In the year 2020, a virus wiped out the Earth’s population. Survivor Phil Miller (Will Forte) has spent the past year visiting every state—and parts of of Canada and Mexico—looking for any other human beings (and looting famous artwork and precious national treasures from museums along the way). Throughout his journey Phil has left billboards and signs saying “Alive in Tucson” in case anyone else is out there. He returns home to Tucson, but lonely, bored and depressed, Phil finds himself going crazy. He keeps busy by performing wanton acts of mayhem and destruction, praying to God for a woman to keep him company, talking to himself and his whole “wolf pack” of friends (i.e. balls with faces drawn on them, a la Castaway). Just when Phil decides to end it all, God seems to have answered his prayers—but once he meets Carol (Kristen Schaal), Phil may want to take those requests back.

The series comes from the minds of Will Forte and executive producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie), and sticks to their unique brand of humor. It is a delightful, painfully-awkward comedy that will have you cringing almost as much as laughing. The writing is witty, the premise and situations Phil gets into are hilarious, and there is a lot of great physical humor and unexpected twists and turns.

Over the course of the season Phil grows more and more despicable. He is constantly acting/reacting while only thinking of himself, and usually regrets his decisions moments later. He then tries to fix things by doing something even worse. Phil always has some ulterior motive or crafty plan, and while he thinks he’s being sneaky, the others can always see right through it. But Phil is not all bad—throughout the season we get glimpses here and there that he does still have a heart and care about others. And he always has his ball friends to fall back on if the others don’t get him—the scenes with Phil talking with volleyball Gary, tennis ball Kevin and the rest of the gang are some of favorite of the whole season.

Kristen Schaal is hilarious as the talkative, grammar-correcting, always-plays-by-the-rules Carol. The polar-opposite nature of Phil’s and Carol’s personalities makes for some highly-entertaining and comedic scenes. Throughout the season we are introduced to a lot of other really fun guest stars as well—January Jones (Mad Men), Mary Steenburgen (Orange Is the New Black), Cleopatra Coleman (Step Up Revolution), Mel Rodriguez (Enlisted) and Boris Kodjoe (Undercovers).

The series doesn’t go the zombie, death and destruction type look at the end of the world. In fact, there is no trace of the deceased, and we don’t really get any explanation as to what the virus was or how it spread. We just jump right into this barren, empty world and don’t dwell on the past. Perhaps next season we will find out more about what happened, but the story never felt lacking without this information. There are some deleted scenes that give a glimpse of Phil’s life before, but I think the show actually works out better not having this information.

It was such a joy to be able to binge the entire season on this DVD set—the season plays out like one long story, with each episode usually ending with some big reveal. So it is great to be able to just watch the episodes back-to-back without having to wait a week to find out what happens next.

The DVD looks great—the picture is sharp and clear and the vast, wide shots of the desolate landscape look quite cinematic. The audio track provides clear dialogue and nice ambiance, and the show’s original score and Kinks-filled soundtrack sounds great. The discs are loaded with bonus features including over an hour of deleted/extended scenes, two episode commentaries, a behind-the-scenes featurette, a gag reel and a cast/producer Q&A panel.

This series is an easy recommendation—it was one of my favorite new shows last year, and definitely holds up to repeat viewings.

What’s Included:

Episodes: (4:42:07)

• All 13 Episodes of the first season:
  “Alive in Tucson”, “The Elephant in the Room”, “Raisin Balls and Wedding Bells”, “Sweet Melissa”, “Dunk the Skunk”, “Some Friggin’ Fat Guy”, “She Drives Me Crazy”, “Mooovin’ In”, “The Do-Over”, “Pranks for Nothin'”, “Moved to Tampa”, “The Tandyman Can”, “Screw the Moon”
• 480p / Widescreen 1.78:1
• Audio: English 5.1 Dolby Digital
• Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
• Closed Captioned

Extras:

• Deleted Scenes (1:05:56)
  A huge collection of deleted/extended scenes—there’s a lot of fun material here! The scenes are in varying stages of completion—some are missing effects or contain glimpses of boom mics. For some reason they’ve added a large elapsed timer in the top left corner of the screen that counts up throughout all of the scenes (across both discs). The deleted scenes from the pilot give us a glimpse of what Phil’s life was like before everything. While the scenes were very interesting to watch, I think it was a wise decision to leave them out because I think the show plays better without knowing this information.

