After four seasons, multiple location changes, various cliffhangers, and numerous guest stars and cameos, The Last Man On Earth might be at the end of its run. Today, Will Forte and Kristen Schaal both hinted that it’s possible the show would not return in the fall. Though ratings have been on par with last season,…
There’s some nice parallel storytelling in this week’s Last Man On Earth: Mike and Tandy embark on a journey to examine the enormous blob on Mike’s thermal imaging system in the hopes of finding new life, while the rest of the gang discover numerous murdered corpses in the walls of their Zihuatanejo mansion. Though…
Last week on The Last Man On Earth, Tandy’s brother Mike Miller, presumed dead from the virus, suddenly returned in the dead of night to shave off half of Tandy’s face. Though everyone welcomes Mike back into the fold with open arms, he nevertheless feels a little displaced from the group. Everyone has kids and is in…
When The Last Man On Earth first introduced Tandy’s astronaut brother Mike (Jason Sudeikis) floating up in space, desperately searching for any human life below, it felt like the series had fully embraced the limitless nature of its premise. After all, if Tandy wasn’t the last person on Earth, let alone the last man,…
Every so often on The Last Man On Earth, the characters will act completely out of whack for story purposes only to reset at the end of the episode. Sometimes there are justifiable reasons for such a drastic change in behavior, and other times, it either makes little sense and/or the writing forces the performances…
Last week, The Last Man On Earth returned to the status quo by burying Karl and re-introducing Todd’s baby fever. After seeing how Melissa bonds so well with Jasper, Todd feels guilty that he can’t connect with the nine-to-eleven-year-old boy in their midst, but he’s more depressed because he believes he’ll never be a…
Due to FOX’s erratic programming schedule, only two episodes of The Last Man On Earth have aired this year, but that’s enough time to introduce yet another new character not long for this world. Karl Cowperthwaite (Fred Armisen), an awkward normie who moonlights as a cannibalistic serial killer, made his first…
After being off the air for a month, The Last Man On Earth returned last week with a POV episode about Karl Cowperthwaite, a dorky cannibalistic serial killer played by Fred Armisen. The episode illustrates how Karl’s social awkwardness and mundane lifestyle disarms his victims who naturally don’t believe he’s capable…
Last season, The Last Man On Earth took a three-month break between its fall finale and its spring premiere. When the series finally returned, it aired an episode that didn’t feature any of the main cast and told a story about life during the viral outbreak from the perspective of Pamela (Kristen Wiig), a haughty…
When The Last Man On Earth first began, Carol Pilbasian was the rule-following, hyper-organized, Type A foil to Phil Miller’s slacker ethos. She believed that the last people on Earth have a responsibility to help redevelop the planet, while Phil simply took advantage of the freedom that relatively solitude provided.…
There are exactly two interesting elements in this week’s Last Man On Earth: 1) It marks Kristen Schaal’s directorial debut, and with a script credited to her husband Rich Blomquist; 2) Tandy switches up his usual “Closure” song with an acoustic rendition of Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” for a wedding, which is…
After last week’s revelation about a possible explosive Rubik’s Cube, it seemed like this week’s The Last Man on Earth was teed up for something big. And in a way, “Double Cheeseburger” did deliver (pun intended) one of the biggest surprises so far this season. But much like Carol’s birth, this episode was a snooze.
The last time The Last Man On Earth gave us a glimpse of the pre-virus era was in “Got Milk?” the third season episode that followed socialite Pamela as she struggled with isolation in an underground bunker. It was a way to introduce a new character and to break from the ensemble for a week, possibly to avoid…
Last week, Last Man On Earth unceremoniously sent Pamela and Glenn back to the mainland to search for Glenn’s likely deceased children. Thus, “Wisconsin” is the first episode this season just to feature the core ensemble (plus Jasper, who wanders in and out of frame depending on the needs of any given scene). The…
Betty Draper was never the easiest character to like on Mad Men. Lord knows we had our issues with her. January Jones’ performance took a while to crystallize, and the framing of her repression at the hands of Don was difficult to penetrate in the early going. Truly, it was her decision to leave Don at his most…
This week’s episode of The Last Man On Earth features not one, but two guest stars. First, Kristen Wiig as Pamela Brinton, a former socialite and philanthropist who sought shelter in an underground bunker for three years, slowly found the gang aboard their yacht, alienated them all with her haughty behavior, and then…
It’s been four months since we last caught up with the Malibu Crew on The Last Man On Earth, but not to worry, they’re exactly where we left them: On a yacht and headed for Mexico to escape nuclear fallout and the unstable, heavily armed Pat (Mark Boone Junior). At the very end of last season, Pat had tracked them…
There’s only so much change that can ever occur on television. Sure, locations change, new faces are introduced, some characters are born, others die, but the central dynamics of any TV show, whether it’s a network sitcom or a prestige cable drama, essentially remain the same. It’s a central tenant of the medium and…
As The Last Man On Earth heads into the homestretch of its third season, there were a lot of loose ends out there before tonight. Melissa’s journey back from mental illness, the integration of the still mute Jasper into the group, Erica and Carol’s slowly gestating pregnancies—and that’s not even counting whatever…
It’s no secret The Last Man On Earth returns to a few different wells time and time again for plot catalysts. Like past and present sitcoms, LMOE uses certain well-developed character traits—Tandy’s stubbornness, Carol’s jealousy, Todd’s kindness, etc.—to drive most episodes. Sometimes these iterations can be quite…
