There is nothing else on television like The Last Man On Earth.
This isn t an exaggeration. There is just not another show that even comes close to what The Last Man On Earth is trying to do especially in its pilot. Quite frankly Alive In Tucson should in no way work as well as it does. A title card tells us in the beginning that this world exists after the virus but we otherwise don t get any information about what said virus was or why aggressively ordinary temp Phil Miller (Will Forte) survived it. Even further The Last Man On Earth is in no rush to answer the question it raises. For eighteen astonishing minutes we follow one person s struggle to maintain his humanity in a human free world. That s it. There is one brief flashback to Phil s life in the old world and the arrival of Kristen Schaal s last woman on earth at the episode s end signals where the series might be going for a while but the vast majority of the Forte penned pilot rests on his shoulders as Phil goes through all the stages of grief all by himself.
Oh but it s a comedy and a very funny one at that.
Given the talent behind The Last Man On Earth it being funny is not a shocker in and of itself. Forte a uniquely absurd writer and performer wrote the pilot knowing he could anchor this tricky premise. He has a knack for grounding characters in reality with affable grins and blas shrugs before yanking them out into chaos with a sudden jolt of anger pain or something as unapologetic as debilitating horniness. There is a part of me that s disappointed with The Last Man On Earth being yet another straight white guy everyman but the combination of Forte s writing and performance is strong enough to justify it. Meanwhile the show is also directed and produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller of The Lego Movie 21 Jump Street Clone High and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. Lord and Miller have a very particular style of directing that leans on quick cuts and escalating montages but more than that all their projects share a common thematic thread none of them should have worked as well as they did.
So no it s not surprising that The Last Man On Earth is funny. The real surprise is that Fox would gamble not just on a high concept but one that finds its comedy in some incredibly bleak material.
Take the cold open of Alive In Tucson. Phil not quite in denial but not quite ready to admit the truth rolls a bus around the United States in search of another living person. He calls through a loudspeaker hoping that someone anyone will call back. When no one does he takes out a map and crosses the state off until he finally looks down and sees a country covered in ominous black X s. He blinks almost calm and then we cut to outside the stranded bus and hear Phil scream. Forte draws the screech out long past its natural end so it goes on and on and on and while it does that thing where something goes on so long the mere length of it becomes hilarious there s also a very real despair there. Phil as far as he knows is alone.
From that moment on The Last Man On Earth immediately becomes one of the most singular shows on television. It manages to be very funny letting Forte stretch his physical comedy muscles in a series of montages in which Phil embraces his id. He decorates a fancy home he could have never afforded in the old world with souvenirs from his cross country quest for humanity Academy Awards the eagle rug from the Oval Office a massive dinosaur skull and countless priceless paintings. He wears Michael Jordan s jersey and yells at Cast Away that he will never ever talk to a volleyball balls are for fun man Then as if to prove his point he stands across from a machine shooting tennis balls in a full suit of armor. He goes bowling in a parking lot starting with regular bowling pins then a clump of glass lamps and then full fish tanks stacked on top of each other. Lord and Miller are fans of a longer shot throughout the series and the one that sits on the waiting fish tanks only to have Phil back into the frame with a pick up truck full of bowling balls is one of the pilot s biggest laughs. For a little while Phil accepts his status as the only man left standing as an excuse to do all the stupid shit he could never have done before and for a little while everything is awesome.
As Phil keeps living and keeps holding out hope that someone else will find him though his conversations with God get more and more hopeless. Phil praying quickly becomes Phil using God as a way to talk to someone anyone. It s a handy device that Forte takes full advantage of I mean of which Forte takes full advantage. Phil starts off by apologizing for all the recent masturbation before chuckling but that s on you like he s old friends shooting the shit with God instead of a lonely man trying to work through his feelings about being the sole survivor of a completely devastating virus. When Phil exhausts his energy letting loose with fish tank bowling and mixing spray cheese with $10 000 bottles of wine he takes his anger out on God. Guess what he shrieks at the ceiling I don t even care I don t need people I m gonna be just fine
Smash cut to FIVE MONTHS LATER. To sell Phil s despair Forte s demeanor swings between existential dread and an upbeat mania. Phil can t decide whether he is in fact dead or alive. He emerges from the pile of trash that s now his house exhausted with the effort of staying alive and goes about yet another day of trying to keep himself occupied with just himself. He wades through oceans of plastic bottles. He fills a kiddie pool with margarita mix pours salt around the rim and lies in it with dead eyed bleariness where he once might have splashed around with unencumbered joy. He stands in front of the tennis ball machine with that same suit of armor on but it now feels less like wish fulfillment and more like self destruction. Where Tucson once felt like his sunny retirement spot it s now a desert blanched of color. It s no longer a playground it s a vast emptiness that s devoid of any sign of life whether that means human bodies leftover from The Virus or even a single sign of animal life.
Instead of talking to God Phil turns to an assortment of you guessed it balls. Five months from where we left him he doesn t even have the one volleyball friend he swore he would never need but a long long roster of imaginary ball friends. Phil walking into the restaurant he s adopted as his local bar and asking each ball in turn if they want some whiskey follows in the cold open s footsteps it s prolonged and it s hilarious but also incredibly sad.
This attempt to create a community out of unresponsive objects leads to the pilot s most uncomfortable and deeply effective scene. With Gary the volleyball in tow Phil pulls up to a storefront and faces a female mannequin he s been staring at for months. He talks at Gary s blandly smiling face about his crush before finally going up to the window shooting it clear and shyly approaching the mannequin. Forte keeps Phil s side of the interaction as grounded in a real nervousness as possible which makes the mannequin s lack of reaction through his small talk and halting kiss all the more crushing. Then Phil goes to shake her hand and it comes off in his. We sit in the devastating silence of this moment when Phil finally has to accept the fact that this mannequin is not and never will be the human he craves. He crumbles to the curb looks to the sky and addresses the god he s at turns tried to ignore and defy in a resigned voice barely above a whisper You win.
