The presidency and Yorick’s secret are both in danger in Y: The Last Man
Verdict on Jennifer: Good! Verdict on Kim: Bad! Verdict on Sarah: Unclear!
TV Reviews Y: The Last Man
Two episodes in, Y: The Last Man has been fairly straightforward in signifying its heroes and its villains, and they’ve been divided down Democrat vs. Republican party lines. Jennifer is trying her best, is taking the office of the presidency very seriously, is concerned about the safety of every remaining person, and is disinterested in treating established traditions with sentimentality or reverence if it is no longer meaningful or useful to do so. Plus, she’s played by Diane Lane! Verdict on Jennifer: Good! Meanwhile, Kim seems manipulative, duplicitous, power-hungry, and centered on “family values” in that way that means “pro-life,” but only when those people grow up to be good, God-fearing Evangelical Christians. Verdict on Kim: Bad!
Y: The Last Man is really not making it difficult to keep track of this. The other Powerful Women™ who we’ve met so far basically fall into these two camps, as evidenced in that hallway showdown between Jennifer and Kim and their various posses. But with “Neil,” the third Y: The Last Man episode, we run into two complications. First up is Regina Oliver (Jennifer Wigmore), the woman who was ahead of Jennifer in the line of succession. A hand-picked choice of the former President who Yorick mocks as “the anti-immigrant, anti-government, anti-vaxxer with a Twitter following” who tried to “bring her gun to a Spin class,” and who one of Jennifer’s advisors later describes as a “complete fucking fringe lunatic,” Regina ends up alive. After Regina is found in Israel, Jennifer’s position as president becomes far more tenuous. (LOL at Jennifer’s crew thinking Regina would just stand aside and let Jennifer continue being president; that’s some real galaxy-brain Democrat thinking.) Ideologically, Regina is obviously going to line up with Kim. But while Kim so far has seemed powerless, does Regina embolden her, or shove her aside? How does that dynamic play out?
And then there’s Sarah. Verdict on Sarah: Extremely unclear! Katie Edgerton’s script gives Ashley Romans a lot of space to work Sarah’s various angles, and they are many. To the pilots, Officer Barnes (Kirstin Rae Hinton) and Officer Mulligan (Marina Moreira), she is alternately encouraging and chastising. To Yorick, she is bemused and a little challenging. (“They named you after a dead clown,” chef’s kiss.) To Kim, she is all insincerity and faux appreciation. And to Jennifer and her advisor Christine, Sarah is unwavering in her presentation of and persuasion for her ideas. Is the geneticist Dr. Allison Mann really the right person to determine what about Yorick helped him survive the “Event”? Impossible to say quite yet. But I have no doubt that whoever Sarah picked would be who Yorick ended up going to, and that those medals she presented to Officers Barnes and Mulligan were secretly bombs she engineered. A “mysterious” explosion? Please.
“Neil” is fairly action packed as we leave New York City behind for the time being and focus only on Washington, D.C., and whatever suburb Nora and her daughter Mack (Quincy Kirkwood) live in. Marin Ireland gives a good dead-eyed gaze (remember her as Chris Pine’s resentful ex-wife in Hell Or High Water?), but it makes me wonder: Was Nora ever going to abide being part of a group with other women and other daughters? She doesn’t seem the type, and didn’t seem to fight very hard to stick together, and I think she really believed it when she said to Mack, “We’re faster without them.” Was she digging graves for her husband and son out of a genuine desire to bury them, or simply to appease the injured, certain-to-slow-them-down Mack? I could see that going either way. Most clear, though, is that Nora is angry, and Nora is ready to move on, and that vulture waiting near her relatives’ bodies was enough of a sign that whatever life she and Mack used to have in that house is totally over.
