Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: the last of us

The Last of Us: Psychotherapy Is Really Messed Up in The Apocalypse

Sure, there's a psychotherapist in the post-apocalyptic world of HBO's The Last of Us - but there's no way she should be treating Joel.

One thing the HBO TV version of The Last of Us introduced is that psychotherapy still exists in this post-apocalyptic world, and since it's a future after conventional civilisation has collapsed, therapists are really messed up. In case you're wondering, no, there were no psychotherapists in the world of the PlayStation game. Since the series is a Hollywood production, of course, Hollywood needs to get some psychotherapy in there. So yes, unlike in the game, Joel (Pedro Pascal) goes to therapy.

In the fort where Joel and Ellie (Bella Ramsay) have settled at the end of season one and the first game, it's been five years, and things are peaceful enough for everyone to feel they can live as normally as close to before civilisation was ended by the Coryceps plague. Joel feels estranged from Ellie, who is going through her adolescence, as well as feeling resentful that he lied to her about how and why he took her from the operating table at the Fireflies' headquarters. Joel is helping the commune rebuild its infrastructure and has started to see a therapist named Gina, played by Catherine O'Hara. Gina starts their session – not the first – by drinking, which therapists shouldn't be doing, but this was after the end of the world, so what the hell, why not? Gina begins to push Joel to reveal what he's been hiding about what happened with Ellie that he refuses to tell her or Ellie.

Gina reveals to Joel (and the viewer) that Joel had killed her husband Eugene, and she still hates him for it. However, she's willing to continue to work with him in therapy to help him along. Now, the fact that the client killed her husband would immediately compromise a therapist's ability to give him unbiased and proper help. Admitting she hates him means she and her client should absolutely not be seeing each other. These are already way beyond the guidelines of the American Counseling Board Code of Ethics, but in the world of The Last of Us, there is no board to rule on how ethically off the charts this is. And Joel seems to agree to keep seeing her! Is he that much of a masochist? That's already a problem that he would need a proper therapist to help with.

Come to think of it, why would Joel go to therapy? He's pretty much the same character in both the series and the game, and he doesn't really come across as the type of guy who goes to therapy. He's killed way too many people for therapy not to burst open a closet-full of skeletons and bloody giblets. Or is Gina unconsciously out to torture Joel for killing her husband? See? Serious ethical questions! FYI – Gina and Eugene are characters not in the game but created for the TV series. It's entirely likely we're going to see a flashback to exactly how and why Joel killed Eugene, because if there's something TV writers reeeeeeeeeeeeaally love, it's flashbacks. It might be interesting to find out if Gina is the last living therapist in this world.

There's probably not a single screenwriter in Hollywood (or New York City) who's not in therapy. And of course, they would take details from their lives to put into their work. "Write what you know" is the often dubious motto that writers are taught. Since the writers of The Last of Us have many hours of screentime to fill that's not taken up with playing the combat and action parts of the game and dying repeatedly to respawn, let's have Joel go to therapy! Why not? The question is, what kind of therapists have The Last of Us writers been seeing??

The Last of Us is on HBO.

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