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S02.E18: 30 Years of Science Down the Tubes

MarkHB

By MarkHB
in The Last Man On Earth [V]

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Galileo908

Galileo908

All those death fakeouts were funny, so sue me. I was worried, then they kept misdirecting us. But man, if this is it for Mike, I'm sad. I liked him. I did loke that Phil gave him all of his "buddies." Phil, as big of a dumbass he is, has come so far that he doesn't need them anymore.

Ha, Melissa got the stocks treatment.

So...that cliffhanger, am I right? This ain't ending well.

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TheRabbi

TheRabbi

Good finale. Eager to see how this plays out next season; happy it got renewed. One of my favorite sitcoms to watch at the moment because there's simply nothing else like it.

Loved the death fakeouts and the fart jars. Hoping that we will see Mike alive and well at some point.

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MarkHB

MarkHB

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Yeah, at least they left it open-ended re: whether Mike will survive.  I was afraid they'd close on him alone in Tucson, digging next to his headstone.

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Dots And Stripes

Dots And Stripes

I was sad thinking Mike might die, then he unloaded on Tandy and I was less sad. I kind of feel like Mike's in limbo depending on what Jason's future availability is. It was good for the show to remind us Mike is a scientist and less likely to live in denial than Tandy. Still, open a medical textbook, Mike!  I'm pretty sure coughing up blood is a symptom of more than just a cold or "The Virus." 

Speaking of medical textbooks, Erica and Carol should probably start learning all about child birth. I know the show can never be completely consumed with the details of the new world, but some nice adventures for those two as they prepare to give birth could be fun next season.

Melissa has gone crazy. I love that the others wanted to tell the drone that they're nice people. Loved the stocks punishment for Melissa. Good to see the justice system still at work there.

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Irlandesa

Irlandesa

But that fart in a bottle humor led to such a moment of sweetness.  I really loved this episode.  It gave me so many feelings. I loved the pranks, the brotherly, love, the brotherly hate, the cow sucking on the bottle...

And I especially loved Melissa's Betty Draper moment with the shotgun.  So awesome. 

I would imagine that Mike won't die but it is convenient timing since he'd recognize the guy on the boat.  I wonder if the guy on the boat is somehow behind Mike's illness.

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tiredofwork

tiredofwork

Quote

I would imagine that Mike won't die but it is convenient timing since he'd recognize the guy on the boat.  I wonder if the guy on the boat is somehow behind Mike's illness

The guy on the boat is that crazy "hazmat" wearing fool who found and held Mike after he came back from space right? Mike was able to ditch the guy.

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ottoDbusdriver

ottoDbusdriver

(edited)

Where did the Back to the Future Delorean come from ?  How did Phil even find it ?  Let alone find fuel for it -- remember all the gas turning to sludge several episodes ago.  Let alone find gas stations to refill.  Did Phil drive something else to go find the Delorean first ?  Or did he walk ?

Umm, why is the roof of Mike/Phil's parents house chock full of holes and letting all that light in ?  It's only been 3 years in the apocalypse, the roof should be fine.  It certainly looked fine from the front of the house.

That fart jar scene went on WAAAAY too long.

Did Mike even bother to try and find some broad-spectrum antibiotics or antivirals in case he DIDN'T have the virus -- and perhaps had something else ?

Finally, the fucking 1/2 beard and hair is gone.  Hallelujah !!

Melissa blindly shooting after waking up -- yeah, that's pretty stupid too.  She could have killed Carol or the calf or both -- that is hysterical !!  Laughs aplenty. Comedy gold.

The date on the fart bottle Mike gave to Tandy was Feb. 11, 2021 -- and the date on the Mike's tombstone was 1985-2021.  That means that Tandy would have had to have put together that tombstone some time in the last 6 weeks (otherwise the date would have had 2020).  And yet Tandy's parents died 2 years ago -- did he wait around until after his cross-country travels to symbolically bury his brother ?

And where are they getting all the milk for the calf ?  Or is it formula ?

