Last Man on Earth: Is There Anybody Out There?
September 27, 2015 10:13 PM - Season 2, Episode 1 - Subscribe

Six months later, Phil and Carol are traveling America trying to find somewhere that Carol will want to settle down in. Has Phil become less of a douche in these six months, you ask? We'll see....

Welcome to Washington, D.C., the new home of Phil and Carol! Which they are driving through in a giant fucking jet! To the supermarket. Show, we need more moments like that and less well, Phil being Phil. Just saying. Carol walks up, shoots the door of the supermarket, strolls on in. Phil, I got the tequila! Can I drive? Oops, he just dropped a missile. “We should go back and get that bomb.” Fine, we’ll go back and get the bomb...no, it’s fine, the fact that you offered is good enough for me. Phil will drop a little caution cone by it later. Yes, let’s make out whle driving.

TEQUILA POOL! and this time Carol’s in it with him...in the White House. They ride around on various wheels, play hockey, force busts to make out with each other. “You just made me discover electricity in my shorts!” Phil give a press conference to his balls. “Tucson can suck it, and you can go ahead and suck it for asking.” Carol tries on First Lady clothes. Carol’s now doing political dirty talk about Phil-ibustering in bed. “We cannot let that vote pass. There’s too much pork in that bill.” She also draws a lovely picture of them flying in the jet.

Phil wants to move in there permanently, Carol’s not sure she wants to commit ... TO THE WHITE HOUSE. But it doesn’t feel right? They’re already tried out Graceland, Dollyland, Oprah’s and LeBron’s.

Carol’s other drawings: she has a lovely drawing of their Niagara Falls remarriage and Phil pretending that he farted Old Faithful. She looks at a drawing of the Tuscon crew and feels sad.

The Pilbasian-Millers leave D.C.,...welcome to Delaware and Carol’s old apartment! She was in “Knitters With Attitude” and “Sawchuck’s Angels” groups, incidentally. Let’s go see her roommates’ rooms! Here’s Glen’s room with some kind of mosquito tent...he was trying not to get the virus. He got it. (So the virus was a mosquito one? Shades of a certain zombie series I read...) Here’s Bernice’s skeleton...no, not HER skeleton after she died, she studied anatomy. Carol’s bedroom is a hand crafted memorial of portraits everywhere to everyone she knew who died. And a banner saying “Kraft Korner.” I love it. “I know it looks like I went a little kookoo bananas.” He says it looks “chock full of sanity.” GOOD JOB PHIL.

Carol still doesn’t want to live in Delaware if no one’s here...and there’s the problem. The only place Phil can’t go is Tucson! Remember how they kicked him out? And how other Phil will kill him? Maybe they’ve cooled off after six months? Phil refuses to go back ever, and Carol stomps out to sleep elsewhere.

Carol and Phil drive by an “Alive in Tucson” sign. Phil passive-aggressively swerves the motorhome when Carol goes to pee. “A little traffic.” “Hardy har har!” As Phil cleans out all the pee, he grumbles to himself about how Carol is a picky little turd. Carol gets out to hit the gas station shop and pick out a shirt that says Oklahoma. “Needs a little razzmatzz, though.” She breaks out the rhinestones. “Where did you get such an expensive T-shirt? In the jewel markets of Monaco?” She yells out to Phil that she’s setting her gems, but he doesn’t hear her and drives off, while she runs behind screaming. She tries shooting her gun, but he’s got music on and not hearing it. “Well, this is a grade A fustercluck,” she says.

Phil drives all night and doesn’t notice that Carol is gone, but feels bad that he drove by the world’s largest plate without telling her. Then when he starts yelling for her....ruh-roh. She’s not there! Oh God, where the hell did he stop last? He doesn’t know what gas station he actually stopped at. “Dammit, there’s infinity Speedy Pumps!”

Two days later, Phil still can’t find Carol and he’s frigging beefed it and lost Carol forever.

Phil finds the gas station--he thinks--and still can’t find her even when he shoots a gun.
Five days later: WHERE IS CAROL? Phil goes through Carol’s sketch book and..I love her drawing of her dragging Phil around the White House. Phil deduces that Carol must have gone to Tucson (how without a car? also it’s 300+ miles from where he was in Oklahoma). Phil sucks it up and ...hides in the bushes. IN A HAYSTACK SUIT. No one’s home. The outdoor pit is abandoned and a little trashed, doors are oepn, nobody’s answering. Also, Phil’s house got set on fire. I guess nobody wanted that dinosaur skull. Also, THEY REALLY HATED YOU, PHIL.

Carol’s still shooting her gun off at the gas station Phil can’t find. (Hint: not Speedy Mart)

Meanwhile, Phil’s brother is still lost in space, searching and scratching off places on the globe he tried to find people in. (Nobody in Canary Islands....) There’s got to be someone out there besides me and these worms, right? He named them Terry and Nancy. Now he’s going to go masturbate.
The other Miller doesn’t know how to fly home and thinks he’d die of the virus if he lands.
In space, worm Nancy’s name is added to brother Miller’s list of the dead and he floats her corpse out to space. Now it’s just you and me left, bud, he says to Terry the worm.

Phil sits, sadly. Carol sits, sadly. Space Miller floats sadly.

Oh man.

Next week: “The search for Care Bear is on.”

So, the big question is: is this show worth watching? Which is to say, is Phil being less of an idiot? Well, so far I’d say yes, even if he absentmindedly drove off without his wife and then can’t find her. Or at least, there’s no Melissa any more, so he hasn’t been a total ass. It still makes me hope he doesn’t find the Tucson crew anywhere else, though.

Where’s this show gonna go? Who the hell knows any more? But maybe it’s worth a shot?

The AV Club review is pretty excellent, btw.
posted by jenfullmoon (3 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Better than I was expecting it to be. When it's dwelling on the depression and loneliness of the situation, it's practically Achewoodian.
posted by drezdn at 11:10 AM on September 28, 2015


Yeah -- this is the show that last year's pilot had me thinking it could be. This is watchable again, not just hate-watchable.

It'll be interesting to see if they maintain this or go back to the hate-watch version of Phil.

On an unrelated note, if anyone else was watching this on Hulu last year and got stopped by them requiring an account to watch it this season (argh!), it is available without an account on Fox's website.
posted by pie ninja at 4:22 PM on September 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


I was really impressed by this episode. It was funny, and Carol and Phil have a great chemistry now. The ending really got to me: the loneliness had a distressing edge.
posted by meese at 4:55 PM on October 3, 2015


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