No what saved the episode was the entire episode being about human connection during an insane apocalypse, and flawlessly executed start to finish. As a fan of the game, the scene with Joel and Tess was cool, but hardly the main strength of the episode.
Time spent telling an interesting story about characters that play a pivotal role in both the world building and plot isn’t wasted time. Why does Bill have a perfectly functional truck and fuel and batteries in this world? Well, this episode showed why. And the fact you have a problem with it being about gay guys says more about you than the material. There was literally zero discussion about gay rights or bigotry or anything of the sort in the episode, they simply existed in the world, and their story was told, and you think that’s “propaganda.” Think about that for a minute.
This all reads like someone who got upset that Ron Swanson kissed a guy and stared at his phone the rest of the hour
I mean if you want to be literal.
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature,
used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
"he was charged with distributing enemy propaganda"
Similar:
information, promotion, advertising, advertisement, publicity, advocacy, spin, newspeak, agitprop, disinformation, counter-information.
Just because you don't like what he's saying doesn't mean he's wrong. In quite a few other places in the world, this episode will not be aired as is. A lot of people don't care what anyone does in their bedroom but don't want to be force-fed that content in every commercial, movie, television show, song, videogame, magazine, or book in American media. Some people just want to be entertained without a .... message.
On task. Despite my son loving the last of us he was a bit disturbed by some of the scenes in this episode of the show. Some of the audience they have is going to find this a bit much and they may lose some people. You don't have to be a homophobe to not want to see it. (thankfully it was handled tastefully) As a writer, it was a very well-written episode despite some purposeful "look at me" subject material. I would still give it an 8/10.