When will Yorick come to the same realization? I think reuniting with Jennifer was a beautiful, necessary thing. But I also can’t help but roll my eyes at Yorick’s choices, or what seems like an overall sense of irresponsibility. Put Amp in his carrier! Move a little faster when chasing him through this facility! Hide more quickly so that someone doesn’t see you! Marla might be losing it, but Yorick had no idea of that. And I don’t think Jennifer and Sarah can convince Marla otherwise, not with Kim whispering in her ear. Kim is a viper, and she poses a legitimate threat to Jennifer. As the pilots pointed out to Sarah, it doesn’t look great that seemingly the sole cis-man still alive happens to the son of the president: As Jennifer says, “We’ve found plenty of men, none with a Y chromosome.” And it also doesn’t look great that said president was only named to that position because of a convoluted line of succession—that now might be invalid because Regina survived under a pile of Tel Aviv rubble.
I will briefly cut Yorick some slack: We learn that he did try to find Hero in New York City, but that her place was already empty and looted by the time he got there. But I take some of that slack back because he told Jennifer that he and Beth were engaged, which they distinctly were not since Beth turned down his offer, and possibly even broke up with him, for the lure of Australia and the Hemsworths within it. Jennifer seems supportive—if maybe not terribly convinced?—by this news, but she also has broader concerns to worry about. Avoiding a nuclear meltdown. Outmaneuvering Kim. And once she agrees to send Yorick to Dr. Mann (the Massachusetts address that Sarah picked up from that Culper Ring station, right?), whatever appeals Yorick tries to make about finding Beth fall on deaf ears.
There are more important things on a grander scale than Yorick finding his girlfriend/fiancée/whatever, and I think Jennifer’s hard line here is telling us something about what we can expect from this character in the future. “We keep going,” Sarah said in that helicopter with Yorick, and she and Jennifer seem to have that in common. There’s no moving backward, and I think whichever route Sarah chooses—either through her own motives, or those of the shady Culper Ring—is where Y: The Last Man is going.
Stray observations
- A trio of questions: Where’s Beth? Where’s Hero? Where is Nora taking Mack?
- Regina Oliver as some kind of Sarah Palin and Marjorie Taylor Greene hybrid … a truly cursed creation.
- Ben Schnetzer’s scoffing delivery of “‘Mann.’ Oh my God, the universe is hilarious, and, you know, awful,” did make me laugh.
- As unbelievable as no one wearing masks on a regular basis: Nora digging those graves without a pair of gloves. Her hands would have been torn up! Come on, man.
- This episode has digs at Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran? I would like to know how the “Event” affected other countries, but I would also like some creativity past just “predictable American enemies,” please.
- What, or who, did Kim steal those crayons for?
- The action figure of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Raphael having his arm torn off makes sense; he was always the bad boy getting into trouble. I was partial to Donatello, though.
- Mack’s leg wound is definitely going to get infected, right?
- There is no way that Kim would think Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton was “finally Broadway did something good for this country.” Absolutely not, does not track.
56 Comments
From what I remember of the comics, I don’t think they ever explained why Yorrick survived, but I think in the show its going to have something to do with where Ampersand was before he became a pet. I think the “Careful! He bites!” line was a clue.
A friend of mine was a big fan and I remember him being pissed at the end and him saying they did explain it but it was dumb. Honestly it might be better if they don’t explain it, I’d be just fine with not having the internet pick apart the science on this fictional plague
For example, a significant number of cis-men are born without a Y chromosome (1 in 20,000) for starters …
Yeah, like that!
“We’ve found plenty of men, none with a Y chromosome.” Also such men are sterile.
Yeah, but they wouldn’t be dead at the same time as the rest of them if that was the sole determining factor for the event!
I assumed she meant trans men, although perhaps she also including those with XX male syndrome. Perhaps they will clarify whether the cause targets the SRY gene which causes male sex differentiation and is on the Y chromosome, except in the case of folks with XX male syndrome.
I vaguely remember in the comic other men do appear, and I assume they are all missing the Y chromosome.
Two other men do appear, but they are not missing the Y chromosome.
