Ope Pardon, No. 22: Every Brat Needs a Pedro Pascal

Like 7.5 million other people, I have been tuning in weekly to The Last of Us, to get my tear ducts worked out and (if you’re inclined to believe the argument put forth in The New Republic) emotionally manipulated to a degree that I have not experienced since This Is Us was wrecking havoc on my hormones.

About three or four episodes into the series’ run I was talking to my sister about something entirely unrelated when the conversation turned to The Last of Us and she said how much she was enjoying it but how insufferable she found Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey.

And I was shocked — not that she didn’t like Ellie, but that, I realized in that moment, I really did. I love her. I am usually the No. 1 Hater of annoying TV (pre)teens. If there are a million haters of an irritating adolescent on your screen, I am one of them. If there are 10 haters of a bratty kid in your series, I am one of them. If there there is one hater of a precocious prestige media child, that is me.

Walt, Jr.? Paige Jennings? Carl Grimes? There was never a second of those shows where I didn’t want those kids off my screens. How was it that I had not yet been bothered even once by Ellie’s performative f-words, unsolicited opinions, reckless noise in the vicinity of echolocating monsters or blatant disregard for the authority/instructions of the people trying to save her life?

And then it hit me: The answer, the solution, the antidote was — as it often is and should, as often as possible, always be — Pedro Pascal.

Ironic, if you are watching the show, that the character of Ellie should herself need an antidote, but with that attitude and penchant for nonstop questioning, she certainly does. Without the proper scene and/or quest partner to balance her out she might be — and to many, evidently still is — absolutely insufferable.

Pascal’s Joel is gruff and uninterested in forming attachments, he doesn’t want the kid to be likable (because then he might get attached) so he doesn’t care that she’s not. She is a dick to him, because she is a dick to everyone, and he is dick to her, because he is a dick to everyone.

For the viewer (or at least for me), each moment she’s annoying is not just a moment she’s annoying but a moment where he is snarky and they are funny and charming, thus rendering the whole moment entertaining rather than irritating. (Anna Torv’s Tess plays an invaluable role as a bridge between the two in the first episodes.) Similarly, if we spent several episodes watching Joel be withholding and snarky to Tess, he too would be intolerable — Joel and Ellie’s personalities only entertain in tandem.

With Joel, Ellie is an amusing presence, part of a package deal and someone whose, yes, annoyingness serves to wear down Joel’s roughness. I look forward to her being annoying because it is an opportunity for Joel to be Joel and for me to laugh and/or be endeared, often both. It is the moment where she makes another pun joke and he can’t help breaking, or him taking advantage of her million questions to assert that yes, everyone did think constructors were very, very cool — but writ large over the series.

Ellie wants get a rise and reaction for attention (as most such-behaving kids do) which he does not give her. He wants to her to be put off by his roughness — she is not. And so like that they proceed, each stubborn and committed to the identity they have chosen for themselves (brat, loner) to a fault until, of course, their reality and ~*feelings*~ make it no longer sustainable. She breaks first, because she is a child, but he can’t hold the line either because he, despite his best efforts, cares about her. He’s not her dad, but he was someone’s, etc., etc., I am crying again.

This is, of course, a credit to — in sequence — the writing, casting and acting and the only reason the Wyoming episode hits the way it does is because they have already showed up for each other and saved each other in small ways and big across the previous episodes and what was once annoying to each other (her questions, his no’s) is now a part of their bond. Wyoming is just the first time they are forced to face it and put it in words. In the aftermath, Ellie is still asking a lot of goddamn questions but Joel is answering them with affection.

Now, in contrast, think back to Breaking Bad, The Americans or The Walking Dead — none of those nitwits had a proper foil to make their annoying antics endearing or entertaining. In fact, I might argue, on the level of first season character setting, that Jesse was the Ellie to Walt’s Joel: Jesse could have been a wild annoying (man)child but was instead rendered endearing, entertaining and amusing by the gruff father figure with a lot of rules in his life.

In any case, I quite love Ellie — the little psycho — and I think it’s largely thanks to Joel.

Other, unrelated thoughts on The Last of Us:

• I am really enjoying that it is shot like a video game. I never played The Last of Us game but I enjoy the decision as a nod to the source material and also am enjoying it just as a new/different viewing experience.

• I get the afore-linked TNR argument that the episodic nature of the plot theoretically shortchanges the narrative work of developing emotional investment over the whole series but I don’t know — I think it works as a reflection of the source material and story. I rewatched some of the early episodes recently and it bummed me out to know that the way those episodes end mean it’s unlikely we’ll ever see those characters again but this is ultimately the Joel and Ellie show so I get it. Which is just to say, it seems more like a legitimate creative and storytelling decision than simply the hallmark of a network known for killing off characters or a writers room looking to outsource “emotional labor.” (Which is also not how emotional labor works but that’s a different conversation.)

• I know it’s probably an easy gimmick but I am genuinely loving all Joel’s explanations of “old world” things like football and college and Ellie’s wonder about things like planes. I also think Ramsey really leverages those moments to remind the viewer that Ellie may be putting on a brave face and have a natural proclivity for the violence of her environment but she really is still a child who has lived a very sheltered existence with respect to the world we know. This makes her less annoying to me too.

Ok that’s all! Please enjoy the rest of your Sunday before it’s time to cry again.