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Thread started 03/02/15 4:28pm

RodeoSchro

The Last Man on Earth

...should be re-titled "The Most Unlikable Man On Earth, Who Lives Next To The Most Unlikable Woman On Earth, And Neither Of Them Are Funny".

Good gosh that was one hour I will never get back.

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Reply #1 posted 03/02/15 4:36pm

XxAxX

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well don't hold back! tell us how you really feel

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Reply #2 posted 03/02/15 5:54pm

paintedlady

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Dumb show. Hated it. I also found both characters annoying.

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Reply #3 posted 03/02/15 8:10pm

PurpleJedi

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lol

By St. Boogar and all the saints at the backside door of Purgatory!
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Reply #4 posted 03/03/15 9:37pm

dancerella

I'm still trying to decide how i feel about the show. I want to like it but we'll see. So far i like The Slap and Secrets and Lies.
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Reply #5 posted 03/04/15 10:42am

purplethunder3
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The Problem With 'Last Man On Earth' No One Is Talking About

Posted: 03/02/2015 6:09 pm EST Updated: 4 hours ago
LAST MAN ON EARTH
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This piece contains spoilers about "The Last Man on Earth."

The only critic on Earth who doesn't like Fox's "Last Man on Earth"? You're reading her right now.

It's not strange for there to be an outlier on a show that has otherwise enjoyed apositive consensus. It happens, and I respect the opinions of critics and viewers who enjoy the show. But I found the one-hour series premiere of "Last Man" truly difficult to get through. I could see attempts to improve certain aspects of the show in the episode that airs March 8, but in that installment, "Last Man" doubles down on some extremely questionable decisions. There's no getting around it: There are just big problems in the execution of this engaging premise, and I doubt I'll be able to get beyond what I've already seen, given how regularly the show turned me off in the early going.

This reaction is almost shocking to me, given that I'm a fan of "21 Jump Street," "22 Jump Street" and "The Lego Movie," the hit films on the resumes of "Last Man's" executive producers, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Those movies aren't just wryly self-aware and laugh-out-loud funny, they have a lot of heart, but that element is often missing on "Last Man." The comedy is truly disappointing when it comes to both character development and gender issues.

The premise is pretty easy to figure out from the name of the show, which opens with Phil Miller (Will Forte) roaming the country looking for any other sign of human life. With no loved ones or friends left, Phil devolves into a sad Everybro, a bearded schlump who uses the pool of his McMansion as a giant toilet.

I might have found Phil's slob qualities funny or charming or something if he were even a little bit specific or compelling, but throughout the premiere and in next week's episode, he's little more than a sad sack with extensive facial hair. It's not a problem that Phil's pretty depressed about the end of the world (though it's a weirdly tidy apocalypse -- there's no sign of the billions of bodies that you'd think would litter the uninhabited planet).

But it is a problem that during the 66 minutes I spent watching this show, I never had much cause to vary my assessment of Phil, who is consistently a self-pitying, predictable bore. You may have found his attempt to hit on a mannequin funny; I found it vaguely creepy and slightly boring. I should have cared that humanity would have died out if Phil kicked the bucket, but considering the sour impression he makes, I would have been at peace with that development.

Occasionally Phil is reasonably interesting and isn't just a generic man-child, but even if I warmed up to the cranky beardo in a big way, the show is still an enormous bummer on the gender front. If you want to spend some time watching a man roll his eyes and sigh and complain about a woman who's making demands on him, "Last Man on Earth" has got you covered. The last place I expected to find a narrow, nagging cable wife was on a broadcast network comedy made by the "Lego Movie" guys, but life is full of surprises, I guess.

It makes me sad and angry to think about how Kristen Schaal's character, Carol, was introduced in the pilot: Phil regains consciousness after passing out and has an intense vision of the woman who is caring for him as he wakes up. They end up kissing passionately. Then the vision of the first woman fades away and we see that Phil is getting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from Carol. He screams.

Any comparison I make between the two actresses will just propagate troubling paradigms about conventional measures of attractiveness, and given how gross the sequence made me feel, I just don't want to go there. The point is, it's hard for me to think of a reason for that sequence that is justifiable on a comedic or dramatic basis. It's hard to escape the implications of Phil's reaction to Carol in that moment, a reaction that is reinforced in later scenes. In general, "Last Man" appears to be pitying Phil for being stuck with the last woman on Earth -- with the kicker being the idea that he doesn't truly want to have sex with her. Even after she cleans up his house.

The fact is, the writing for Carol is frequently awful and one-note and generally casts her into the thankless role of the hectoring woman who exists to remind a lead male character of rules, laws and social norms. It's generally not a great look for anycharacter, but it's the kind of character that women on TV are frequently thrust into, even on ambitious dramas that should know better. You would think a comedy that ignores a lot of other sitcom conventions would not hew so slavishly to those tired gender patterns, but when it comes to "Last Man on Earth," you would be wrong.

The thing is, Carol as a mega-buzzkill might be just fine if she had a bunch of offsetting positive qualities or if her killjoy inclinations produced solid comedic beats. But they generally do not. The next episode has a few moments of more human and grounded interactions between the two leads, but you also have to sit through a Phil pity party that includes the line, "You pester me worse than my mother."

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." --Plato

https://youtu.be/CVwv9LZMah0
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