A new world dawns in Y: The Last Man’s second episode
Amid the wide tragedy of this event, one question remains: Why Yorick?
TV Reviews Y: The Last Man
After Hillary Clinton lost the U.S. presidency to Donald Trump in 2016, certain corners of liberal Twitter were flooded with viral tweets and memes about how different the country would have been if a woman were running it. It’s difficult not to think about those scenarios while watching Y: The Last Man’s second episode, “Would The World Be Kind.” We’re now in a world (nearly) entirely without men. Women are in charge of everything: Jennifer Brown holds the presidency, she has a council of advisors, military leaders are trying to maintain order, scientists are trying to get the power back on. And there is a tricky question here: If women are now the only people still alive, does it matter that they are women? With the male/female binary removed, to what degree, and why, does that designation still exist?
When Y: The Last Man was running in comic book form, its writers grew to consider questions about gender identity over time as criticisms from the trans community rightfully received attention. But in TV series form, “Would The World Be Kind” jumps right in by introducing characters who are trans men and who are navigating how to live in this new world. There are considerations of identity and belonging that the series is using Sam to explore, and I think they are making Y: The Last Man a fuller, more well-rounded show. As showrunner Eliza Clark, who also wrote this episode, told Variety in August, “Gender is diverse and chromosomes are not equal to gender. And so, in our world—in the world of the television show—every living mammal with a Y chromosome dies. Tragically, that includes many women; it includes non-binary people; it includes intersex people. … We are making a show that affirms that trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary people are non-binary, and that is part of the richness of the world we get to play with.”
I think “Would The World Be Kind” is beginning to communicate the wide tragedy of this event, and the confusion and uncertainty it raises. Jennifer and her team are doing the best they can, but things are still going very wrong. Paranoia and waterborne illnesses are spreading, and protestors are growing in number every day outside the White House. People are hungry, and suffering, and need help. So much is in flux, especially in fields or industries that were dominated by men. Can the survivors get the power grid back up, and keep it on? Can they avoid a nuclear meltdown? What relationships do the Americans still have with the rest of the world? And at the center of this all, Yorick. Why Yorick?
Like premiere episode “The Day Before,” “Would The World Be Kind” again jumps around with time as it cycles through its characters. If everyone was unhappy before the “Event,” well, things have only gotten worse! The episode begins with Agent 355/Sarah (who I’ll refer to as only Sarah moving forward, since that is what she requested of Jennifer), who tries to connect with her organization Culper Ring. On Day 8, she ventures to the middle of nowhere, opens PO Box 355, shimmies behind a secret door, and gains access to what seems to have been her personal handling team, all dead in their hidden office full of computer monitors, tracking devices, and files. The way she touched these men’s bodies, and arranged them on the floor with their arms crossed and their eyes closed, seemed melancholy and intimate. No one in New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, or Omaha picks up, suggesting that perhaps Sarah is all that remains of the Culper Ring. (Unless there are other female agents whom she doesn’t know, of course.) And in that cardboard box, just a few ephemera in the form of knitting needles and yarn, a floral glass paperweight, a locket necklace—and a Massachusetts address. What, or who, is there?
While Sarah briefly looks toward the past before being sent by Jennifer to New York City to find Hero and bring her back to Washington, D.C., everyone else is already firmly in a future they can’t escape. Jennifer is now president, now knows who Sarah works for (although no one really seems to grasp what Culper Ring does), and is now unconcerned by trivial things like the security and the sanctity of the White House. Who cares if protestors overrun it? They’re in a time of rebuilding anyway. And when Y: The Last Man jumps forward to Day 63, it seems like two steps forward, one step back. After abandoning the White House, Jennifer has focused on providing emergency aid to survivors in big cities, but camps are rife with sickness. Militia groups and conspiracy theories about a biological weapon are gaining traction. And the evacuation plan for New York City, in which 80,000 people still are, becomes severely compressed because of rising water. One week to leave is now one day to leave, and people are growing frantic.