The creators have said that they purposely left that vague, but left enough clues in the background. honestly when it came out, I can see them leaving it vague, but it was right on the cusp of the whole “Tony Stark’s Eyes looked left before he said Iron Man which means he was really saying I love you to Groot before he died” vein of needing everything explained.
The creators basically said one of the in comic theories was correct, but would not give hints as to Which theory it was, only that one of them in the comic was correct.
I thought it was explained that it was a byproduct from Ampersand’s poop that had infected Yorick and made him immune.
If I remember correctly in the comics it was implied that Ampersand was the carrier of some mutation that ‘infected’ Yorick through the monkey’s feces that allowed for his survival.
Considering its important place in the plot, I decided to see who would be the executive in charge of Israel. I found that parliamentary systems make no sense to me and seem to just make shit up as they go along (and that’s from already knowing where Israel’s presidency falls in the power scale, which is often difficult when trying to figure out who’s the real figure in charge of a given country). I think the highest-ranking woman (or at least most important minister) is Ayelet Shaked, who wants to instate the death penalty, curtail the Supreme Court’s powers, and it looks like send the military in the liberate Kurdistan. Next seems to be Aluf (major-general) Orna Barbivai, who I can’t find any policy positions from other than a little goo-goo criticism of Bibi. The rest are Pnina Tamano-Shata, Yifat Shasha-Biton, Karine Elharrar, Orit Farkash-haCohen, Meirav Cohen, Merav Michaeli, and Tamar Zandberg.
“parliamentary systems make no sense to me” – there are a million ways to do parliamentary systems and most of them are far fairer and more representative than the garbage governmental systems of the US.
I mean, its pretty simple. The President (as it is in most democracies) is little more than a figure head (in Israel, the President doesn’t even have nominal executive powers) with the actual head of government being the Prime Minster. If the President dies or is otherwise incapacitated, the Speaker (currently Mickey Levy) of the Knesset (Israel’s legislature…the parliament) becomes interim President until the Knesset elects a new President.
The Prime Minister is merely the head of the majority party in Knesset (or as is most often the case, the head of a coalition government formed by multiple parties). If the Prime Minister dies in office, the Cabinet elects an interim Prime Minister who will serve until the Knesset selects another, permanent Prime Minister (I’m knowingly glossing over how the Prime Minister is nominated and his election process).
Or, instead of having a fixed line of succession which the government must strictly adhere to regardless of their qualifications, the Prime Minister’s advisors and heads of departments, the Cabinet (the members of which were confirmed by the Knesset), elects the interim successor. The later system (used in the US), is fine for every time we’ve never needed to go deeper in the line of succession than the VP (a individual elected specifically to be a backup President), but would be problematic if we were required to go deeper than the Speaker of the House (who is at least an active leader of the majority party in the House). The President pro tempore of the Senate (3rd in line) is merely a figure head and is generally simply the longest tenured Senator in the majority party (instead of the President pro tempore, the Majority Leader of the Senate should be in the line of succession, as that role is more akin to the Speaker of the House). The Secretaries of State and Defense are good options to have in the line (both of which should be a head of the President pro tempore), but most of the other cabinet positions are frequently political appointments without much thought to their actual qualifications.
Thanks for reviewing this show, I don’t think I would have heard about it otherwise. I’m digging it so far!
I thought it was obvious, Kim stole the crayons so her mother could draw a sketch of the man she saw, and Kim recognizes it as Yorrick, leading to the scene where she is fucking with President Brown.
Thanks, it wasn’t obvious to me. But that’s just my Y chromosome impairing my cognition again, probably.
I thought it was obvious, Kim stole the crayons so her mother could draw a sketch of the man she saw, and Kim recognizes it as YorrickUnless her mom is really great at rendering faces, I’m not sure that makes much sense.Speaking as an artist, crayons SUCK as a drawing medium, even when you have a knack for drawing likenesses.
