Spoiler Yeah you hit on some of the ways they messed up in presenting that dilemma. I admit at first I kinda rolled my eyes at some of these complaints ("Why is it a big deal that Ellie called herself dumb once?"), but taken as whole, all these things just make her more annoying while detracting from the revenge vibes. I did see one take about how with the game, people hated Abby so much (and conversely liked Ellie despite her regrettable actions) that it made the Abby portion of the narrative less appealing. Perhaps they added these things to make Ellie appear a bit differently to the audience, and thus might make Abby more appealing. Of course that seems dumb since this just makes Ellie less appealing while not changing much about Abby, but I really don't know why these things were done. :/ I'm also wondering if they forgot this is a TV show and not a game. People playing the game might still feel vengeful (i.e., the same as Ellie) during this part of the story because it was only hours ago that Joel was killed. With a TV show like this, Joel's death was like a month ago. If they just kept the same basic approach as the game (didn't have to be identical), I'm wondering if people naturally would have turned more away from Ellie than those who played the game (as their own emotions would have stabilized by now). On the production stuff, I agree (basically said the same earlier). I was a bit surprised they didn't seem to get S3 approved until right before S2 aired IIRC. It should have been a package deal (at the very least, core scenes should have been approved, and maybe extra stuff could have been shot/re-shot if S2 was a huge success/failure). Actually the more I think about it, they probably could have just ended the season one episode early. Guess it would need some tweaks. Maybe add another episode at the start to flesh out Jackson (maybe more Abby, Ellie, Dina, Joel, etc). Or more stuff in Seattle (they did cut some stuff from the game, which I didn't mind per se, but they could have kept). Could have ended the season with what seems like a imminent showdown. Etc. Then start S3 with something major, then do the rest of what S3 has planned. I understand the appeal of doing it the way they did it, especially since it closely mirrors a major point in the game. But I don't think a TV show like this works like the game. Honestly it kinda bugged me with how the game did this (even if I didn't necessarily have a good answer of how to do it ebtter), and it is much worse doing this in a show. Hindsight is 20/20, but this seemed like a pretty obvious thing that multiple people saw could be a problem, and this is still what they ended up doing. Pretty sure Mazin and Druckman decided to do things this way, but I'm happy to bash Zaslav and any other execs just because.
The show has me seriously rooting for Abby to kill Ellie. Even though I never played Part II because I didn't want to touch playing as Abby after killing Joel. I can't imagine Ellie is this pathetic of a character in the game. I thought she was on a brutal revenge tour killing anything in her way (until Abby at the end). She's just incompetent every step of the way in the show.
Ellie can't be that pathetic in the game because 1) there's not enough exposition/cut-scene time to devote to making her that annoying/stupid and 2) the gameplay is an extension of the character so you do plenty of stupid stuff in that modality to make up for it. If you didn't want to play as Abby after Joel's death, then I urge you to watch this:
After giving it a week I honestly feel S2 overall was a major miss. Mediocre acting, bad plot choices, the whole thing. First 2 episodes were great, after that it was overall downhill with random good moments usually involving Joel or zombies. Enjoyed Ellie's moments of revenge (Nora, the other 2) but getting there was painful. Abby was barely seen in S2 so I can't make a call, but what was seen was underwhelming. Without Pedro this show is just not working.
