Episode Guide
Episode 1 -| Review Score – 3.5/5 Episode 2 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episode 3 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episode 4 -| Review Score – 2.5/5 Episode 5 -| Review Score – 2/5 Episode 6 -| Review Score – 2/5 Episode 7 -| Review Score – 2.5/5 Episode 8 -| Review Score – 2/5 Episode 9 -| Review Score – 2.5/5 Episode 10 -| Review Score – 2/5 Y: The Last Man is the perfect example of how not to adapt a comic. Based on the graphic novels of the same name, Y: The Last Man starts promisingly before descending into an absolute bore-fest across its 10 episodes. In fact, the show was promptly cancelled midway through its run on American TV, which should tell you all you need to know about this one. The premise is actually interesting though and certainly timely for 2021. Within this, a deadly virus spreads throughout the entire world, killing all but one male; Yorick. Time passes and the world descends into chaos before different factions band together and try to survive the future. Aside from the descent into soapy melodrama and not understanding its target audience, Y: The Last Man somehow feels insulting to both women and men. The former comes from the idea that society would just collapse when men aren’t around. The other comes from the women and their attitude, bemoaning men and blaming them for all their problems… even though they’re not around. It’s pretty impressive to alienate both sexes within a few episodes of the show airing, and may explain the huge drop-off rate of viewers. The world-building too doesn’t fare much better. There are so many questions left unanswered, ideas that are never fully fleshed out and a concept that pushes our main characters from one plot device to the next without an end-goal in sight. When the story finally does get moving, the show’s cancellation and subsequent bait for a second season that will never arrive, does absolutely nothing to help Y: The Last Man’s case- especially if you fancy diving into this months or years down the line. The loose goal here is to get society back up and running again, and that comes from Jennifer Brown taking the presidency spot and fighting off competitors and doubters breathing down her neck. When she learns that her son Yorick is still alive, she tasks a rogue government agent, known simply as Agent 355, to escort Yorick to Washington with a doctor called Allison Mann (the irony of that name!) to try and figure out why Yorick has survived and save humanity. There are various other factions and groups of characters here that pad out the run-time, but these are completely inconsequential to the main story and just feel like busywork. The biggest problem with this show – above the litany of other issues – is the pace. My god this show is slow. Episodes tick by with little movement on the main plot-line, while the show has a weird tendency to focus on the complete wrong storylines for large swathes of its run-time. If you thought Yorick was the main character, think again. He’s basically sidelined after the first few episodes to focus on a political power struggle between Democrats VS republicans. Yay? Some of this may have been redeemable if the show had good characters. But it doesn’t. Yorick is one of the worst culprits here, whining and generally moaning every chance he gets about how hard things are. He also shows his face to almost everyone he meets too, despite being told this is incredibly risky. And as one may expect, it doesn’t always go to plan either. There are other characters here as well, including Regina, who plays up the “Crazy Republican” trope and Roxanne, the “man-hating feminist” but these people are never developed in a way that actually makes for a compelling watch. It’s impressive to find a show that’s both insulting to men and women, as well as slow, laborious and completely directionless – but Y: The Last Man manages to do all of that and more. This is definitely in the running for one of the worst TV shows of the year.
