Our series on Last Man on Earth Writers' Room continues with episodes 15 and 16.
This part of the walkthrough looks at episodes 15 and 16 fromLast Man on Earthssecond season.
Note: This interview has been edited for brevity.
Meanwhile Todd establishes his dominance.
It was also recently announced that Forte will be playing Douglas Kenney in David Wains National Lampoon biopic.
Did this have anything to do with the decision to lose it?
Or was it Forte just wanting to mix things up?
There was a lot of anticipatory laughing.
ANDY BOBROW:I think at one point Kristen floated the idea of her doing it too.
Im not sure how serious she was.
We should have pushed it.
I also saw that a bunch of crew membersdonned the same haircutout of solidarity.
Thats really kind of incredible.
Youve got these guys drinking the cricket Kool-Aid pretty hard!
Forte was the only one who shaved the eyebrow, chest, pubes and leg, though.
All of this sibling feuding stuff between Tandy and Mike feels really natural.
I think we were kind of worried that if they dont fight, who are they?
Brothers who get along are not so great for comedy.
So we bit the bullet and had them make up.
Whos voicing Tandy and Mikes mother in that snippet?
She also played Tandy and Mikes mom in the pilot episode of the show.
It was a flashback and she didnt have any lines.
This time she has lines but you cant see her.
You only get to experience Patti Forte using one of the five senses at a time.
Todds behavior is a little troubling here.
In a situation like this he really shouldnt be having favorites, like he tells Melissa.
Whats your thought process on how hes doing with this arrangement?
You want to see him succeed but hes clearly messing it up.
I say that because Todds intentions are pure and good-hearted.
For the most part, anyway.
ANDY BOBROW:We went through a weird process.
Here we had decided to do the bold thing and have these characters in a three-way relationship.
And we were very proud of ourselves.
And then we kind of hit a wall trying to figure out how to exploit it.
Whats our funny angle on it?
We wrote some scenes about the scheduling.
Just the women negotiating over who gets him when.
And those felt a bit expected.
And so we thought okay, maybe Todds exhaustion is the angle.
But we realized we had basically already told that in the fertility test episode.
And that was kind of promising, but felt just a little trite.
Were not finding it.
Will broke the spell when he pitched Todd over-sharing.
Just taking the concept of openness way too far.
It was a great bit and of course Mel was great doing it.
Meanwhile, Gails wine consumption has become an issue.
A lot ofOnceHeads in the writers room?
Was anything else on the table?
I think this was a bit that he and Jason had done for fun when they were working atSNL.
The timing would have been right.
I think that movie came out when they were there together.
And they do love to sing.
So no, there were no other alts.
You guys have somehow managed to top the beard.
Once again, all Will.
Someone was asking me about Will, asking did he really walk around like that in public for months?
They were saying it was so brave of him.
Thats his core identity.
And the scary thing for him would be to do it with a fake beard or a bald wig.
I think that would have been much harder for him because it would have eaten away at his soul.
You had said that the topic of pregnancy itself drew a real division line in the writers room.
How did this topic agree with the room?
By the time we got to this story, all of our internal pregnancy concerns had really been resolved.
So this one wasnt that.
It was Carol, who has always felt a higher purpose, acting on her calling.
I see the danger.
Would it be a cop-out if I said we just didnt want to get into it?
And in this scene, even though Gail has been through a lot, shes not going anywhere.
So a drone shows up at the end of this one!
Lets talk about that.
Weve always been tempted by this sort of thing.
Knowing theres someone alive, but you cant tell if theyre friendly or not.
Also, Emily Spivey started adlibbing Gail attempting to describe a drone and we couldnt stop laughing.
The military and/or government feel like a natural extension of this sort of story, too.
Was this a dimension that you guys were eager to dig into?
Like I said, were nervous about doing mystery stuff or sci-fi stuff because were notWalking Dead.
And all the drama is human-sized.
Shows get stuck in quicksand trying to sustain a big mystery like that.
Do you like when your show extends its boundaries and pushes the larger story forward in some way?
Or are you happy focusing on the core that youve already built?
I think weve settled into our pace, which is nice and slow.
We linger in small moments and petty desires.
Do not hold me to this, though.
Well turn on a dime and introduce Martians if its funny.
Our walkthrough on the second half ofLast Man on Earthssecond season concludes on Monday.Read the previous entries here.