  The 18 scenes on disc 1 include Episode 101 “Phil Shows His Mom His Apartment”, “Phil At His Old Job”, “Phil Plays Tennis” (Extended); Episode 102 “Phil Gets To Know Carol” (Extended), “Stop Sign”, “Phil Plays Pool” (Extended), “Phil Confronts Carol About Moving In” (Extended); Episode 103 “Phil and Carol in Bed” (Extended); Episode 104 “Phil Talks to The Balls”, “Dream #2”, “Carol’s New Door”; Episode 105 “Phil Picks Up Melissa”; Episode 106 “Unfinished Business”, “Carol is the One”; Episode 107 “Carol Sings All Night Long” (Extended), “Phil and the Grievance Board” (Extended), “Phil Dreams a Better World” and “Phil Surprises Carol” (Extended).

  The 32 scenes on disc 2 include Episode 108 “Carol and Melissa” (Extended); Episode 109 “Phil is Todd’s Best Friend”, “Showing Phil Around”, “Phil Gets To Know The Ladies” (Extended), “Carol Shows Off Her Decorating” (Extended); Episode 110 “Carol the Ghost” (Extended), “Gail and Erica Apologize” (Extended), “Bartender Phil” (Extended), “Todd and Melissa Check on Carol” (Extended), “Phil Gets an Idea” (Extended), “Hi, I am Mike Miller” (Extended), “Phil, Undercover” (Extended), “Phil Confesses” (Extended), “Carol and the Quilt”, “Carol Apologizes to Gail and Erica”; Episode 111 “Where is Phil” (Extended); Episode 112 “How Do You Take Your Coffee, Phil?” (Extended), “”Carol is Hot” (Extended), “The Broken Generator”, “Freakin’ Phil” (Extended), “Good Day Erica, Good Day” (Extended), “A Scarf For Phil” (Extended), “Tucson Will Not Be Slandered” (Extended), “The Phil Miller Situation”, “He Had Sex With Them! All of Them!” (Super Cut), “Tandy, Are You Jealous?” (Extended), “Put the Food in the Bear Box” (Extended); Episode 13 “Erica Needs Pizza”, “Phil Showers Carol With Gifts” (Extended), “Tandy vs Phil”, “Hungry Phil” and “A Post Phil and Carol World”.

• Commentary on “The Elephant in the Room” (21:44)
  Stars Will Forte (“Phil Miller”) and Kristen Schaal (“Carol Plibasian”) and directors/producers Phil Lord & Christopher Miller provide an entertaining commentary on episode 2 of the series. They give some interesting production tidbits such as how they shot the driving scenes and designed the sets. They also discuss some of the material that was improvised and/or cut out of the episodes, including a whole Keyser Söze subplot with Carol.
• Commentary on “Screw the Moon” (21:44)
  Stars Will Forte and Kristen Schaal and directors/producers Phil Lord & Christopher Miller provide another entertaining commentary on the season finale. They give more fun and interesting production tidbits, including a discussion about Phil’s ball friends, the use of green screens and how some of effects were done.
• The Last Man on Earth Q&A Panel (22:52)
  Highlights from the Deadline Hollywood AwardsLine panel that took place on June 11, 2015. Dominic Patten moderates this interesting and entertaining Q&A with panelists Will Forte, Kristen Schaal, Christopher Miller and Phil Lord. They talk about how the show came about, the characters, the music, and the look of the show, and also discuss keeping the momentum going throughout the first season, and give some hints as to what folks can expect in the upcoming season.
• Survival of the Funniest: Creating The Last Man on Earth (11:37)
  The cast and creators talk about the show’s premise, characters and situations, and what it’s been like working with Will Forte. Includes behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with executive producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and actors Will Forte (“Phil Tandy Miller”), Kristen Schaal (“Carol Pilbasian”), Boris Kodjoe (“Phil Miller”), January Jones (“Melissa Shart”), Mary Steenburgen (“Gail”), Cleopatra Coleman (“Erica”) and Mel Rodriguez (“Todd”).
• Gag Reel (6:14)
  This hilarious blooper reel is a compilation of alternate takes, flubbed lines, prop malfunctions and the cast just having fun on set. Like the deleted scenes, this has been watermarked with a large elapsed timer in the top left corner.

Final Thoughts:

The Last Man on Earth was one of my favorite new comedies last season, and I enjoyed it just as much the second time around on this DVD. This is a show that is built for binge-watching, and this DVD makes it easy to do so. The DVD looks and sounds great and is loaded with hours of bonus material. This comes highly recommended, and definitely worth checking out before the new season starts up.