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Siskoid
Season 1: Will Forte's The Last Man on Earth Season 1 takes the postapocalyptic formula and turns it on its head. Unlike other shows in the genre that show us heroic zombie fighters and civilization rebuilders, his "last man" is hapless, horny, and wasteful. This is probably closer to the truth of the situation, and reminded me of The Battery without the zombies. But everyone hasn't been wiped out by the virus, and people start to congregate to his location, including Kristen Schaal, January Jones, Mary Steenburgen and others. After a while, it's more of a play on "I wouldn't if you were the last man on Earth" because the character is an irredeemable liar and a terrible manipulator. The soul of the series probably resides in the other characters, but Forte gives you permission to point and laugh at his own. This is much more of a serial than your usual half-hour comedy, equal parts Three's Company and docu-drama on how people would actually live once civilization has fallen. You're never too sure where it's going, which I think is a big plus.
With its second season, The Last Man on Earth tackles consequences. Will Forte's character, Tandy, needs to pay for the previous season's behavior, but the wasteful lifestyle of the survivors is also addressed, as is the need for the group to become a family and a society. A surviving astronaut in the International Space Station adds an interesting wrinkle as well.
In season 3, it's time to have babies and confront security risks head on. The show gets darker for it, but I do enjoy how the real problems you'd associate with the total collapse of civilization are realistically addressed, no matter how silly some of the characters can be (especially Forte's who, despite a sea change in attitude, is often very close to annoying the viewer as much as his fellow survivors). A change of venue seems to come with each season, keeping things fresh, and the show's serialized structure is really quite good at keeping us guessing.
It's a damn shame that The Last Man on Earth's fourth season is its last, or rather, that it couldn't be foreseen. Will Forte's group of survivors had a perfectly good finish in sight, if only that cliffhanger element hadn't been woven in, or given a couple more episodes to resolve positively. (I've read Forte's plans for Season 5, and it would have actually gone darker than this already dark comedy has gone before.) But there's no television series with a science fiction premise that Fox won't cancel at the wrong time (except X-Files which was forced to go on well beyond it's best by date). Season 4 has the group move around a bit more than usual, looking for the perfect place to raise their kids. New survivors pop up here and there (all comedy stars, the bigger, the more short-lived, as per the show's tradition), creating the sense of multiple arcs and drawing you back in the overall story. By this point, the group can be more firmly called a family, which is why it was a good time to end. You might also think the laughs would have dissipated when the pandemic struck, the first lockdown hitting around the fifth season's last few episodes. Still... 6 years 8 months ago