This past week’s episode of The Last Of Us was a watershed moment in queer television, depicting a compassionate, painful, and rewarding romance played by Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett to rapturous acclaim. This very website thinks it might earn Offerman his first Emmy. The spoils and pain of human connection set against the backdrop of the end of the world, the episode celebrates life when surrounded by death, giving viewers a reason to hang on in dark times. Unfortunately, all that was for naught because—let’s be honest—Neil Druckman and Craig Mazen think we’re stupid. There’s no way that episode happened outside of Boston.
The episode supposedly took place in “Lincoln, Massachusetts,” but you’d never know it from observing the episode’s mountainous terrain. Maine’s favorite son Stephen King gets it. That ain’t Lincoln, you chowderhead.
“The Last Of Us. Episode 3,” King tweeted. “Do you really want to tell me that’s 10 miles west of Boston?” Yeah, um, Mr. Druckmann, that doesn’t look like any part of Waltham we’ve seen.
Seriously, if HBO wants to tell us that, sure, this episode took place in Worcester, we’d buy it. But c’mon, 10 miles outside of Boston, with those landscapes and so few Massholes? Forget it. If Red Sox fans can survive the curse of the Bambino, they can endure the end of the world. King, who liked the episode “fine,” doesn’t care how tender the love affair, that ain’t anywhere near a Legal Seafood. Maybe that’s Woburn. Maybe.
King’s not alone. Per Variety, Boston.com declared the episode “a mockery of Boston-area geography” in a Neil deGrasse Tysonian bit of trolling that everyone loves, particularly Bostonians. Quite simply, Matt and Ben would never. You’d never know it by the reviews, which have uniformly praised the episode for couching such an emotional same-sex love story in a big-budget mushroom zombie TV show. Our own review said, “If The Last of Us is about the love that grows between a grieving father and the girl in his care, its parallel is the bond between Frank and Bill, which Mazin’s script traces with tremendous heart and humor.” It’s such a shame that an apparent lapse in geographical knowledge defiled this kind of screenwriting. Seriously, what part of I-95 did this episode take place on? We want exits.
Everyone knows that this episode took place in Lynn, the city of sin (you never come out the way you came in).