Maybe this could all be an opportunity for Kim, who lost her president father, her husband, and her four sons in the “Event” and is now responsible for caring for her scattered mother, former First Lady Marla (Paris Jefferson). Kim is still clinging onto her “We need men, wah!” ideology (“Without men, there is no future”), and I could see people being drawn to this. Marla, whose sole motivation right now is burying her son (not her husband?), probably would side with her daughter against Jennifer. And I think that maybe Nora would back Kim too, since no one invited her back to the White House, she gets turned away by the guards, and not one person—not Jennifer, not any of her assistants—has even thought of Nora since her boss’s death. “I am essential personnel, Jesus Christ,” Nora insists, but … is she?
While D.C. remains a mess, New York City, well, also remains a mess. Hero and Yorick still haven’t crossed paths, and separately, they’re struggling. Hero is overwhelmed by her guilt over killing Mike, and then her remorse becomes even more acute when she recognizes his widow and baby at an overrun FEMA center. I must admit that the widow’s subdued reaction to Hero’s admission of the affair via returned driver’s license was certainly more anticlimactic than I initially anticipated, but maybe it’s an indication of the kind of storytelling Y: The Last Man wants to pursue. We’ve already had a few gigantic shocks, so is it worthwhile to keep layering shock after shock after shock, especially in person-to-person interactions that might not require them? I suppose not. This was still a moment of growth for Hero that Olivia Thirlby played evocatively and wistfully, and it led to a nice moment between Hero and Elliot Fletcher’s Sam, too.
Hero was acting selfishly by failing to pull her weight on the supply runs that Sam and the other trans men were going on, and she did hurt Sam by failing to show up at their predetermined departure time. Fletcher’s delivery of “Do you have any idea what it’s like out there for me? Questions I have to answer? Shit I have to explain, all over again?” was restrained and anguished, and spoke directly to the themes a more inclusive version of the Y: The Last Man needed to consider. And Sam having only one two-week vial of testosterone left is the kind of thing that Hero—as Sam’s best friend!—should seriously care about. So sure, it probably is another knock to Hero’s pride to reach out to Jennifer. But how long did Hero really think she could survive without needing Jennifer’s help? And is that fair to a mother? (Jennifer’s “World ended, and she’s still stubborn as hell” description of her daughter is quite right.) Massive catastrophes can shift priorities, and whatever Jennifer did to cause such a schism between herself and Hero, maybe it’s time to heal that wound.
I have similar questions for Yorick, though. It’s been two months, and all he’s done is look for Beth? Did he look for Hero? Did he try to contact his mother? His phone still works, as we know because he keeps watching videos of Beth. Maybe it’s not really possible to just call the White House… but did Yorick try? I can appreciate all the work he’s doing within NYC to find Beth; all those X marks on his map signify endless dedication. And I can appreciate his selflessness toward Amp, and his fear when those three women pull the gun on him at the dry cleaners, and his shock when Sarah showed up at his door, and his elation and exhaustion when Jennifer gathered him up in that reunion hug. But what hit me hardest was his half-sobbed “I’d give anything to just go home.” So would any of these people. Home doesn’t exist anymore, though, not with families destroyed and identities altered. “I think it’s going to get worse—maybe a lot—before it gets better,” Jennifer had said in her attempt at a rousing speech early in the episode. I would swap that “maybe” out for a “definitely.”
Stray observations
- Again, I ask: Where’s Beth? I don’t know if I have a theory yet, but I would be surprised if she just passed away offscreen and that was the end of the character.
- Was that a fun-size Snickers? I buy this as a post-apocalypse detail; I too would raid all the full-size Snickers first.
- Worth mentioning, I think, that Y: The Last Man, even with its changes from the source text, is still receiving some thoughtful criticism about its inclusion of trans characters. As Mey Rude wrote for Out, the fact that the show might not include trans women seems like an oversight: “What are women without trans women?” Worth reading.
- Maybe I am overthinking this, but: If everyone with a Y chromosome disappears, doesn’t that mean there are fewer people to eat food and to use various resources? I don’t understand the widespread lack of food shortages being discussed as an emergency concern. I can grasp worrying about food production and the supply chain as a long-term issue. But with fewer people, wouldn’t there still be enough canned food, shelf-stable food, and preserved items to last the survivors a fair amount of time?
