The super commie perfect town shit was a bit eye rolling. That change from the game was just pure wokism. In the game, they are just some people trying to get a hydrodam going again and Joel helps them repel some raiders. Ok they hook him up with one of the raider horses, makes sense. In this version, the town that survives party on being isolated is going to let random murder hobo take a horse and leave after feeding him a day? They did not think that one through.
Also as well executed as the PTSD Joel stuff was, it kind of came out of nowhere and reeks of them trying to pussify him. If they stick to the original morally ambiguous ending and not the sequel's retcon of it that made Joel out to be an asshole, I will accept this show as a great one season story. I won't be tuning in for the live action version of Tranny Golf Murder Simulator 1000 with some roided out Troon as the focus character. This show lives and dies on Pedro's performance and even if the story for TOLU2 were not garbage, I can't see it being worth watching without him in it. This is particularly true as they are really trimming back the zombie battles (and action in general) probably to save budget. I.E. Cheaper to have Gay Bear Ron Swanson bottle episode than to show them fighting though the school for a milspec battery, as one major example of this. The major condensing of the KC sequence and adding in backstory for the rebels was another. Early on, the extra side bits were pretty good (the 1970s talk show, the stuff in Sri Lanka) especially for world building, but the later episodes its clearly for keeping the budget down.
This show has, and continues to have, great potential. But knowing its getting season two and that the entire first game was crammed into a single season, means the next three episodes are the Ellies Gay BTW DLC, the cult stuff in the snow, and the final SLC stuff. Thats a lot of material being packed into each episode, meaning less action and tension and more "backstory" from Druckmann to shit on the original story with. It also means S2 is assuredly Troonzilla Gigantor focused, which I will not be sticking around for.