You Wasted It - The Last of Us Season 2 (2023) Ep6-7

Rain patterns across the bitumen. Thunder peels over the horizon, white-blue flashes followed by calamity that vibrates the walls themselves. The smell of fresh rain on soil fills the empty city as the roads become spillways and the sewers overflow.

This week David and Darth are joined by Danielle from ‪@levelstoryplays‬ and Alex to close out their discussion of what has turned out to be a fairly bad season of television.

Follow Danielle on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/levelstory.b... Glossary: https://zeroindent.com/apocalypse/

Glossary: https://zeroindent.com/apocalypse/

D.C. McNeill: I think it feels quick because it's structured really poorly. If that makes sense.

Danielle: I also want to bring this up just because it's fresh on my mind and I don't necessarily want to assign it to the last assign it to the Last of Us season 2, but perhaps it could be a product of this, but I saw a video and I forget who the actor's name, but if I find it, I'll make sure to post it in our Discord chat with an actor talking about when screenwriters are writing their scripts, they have to have a second pass because they want to write it in such a way where people can understand it when they're looking at their phones.

Alexogeny: Oh, I remember seeing that one, too.

Danielle: I couldn't help but think of that as we were talking. And again, I don't want to assign it that to this, but part of it does feel like that, but that's like a larger conversation, but I wanted to at least throw it out there.

D.C. McNeill: Yeah. I mean, I knew that we were all in trouble in 2019 when Netflix started talking about second screen viewing. Where they were developing TV shows that were like that you're supposed to just have on in the background. As an illustrative example, and this is the most like David's on his high horse bullshit, but I think this is like a valuable thing to say, so I'm going to do it anyway. Let me know in the comments how pretentious this sounds, but we were-- it was I think it was like the second or third viewing session um after I got back from the UK when when me and Lucy were watching the season. Um and it was a Friday night. We got to like 9:00 p.m. and she was like like, "Wow, like I'm like I'm really relaxed. Like I was super in the story and have completely decompressed." And I was like yeah it's because like you sat down and you actively watched the TV.

The way that people like Lucy, and I think it's like a pretty normal thing to do, she runs her own business, right? She's a busy person. She's got a kid all that stuff right is when she's watching TV's usually working or doing email or doing, you know, making dinner or whatever. And so I think for her it was the first time maybe ever that she'd sat down and just like like you know the lights in the apartment are off, the TV's on, you're actively watching the TV. I and it was so funny afterwards because, you know, she's had a rule for a long time which is no TV in this house, right? She doesn't want to have a TV in her house. It was the first time ever where she gone "oh I think I get it now." Like I think I understand the appeal of this as an actual active pastime. And I think we're seeing a growing divide--maybe divide is the wrong word–but a kind of factionalization within viewership production and artistry in the screenwriting TV industry: people who want to make television and people who want to make stuff that's on the TV.

And you know in the same way that we're seeing increasing factionalism within technology technology companies and technology communities where some people can tolerate the use of AI in minimal ways and some people absolutely you know refuse it and will detonate communities if they find out that has been injected into into certain practices without their consent or without their knowledge. I think increasingly what's going to happen over the next couple years is we're going to see that second screen viewing focus be increasingly affected by the proliferation of these generative tools because it's an easier way for these companies to lazily make you know more and more what we would call content as opposed to to art.