Y: El último hombre

I, like many of the viewers, am a huge fan of the graphic novel and have wanted a live-action series for years. And I have always thought that a TV series is a better format for this IP than a movie because the original series is a long and winding adventure that does not truly get going until roughly a quarter of the way through. What we've seen so far is good albeit a little slow, but I am going to be patient because this series really pays off the further you get.

We the people are sick and tired of series first episodes that try to introduce every continuing character rather than deal with the plot and relevant protagonists. We do not care or want to know or care for the other characters yet. We want a sense of the challenges ahead. Will the story be action oriented or cerebral or emotional or a combination? If all that happens is that we meet a bunch of people, what is going to bring us back?

We the people are also sick and tired of episodes where the story is frozen, nothing plot wise happens.

We the people are also sick and tired of this show.

No redeemable qualities here. Pilot episode ok but the main character Yorick is so disrespectful, a complete moron, childish, selfish and never does as he's told, even if it's for his own safety. The world has literally exploded and all he does is think about himself.

I'd thought Diane Lane would save it but her presence alone can't make up for bad writing and character development. I'm done watching but if Yorick ends up dying, I may come back just to watch natural selection do it's job!

With perhaps some minor exceptions, I thought the first episode was pretty solid - a very promising introduction with decent exposition and good acting. Was really looking forward to the next episodes.

Unfortunately episodes 2 and 3 were extremely disappointing. It's as if the writers suddenly lost their minds. Characters started acting with a complete lack of any common sense, and the plot devolved into a miasma of scenes that are at best puzzling and at worst nonsensical.

Very disappointing that they could transform such a great comic into such a poor show.

I'm going to assume that nobody is going to swoop in and save "Y - The Last Man" from its cancellation and put my review here, rather than against the last episode of the season. Apologies to any future readers if I'm left looking foolish. Truth be told, it's covid and the expense as well as the lukewarm response that has done for the series, but I can't help but feel that it's refusal to stick with the one aspect of it's three pronged story I was most interested in, means I'm not too sad to not have to watch any more.

At one moment, every creature on earth with a Y chromosome dies, save for Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer) and his pet capuchin monkey. His mother, Jennifer (Diane Lane) was the highest-ranking Government official in the country so is elevated to President. On discovering her son is alive, and acknowledging the danger he's in, she assigns Agent 355 (Ashley Romans) to get Yorick to a geneticist and to begin working out how he's survived.

There ends up being three plot strands to the series, Yorick and Agent 355 try to get across the country as undetected as possible. The President tries to maintain some level of organisation with a distrustful and angry population and political enemies forming against her. Meanwhile her daughter and a former government employee, played by Olivia Thirlby and Marin Ireland respectively, fall in with militant group led by Roxanne, played by Missi Pyle. My problem was, all three of these plot strands play equally in terms of time, but I was only really interested in one of them - that being the Yorick one. I'm aware that is essentially me (a man) saying that in a show that is literally 95% actresses I only care about the one other male in it, but I don't think it's that I can't relate to the other two aspects, it's more than the intrigue of the show, why has everyone with a Y chromosome died, is most likely to be resolved in that one.

I also struggled to accept the level of devastation caused by around 50% of the population disappearing. I accept that there's big issues to deal with, such as the grief of the loss of loved ones and the engulfing realisation that life is essentially going to come to an end within the next generation but I don't understand why cars are just abandoned in the streets, why houses are left empty - why, essentially, it's a post-apocalyptic world just weeks after the event. I get that there would be supply struggles, but demand has just halved too... still.

I can't help but think that the decision to replace the original showrunners, led to a different and less interesting show, and if this is the only adaptation of "Y - The Last Man" we get, that is very disappointing.