Okay, a few things off my chest first. I hate the number of people bashing the show because it is not the games. The plotlines of the Naughty Dog games, in my opinion, stand alone as their own story. I would hate it if HBO had just made a carbon copy of that experience. I’m okay with leaving that experience for us gamers. Druckman & Mazin have crafted a slightly different bent to the story, embellishing moments in one place and changing the dynamics in another. Guess what, that’s okay too. It is the same master plot tweaked to give HBO’s telling a life of its own.
Second, because I’m down with giving the show those allowances, I am also alright with the casting choices for the show…ALL of them. The original take & looks are always there for me in the PlayStation games, so HBO’s version is not a contentious point for me… UNTIL THIS EPISODE!
What I’ve stated above holds true, but there was an aspect of “Day One” that rubbed me the wrong way, and I’ll point it out when I recap the episode below.
We are now in Seattle, Washington. It is similar to other locales across the landscape. Not only are there Infected, but there are factions of human resistance of all kinds out there too. They are hard at war with each other for dominance as they are against the Infected. Not only are Ellie & Dina dodging the Clickers and their kind, but also two heated factions. They are WLF, a military unit and Seraphites, a religious cult. Ellie’s target, Abby, is WLF.
But our story picks up with a flashback to 2018 and the start of a rebel feared by many as the years roll by. He is Isaac Dixon, played by Jeffrey Wright. He returns to the role having voiced the character in the game. He was of the Fedra faction, but in his moment, he made a choice and turned on them and slaughtered the unit he was with. He was ruthless then and he is ruthless still. Next, we are back in the present time; it is day one 
for Ellie & Dina in Seattle. They discover easily enough that they are in WLF territory. They hole up in an old music store to wait until dark to check out the faction’s advertised position on a hill. In the store, Ellie instantly thinks of Joel. Dina bangs a bit on the drums, but Ellie picks up a guitar and sings a number. A touching moment from the game brought to life. The girls get into where they wanted to go after nightfall, but savagery was around every corner. Walking up on hanging disembowled bodies had better toughen up these two. They are spotted and tracked down, but they escape through tight spaces to end up in a subway line and right in the lair of some Infected. The action hasn’t stopped for a good several minutes, the only real action of the episode. Great action in the game and series.
But the dynamic has changed for Dina because she notices that Ellie has been bitten; she doesn’t know of Ellie’s immunity. Once back in hiding, Dina has to draw her gun on Ellie. Ellie announces her immunity to Dina, but Dina keeps the gun on her for hours. When Ellie doesn’t show the typical effects, Dina blurts out that she’s pregnant, and they make out.
And that’s when I HAD ENOUGH, and there were still 10 minutes to go! I know I went on about the game story & the show story can diverge, but what has transpired since these two made it onto the screen in this episode just seemed false & wrong to me. At first, they acted like they were going to Day Camp, not into a battlezone. They made noise in the music shop that could have drawn attention to them. Yes, a nice moment, but it seems foolish in light of how they’ve been just daytripping through their Day One. Then the last scenes sealed that deal. By the time we get to these moments in the game, Ellie is in full-on, frighteningly crazed revenge mode and sees a pregnant Dina as someone to slow her down, a liability. Instead, we get a sex romp to cap off a fun day at Day Camp. These gals are not viscous, fierce, and focused enough for me. They don’t know what battlezone they are heading into. Abby and Isaac are way deadlier than these two, to the point that it ended up a disconnect for me. It is well told, but unless the show adjusts a bit, a crucial element of Ellie’s personality is lost for me, an element that is at the core of the story, and this episode misplayed it.
That’s that. A good episode in its execution, but I feel a key component of Ellie’s being is absent here. It is as if the show is misrepresenting her in this episode making it harder to believe she can execute what she has sent out to do. That never wavered an iota in the games. What I see then as a character flaw, taking something away from the core character, is just my hangup. It is what it is and plenty of people will enjoy this episode regardless.
