The first episode was last night, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It kept the goofy fun (driving a stealth bomber around, Carol’s conversation between Ben Franklin and Abe Lincoln), and dialed way back on the Phil-acts-like-an-unbelievable-tool aspect that made parts of last season somewhat unpleasant.
One of the things I like so much about this show is that I literally have no idea what’s going to happen. Will Phil and Carol be back together 5 minutes into next episode? They might… or they might spend the entire season wandering around separately. And when will Astronaut Miller make an appearance? Ever?
The idea of one of Carol’s roommates trying to avoid “the virus” is interesting, but I’m not expecting (nor do I really want) any actual backstory-building along those lines.
Favorite line:
“Ooh, Carol. Where did you get such an expensive T-shirt? In the jewel markets of Monaco?”
So much darker than anything last season; I wonder if we’ll ever find out what happened in Tucson. As for Phil’s brother coming back down to Earth; I now it’s a sitcom, but he has to last an escape capsule he has no idea who pilot without any ground support and he’s been in microgravity for at least 2 years (not that I expect the latter to be addressed at all). But then again they did point out that he may not share whatever immunity the Earthbound survivors have. Come to think of it, why is he alone? Where did the rest of the crew go if the escape pod is still there? Maybe it would be better if he stayed up there.
In his scenes on the ISS, wasn’t he searching for possible deployment approach using a Soyuz-type capsule?
Maybe the whole crew was infected right before they boarded the ISS, and since he’s the brother of Phil, he might have inherited the same immune gene, or whatever, but the rest of the crew died, and he jettisoned them out the airlock.
But I’m glad it’s back. So curious to see what they’re going to do this season. I think douchey Phil is behind him. Loved this episode.
I gave up on the show an episode or 2 before the finale last season. I see that people are remarking on the changes. Is it less. . .cringe-inducing, I guess. . .than last season? Phil was a tool and Carol was an unreasonable, crazy jerk. I kinda like Will Forte, and I love Kristin Schaal’s voiceover work, but I couldn’t get into it. Do you think the changes warrant a second chance, give the above?
This TV show is truly different. Even though I’m not really enjoying it much I am going to keep watching for while because it is just not more of the same.
I’ll try to take a stab at this, but in short, yes.
In season one, arguably to a fault, Phil became more of an ass and a lying douchebag as more and more people arrived. I don’t want to give much away, in case you plan on catching up, but he eventually came to term with it in some way, and I think he’s moved beyond it. Plus, the ending had an interesting plot twist (if you haven’t been able to work it out by now).
This first episode of season 2, his beard is back, he’s being his original quirky but good-hearted person to Kristen, and is looking to be on track for returning back to the non-cringe fun of the first few episodes of season 1.
I thought he was just looking for signs of recent human activity. Granted if he was scoping out landing sites he’d want to try and land as close to people as possible.
When they found the cow in the first season, one of them mentioned that it was the first animal they’d seen since the virus. Presumably, there are millions upon millions of human and animal corpses everywhere. But the show has avoided showing that, until we saw the dead whales on the beach.
FWIW, I gave up at the same time you did. I decided to give season two a shot. I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. Phil is a lot more likable when he’s not lying or scheming. Or even arguing with Carol for that matter.
Another enjoyable episode. I worried that bringing all the other characters back in would put us back into a repeat of some of the more boring parts of season 1, but so far that hasn’t happened, largely because it was Carol doing most of the crazy lying.
The scene with the gun was obviously totally over the top, but it fits well enough into this show.
Apparently it also wiped out fish and most insects given how surprised everyone was to find crickets (hey at least Carol’s trying to solve their food problem). I like that fill Phil begrudgingly being accepted back into the group. I wonder when we’ll see his brother again.
Where did the rest of the crew go if the escape pod is still there? Maybe it would be better if he stayed up there. 