The boat -- it's the same boat with the guy that abandoned Mike in Miami. How did he get to Malibu ?  Because he would have had to sail all the way around South America (since I'm pretty sure the Panama Canal is probably out of commission).  How did they even find the Malibu folks in the first place ?  It's not like they are broadcasting their position.  And it's not like Mike told boat guy about Malibu .

Did Mike not tell the gang about the guy that rescued him from the ocean -- near Miami ?  It's another survivor which is kind of a big deal. Because what the boat guy is doing looks like the standing operating procedure from when boat guy and Mike went ashore.  Except that he somehow picked up two more people in his travels from Miami to Malibu -- and also picked up at least one drone.  

Or maybe boat guy doesn't have drones -- and the drones are someone else ?  Because those drones don't have a very long range and the first drone appeared at least a week ago in showtime.
 

Edited by ottoDbusdriver
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Irlandesa

Irlandesa

1 hour ago, tiredofwork said:

The guy on the boat is that crazy "hazmat" wearing fool who found and held Mike after he came back from space right? Mike was able to ditch the guy.

Yes.  That's him. Mike got away because I believe there was a rip in his hazmat suit and so the guy abandoned him.

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Mrs Shibbles

Mrs Shibbles

I got the feels a little bit when they played "Falling Slowly" during the haircut.  That really is one of those songs you can play over and over. I really hope they don't kill off Mike, but it's looking more and more like it.

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ItCouldBeWorse

ItCouldBeWorse

(edited)
1 hour ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

And where are they getting all the milk for the calf ?  Or is it formula ?

I kept wondering about that, too.  No milk, no calf, assuming it still needs to nurse.  Bottle-feeding it was a set up to establish that Phil would be a great dad.

Are Mike's symptoms consistent with those of the people who had died from the plague?  If not, he seems to have TB and the others should be concerned!

And if Mike does have the plague and that is what the cow died from, then shouldn't Mike have died already?  Do infected cows die faster than people?  (I'm willing to assume that the cow had somehow miraculously never come into contact with a plague carrier before now.)

Edited by ItCouldBeWorse
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ottoDbusdriver

ottoDbusdriver

(edited)
5 hours ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

I kept wondering about that, too.  No milk, no calf, assuming it still needs to nurse.  Bottle-feeding it was a set up to establish that Phil would be a great dad.

Are Mike's symptoms consistent with those of the people who had died from the plague?  If not, he seems to have TB and the others should be concerned!

And if Mike does have the plague and that is what the cow died from, then shouldn't Mike have died already?  Do infected cows die faster than people?  (I'm willing to assume that the cow had somehow miraculously never come into contact with a plague carrier before now.)

That's what I don't understand -- the plague apparently killed pretty quickly, but not so quick that all the highways weren't first cleared of all abandoned cars that made for easy cross-country driving -- and all the railroad tracks were cleared so that Tandy could send unmanned trains across the country to signal Carol (yeah, that happened).  That is some seriously kickass disaster planning by the federal gov't.  You know, just in case some survivors were going to be using the roads and rails after the apocalypse.

Edited by ottoDbusdriver
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MrsMommy

MrsMommy

Sometimes my ocd gets the best of me so be warned.

If Mike came down from space and got the virus that means the virus is still active on earth,  which would mean the babies are doomed unless they are like their parents and can fight it off. Am I right or crazy?

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DrLar

DrLar

I guess the boat guy travelled by land to somehow find two more people like him and maybe followed Mike all the way to Malibu and acquired another boat, 'cause going around the continent is crazy LOL

Yeah those automatic weapons mean run like hell! (better get Melissa out with her shotgun ready)

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tominboston

tominboston

I guess I enjoyed this show more at the beginning when it was strictly a comedy. It got a lot darker this season. The interaction between Tandy and Mike has been thoughtfully written and poignant, but I'm watching for laughs, not to watch a likeable character [probably] get killed off. At least we can be reasonably sure that the sailboat people don't massacre the Malibu gang since that wouldn't leave much of a show for the rest of the season.

