What would you say if someone proposed you that with a group of less than 10 individuals, you could survive on this planet after a death mortal virus has occurred?
You could consider yourself lucky, having the possibility of keeping with something more than 7 billion people have lost. Could you imagine how it would be to survive when everyone around you is dying? You wouldn´t feel so lucky. This is what The last man on earth, the Fox series starring Will Forte, sets out. Phil Miller is one of a little group of survivors that has prevailed on this planet earth after a death mortal virus killed almost every single form of life. One year has passed since Phil buried his parents and, having been left alone, he takes the roads of America to find company. After going round and round he decides to return to his hometown, not without leaving the following message on every signpost: ‘Alive in Tucson’.
New people will appear on Phil’s life, thanks to the messages left on those big road signs. Not in the order he would like but, regardless the particular characteristics of each one,[1] there is something that everyone shares: the lack of skills/willingness to work on tasks that are necessary to preserve life, like producing food or energy supplies. A good sample of the prototipical human beings of this century, the characters of this story were in their recent past life inhabitants of big cities, used to the comfort and facilities of these great masses of concrete.
With the exception of ‘the other’ Phil Miller (intelligent, strong, good-looking) the rest of the members of LMOE doesn’t seem to know or have the will to reconstruct the human civilization. They just limit to consume the leftovers of the past in an indiferent and self-destructive way that doesn’t care much about the future. Their destination is tragic: they had the misfortune of being the few survivors on this planet Earth, neither have skills nor knowledge, they just count on the stock left by the previous world.
The inertia of the real
In The pervert’s guide to ideology (2012), Slavoj Žižek analyses, from Mojave dessert cemetery of planes, the ‘other side of capitalism’: the great amount of waste that it produces, consequence of its permanent crisis that pushes forwards to reinvent itself all the time, producing unlimited number of goods, self-revolutionising itself. Žižek says that instead of turning our faces to this other side of capitalism, rather we should accept this side maybe because the recognition of this could be the first step to ‘break out of this eternal cycle of functioning’: reconsidering the existence of useless objects and contemplating their mute presence on this planet, we could start creating something entirely new.
The post-apocaliptic scenario that LMOE sets out has that nature. Nothing is useful, because everything is waste. Their characters not only lack any skills to face the future, they may as well feel overwhelmed by the extent of the tasks they might afford. The only two responses they could attempt to give are these: the needed or careless way of consumption of the leftovers, or its contemplation beyond meaning, because they are still shocked by the situation they are immersed in.
If we consider the series by the remarks made so far you could say it’s one hell of a drama. It’s the acting, the performers, the situations and the order of events what makes of LMOE a marvellous comedy. Take Phil Miller for example: he represents all the immature that a man can be, from the initial laziness to the total dependency of all his acts because of Melissa (January Jones), always wearing a smile. Remember when, after convincing Carol and Melissa that the fastest and moral way of repopulating the Earth is by having sex with both of them (by separate), he mounts a scene with big amplifiers, guitars, fireworks and a recording of him saying “That orgasm was generously provided by…”. Or the personal conflict he suffers because he doesn’t take a decision whether leaving Todd (Mel Rodríguez) alone in the dessert or taking him back again to their home.
On a background of loneliness and a lack of understanding, the characters of LMOE remind us how ridiculous and pathetic human beings can be.
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