Lent- Day 14: The last (and first) man on Earth.

Will Forte as Phil Miller in Fox’s “The Last Man on Earth” (Source)

Today I watched the new Fox show “The Last Man on Earth”. It stars Will Forte as Phil Miller, a guy who survives a massive epidemic in the year 2020. He’s left in a silently creepy world, filling his time taking priceless paintings and other tchotchkes (Oscars, a Heisman trophy, Hugh Hefner’s PJs) to his new home- an empty McMansion in Tucson, Arizona. Check out the videos below:

As much fun as bowling (even with fish tanks as pins) can be, it is only a matter of time before Phil goes all Tom Hanks in “Castaway” (which we actually see Phil watching) and starts bringing inanimate objects to life:

Just as Phil is about to give up on life due to extreme loneliness, he meets… the last woman on Earth, Carol Pilbasian, played by Kristen Schaal. Carol is basically the polar opposite of Phil. Without society, Phil has no structure and descends into a drunken, filthy slob. Carol, sans society, insists that order be maintained (even to the point of stopping at stop signs even though, as Phil points out, traffic no longer exists). They immediately clash, arguing over just about any and everything.

Phil and Carol- they can’t even agree on the correct pronunciation of tomato (I’m with Phil on this).

The show is pretty interesting in that it’s not at all like anything else on Fox right now. The way it’s shot looks more like a movie than a network TV series. It also raises a number of questions: absent civilization, does any individual have a duty to be civilized; what does civilized, in such a world, even mean; what are the boundaries of wrong and right in a world with no laws?

But that’s for another post. Phil made me think of the first man, Adam and his story in Genesis chapter 2:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed…

 

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it….

 

And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.hen the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.

God set Adam in the perfect surroundings- lush, unsoiled, beautiful. He gave him a job, to tend the Garden. Not wanting Adam to be alone, God gave him plenty of animal friends. Yet… none of that was comparable to Adam, so God made Eve. 

It’s so easy to get caught up in the daily grind. Yet it should never be forgotten that even with good health, lovely surroundings, and ample recreation time, we need each other.

Reflection for the day: Am I truly interacting, in a meaningful way with my family and friends? Am I helping to fulfill their God-given need for relationship?