The megan mccain casting is so perfect
It’s like a Megan McCain and Ivanka Trump combined into one. “My father also considered me an advisor!” oh honey. Men like that don’t think any woman has a worthwhile opinion.I forgot Ivanka’s name and put Blonde Dumb President’s Daughter and I bet everyone would know exactly who I’m talking about.
And the entitlement! Although I think it would have been smarter for president Diane Lane to include her, in a “keep you friends close and enemies closer” kind of way.
yes, I’m not seeing Ivanka in here aside from the advisor role, it’s pure McCain. Ivanka doesn’t actually care about American family tradition, McCain is adamant about it.
Starting to wonder if they’re going to do away with the Amazons entirely. Hero joining them makes no sense this time around now that she has Sam as a friend and, honestly, the ‘men lovers’ we’ve been given are a lot more disturbing than the ‘men haters’ ever were.
The Amazons feel a little more out there, like maybe once the world has gone a bit more Thunderdome-shaped. Maybe they’re saving them for a later season, as opposed to how early they were introduced in the book.
“once the world has gone a bit more Thunderdome-shaped”Will they need another Hero?(I’m sorry.)
I think we’ll get them in some form, hopefully not in the bizarre feminazi stereotype of the comic.
have you watched today’s episode? lol
“those medals she presented to Officers Barnes and Mulligan were secretly bombs she engineered.”What? NO. That would be ludicrous. Making bombs in shape of medals? With what resources? For what purpose? That somehow exploded the rotor of the helicopter? Localised entirely in their kitchen?Occam’s razor people, jesus!
Yeah, I mean seems completely unnecessary if she could just put one on the helicopter.
It’s an important test of her character. Does 355 do things the simpler way, or the much cooler, unnecessarily badass way?
Be prepared for alot of Yorrick not making rational decisions. He makes some dumb choices in the comic however its not a critism cause it fits his character and the story
I love the little monkey, but my god Yorick. You are bad at taking care of your pet and Amp doesn’t seem to give a shit about you.
I was glad to see the show hitting, nearly point by point, all of the potential concerns I raised in my (unnecessarily long) comment on the last episode about the presidential succession. The only not I might add is that the constitution would likely be seen as giving congress leeway to select anyone they saw fit as president in a situation like this, but the choice to select Jennifer, a sitting congresswoman, elect her speaker, and then have her ascend to the presidency gives it that extra imprimatur of legitimacy that I thing is actually pretty realistic as to how Democrats would likely handle this kind of situation.The one concern I would still highlight is the mention of the cabinet secretary who is foreign born. Given that Republicans have already shown that they’re happy to ignore natural-born citizenship issues with respect to John McCain and Ted Cruz, and given that many constitutional scholars think it’s not a real issue, I absolutely do not believe that a cabinet member would allow herself to be stepped over like that. Especially when we consider that this fictional character is sort of equivalent to Elaine Chao, Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, who was born in Taipei. Chao is literally married to Mitch McConnell, and I guarantee that people like her would fight tooth and nail, no matter what kind of apocalypse we’re in, to make sure Republicans held onto the White House. All in all, though, this is a very minor suspension of disbelief issue.
Anyway, I’m excited that the show is engaging with the political intrigue side of the story in a way that the book only lightly touched on. (Possible spoilers) In the comic, Yorick’s mom was being threatened by a group of the wives of Republican senators who wanted to take their husbands’ seats. I think I like where this storyline is headed more, with a little more intrigue with regards to Jennifer holding onto power.
McCain and Cruz were/are natural born citizens.They were US citizens at the time of their birth. There’s absolutely no doubt about it.
I think “no doubt” is overstating things, but I do think that the natural born citizen clause is outdated and should be largely rendered moot should it ever be challenged.
