Counting with spiders

The Last of Us, season 2, episode 3

Not gonna lie, I thought it would take a lot longer for Ellie to arrive in Seattle. I figured we’d have a whole episode of internal Jackson conflict, then she’d take off with Dina and we’d have a couple of episodes of travel before Team (More) Bloody Vengeance arrived.

I love being surprised. This was a quiet episode, in many ways, with no on-screen violence, but it serves to establish the new status quo — and then change it.

I genuinely think that The Last of Us has one of the stupidest fandoms on the internet, because there are people out there who hate Catherine O’Hara’s therapist character and think she has no place in this series, or indeed, in the apocalypse. But I think Gail is brilliant. She’s not an ethical therapist, maybe not even a good one, but she’s the only one in town and she’s trying to do right by people.

Even Ellie, whom she dismisses as a liar, which I find fascinating. It’s such an all-encompassing way to describe a person, and then Gail digs in when Tommy points out that people can tell lies without that being the entirety of their personality.

Why does Gail believe this? Because Ellie pretends to be okay? That cannot be new to her. Because Ellie couches her quest for vengeance in talk of community and justice? Again, that cannot be new. Gail intrigues me, and I want to know more about her — but I have no idea if we’re ever returning to Jackson.

Because WE’RE IN SEATTLE, BABY. Google Maps tells me that Jackson to Seattle is a thirteen-hour drive, or a thirteen-day walk; it’s safe to assume it took Dina and Ellie a week or so by horseback. That’s a lot of time to play word games and gaze longingly at the girl you have a crush on, whom you think is straight. Prayer circle for Ellie, but also prayer circle for anyone who gets in Ellie’s way.

Arriving in a decaying, dangerous city, it feels like The Last of Us is back in its discomfort zone. I don’t know what’s happening next, but I’m scared and excited to find out.

Andor, season 2, episodes 4 to 6

So here’s a question which I suspect the rebels themselves are going to have to confront in the coming episodes:

Is Luthen a villain?

Obviously he does terrible things for a good cause. He has always been ruthless. But as time has passed, he has grown even less concerned about the well-being of those who answer to him, and of the civilians who might get in their way. He knows the Ghorman Front are not ready for open conflict, but he sends Cinta and Vel in anyway. He chews Kleya out for persuading him to hide a microphone in an artifact. There’s a sense that he’s losing control.

And I don’t think this is my imagination; there are moments where the lighting and Skarsgård’s performance combine to be strongly reminiscent of Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine. I will not be at all shocked if the coming weeks see someone, probably Mon and Cassian, agreeing that it’s time to take Luthen out.

The question is, can Andor pull this off without falling into the classic “the best kind of rebellion is the one that doesn’t challenge the status quo too much” trap? I have some faith in Tony Gilroy, but I won’t say I’m not curious to see how he pulls it off. Unless I’m completely wrong, in which case I’ll just sit back and enjoy the story I’m given.

Here’s a story I’m not sitting back and enjoying: Andor’s treatment of women.

I mean. Mon Mothma is a great character, and it’s fantastic to have a woman over 40 whose strength doesn’t just lie in her ability to shoot a gun and make quips. And obviously child marriage is bad and we do not approve, but everything with Mon’s daughter is essential to the story, and Leida herself makes choices. I don’t have beef with the depiction of either of these characters.

Likewise, Dedra is sort of the inverse of Mon, another woman whose power is intellectual, and whose danger is easily underestimated.

But then we have Bix, whose story is one of Eternal Suffering With A Side Of Sexual Assault. I think this is as well-executed as possible, but that doesn’t make it enjoyable to watch, and she is constantly teetering on the edge of “damsel in need of rescue by Cassian”.

And now we have Vel and Cinta, Tragic Lesbians. Cinta is shot dead in an avoidable firefight, and I understand that it’s important to demonstrate just how amateurish and dangerously naive the Ghorman Front are, but ALSO we are not yet ten years out from The Year of Dead Lesbians, in which a wildly disproportionate number of lesbian characters were killed off — mostly by gun violence — immediately after declaring their love for their partner.

I’ve never had any illusions about Vel and Cinta surviving to the end — especially not Cinta, since Varada Sethu is heavily in demand, and I assume filming on Doctor Who overlapped with Andor. But the specific manner of her death felt careless.

