Andy Bobrow reveals the secrets of The Last Man on Earth Season 3 to us!
This part of the walkthrough looks at episodes one and two ofLast Man on Earthseason 3.
While Melissa takes drastic action, Tandy gets a new lesson in fashion.
Hes really the perfect choice for that role, but what was the story there?
But with celebrity cameos you have to cast a wide net.
Boy were we wrong.
January texted him and got an immediate yes.
We were so lucky to have him.
We shot that but cut it for time.
Would have been gilding it a little too much anyway.
We had made our bed with the finale last season.
We had Pat and two people in hazmats coming up the beach.
So we always knew that this episode would be continuous action from there.
But we had no idea who the other two hazmat people would be or what the story would be.
Most of us were assuming wed do a battle.
But the more thought about it, we decided the big fight would be not quite our thing.
Hed live on his boat and stop by for sugar once in a while.
But we werent quite sure we could commit to having Pat as a regular.
Hes such an intense character, we wouldnt want to neuter him by making him a familiar sight.
I really like where we ended up with this one.
I love Tandy falling for Pat and being so wrong about it.
Its a perfect Last Man story.
But we felt the cliffhanger was in immediate need of addressing.
We wrote plenty of lines about the Panama Canal and global warming.
Maybe the whole isthmus of Panama was flooded over.
Or maybe Pat put the boat on a trailer and hauled it across land.
We decided they came across the Northwest Passage.
Pat says that in a line somewhere, but it may have got cut.
There are some huge Melissa developments in this episode.
Is watching her trauma unfold going to be a larger part of this season?
Are emotional consequences inevitable with these people?
We are having a lot of fun with Melissa this season, and January is really fun to watch.
The tool we have, more than other comedies, is death.
Our whole premise is a very special episode.
So yeah, death, tragedy, loss, those are the things we use to expose our characters.
Was this always a situation where you wanted the gang on the road by the end of the episode?
Did you consider Pat learning about Mike in episode two or three?
We couldnt have him for 302, so that was that.
Talk about Lewis a little bit and the casting process there.
Did you know what you wanted for that character?
We had some vague notions.
We liked Lewis being kind of mousy, kind of the opposite of Phil 2 and Mike.
And when we saw Kenny Choi, he was perfect at that.
As for other aspects of his character, weve had very good luck letting that stuff evolve naturally.
When I see him on the screen, I see the Professor fromGilligans Island.
Of course Todds our Skipper and Tandys Gilligan.
Melissa is Ginger and Erica is Maryann.
If you squint, Gail is Mr. Howell and Carol is Lovee.
Not quite though.Gilligans Islandcomparisons are never an exact science.
Although we are breaking a Harlem Globetrotters episode as we speak.
It just popped into Wills head one day and its awesome.
We didnt think we were doing a running gag with his appearance, but now we definitely are.
Theres a real energy that drives this episode, especially in its ending.
Im not sure if weve hit that target all the time, but its been our general goal.
Not really, but there are stories that come up where we realize thats season one Tandy.
Like where hes being inconsiderate of Carol.
We avoid that stuff now.
We have talked a lot about his impending fatherhood though.
Impending fatherhood is a factor for Tandy this season.
The beach and the ocean after the apocalypse dont look any different than the beach and ocean do today.
You need empty highways and crumbling buildings to really establish the end of the world.
ANDY BOBROW:A lot of this was driven by stuff I dont want to spoil.
The second episode sets up some great Melissa stuff and some very specific stuff well see in episode 3.
I have no idea if thats how drama people do it.
Were probably doing it all wrong.
So we were talking about what we can do on location somewhere.
And then we had the idea for a celebrity house and that seemed perfect.
Was Cher always the owner of the house that they end up invading?
Why is she the right personality for this sort of thing?
We actually considered Barbra Streisand as well.
Mary Steenburgen knows her and she knows that Barbra and James Brolin are fans of the show.
So we asked for permission and Barbra was very sweet.
She was an equally great choice.
I hope she saw it and enjoyed it.
Were there more Cher-isms that inevitably got cut out?
Maybe well put them out as deleted scenes.
But there was a subplot where Lewis goes around asking people if they really trust Tandy.
First he goes to Carol and she delivers this awesome soliloquy about the movie Mermaids.
Did you intentionally want to show two different coping mechanisms for this big act?
But we made cuts and now it works more as an unstated reality.
Its going to become bigger as the season moves forward.
Its a nice thread.
Talk a little bit about the dynamic of having Lewis around so far.
It is kind of different, right?
I think with Lewis, like I said, it has a lot to do with who Kenny is.
I mean, we didnt give him much to work with.
Just the first script because thats all we had figured out at that point.
But Kenny came in with this intelligent look, this studied manner.
Weve seen Tandy react to true Alpha males Phil 2, and Mike.
So weve seen Tandy measure his dick with guys.
But Lewis is different.
Hes not a physical threat to Tandy, and hes never going to punch him.
Hes just demonstrably smarter and doesnt have anything to prove.
Its playing pretty well.
Im glad you like it.
If everyone knows that Pat is dead, theyll just want to go home.
And if everyone thinks hes alive, theyll get the hell out of Malibu in a hurry.
So as soon as Tandy told Todd that Pat was alive, we had ourselves a problem.
Todd would want to tell everyone immediately.
How can we delay it, and how can the delay be funny?
It just gave us that Last Man thing we really needed.
That ending is classicLast Man.
But us, we go, We need another twist.
Would it be too much to have Pat be missing after all this?
Ah fuck it, lets just go for it.
Then a couple hours later, You know what?
Our walkthrough onLast Man on Earthseason 3 will continue every two weeks!
