The very dark and very funny Last Man on Earth has only provided brief glimpses at life before the virus wiped out mankind. Except the titular last man. And Kristen Schaal. And Betty Draper. And a few others, including, as we were introduced in Sunday’s midseason premiere, Pamela Brinton (Kristen Wiig), an uptight millionaire who initially attributes the fatal illness to a “bad flu season.” Eventually, she realizes the severity of the situation (the surgical masks help), and begins to freak out. “There’s got to be a vaccine,” Pamela tells her husband. “Something fishy’s going on, if you ask me. You mean to tell me the president of the United States doesn’t have a vaccine. Yeah right.”
Smash cut to…
The Last Man on Earth‘s pilot — when Phil “Tandy” Miller is all by himself, sipping margz in the pool — takes place in “Novemberish 2021,” so that’s probably Donald Trump’s memorial service, right? Nope, it’s Michael Pence’s. It’s left tantalizingly unsaid whether Trump was impeached or died from the virus — the only detail we get from the expository news anchor is, “Michael Richard Pence, 46th President of the United States, dead at the age of 61.” Pence is currently 57 years old, and doesn’t turn 61 until 2020. That’s some forward thinking from the writers, although the episode does get one thing wrong. When Pence dies, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan becomes president.
When Ryan dies, Rex Tillerson becomes president.
When Tillerson dies, Steven Mnuchin becomes president.
When Mnuchin dies, Jeff Sessions becomes president.
And when Sessions dies, Betsy Devos becomes president.
That’s not the line of succession, though. It should go: Trump, Pence, Ryan, Orrin Hatch, Tillerson, Mnuchin, James Mattis, Jeff Sessions, and eventually, all the way down at 10th, DeVos. On the bright side, first female president!
And all it took was a deadly, deadly virus.
