I think originally I had it rated like a 7 or 8. Which after watching a few different reactions, I don't agree with myself anymore, but I can't say it was horrible.
There's plenty of good things that bring it to the average or slightly below average level for me.
A. The acting all around was superb. Even Tony Dalton and Joey Pants crushed it in their small cameos.
as mentioned in other threads - the entire vibe for the girls was plucky fun happy go lucky stuff - which just felt so out of place
did some reading and it seems like they followed the game pretty diligently, i think the main issue is exactly that - a game is designed for gameplay not world building, dialogue and plot etc so they perhaps should have deviated more when needed
going to talk about stuff all throughout so putting in spoilers
early on in the season
Spoiler:
like when they are going to go after zombies with knives, they are giggling and joking about - which is beyond absurd, the writers obviously wanted to show that they were super relaxed and experienced in this stuff while also having a strong bond but the presence of danger and fact that people regularly die on these patrols and that ellie indeed would have died had she not been immune just shows how absurd and out of place it is
later on
Spoiler:
population centers are not in agricultural regions but rather barren and desolate city centers - when you find people living away from the city it's not farmland but again barren forests - how are these people feeding themselves - not once are ellie and dina ever showing a requirement for food or water etc
how is it that these people feed themselves? and how is it that these people care about holding worthless cities, when you know, they could be holding the valuable farmland instead?
and just everything is so dumb - one minute they are being super quiet out of fear of being heard and then "hey let's play some music"
likewise when ellie and that asian fella are going off to the rendevous they are talking about how dangerous it is and how quiet they gotta be but then they walk right down the middle of the street and stand there having lengthy conversations
they get to the rendevous and joel's bro isn't there, but his camp hasn't been compromised, but what is he doing, he clearly just went pretty far away for no reason just to start randomly sniping people? how does that even make sense, and how given that they are coordinating against him does he even come out alive
and ellie, who's supposed to be in love with dina and wants to raise a kid with her not only takes her pregnant ass on a highly suicidal revenge mission but then when going to get help for her as she can't walk, decides to then stop that rescue mission and head off on a hunch she can go kill abby
and so ellie decides, in the middle of a storm at night to steal a loud boat instead of walking silently - she's ready to start firing at two people from decent distance with a revolver and only gets bailed out that some boats come to pick them up (again, wtf, why are they doing this mission during a storm - why not postpone a day?) and she then takes the boat
she knows nothing of boats, her world is living under fedra - but she somehow knows how to find the kill switch, prime the fuel and use the choke? - just zero chance she'd get that thing started
and then the image of her on the boat was some of the worst cgi i've ever seen - just acted nothing like a little dinghy out on a storm would act - then finally there are consequences for her being an idiot and a wave takes her out - but somehow some way this girl who has no reason to know how to swim gets ashore with a backpack, jacket, & boots on?
and then the cult finds her and it's all for nothing, the storm, the wave, getting shipwrecked, getting captured and about to be executed - none of it matters because they just let her go and she just goes back to the boat which was left alone and somehow didn't get swept off by the tide but also still at the water line and pushes it off and heads out again
none of it mattered - we could have cut from her saying "i'm going to the wheel" and her entering the building and it would have changed nothing
like i really hope they kill her off - she's just so stupid - "hey those guys we've been trying to avoid captured a stranger, there's a dozen of them with assault rifles but i have a pistol so i'm going to rescue them" etc etc and of course the one guy who is reasonable about all of this, the asian dude, is the one who they kill off
hate the second season so much, it's not game of thrones bad, but it's getting close
