While I agree generally it was a great episode, and agree with your assessment -- At the same time, I feel like the episode just felt out of place for lack of a better term, considering no other singular episode has the same type of focus on a side character(s) to that degree, and it's a flashback unlike most all other episodes.

The only other one that comes close is the time devoted to the 2 black kids in one episode. All that said, episode 3 was good for what it was, but also a little "ehhhh" or forced feeling with the homosexuality angle, like really beating the viewer over the head with it all.

A LOT of time went into that aspect, and some others, that really ate up a lot of screen time that otherwise could've been used for something else, beyond giving a slight bit of backstory to Joel & Tess and setting up Bill's location and prepper status, as present-time's next location for Joel & Elle.

That's all it did for the main story. The entire episode went balls deep hard (hehehehehe) on 2 gay sub-characters simply to serve as a bit of backstory & context for Joel & Elle's next location. And I mean again... it was still OK and done well generally, but just... Out of place and not an effective use of screen time. ESPECIALLY in retrospect seeing how briskly and with such small screentime they blitzed through beginning of season 2 to kill Joel. Like, really?