On the other hand, carelessness is a recurring point here. The Ghorman Front are careless when they bring Syril into their midst; Luthen is careless when he disregards Cassian’s warnings and decides that Ghorman martyrs might be as valuable to his cause as successful rebels. I see what’s happening, but I don’t know that Tony Gilroy should be emulating Luthen, no matter how stylish his wig collection may be.

On a lighter note, this week Andor offers us three separate, and very different, couple goals.

“Turn off the lights.”

“I can’t believe you had me followed.”

“Turn off the lights.”

Dedra and Syril are absolutely not relationship goals, but there is something compelling about them — two people who are utterly repugnant to everyone but each other. Although, in fairness to Syril, he seems quite pleasant when he’s posing as a rebellion-curious functionary on Ghorman; it’s a glimpse into who he could have been if he had grown up in a different society.

Dedra letting her boyfriend fulfill his espionage dreams while also using him to further her own goals: actually iconic. Yes, her own goals are “genocide”, but I support women’s wrongs. I try to imagine who she would be in a functional democracy, and I cannot. She was raised by the state; she is the state. The fascism is in her cells. Does that make her better or worse than Syril? Next question.

Is a bit of light terrorism a better option for a date? For Cassian and Bix, the answer is absolutely yes. Bix gets to reclaim her agency by briefly torturing and then blowing up Creepy Dr Gorst, which is probably good for her mental health — although, given that part of her trauma is that she’s struggling with the death of one Imperial soldier, I’m not entirely certain on that front. It’s probably better than getting high and sleeping on the floor in front of Coruscant breakfast television, but that’s a low bar.

Important question: who is a better therapist — Luthen, or Gail from The Last of Us?

Actual couple goals: Vel and Cinta. Again, they’re combining terrorism with date night, but I do think it was working for them until … you know. But up until then, it was great! Emotional honesty! Mutual respect! A shared disdain for French people!

Hey, you know who else I’m shipping? Saw Gerrera and Harmony Cobel. Yes, they’re very different people and occupy wholly unrelated fictional universes, but they’re united by their love of huffing gases. What could go wrong?

And truly, Andor is taking Star Wars in exciting new directions. This week brings the first same-sex kiss to the franchise, along with chroming, and the French. (Actually the French were soft-launched by George Lucas with the Twileks in The Clone Wars, but Andor remains a mostly alien-free zone for some reason.)

Hacks, season 4, episode 5

This feels like the first fizzler of the season. I went in going, “I feel like at this point in her career, Deborah is more likely to ignore focus groups in a way which is detrimental to her success than to cater to them,” but I was ready to be convinced!

I was not convinced. The initial business with Kristen Bell, followed by Jimmy Kimmel warning Deborah to stay away from Bell or face the same fate as James Corden, was great. But the rest? Meh. Not even naked Hannah Einbinder could save it.

Stealth Australians of the Week

Okay, so I was gonna do Mendo here last week, but I was in a real hurry to get the newsletter out, and I forgot. But that’s okay, because Andor gave me a scene with Ben Mendelsohn and Genevieve O’Reilly being passive aggressive at each other about revisionist history, which is a thing I did not know I needed until it was happening in front of me.

Mendo is your standard issue Australian icon, bursting onto the scene playing the town tough guy in The Year My Voice Broke (1987). He’s one of our most reliable and interesting character actors, and we produce a lot of reliable and interesting character actors.

This week’s Andor strongly reminded me of one particular misfire in his career: The New Look (AppleTV+, 2024), in which Mendo played Christian Dior (you may have heard of him) during and after WW2. I made it two episodes before I had to give up, not least because Mendo played Dior with an accent that ranged all the way from “Australia” to “England” to “France, but like he wanted to offend the French”. Sir, you are better than this.

Genevieve O’Reilly is such a stealthy Australian that she’s also Irish, having been born in Dublin and raised in Adelaide. I’ve noticed a lot of stealth Australians so far have been from Radelaide, I assume because there’s nothing to do there but hone your craft and avoid serial killers.

O’Reilly has been a steady supporting actor in UK, Australian and Canadian productions since the early 2000s, along with regular theatre work. Her work in Andor is her biggest role by far, but I also wanna shout out her work as the love interest/suspect to Eric Bana’s sad detective in outback noir The Dry (2020, the second-last movie I saw in cinemas before covid hit).

Season 2 of Andor seems to be her breakout role, thanks to last week’s grief dancing, and I hope it leads to more opportunities.

Mendo can come too.