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Was it always Erica that was going to be pregnant?
Did you guys contemplate at all over having Melissa or Gail end up with the pregnancy?
I think thats 104.
And we wrote that script, and we wrote several scripts following that one where Carol was pregnant.
And it just didnt sit well with a lot of people.
It affects how you feel about Tandy, if hes acting out and his wife is pregnant.
Liz spearheaded the change.
She actually took 3 or 4 scripts home one night and just re-jiggered them to remove the pregnancy.
What she proved was that its deeper to have Phil change his mind because of emotions rather than circumstances.
He sees the wreath she made and he melts.
Hes a better man because of that moment.
But ultimately Erica felt like the best choice because it directly affected Phil 2.
This episode takes some real strides to humanize Phil.
Was there a lot of discussion over this?
Did you consider keeping him the villain for longer?
Where did the writers room fall on whether he deserves redemption or not?
Hereallycrosses the line with Tandy in this one… Will had an image of Tandy standing up for Phil, despite the fact that Phil had punched him.
So Tandys journey was way less clear.
It didnt go anywhere and it didnt explain itself well enough.
But this script went through lots of rewriting.
No no, absolutely not.
They come with this guy named Scott, a total cowboy who wears a hat and everything.
Were like, Hey, Scott, can Will slap her on the butt?
Will she freak out?
And Scott will be like, super quiet, man of very few words.
Hell just look at us and say with an assured understated drawl, Shell be alright.
This is one of the rare occasions when we know.
Did it feel important to cement that in at this point?
I love that youre seeing the best possible interpretation of this move.
We got caught by our own cleverness with that space stuff.
Why was that particularly important to you guys?
It was important to Will, which made it important to us.
And what we get out of all this Tandy/Phil stuff is a set-up for a tearjerker.
Theyre both mountains for Tandy to climb.
So we wanted Tandy to get up to the top of that mountain before losing it.
Phil brings up Canada as his destination point here.
After shifting from Tucson to Malibu, Canada would certainly be an eclectic place for the group to relocate.
We like the idea of changing the look every season, but its expensive to make all new sets.
Not sure if well do it or not next year.
Where is Melissas head at in this episode?
Weve seen a lot of Todds behavior and been privy to him opening up and explaining his actions.
The same hasnt been true with her.
That may be a very delicate way of saying youre not buying Melissa, and Ill take the criticism.
Weve not done the best job of fleshing out Melissa.
Shes just not dishing in the way that Todd is.
Shes also harder to read by design.
I mean, the flipside is that January plays her very subtly and we do like that.
It feels right that Melissa is somewhat of a mystery.
She likes Todd but she doesnt like opening up to people, and shes really turned off by neediness.
She likes Todd when hes fun and shes turned off when he wants something deeper.
Its a bit of a role reversal here.
Todd is the needy chick and Melissas the dude who doesnt want drama.
I think we could have made that clearer with one additional scene of them alone together.
And were all really proud of some Melissa stuff coming up.
Melissas head will be opened.
The Todd and Gail romance is such a sweet, wounded bubble that I really hope doesnt burst.
Did you guys kind of just stumble upon this pairing naturally, like the two of them did?
Or was everything from Gordons death an intentional move to slowly push these two together?
Stumbled into it, just like them.
It just came out of a simple blue sky session of We need some relationship shit to go down.
What can go down here?
And the moment someone said, Todd and Gail kiss, everyone was like, Yup.
We have some awesome stuff coming up in that story.
This final collection of episodes certainly puts all of that back on the table.
Can you talk about the music in the series at all?
Ooh, really good question and Im the worst person to ask.
I dont think Mark would have done a TV show if not for them.
I havent met him, but Im such a fan, and we feel so lucky to have him.
That sound really set the tone.
We also reuse a lot of stuff, which is pretty standard for a TV show.
But in general Will likes to be very sparing with the music.
Its a pet peeve for many of us, when sitcoms overuse music.
Like they dont trust the audience to know what to feel.
And of course we use pop songs a lot, and that reflects Wills taste mostly.
Big Kinks fan, Will.
Our walkthrough onLast Man on Earthssecond season will continue tomorrow.The previous entries can be found here.