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peeayebee

peeayebee

(edited)
12 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Where did the Back to the Future Delorean come from ?  How did Phil even find it ?  Let alone find fuel for it -- remember all the gas turning to sludge several episodes ago.  Let alone find gas stations to refill.

Didn't the Delorean run on garbage?

Loved this ep. All the scenes with Mike and Phil were great. Some were funny, some were touching, some sad. The hair cutting scene was great. It was set to be romantic, but it wasn't laughable; it was sweet.

I liked the fart-jar scene. Phil's slow unscrewing of the cap did go on a long time, but that worked for me. And then when he learns that Mike actually farted and said he didn't know Phil was going to open the jar, Phil says he made a big production out of it. Yes he did. Mike giving him a new fart jar was also sweet. NASA's Fartology and Toots Division. Hee.

Phil heading back to Malibu and passing the 'Alive in Tucson' sign was sad and ironic.

So great when Melissa shot the drone like Betty Draper shot the pigeons. Obviously a direct callback. Funny and scary when she shot the sliding glass door, fortunately missing Carol and the calf. Loved seeing Melissa later in stocks, and being so happy!

It was so right that Gail got back into drinking after discovering she hadn't hallucinated the drone. Loved when she wanted Todd and Erica to look out the window to provide confirmadoodle-doo.

Those guys coming to shore scare me. I think it's possible they saw smoke from a distance and headed this way.

Edited by peeayebee
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Gulftastic

Gulftastic

5 minutes ago, peeayebee said:

Didn't the Delorean run on garbage?

 

Just to be a bit nerdy...

'Mr Fusion powers the time circuits and the flux capacitor. But the internal combustion engine runs on ordinary gasoline'

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Traveller519

Traveller519

1 hour ago, Gulftastic said:

Just to be a bit nerdy...

'Mr Fusion powers the time circuits and the flux capacitor. But the internal combustion engine runs on ordinary gasoline'

So good!

I'm willing to hand wave a bit of the fuel issue. I'll assume it can last longer when properly stored in large containers as opposed to jerry cans...because surface area and what not...

This was probably one of Melissa's strongest episodes and Gail was very on point too. Mary Steenburgen straight up knocks it out of the park.

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DrLar

DrLar

It's 2022+ why there aren't full electrical cars out there? well the virus was in 2019 right? Yeah the Delorean fusion thingy is still years ahead..

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peeayebee

peeayebee

2 hours ago, Gulftastic said:

Just to be a bit nerdy...

'Mr Fusion powers the time circuits and the flux capacitor. But the internal combustion engine runs on ordinary gasoline'

I stand corrected. But actually I was trying to use events from a fantasy movie to explain away nitpicks in a fantasy TV show. In other words, I'm not sweating the details.

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DrSpaceman73

DrSpaceman73

I doubt Mike has TB.  TB is respiratory spread from person to person.  Unless some other person has it , its unlikely he would get it.  People who get TB tend to be immune compromised, very young or old, live in crowds or are smokers. 

There are other things than can cause you to cough up blood but it seems the most common cause in this show is the virus. 

I wish Mike didn't die, Phil and Mike together are funny.  And he makes Phil more tolerable. 

I assumed the sailboat buy was the same one that was with Mike before.  How he got from Miami to Malibu I have no idea.  And don't know who those people are with him. 

Maybe he is going to shoot the two guys he has with him, not the Malibu crew.  he's a nut, hard telling what he is doing. 

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jcin617

jcin617

(edited)
15 hours ago, MrsMommy said:

Sometimes my ocd gets the best of me so be warned.

If Mike came down from space and got the virus that means the virus is still active on earth,  which would mean the babies are doomed unless they are like their parents and can fight it off. Am I right or crazy?

If it's some quirk in their genes that makes the gang immune, then having two immune parents would probably bode well for the baby.   

Edited by jcin617
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Traveller519

Traveller519

11 hours ago, jcin617 said:

If it's some quirk in their genes that makes the gang immune, then having two immune parents would probably bode well for the baby.   

Yes, this is how some species of animals have survived diseases that have wiped out large swaths of the population, when those that have the immunity are the ones that breed, the offspring tend to have the immunity as well.

