Emmy Episodes: The Last Man on Earth

It’s always my policy to watch every Emmy-nominated episode each year, which leads me to sample a handful of shows that I don’t tune in to on a regular basis. This year, I’m making a special effort to spotlight each of those installments to offer my perspective on shows that I don’t review each week.

The Last Man on Earth: Season 2, Episode 18 “30 Years of Science Down the Tubes” (D)
Nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy Series (Will Forte)

Color me very confused. When I last watched this show – the Emmy-nominated pilot “Alive in Tucson” – there was one man left on Earth, and he met and couldn’t stand the last woman left. Now, suddenly, he has a family, they drink together, and there’s plenty of people around for him to talk to. I don’t know what happened over the course of the first two seasons to change everything, but clearly a lot has happened. I gave the pilot a C+ and decided that it wasn’t for me, though I do sometimes like Forte, who earned a deserved Emmy nod for guest-starring on “30 Rock” three years ago. He’s got a certain way of speaking that makes him very entertaining, but I don’t think that needs to translate to an Emmy nomination. The title of this episode references Will’s character Phil’s frustration that the fart that he tried to bottle up for his brother to experience didn’t last. It’s highly unsophisticated and I get that it’s why it’s supposed to be funny, but it didn’t do it for me. This is a weird show and Forte’s chances are considerably lower this year since his show didn’t earn directing and writing bids like it did last year. I was intrigued by the always great Mary Steenburgen, though, and I spent a while trying to figure out if that really was January Jones as one of those inexplicably alive people. It turns out it was – who would have thought? Let’s hope I don’t have to watch this show next year.

Pilot Review: The Last Man on Earth

The Last Man on Earth (FOX)
Premiered March 1 at 9pm

Having one person anchor a show all on his lonesome is a tall order, and having two instead of one isn’t all that much better. It can be very alienating, obviously, but it also means that focus can’t be shifted elsewhere if a given character isn’t working perfectly. This show doesn’t exactly have that option, though it has succeeded so far at multiplying its number of characters by two each episode. The first installment was essentially a half-hour parody of “Cast Away” with Will Forte serving as sole player and narrator. The end of that episode changed the dynamic considerably, adding Kristen Schaal as the last woman on earth. I’ll admit that Carol’s obsessions with not ending sentences with a preposition and stopping at stop signs in the deserted post-apocalyptic future are entertaining, and elicit some great reactions out of Forte’s Phil. Wanting to get married before they have sex to repopulate the earth, on the other hand, just makes her seem like a crazy person, and I’d much rather see Phil drive his car into the store for a closer spot than have him roll his eyes endlessly at her excitement over wedding preparations. Her tics are about following societal conventions and rules, while being married feels like something wholly antiquated, even just for the sake of humor. This show just feels very lonely, and I’m not sure it’s a welcoming or humorous enough place to spend even just an hour a week, even with the dependable Forte and Schaal leading the way.

How will it work as a series? Episode two was dramatically different than episode one, so who knows what episode three will be like? I suspect that it will lean towards the antics of the latter half of episode two, in which Phil and Carol are constantly competing over survival tactics and judging each other for how they behave. That doesn’t seem like it will be terribly funny, at least not consistently.
How long will it last? A while, potentially. The pilot numbers were surprisingly high and catalog this one firmly in the positive category, signaling good news for FOX during midseason and a productive companion to “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” Right now, a renewal is looking pretty likely.

Pilot grade: C+