In the pilot episode of Fox’s quirky sitcom The Last Man on Earth, Phil “Tandy” Miller (Will Forte), the seemingly sole survivor of a deadly global virus, crisscrosses the country in a Winnebago searching of survivors. After finding none, he leaves his calling card — the words “ALIVE IN TUCSON” spray painted on billboards — before returning to Arizona. Back home, he moves out of his studio apartment and into a nearby mansion, decorating it with amenities such as paintings by Monet and Van Gogh, a T-Rex skull (no doubt “Sue” from Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry) and a baseball bat autographed by Babe Ruth, briefly stopping to moonwalk while wearing Michael Jackson’s iconic red leather jacket.
Phil entertains himself by bowling with cars, experimenting with flamethrowers, soaking in a kiddie pool filled with margaritas, and talking to his “friends” (a collection of balls with faces drawn on them, a’la Cast Away), but before long the loneliness is too much to bare. Seconds before driving headlong into a giant rock, Phil spies women’s undergarments hanging from a clothesline, which leads to the discovery of Carol — another survivor who, at gunpoint, corrects Phil’s grammar.
The disparate relationship between Phil and Carol — a woman who refuses to park in handicapped parking spots even though she may be one of the last living people on the planet, and a man who cut a hole in a diving board to convert a swimming pool into a backyard toilet — becomes the basis for the show. By the time Phil and Carol get married (she refuses to sleep with him unless they’re married), Phil’s billboards pay dividends, and other survivors of the virus begin to arrive to Tucson.
For four years (and four season), the small group of survivors have bumbled together around the landscape together. The group relocated from Tucson to Malibu and then San Jose before settling in Mexico. In the five year span covered by the show (2020-2024), people died, babies were born, people got married, a whole lot of supermarkets were raided, and the group befriended a cannibal.
Above all else, the half a dozen (give or take) sole survivors of the virus found ways to annoy one another. Whether it was Todd (who discovered a large stash of frozen bacon, which he hid from the group) or Melissa (who became homicidal after her medication ran out), someone was squabbling with someone else in almost every episode. Often, the source of conflict and tension was Phil (renamed “Tandy” after another survivor also named Phil Miller arrived), whose terrible jokes and pathological lies temporarily led to his banishment from the group.
At the end of the fourth season, the group once again agreed to move, this time to Cancun. Phil/Tandy’s brother Mike, a former astronaut, discovered a large heat source in Zihuatanejo that seemed to indicate the presence of survivors. When the whole group arrives there, Tandy takes a stand. He says the group’s previous way of life is not sustainable. What food remains is expiring, and the fertile land in Zihuatanejo, evident by surrounding oranges and avocados, is as good a place as any for the group to plant their roots.
Tandy’s speech is interrupted by the discovery of others — almost a hundred people wearing gas masks, surrounding the group.
After Tandy uttered one of his famous catch phrases (“Oh, farts”), the episode, season, and show ended.
A week after the airing of Season 4, Episode 18 (“Cancun, Baby!”), Fox announced the cancellation of The Last Man on Earth. The show’s dark humor has always been a rocky fit for network television, and Fox’s new $500 million dollar contract with the NFL sealed Tandy’s and the rest of the survivors’ fates. Along with TLMOE, Fox also cancelled Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Mick, The Exorcist, and Lucifer. Of those five, only B99 appears to have been offered a reprieve (the show was quickly picked up by ABC). Despite pleas by fans for Hulu, Netflix, or YouTube Red to rescue to show (or at least fund a series-ending movie), nothing has been announced.
To those who say the final episode serves as a fitting end to the show, I say “bullocks!” Are the masked survivors, who we learned were living in underground bunkers, friends or foes? What happened to Mike, who left with the groups only running vehicle? And what about Jasper, the young boy who lives alone in the woods and thinks the group is on their way to Cancun? This isn’t the way to end a show. This was a time-honored method of ending a teetering show’s season on a cliffhanger in hopes of getting it renewed, and in this case, it didn’t work.
For me, The Last Man on Earth has been hit or miss. As a fan of Will Forte’s unique brand of humor, I have enjoyed some of the show’s more zany story lines, obscure references and groan-inducing humor. That being said, many of the show’s plots could have fit into almost any television sitcom. The longer the show went on, the further it strayed away from its original premise. Survival, even comfort, was simply assumed. I liked the moments when the group ventured out into abandoned cities in search of food and/or supplies. Instead, most of the group’s interaction took place in houses, which, for production reasons, I’m sure were simpler and less expensive to shoot in. Still, an occasional reminder that food was running low, what life is like without running water, or how hot Mexico must be without air conditioning would have been appreciated.
Will Mike (and possibly Jasper) return to save Tandy and the gang? What will happen with Tandy and Carol’s twins, Mike and Bezequille? Unless another network or streaming site comes to the rescue, we may never know.
