What began as an exciting post-apocalyptic zombie thriller, quickly devolved into a boring video game adaptation that actually started to feel like you were watching someone play a video game.

But before I start complaining, here's what I liked:

The set, costumes, and cinematography were excellent. They truly built an amazing world and the scariest zombies on TV. I was absolutely repulsed by their depiction of the fungus. They knocked this out of the park.

Pedro Pascal is always great.

And the rest? I mostly hated. Here are my biggest complaints:

The story of season 1 was choppy and lacked a compelling through line. Every episode felt so self-contained (almost like a level of a video game...), that it was hard to feel compelled to watch the next one.

There was no real villain. I have never seen a show like this just refuse to employ a true villain character. The showrunners instead seemed content that each episode had a "boss" to beat. While that may work for video games, it doesn't work for TV. There is no "game to beat" while watching TV, but this show did leave me feeling like finishing it would be the ultimate challenge.

It's barely a zombie show. TLOU does zombies so well. And then forgets that they exist 75% of the time. Some viewers might appreciate this. I did not.

It's impatient. Every time you met a villain or a conflict, you could reasonably count on a resolution by the episode's end. The showrunners seemingly had no patience for letting viewers sit in suspense. If there was a problem, it had to be solved within 60 minutes. Thus, they developed a bit of a "boy who cried wolf" reputation with my wife & I.

Even the characters didn't care that much about staying alive. In high school, I loved The Walking Dead. I loved the feeling that the characters would do anything to survive. That made me care about their journeys. In TLOU, the characters barely even care about staying alive (Ellie refuses to stop yelling), so why should I care if they live or die?

Ultimately, for me TLOU was a massive disappointment. The visceral fear I felt in episodes 1 & 2 never returned and finishing this show was a chore.

The context, actors, and cinematography provided a really fun opportunity to create something extraordinary. It seems to me that they wholly missed the mark. Season 2 will be a hard pass for me.