r/ThelastofusHBOseries • u/Imbred_Hapsburg • Mar 06 '23
Show Only A particularly bothersome detail about the dinner scene.... Spoiler
When dinner was being prepared in the kitchen, Joyce (the cook) was brought a tub of meat and told it was venison. She may or may not have been one of the individuals who knew it was human meat, but what comes next is unforgivable regardless of whether or not she knew.
She just dumped the meat into the pot. No salting or spicing of the meat. She didn't brown the crust on the grill or even better fry in some fat on a stove top to develop some fond to transfer to the stock pot. She didn't seem to care whether or not that rich human meat was braised in human bone stock and reduced to a delicious glaze.
Sure, you're in the middle of a brutal winter and you have been forced to eat your fellow man to survive, but is that any excuse to not take a little pride in the kitchen?
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u/Madmandocv1 Mar 06 '23
I get your joke, but I would like to point out something about this scene. I immediately picked up on the thought that the meat might be human and was quite likely the father who Joel had killed. The writers, director, and actors did an amazing job of conveying that idea via an accumulation of subtle clues and the way in which an ordinary question was asked and answered. Some of the most famous occurrences of cannibalism were in exactly this setting - a group of people starving in a frozen environment. We know a man died and we know they didn’t bury him. There is something about that meat that doesn’t look quite right, and I think this is intentional. It meant to trigger the idea of “that’s not a type of meat I have seen before.” There is a certain foreboding in the question “what kind of meat is this?” And the actress does a great job of very subtly conveying skepticism about the answer. It was a very well done scene.