I mean, I really doubt that it could seriously be challenged in court, but it’s all armchair speculation at this point. Perhaps we’ll find out in an actual court case someday.https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/03/on-the-meaning-of-natural-born-citizen/
The way I see it, it will be tested in court when and only when the Democrats nominate somebody born overseas. Just looking at all the avenues all sorts of nutsos pursued trying to prove that Obama was born in Kenya (which wouldn’t have been disqualifying even if somehow true), I cannot imagine that someone like Tammy Duckworth or even Michael Bennet getting the presidency without facing serious, if hopefully easily dismissed, legal challenges.
Agree, that’s the most likely scenario for it winding up in court.
Strictly speaking, John McCain was NOT a specifcally “natural born” US citizen at the time of birth, as the law of the time covered being born in the US or being born in foreign lands to parents who are US citizens but not US controlled territory that was not in the US, e.g the Canal Zone. But as that was mainly considered a blunder when the applicable definition was written into law, when Congress corrected the definition they applied it retroactively.
He was a natural born citizen since he was born to US citizens. It didn’t matter where he was born. From the congressional act of 1790“And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens.”https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/john-mccains-presidential-eligibility/
Another fun(?) example would be Boris Johnson, who was actually born in the US though he renounced his citizenship. Can a non-citizen be a natural-born citizen?Fun fact, due to his US citizenship at the time, Boris Johnson had to pay US capital gains on a property he inherited in the UK.
I’d think Johnson running for office would be a good test case, if not for the fact that I don’t want America to have any more to do with that man than we have to.
Madeline Albright was born Czech and nobody considered running her for the presidency, and if they could have they very well may have. That’s not the same as natural-born.
One aspect the show adapted truthfully to the comics – they both butcher Hebrew.
That’s because now it’s HERbrew
There is no way that Kim would think Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton was “finally Broadway did something good for this country.” Absolutely not, does not track.Maybe she’s not a total monster.
Pence went to see it…
A story about how the world might be run by women after the catastrophe of half the population dying is a big idea. To find the story centered on the one remaining, extremely mediocre, man is super sad.
I mean, I did read the show’s title but I thought there would be a better reason to focus on this guy.
I read the comic a while ago, but don’t remember Yorick being this mediocre, or hateful. My god is he making it hard it watch the show.
“they named you after a dead clown” was the greatest delivery ever…I had to pause I was laughing so hard“some real galaxy-brain Democrat thinking” – also thanks for this lol…if we just explain the election they’ll know it wasn’t stolen!
I had no idea that Ampersand was completely CG until I just read a Gizmodo article about the show. Huh. He did look strange in his cage at one point this episode but I figured he was just CG there because of some issue… not that he is always CG. Fooled me!
Why “Neil”? Titled for Neil Young since Nora & Mack heard the Dolly Parton cover of “After The Gold Rush” on the car radio? Assuming the writers were going for a significant thematic tie-in with the songs apocalyptic imagery. Love Dolly, buy it didn’t do anything for me.
I didn’t take Kim’s Hamilton comment as her saying the play itself was good for America as much as she was saying that at least there was this ripple effect and a kid was inspired to read a very long book about Alexander Hamilton. Also I think she stole the crayons because she misses being a mother so desperately that little things like that give her comfort.Ugh to this woman for still saying things like, “She’s pro-choice,” and, “You RINO!” when the possibility that any pregnancies will ever occur again is currently in doubt and most of the world is in chaos.
I don’t see how it’s a constitution crisis as it’s implied. Yes, technically Regina Oliver was in the line of succession, but line of succession skips over incapacitated people in power just as much as it does dead people in line. She was incapacitated, what was left of the House made Jennifer Brown Speaker of the House (which is possible because most women in the House are Democrats, so Republican women would simply be outnumbered). Which is higher than Regina Oliver in the line of succession. Whole point of line of succession is to maintain the government, which it did here. Now if Regina was VP, that’d be another matter but she wasn’t. If the Republicans in the show have a problem with that, they can vote against her after she finishes out Ted Campbell’s term (which was implied to be two more years).