The Last Man on Earth

I’ve had laugh-out-loud moments with lots of television characters over the years: Lucy, Jackie Gleason, Dick Van Dyke, Archie Bunker, Bill Cosby (but not many laughs lately), Raymond, the Golden Girls, and Frasier, to name only the cream of the crop. And more recently, Jerry Seinfeld, the bunch of friends on Friends, and the nerds on Big Bang Theory. Now I can add another to the list. My wife and I almost fell on the floor laughing at the absurd antics of Will Forte and his Last Man on Earth opening episodes (Sundays on Fox). A virus has wiped out everyone on earth but Phil Miller (Forte), and his efforts to find someone else alive are futile. He’s visited every state, dutifully crossing out each one on his list when he finds no one alive, writing as he leaves each city the same message on the welcome signs, “Alive in Tucson.” He returns there to live as best he can, taking up residence in a Tucson mansion. And he drinks everything he can get his hands on, finally filling a kiddie pool with margarita mix, salting the rim, and lying down in it for sideways sipping. What does the last man on earth do when there’s no running water and he’s run out of bottled water to fill his toilet tank? He has a large swimming pool in the backyard. So he cuts a hole in the diving board and calls it his “poop pool.” “Oh, yuck!” you say, but, yes, very funny. What does he do for companionship when he’s the only one left? Although he makes fun of Castaway Tom Hanks for naming a volleyball and talking to it as though it’s human, Phil also finally paints faces on a wide variety of balls and gives them names and talks to them. What does he do when he meets Carol (Kristen Schaal), apparently the only other human still alive? Carol thinks they’re destined to save humanity and wants to have children with him. When he learns that she’s obsessive about laws and rules, telling him not to go through stop signs and not to park in a handicap space at a hardware store, he tells her he wouldn’t have sex with her if she were the last woman on earth. Which she is. Thank you, Will Forte, for coming up with this outlandish idea for a sitcom. We can’t wait to see what else you have up your sleeve. Or hiding in that facial bush of a beard.

You can count on us to watch faithfully to see what else you develop. But, please, no more “poop pools.”