And so Phil decides to kill himself.
It would really surprise me if Forte didn t look to Groundhog Day at least a little when writing The Last Man On Earth. Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin s pitch black comedy also explores the existential crisis that comes out of being stuck in a constant repetitive loop. It even manages to wring humor from an extended sequence in which Bill Murray s self loathing reporter (also a Phil) tries to kill himself over and over. Both Groundhog Day and The Last Man On Earth play out a variety of scenarios before their main characters take a turn for the worse so that by the time they decide to end their lives we have lived with their pain enough to understand what brought them there. The Last Man On Earth has a trickier problem to navigate though. Murray s Phil learned to love life again by loving other people Forte s Phil doesn t have quite the same opportunity.
While Alive In Tucson is so impressive for being a largely one man performance it also portrays Phil s loneliness in such a way that it makes the audience feel just as claustrophobic as he does. It s impressive especially because it make us feel just as relieved as Phil does when he sees a curl of smoke in the distance and slams the brakes on his suicide mission.
While it was unlikely that The Last Man On Earth was ever going to try and sustain a series based around a single person it still comes as somewhat of a surprise when he pulls up to someone else s campsite. It s even a little disappointing since Forte turns in such a stellar performance throughout the pilot. When the someone else turns out to be a softly lit Alexandra Daddario it feels too easy which of course it is.
No wait sorry which it is of course.
Having Phil wake up to Kristen Schaal s Carol is a bold choice. First of all it throws Phil into startling and unflattering relief. After years of wandering the earth all by himself it s natural that he would start concocting fantasies of finding a stereotypically gorgeous babe who would cradle his head and sing the Ghostbusters theme with him. It is less understandable that Carol immediately repulses him. She might not be a softly lit Alexandra Daddario but at the end of the day she is still a person. It was easier to see Phil longing for a woman as Phil longing for companionship but his disappointment with Carol makes him less sympathetic but maybe more realistic. Sure he d like to have a woman he can get along with but he also really really just wants to get laid. To be clear I m not ideologically opposed to Phil reacting to Carol in a questionable way. It s far more interesting to let the last man and woman on earth not just find each other but hate each other. Pre virus Phil and Carol would never have gotten along but for now they don t have anyone else with whom to get along (are you happy now Carol ).
A less ambitious show would have let the pilot handle the brunt of the existential crises so that the series could go on to purely have fun with this brave new world that has no people in it. Instead the second episode ( The Elephant In The Room ) continues to ask hard and fascinating questions. While Phil assumes not having to deal with other people means he can embrace a lawless and shameless existence Carol still operates by all the previously existing rules. She bristles when Phil runs through stop signs and gapes at the paintings he lifted from museums. She constantly corrects his grammar to the point where it s unclear whether she actually knows what she s saying (Phil what do you need that gun for Carol I think you mean out for what do you need that gun Phil That can t be right ). Then when they go to the store she demands that he park in a non handicapped space.
I was with Phil at first because who could care about traffic when traffic doesn t exist anymore But Andy Bobrow s script makes Carol s approach to this empty new world far more complicated than just being strict. I wasn t necessarily surprised Bobrow wrote Mixology Certification a controversial Community episode that s nevertheless one of my favorites. It s an unusually dark chapter filled with as many uncomfortable truths as jokes. For me Bobrow showed an impressive skill for balancing bleakness with humor and he does the same in The Elephant In The Room. Just look at the fight Phil and Carol have over him parking in that handicapped parking space
Carol What s next Are you gonna burn down a church Phil No I would never burn down a church Carol Why Phil Because it s a church. Carol And this is a store and that is a handicapped parking spot.
It s not just that Carol is a stickler for the rules it s that she thinks letting go of the world they had before could also mean letting go of her humanity now. (And if you think she s operating in extremes take a look at Phil s hoarder house and tell me he s not doing the same.) The episode unfortunately moves a little too quickly from there to Carol unraveling but it s still hard not to feel a pang when Carol deadpans from her toilet fountain we weren t chosen we were forgotten. The ensuing sequences in which Phil buckles down to get running water for her she forgives him they have dinner and she makes him propose marriage so any kids that come out of possible lovemaking are again slightly rushed.
As as the credits roll on the second episode though we have a much better idea of what The Last Man On Earth could look like from here on out. Or a much better The Last Man On Earth from out here idea could look. Or something. (Dammit Carol ) Anyway it s unclear for now whether Phil and Carol really are the last man and woman on earth like they say (there have to be some people wandering around Europe Africa Asia and Australia right ) but their manic grief is the perfect showcase for Forte and Schaal. If we re going to be stuck with just two people for the foreseeable future I m thrilled that it s them.
Stray observations
Welcome to weekly coverage of The Last Man On Earth I m thrilled to be covering this show as evidenced by the many many words I wrote on the subject.I was expecting far more flashbacks but I m more impressed that they practically don t use any. That s definitely Jason Sudeikis in Phil s family picture though so I d wager we ll get at least one with him.Like I said there are so many questions I still have about The Virus. Does it actually disintegrate bodies Did it kill all the animals Will they have to be vegetarians (This last question is the most important.)I hereby nominate Will Forte to sing the Ghostbusters theme for the upcoming reboot.Phil to one of his many ball friends That s really homophobic Bryce. Even for you. I apologize to the cast and crew of Cast Away. They nailed it. There s really no wrong way to use a margarita pool.
No comments:
Post a Comment