- That “woman in Israel” who was actually in the line of succession to be president—there is no way that’s the last we hear or see of her.
- How did Yorick’s cellphone still work? Do we really trust that Yorick would be responsible enough to carry around a charger?
- Diane Lane’s huffy line delivery of “Fuck the art!” was a delight.
- As was Thirlby’s very dry “You’re not the first person to think of looting an REI.”
- I had this issue with The Stand, too, but why isn’t every single person wearing a mask? My assumption is that all these dead bodies reek, and we see the characters react to that smell every so often. But it’s a real failure of the suspension-of-disbelief to just accept that these characters wouldn’t be protecting themselves from widespread decay, caused by an illness they don’t understand.
- When the woman at the dry cleaners thought they could “trade” Yorick—trade him to who?
37 Comments
Not to spoiler, but I really hated the end of the comic. Hopefully they change that.
I had a more in depth reply, but Firefox crashed (it’s been convinced that it needs to close to finalize an update for over a month, despite being up to date), so brief and dismissive it is. Maybe I am overthinking this, but: If everyone with a Y chromosome disappears, doesn’t that mean there are fewer people to eat food and to use various resources? I don’t understand the widespread lack of food shortages being discussed as an emergency concern. I can grasp worrying about food production and the supply chain as a long-term issue. But with fewer people, wouldn’t there still be enough canned food, shelf-stable food, and preserved items to last the survivors a fair amount of time? Famines are basically never an absolute resource shortage, but a policy failure. The closest were the perpetual socialist ones (too many to list for the USSR, China, or Ethiopia alone), but it’s more often either an inability to get food to somewhere having issues from everywhere else (if Ethiopia loses its teff, if can’t count on Egyptian wheat, Sudanese sorghum, Ugandan bananas, or Kenyan corn) or an inability to get food from farm to table. In America, stores use the highly reliable shipping system to follow a practice called “just-in-time delivery,” basically aiming to refill a just-emptied shelf straight from the truck. NYC real estate makes stock rooms particularly expensive, so stores there definitely run particularly lean. Grocery stores restock daily or, if a slower location, QAD, so they top out at carrying two days’ worth of food. why isn’t every single person wearing a mask? My assumption is that all these dead bodies reek, and we see the characters react to that smell every so often. But it’s a real failure of the suspension-of-disbelief to just accept that these characters wouldn’t be protecting themselves from widespread decay, caused by an illness they don’t understand They pattern of death is obviously not airborn and they don’t believe in miasma (although there’s still a notable precaution against it in the background, NYC’s famous gridiron being largely intended to have those straight streets promote wind to blow diseases away) and this was written before the most recent outbreak in the public consciousness was mask-responsive respiratory (a driver for the difference between mask adoption in the Manchurian plague/SARS East and cholera/influenza West). It would be fun to speculate about whether characters would be weird around bodies if this had been written in the shadow of the W. Africa and DRC Ebola outbreaks or weird around vital fluids in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, but this was two months before SARS and the last big epidemic was 1996 West African Meningitis. Previous epidemics to break a million were AIDS and then the Hong Kong and Asian flus.
As Mey Rude wrote for ,
the fact that the show might not include trans women seems like an
oversight: “What are women without trans women?” Worth reading.
They’re dead, and significantly less numerous in the show’s NYC setting than women dealing with being unable to say kaddish over their families without a minyan.
Yeah, not entirely sure what that writer thought would happen to trans women (especially since it sounds pretty up front about the survival of trans men for the exact same reason).
Why isn’t anyone wearing a mask? We are in an honest to goodness pandemic and most people are only wearing a mask cuz authorities say so. In-story the mask thing happened then stopped.
