Will Forte’s new post-apocalyptic series imagines a future in which anything goes — except the dissolution of expectations about gender and domesticity.
Jordin Althaus / FOX
In only five short years, the world as we know it will be gone, according to Fox's new comedy The Last Man on Earth. Cities will lie vacant, the normally bustling streets devoid of any human presence, all thanks to a mysterious virus. Everyone and everything will be gone — everyone except for the last man on Earth.
That man is Phil Miller (played by Will Forte, who also created the series and wrote the pilot). The early fortysomething is first introduced as he drives through the entire United States (and Canada and Mexico!) looking for anyone else who, like him, may have inexplicably survived the most catastrophic event in history, leaving signs along the way that he's "Alive in Tucson." Despite his early initiative, Phil quickly resigns to a life of disarray and disappointment when there is no one else to be found, descending into a state of bedlam filled with margarita pools, towers of porn magazines, and humongous piles of trash. It's a far cry from the optimism implied when he first decorates the McMansion he decides to move into with priceless paintings and statues pilfered from museums all around the nation. Phil was going to live like a king, but within five months, he has simply become a slob instead.
Phil becomes strikingly animalistic as he makes his lonely way through the world (The Kinks' "Apeman" plays over the scene of him moving into his new abode), his mind seemingly unable to process anything besides a primal need for sex. He talks (to himself and his "friends," a collection of sports balls a la Wilson in Cast Away) about his rampant masturbation and constant horniness, saying that he would "give anything to see another woman again." Women serve a specific purpose in Phil's eyes (i.e. sex) and anything else they bring along (e.g. basic human companionship) is extraneous.
Jordin Althaus / FOX
Just minutes into the first episode of Last Man on Earth, Phil has essentially regressed to a pre-evolutionary state. He is pigeonholed into a type of masculinity marked by childishness, impulsivity, and laziness. He doesn't care about things like bathing or shaving and has no qualms about his constant drunkenness — the masculine condition is, at its core, basically the life of a disgusting bro.
And since Last Man on Earth is, at its heart, Phil's story, the viewer is meant to identify with his version of masculinity. "The show is about Phil Miller, and whatever else happens in the show, it's about him," said co-executive producer Andy Bobrow in an episode of Vulture's TV Podcast.
That approach essentially downgrades the female characters on the series as mere props for Phil to play off of, like Carol Pilbasian (Kristen Schaal), who saw the signs he left around the country and has traveled to the desert to find the only other person out there. Carol is a highly idiosyncratic individual, with strong grammatical preferences and a belief in the continued importance of stop signs, even with no other cars on the road. And she is the woman who is now entering Phil's life, seemingly giving him everything he could have hoped for.
Except of course not, because Carol is not the type of woman Phil has been waiting for, as indicated by the fact that — when Phil passes out after discovering and sniffing Carol's bra (because he's horny, remember?!?!) — he hallucinates a vision of a conventionally beautiful twentysomething (played by True Detective's Alexandra Daddario) waking him up and almost immediately making out with him. As he comes to, he realizes that what is happening is, instead, Carol performing mouth-to-mouth on him. He screams.
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