View more stories New episodes of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars' Kyle Orland (who has played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn't) will be talking about them here every Monday morning.

This is the kind of important, character-driven backstory that was only hinted at in the games and which a prestige TV show feels particularly well-suited to fill in, and this episode did a beautiful job of it.

Andrew: As a non-game-player with no particular expectations or attachments, I kind of hope the story is a one-off, something that gives the world texture and does fill in Joel's and Tess' histories a bit but isn't continually revisited.

Kyle: OK, so I may be seeing things that aren't there, but did you think anything of the pretty prominent front-door-shutting moment when Joel was searching through Bill's house?

Also, if we're talking about period-appropriateness, there's a whole weird cul-de-sac my brain got stuck in about where opinion about gay people in America would have been if it was frozen in 2003.

That said, I feel like I have seen three episodes of this, and each one has given me a different show: apocalypse-by-the-numbers, then video game tutorial level, then a one-act play about love in the time of cordyceps.