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amaranta

amaranta

Total speculation here: maybe, later in the series, we find out that Mike had the virus but survived it.  In becoming the first human to do so he now has the means to create a vaccine.  He is a scientist, after all. 

I'm probably just reaching since I want Mike to live. 

I teared up again - two weeks in a row!  And then got scared by creepy guys with guns.

Each time I watch an episode I'm always surprised by how much I like this show.

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AnnieBeez

AnnieBeez

On May 17, 2016 at 6:50 PM, DrSpaceman73 said:

I doubt Mike has TB.  TB is respiratory spread from person to person.  Unless some other person has it , its unlikely he would get it.  People who get TB tend to be immune compromised, very young or old, live in crowds or are smokers. 

There are other things than can cause you to cough up blood but it seems the most common cause in this show is the virus. 

I wish Mike didn't die, Phil and Mike together are funny.  And he makes Phil more tolerable. 

I assumed the sailboat buy was the same one that was with Mike before.  How he got from Miami to Malibu I have no idea.  And don't know who those people are with him. 

Maybe he is going to shoot the two guys he has with him, not the Malibu crew.  he's a nut, hard telling what he is doing. 

I want to say by the Panama Canal, but how did they work the locks?

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DrSpaceman73

DrSpaceman73

Yes someone mentioned that before, to get through the canal you'd have to have working locks, so it seems unlikely.

 

He could sail all the way around south America and then to Malibu, but would take a long time. 

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Big Mother

Big Mother

How do these survivors know they are the last people on *EARTH*? There may be faraway countries that are teeming with people. A virus does not infect the ENTIRE universe of billions and billions of people.

also, this is 3 years later. These guys should be dead of starvation, dehydration, and lack of medical care by now. None of them have any medical training, I'm amazed that NO ONE got strep throat, a cut, a burn, an infection of any kind, required surgery (except for poor Phil II), gotten injured, or the gazillion other things that can happen to a human being in the course of 3 years. They havent been able to plant food. They can't pump water out of wells bc there's no electricity and no water purification system. They subsisted on all the bottled water in all the convenience stores across the United States? It's really bizarre that the actual premise of the show - living in a post apocalypic world - is so badly fleshed out, and they are focusing instead on Tandy's issues with humanity, every single week.

Oh and one more thing: Tucson and Malibu are eight hours apart. I would be scared out of my living daylights to drive alone for so long without encountering one more human being along the way. And he's been doing it back and forth quite a bit.

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MarkHB

MarkHB

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13 hours ago, Big Mother said:

It's really bizarre that the actual premise of the show - living in a post apocalypic world - is so badly fleshed out, and they are focusing instead on Tandy's issues with humanity, every single week.

Oh and one more thing: Tucson and Malibu are eight hours apart. I would be scared out of my living daylights to drive alone for so long without encountering one more human being along the way. And he's been doing it back and forth quite a bit.

I don't think "living in a post apocalyptic world" is so much the premise of the show as is "what if the last people on Earth were a bunch of jackasses?"

So far as being scared of the drive goes, the only thing to be scared of would be running out of gas or breaking down and dying in the desert; the show has already said that all the animals died from the virus as well.  And I think it's a conceit of the show that the highways are lined with an inexhaustible supply of fully fueled cars that have the keys in them but no corpses.

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dcalley

dcalley

(edited)
On 5/15/2016 at 11:51 PM, ottoDbusdriver said:

The date on the fart bottle Mike gave to Tandy was Feb. 11, 2021 -- and the date on the Mike's tombstone was 1985-2021.  That means that Tandy would have had to have put together that tombstone some time in the last 6 weeks (otherwise the date would have had 2020).  And yet Tandy's parents died 2 years ago -- did he wait around until after his cross-country travels to symbolically bury his brother ?

I don't think the bottle said 2021, but I don't know what it said because I think they intentionally made it hard to see the last digit. To me it looked like it could have been a 4 or 5. ETA: They also talked about the 1994 jar being 30 years old, which would be 2024.

Edited by dcalley
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