Last Man on Earth WAS promising

FOX comedy “The Last Man on Earth” started out with an explosion of greatness. A stunning and almost dangerous concept starring but one actor, the under appreciated Will Forte who was the bumbling MacGruber in numerous SNL sketches. The concept was risky but played out wonderfully — one solitary man leaving a bleak if not interesting existence after a virus wiped out 99.99999999% of humanity. It was a wonderful one-man show. Forte’s Phil Miller traveling the country in search of any glimmer of humanity.

I even liked the second episode where the moderately grating Kristen Schall was introduced. She is wonderful as the voice of Louise Belcher on another FOX comedy, the animated and overlooked “Bob’s Burgers” but just like  her role as Hazel Wassername on NBC’s “30 Rock” a few years ago, her acting simply rubs me the wrong way. Her characters are grating and borderline annoying but I suppose that’s why she is playing the characters she is playing.

But a comedy starring even two characters was too good to be true and too good to last for long. Future episodes saw the addition of two more characters. Hopefully that’s where the character additions stop because what quickly became a multi-faceted show focusing more on Phil Miller’s desire to be with the more attractive of the last two apparently living females in America showed just how much of a dickhead he is — even to the only other apparently living guy in America. Everyone needs friends, no matter how much they deny having such a need, and pushing them aside in an effort to have the more desirable of two women possibly shows why Phil Miller survived. He was left behind to suffer through a miserable and incomplete life.

He could choose to be a better friend and a better husband but instead he continually finds ways to alienate those around him. That is, until the most recent episode. Forte’s character chose to change his life to make a better life for those around him. He decided to clean up his poop pool, he reluctantly allowed his wife to move into his house and is beginning to realize that, for better or worse, this weird existence is his new life and that he needs to make the best of it or continue to be a self-loathing and shallow dickhead.

I know that even after a short while that television shows change and evolve but I hope to see more of the weirdness that comes with what is now a small group of  survivors left as the last people in America — possibly Earth — and less of the relationship drama. Check out “The Last Man on Earth” Sundays at 8 PM and/or 8:30 PM (C/T) on FOX.