tess was family to Joel. He’s fulfilling the promise he made her. Ellie, to Joel, is “cargo”. Ouch. We’re still at this part of the game, huh?
Ellie naps after being slighted, and wakes up to Joel pulling over once they spot that the tunnel ahead has been barricaded by abandoned cars. Something isn’t right. Joel instructs her to stay put in the truck so he can survey the area with his shotgun in hand. No one seems to be alive, so the area is safe, but there is still no easy way for them to drive through the build up. Joel makes a U-turn, and they should be heading towards their destination in no time. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. They get lost and start squabbling, while they drive by a mass grave (one that seems fresh, I may add). They stop amidst their confusion and find a man pleading for help. Joel refuses to help him and recognizes this is a trap set up by scavengers. He tries to speed through it, only to have a block dropped on his windshield from above and have his tires punctured by a nail strip. Joel and Ellie crash, and instantly get out of their car: the scavengers are shooting at them and won’t let up. Joel spots a small hole that Ellie can crawl through and instructs her to evacuate while he fends the baddies off.
Ellie makes it through the hole. Joel kills one of the attackers, and sneaks in to where Ellie is while there’s a moment’s chance. A scavenger tries to sneak up on Ellie, but Joel is there to protect her from his new vantage point. The coast seems to be clear until Joel is snuck up on from a third attacker that is now responding out of vengeance for his fallen partners. Ellie recognizes that Joel is in trouble and comes back out with that handgun she’s been itching to use. She gets one shot off, and the attacker starts panicking, begging her not to shoot at him again. He even asks if they can be friends to try and spare his life. Joel isn’t as thankful as he should seem, as he asks for Ellie’s gun instead of saying “thank you”. Joel finishes the attacker off while Ellie waits in the other room as to not see the carnage.
We then cut to Kathleen — a leader of a rebellious group — grilling who appears to be a prisoner of war, but really this is the doctor that delivered her the day she was born. She clearly trusts no one, and is willing to hold a pistol to her own doctor’s head. She is distracted by noise outside by a corpse: she claims it is “Henry’s” work (whoever that is). Before instructing her team to go out and seek justice, she heads back inside to kill the doctor without a second thought. Joel and Ellie hear this commotion and seek refuge away from danger. This moment alone gives Ellie and Joel the opportunity to talk about Ellie saving his life. Joel apologizes (to a degree) that Ellie had to kill someone for the first time to defend him, and he tries to relate to her how difficult this can be. Ellie retorts that it isn’t her first time. Whatever that means, Joel realizes that there’s no turning back. Maybe Ellie can hold her own with a gun after all. He scoots over to her and begins giving her some gun handling advice.
We’re back with Kathleen on the outside. One of her men takes her to a lead he spotted: an attic space full of empty cans, drawings on the wall (they look childlike in nature), and other signs of someone having lived up there. Kathleen concludes that “Henry won’t let Sam starve”: a sign that they’re looking for a father and son, or two brothers, or some sort of family dynamic. They keep searching and notice what appears to be collapsed ground with movement underneath. We’re not sure what this is (infected, the building collapsing, et cetera), but Kathleen wants to deal with it later and instructs her soldier to seal off the building. Joel and Ellie break into a building elsewhere. She uses this opportunity to ask about the ambush earlier, only to question what’s actually on her mind: has Joel killed innocent civilians? He doesn’t respond, and they keep going. They find what appears to be a nice resting area and begin to settle: Joel barricades their sleeping quarters with broken glass.
Earlier in the episode, Ellie couldn’t sleep and wanted to crack more jokes. Now Joel is the one keeping them awake. He wants to ask about Ellie having killed someone before they met: she refuses to talk. Instead, she points out that she has noticed that Joel is hard of hearing in one earl he confesses it’s form all of the shooting he’s had to do. Then comes Ellie’s best-worst joke yet: a diarrhea pun that would make Peptol Bismol proud. Both Ellie and Joel laugh hard at this, either because of relieved tension or because it’s actually a pretty good joke. We don’t get far through the night after they pass out before Ellie screams at Joel to wake up: they’ve been found by the Sam and Henry that have been looked for the entire episode. What happens now? Will Kathleen find our protagonists while on the hunt for the other two friendlies? Are Sam and Henry actually scavengers? Who knows. The episode ends, and we can either wait a week or play the game and get some answers.
FIRST REACTION
So far, this is the first episode of The Last of Us that hasn’t blown me away, but that’s okay. I feel like we’re allowed to get an expository episode this far into the series. We’ve had a lot of world building where we’ve been informed what has transpired since the outbreak began. Now, it’s time to dive deeper into the Joel and Ellie story. That’s okay. We don’t have to be blown away, but we do need some sort of a set up for things to come. While we see Joel and Ellie bond a little bit over confessions, dangerous situations, and some brutal jokes (but God bless them), there aren’t too many scenarios here that felt exciting or nerve wracking (outside of that one scavenger attack, mind you).
Again, this is an episode made to get us to where we need to go. We are introduced to some new characters, ranging from Kathleen (who I’m not familiar with: I don’t recall her in the game, but I also have not played The Last of Us’ sequel or Left Behind) to Sam and Henry (albeit very briefly). We only have five episodes left in this season, which is really not much room to play with. I know what still lies ahead that we need to get to, but maybe a bit of a breather that focused on Joel and Ellie’s relationship matters (so what we await down the road makes more structural, natural sense). Not every episode of a show has to feel like a home run. “Please Hold on to My Hand” is a fundamental episode: a brisk fifty minute run down of where we are at, with a bit of insight as to what is to come.
Final Grade: 3.5/5
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.