I can't say that the show is bad in general. But it is far from living up to its potential. And episode 3 has show us that it can really suck (no pun intended) at times.

I am going to loosely address some reasons for why I think this show is disappointing and not as good as it could be:

Bad casting of main characters, unnecessary type-switching.


Though I think that most of the actors are good, a lot of them and especially the main characters are not matching their counterparts from the game and the game (at least TLOU, Part I) just nailed it. The actors are good, but the casting choices still are just bad.



There is no matching chemistry between the actors of Joel & Tess or Joel & Ellie.



Those deviations don't add anything good to the story, they are just annoying distraction at best and derailment at worst.



There is more examples than just the bigger part of episode 3 for that.



When it sticks to the main plot, it's not bad. But it's not really good either.

After episode 3 I decided to take a break from watching the show and before I would continue to watch, I will wait till the whole season has aired and the reviews came in. If according to the non-shill and non-cheerleader reviews the show will give us more crap in the direction of episode 3, I'm out for good.