I don’t pretend to be an expert, but surely almost all if not actually all trans women, possessing as they do a Y chromosome, would be dead along with the cis men in this scenario? Given that this seems to be a biological sex thing rather than a gender thing. And if only an absolute minority of cis-men like Yorick possess whatever immunity to whatever happened to enable them to survive it, then if we take the general percentage of trans individuals to cis individuals as a rough guide then the percentage of trans women who also possess a similar immunity would in turn be a minority within a minority.Which isn’t to say that absolutely none can’t appear, of course, but surely it’s not a huge surprise that they’d be a huge rarity if they did.
None can appear if the premise is to mean anything. The Y chromosome doesnt care about how you identify.
Except for 46XX intersex people who have external male genitalia, and internally female, and that all depends on what gender they identify with.
Do they have the Y chromosome? Dead. Unless they substantially change the cause of this for the show.
True, but considering the premise is also that at least two beings with Y chromosomes have survived (and IIRC a couple of other surviving men showed up in the comics), I’m just leaving my options open.
I can’t find it on YouTubeTV. Is this another FX show that’s not really on FX?Why do they do that? If it’s a Hulu show, just say it’s a Hulu show.
These shows are branding for shows originally ordered by FX from Fox Studios when they were actually a unified company. Now they are shows that FX doesn’t really want, so Disney has to offload them somewhere so they went with this branding on the streaming service they have have the largest stake in Hulu because they are a bit off the type for Disney+.
Its the opposite. Disney causing Y: The Last Man to air on Hulu exclusively (rather than FX and then re-aired on Hulu) is Disney’s recognition that this is the type of genre show that frequently drives subscriptions.
Disney wants to bolster Hulu’s subscriber base. Disney controls Hulu and owns 2/3s, with the remaining 1/3 still owned by Comcast (NBC/Universal) as a silent partner without any control on input. Comcast must offer sell its interest in Hulu to Disney by 2024, at which point Hulu will be 100% owned by Disney. Disney sees Hulu as a companion to Disney+, with Hulu focusing on more adult orientated dramas & genre while Disney+ airs media that is more kid friendly (it will still air dramas aimed at adults if the dramas are still accessible by children). Disney wants both services to have a high subscriber base.
FX is owned and controlled exclusively by Disney (since March 2019). Y: The Last Man was never produced by Fox, it was always produced by FX (though at the time FX was a subsidiary of Fox). I point this out to counter your point about FX and Fox formerly actually being a unified company. Seeing as Fox wasn’t involved in Y’s development, this fact doesn’t matter. FX used to be a unified company with Fox, now its a unified company with Disney (who also owns 2/3 of Hulu, soon to be 100%). Fox’s prior involvement with FX is not relevant.
Finally, answering MyTVNeverLies original question regarding the branding (Hulu Original vs. FX on Hulu), this is to take advantage of FX’s brand. FX is widely known for producing high quality (Emmy caliber) dramas and has been a critic and award darling for years (decades?). Instead of letting that brand go to waste, they’re using it to promote shows that were actually produced by FX, even if the Disney overlords want it to air exclusively on Hulu.
And confusingly some (most?) have appeared on FXCanada (we don’t have Hulu here) but not all… Still, does FX really not want most of these high profile shows? I would be surprised that they didn’t want Y, or last year’s Mrs. America, for example so I feel there’s some bigger reason for the “FX on Hulu” brand I’m missing.
It occurred to me the immediate effects of this would be almost the same as “The Snap” in the MCU with the important distinction being, of course, that most life on Earth is well and truly fucked in this case with no ability to reproduce.
So far this has been pretty decent, although I’m struggling with Yorick’s character. He was always a self-involved baby in the comic, but somehow he was depicted as a little more likeable than he comes across here. Between the extra male entitlement he’s putting off in the proposal scene in the first episode and his struggles to do anything in the second episode, we’re not given a lot to hang onto with his character. Unless you count “knows how to do a little bit of stage magic” as a positive attribute (which I don’t).
He’s a cipher, the show is really about the women.
