This part of the walkthrough looks at episodes 11 and 12 fromLast Man on Earthsseason 2.
Heres a look at how such an unusual sitcom comes together.
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Note: This interview has been edited for brevity.
Mike thinks he is the last man on earth, but who knows what or whom he might encounter.
Did you guys circle a lot of ideas before deciding that Mike should land in the ocean?
ANDY BOBROW:Yeah we weighed all the options land, sea, desert, jungle.
And hes like Oh crap, Africa?
And then he walks a bit further and finds out hes in Disney World.
We knew he had to have his own journey on Earth before finding the others.
Ocean seemed like a good start.
Drinking all the booze and basically having a pleasure cruise by himself.
That was cost prohibitive.
And John and Dave came up with that really cool bit where he crashes right into the boat.
That was a great solution.
The kind of coincidence you buy because its hardly good news.
But this was a hideously expensive episode even without that stuff.
We shot in Long Beach, which doubled for Miami.
And Jason was really on the ocean.
It was easier to shoot him on the ocean than put him in a tank.
We had to erase some land and some signs of civilization in the background.
And the cruise ship was CG.
But Pats boat was a boat, not a set.
This episode works as such a nice companion piece to the pilot and Is Anybody Out There?
We had two cliffhangers to deal with: Does Mike live and did Phil die.
So we laid out two episodes, one to deal with each cliffhanger.
And we could have simply flopped the air order.
Thats how we sold it to the web link.
We just said, If youre worried about it, you could start with the funeral episode.
They ultimately went for the big one and we really appreciated it.
That was the right one to go with.
You spoke about only having Sudeikis for two days for all of the space material.
How did this material work?
You obviously had him for another set of episodes for the seasons second half.
So we ended up shooting a few things out of order.
Pat Brown is such an interesting character.
I may have been the only person who actually considered that seriously.
And Mark Boone was so perfect.
This is probably the most virus-heavy episode, but it still keeps things subtle and restrained.
What were your thoughts on this?
Did you think you spent too much time on it?
Will had wanted to do the sea of body bags for a while.
I think he brought it up in season one, and we definitely considered it for 201.
Since the pilot, we kept seeing people online saying, where are the bodies????
We knew some people just had to see them.
This was our way of saying, Here.
A buncha bodies, happy?
Can we get back to the show now?
There would be bodies everywhere and crashed cars and stuff.
As if we had missed the first rule of apocalypse stories.
I felt a mission to show people that there are other versions of that story.
So I think we spent the right amount of time on it.
We just wanted to give a plausible explanation, frame the story our way, and move on.
I really like that this episode can still just take some time to soak in the beauty of normalcy.
The scene of Mike and Pat playing tennis in hazmats suits is such a simple, surreal image.
That scene was not in the first draft, and it came to us from Phil Lord.
Thats a supremely awful song, but were there any other options in the mix?
ERICA RIVINOJA:I dont remember!
ANDY BOBROW:I got this one, because I was at the keyboard when it happened.
This was actually the second time that trick worked for me.
The other time was with Informer by Snow in episode 202.
So Im two-for-two in sticking dumb songs into outlines and no one challenging me.
This marks a lot of funerals for these guys at this point.
How is this one different and what have they learned from this process?
How is it different for you guys, writing a scene like this a second time around?
We wanted everyone to be genuinely sad about Phil.
With Gordons death, Carol didnt know him, so there was a lot of humor in that.
Will was very excited to have a Viking Funeral.
We did some pretty exhaustive research on Viking Funerals.
ERICA RIVINOJA:A threesome with Will Ferrells corpse or a threesome with the CPR dummy?
Yes, they were both tabled.
Threesomes are tabled at pretty much every opportunity we get.
Was it kind of the point to have everyone reeling and going through something together here?
ERICA RIVINOJA:Yes.
We wanted to see everyone having a rough time as a group.
When
Gordon died, we could play it lighter, since the audience never knew him.
But Phil was really family, so it gave us a chance to get into that real stuff.
No one wants the big funeral but Tandy.
No one wants that memorial song.
Everyone else just wants to quietly compartmentalize it like theyve done so many times before.
Was this a more recent development, or did you always know that he was lying?
ERICA RIVINOJA:I started on season two, so I dont know for sure.
But I remember we came up with the middle names in the room.
I originally pitched that his middle name was Marion.
But Stacy makes me laugh even harder… its so 80s.
ANDY BOBROW:I vaguely remember talking about revealing this at some point last year.
I think the idea of finding out Phil lied was in the air for a while.
Its a natural place to go, since it messes with Tandy.
I think we had it in the back pocket for a while, but we hadnt got to it.
So this was a good time to pull it out.
ERICA RIVINOJA:The lyrics were scripted (believe it or not).
Will improvised the clapping above the hands, which was super brilliant.
Old sports events and crappy reality shows likeCake Bossare the things theyre stuck with.
This episode really draws some intentional parallels between Phils death and Mike Millers assumed corpsification.
Tandys been pretty quiet about his brother.
ERICA RIVINOJA:Yes.
That was the goal.
Tandys entire relationship with Phil is a nice reflection of Tandys issues with his brother.
ANDY BOBROW:I hope it didnt come off as ham-fisted.
Which is pretty clear from the scene where he puts on Phils clothes.
But still thats a pretty thinky explanation.
To build a story on Tandy craves approval from alpha males, thats a pretty tricky premise.
Whereas, Tandy misses his brother is easier, and it rang equally true to us all.
Our walkthrough on the second half ofLast Man on Earthssecond season continues all week.
Our walkthrough on the first half ofLast Man on Earthssecond season can be readhere.