Yeah, I don’t think he’s going to be the messiah he was in the comics. Not that he was in that but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be HIS journey entirely like in the comics. I think his character in this is great. When the laundromat people had him at gunpoint and he crouched down on his knees and bowed his head in fear I was half waiting for him to spring back up, slap the gun away, and do some kung-fu. But, no, he just started crying. So that’s great… the rules of this show seems to trend more towards realistic behavior and not “main character has way above average stats and skills.” In episode 1 he was clearly established as a very immature person trying to fake his way through life while trading on his good looks and charm. Hopefully the character doesn’t all of a sudden turn into Captain America.
I also really like the more diverse storytelling in this show so far. It feels important that it not be Yorick’s show — cue joke about how even when 99.999% of them are dead, men manage to steal all the spotlight.
I also have a very slight quibble, which is that it’s unclear how Diane Lane’s character becomes president. She’s mentioned as a US rep, but a high-level one with presidential aspirations, which is all well and good. But unless she’s Speaker of the House (which she doesn’t appear to be) she would not fall anywhere in the line of presidential succession.The only thing I can assume in this show is that the entire cabinet-level presidential line of succession has been wiped out. How plausible is that in this scenario? Right now the VP, Speaker, and a record five cabinet members are female. But let’s assume for the sake of the show that Republicans control the house and senate and that this president is a W. Bush-like moderate Republican; during Bush’s presidency there were typically three women in the line of succession, most prominently Condoleezza Rice and, from 2007 on, Nancy Pelosi. If we imagine the event occurring in 2005, then for there to be an empty line of succession the secretaries of State, Agriculture, and Education would all have to have died simultaneously.Is it plausible that all three of those people would be on airplanes, or in cars, or somewhere where they could end up dead during this kind of event? Sure. But that doesn’t mean that some charismatic representative, even one who looks like Diane Lane, could just seize the presidency. There would be (slightly less than, after casualties) 24 senators and 119 representatives still in office, and the resulting constitutional crisis would likely be ruled on by the surviving three members of the Supreme Court, with emergency powers input from the two surviving four-star military commanders.
There would be some constitutional, and likely pragmatic, basis for having Congress then vote on new leadership, especially in a crisis situation. Considering Democrats would have a greater than 2/3 majority among the surviving membership, this, then, is where Diane Lane would presumably swoop in and seize power. But it would not be an uncomplicated sequence of events that would have led to this.This was all actually a lot simpler in the book, where her character was specifically identified as Secretary of Agriculture (9th in line for the presidency), which solves the problem neatly. It worked much the same for President Roslin in Battlestar Galactica, being elevated from Secretary of Education (despite taking place in an alien solar system, they had a surprisingly similar constitutional republic to our own!).
There was a throw away line that she was Speaker of the House for a hot second before becoming President – did the remaining Congress people vote her in as Speaker to recreate a line of succession?
Thanks, that sounds plausible.
I think the answers you’re looking for are explained in episode, but I watched all three at once so maybe I’m wrong. She was a House Rep (from NY? That’s never explained) that got promoted to Speaker after The Event. She was then promoted to President because of the line of succession. “She was Speaker for 10 minutes.”Presumably she was the best option of the remaining women in the House? I’d be curious to see how that went down, surely there was more than one woman in the House? What does the cabinet look like now? How about the House/Senate? I’m very curious if the go down this road.There are (were?) two women on the previous cabinet, one not born in the US and one is presumed dead in Israel. Presumed Dead Woman is the teaser at the end of the episode that she’s really alive and should be president.
Thanks. I haven’t watched the third episode yet, is it from that?Anyone who thinks Elaine Chao’s foreign birth (or her fictional equivalent’s) would stop her from trying to grab the job is deluding themself. She totally would, and let the courts sort out birthright citizenship later.
“Anyone who thinks Elaine Chao’s foreign birth (or her fictional equivalent’s) would stop her from trying to grab the job is deluding themself. She totally would, and let the courts sort out birthright citizenship later.”
True, but note that the show is operating in that hazy unreality where Republicans are still depicted as reasonable and interested at all in governing.
lol. Even if you only took the Republican women? [thinks about a party led by Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Mary Miller]Okay, you’re probably right.
Is it plausible that all three of those people would be on airplanes, or in cars, or somewhere where they could end up dead during this kind of event? It’s more plausible than you might think — it’s also entirely plausible that one or more of them could still be alive somewhere but the moment they said “Don’t you know who I am?” that only answer is “Nope – and I don’t care.”
If the House swore in a new Speaker before they got a hold of someone in the order of succession they would probably swear in that Speaker as President because fuck you, that’s why.
Beth wasn’t even a character in the books until Yorick has left the USA. So why should she need to be one now?Also look at the shortages we have nowadays because of lack of delivery drivers. Logistics play a part in a lot of things from food to building supplies.
Kim is still clinging onto her “We need men, wah!” ideology (“Without men, there is no future”), and I could see people being drawn to this. Well, yeah. Obviously. You know, reproduction and stuff.And yes, Yorik looked for Hero. He went to her apartment looking for her. That’s where Agent 355 found him.Good show so far.
I think you missed that the cell network is down, so he can’t make calls. He has been charging his phone and watching videos. Also, he was looking for Hero, he was found in her apartment and mentions he’s been there several times.
I imagine the problem isn’t necessarily the supply, but the infrastructure that ensures all that food gets to where it’s needed.On the subject of smell, some years back we had a flood that required the power being cut to certain blocks in my area. Catching a whiff of a supermarket that had gone without power for a few days made be question the whole post apocalypse trope of people merrily foraging away in an abandonned grocery store. All that rotting food, and the animals it would attract, would not be a pleasant place.
I had this issue with The Stand, too, but why isn’t every single person wearing a mask?Well a lot of reasons really. First, this is not our post pandemic world, and masks would not be as readily available at the onset, and unlike our world, manufacturing and distribution is completely disrupted, so they are not being made available en masse later. Second, most masks would do ZERO about the horrible smell. Third, what ever happened here killed everyone with a Y chromosome, all pretty much at once. It is sort of a magic macguffin as presented in the comics anyway. The mask would be useless. Anyone left would have seen a bunch of males die, and then see it stop happening to others after that.
I get the impression that Yorick’s phone only works enough to play the content it has stored, like the videos. The cell network itself is probably down so he can’t call. As to how he’s charging it … I dunno.
“I don’t understand the widespread lack of food shortages being discussed as an emergency concern. I can grasp worrying about food production and the supply chain as a long-term issue. But with fewer people, wouldn’t there still be enough canned food, shelf-stable food, and preserved items to last the survivors a fair amount of time?”Guess who does most of the farm work, and drives most of the refrigerated trucks to grocery stores and shops? Men. No men and the supply chain collapses almost immediately. As far as canned and preserved food is concerned, people will do what they always do during disasters: loot and horde, leading to shortages, exacerbated by government mandates price controls.
To be fair, Mey Rude’s piece for Out came out over a month back, without them having seen even the premier episode of the show. But, with all due respect, they seem to be complaining about something that’s not there. The Out article basically complains that now is not the time to show the genocide of all trans women due to what’s happening with trans women in reality. Which would be a fair enough point, except they seem to think the show should have then cast some major trans female roles. But wouldn’t they then, DUE TO THE VERY CONCEPT of the show have just hammered in this idea of “trans women genocide” if they were introduced just to be killed off—a depiction Mey Rude feels it isn’t the right time to have? The whole piece confuses, and, I’m not really sure why it’s suggested as an important read now that we’ve seen the first three episodes of the show and realize why it would have to be a very different show to fit what Rude feels it should be representing.
“I had this issue with The Stand, too, but why isn’t every single person wearing a mask? My assumption is that all these dead bodies reek, and we see the characters react to that smell every so often. But it’s a real failure of the suspension-of-disbelief to just accept that these characters wouldn’t be protecting themselves from widespread decay, caused by an illness they don’t understand.”The illness potential is one thing, but as to the smell – I can attest from a job I had long ago that involved a great deal of working in a very smelly environment: quite simply, you get used to it very quickly.
If this happened, no one would consider the surviving transgenders “men”. They would be despised as mock men by others, if anything.