Getting Over the Apocalypse
Y:THE LAST MAN – Season 1 Episode 9 – SPOILERS
Planning a date with Dominique, Dr. Mann asks 355 for fashion advice.
In Episode 5, when Dr. Mann (Diana Bang) told Yorick (Ben Schnetzer) they had to go to San Francisco, he remarked: “Maybe on the way, may I suggest sunny Ohio?”. In parallel with the comics, Agent 355, Yorick, and Mann are (loosely) held hostage in the fictional town of Marrisville, Ohio by self-liberated prison inmates, while, unknown to them, the Daughters of the Amazon are only a few miles away. Yorick’s sister Hero (Olivia Thirlby) is traveling with the Amazons and things are pointing toward a partial reunion of the Brown family soon.
Sonia returns a tracker and gives 355 some advice
In Marrisville, Sonia (Kristen Gutoskie) finds Agent 355’s tracking device and suggest she tell Yorick about it. “He trusts you for some reason,” she advises. “Don’t fuck that up.” Yorick and Sonia go smoke a joint, then Yorick has a Miller High Life (which is either an unfortunate pun or product placement) and Sonia gives him a manicure, and then utters the best lines in this episode. When describing how she and her fellow inmates broke out of prison, she explains: “We were in the yard when it happened. At first the women thought we did it. But then, they were outnumbered, scared, so they locked us in. Left us. It was days. So once we broke out, they were waiting for us with guns. They were so scared they forgot we were people.” Then she gives Yorick a manicure.
Meanwhile, 355 (Ashley Romans), after having a flashback to when she was recruited into the Culper Ring by Fran (June Carryl), takes Sonia’s advice to heart and goes to the river (likely the same river where Roxanne tried to dump the State Police car that represented her past) and crushes the tracker with a rock.
At the point of a softball bat, Athena calms down, but firmly reminds Nora how she should correctly be addressed.
After last episode’s fire, the Daughters of the Amazon must resort to pillage for survival. They locate a “Museum of Men” run by a bunch of women dedicated to memorializing pre-apocalypse patriarchal society. Before the Amazons attack, Nora (Marin Ireland) urges Roxanne (Missi Pyle) to tell them to concentrate on acquiring as much food as possible, but Roxanne is having none of that, and the Amazons attack with destructive fury without concern for the utility of what they destroy. When Athena (Jayli Wolf) persists in dismembering a carton of cereal boxes (Kelloggs Corn Pops), Nora has had enough and threatens her with a softball bat. “Don’t, Laura,” she warns, using Athena’s old name. “Don’t touch the fucking corn pops.”
June Carryl as Fran from the Culper Ring in the first of two flashback appearances.
The women who ran the Museum of Men also kept track of survivor sightings and through them Nora finds out that a man who wears a gas mask and has a bodyguard has been sighted in a nearby town that also has electricity. Sensing an opportunity to depose Roxanne, she passes this info along to her, hoping the Amazons will bite off more than they can chew. (Nora also was once an aide to former President Cunningham, and might recognize the drawing as Jennifer Brown’s son. If so, she could smell an opportunity to be useful to the new administration.) Next episode (the season finale) is ominously titled “Victoria”. Remember that, in the comics, Victoria was the leader of the Amazons.
Christine Flores (Jess Salgueiro) looks worried as she is accused by the cabal of being an accomplice to President Brown, who quickly rescues her from blame.
As if all this weren’t enough, trouble is developing in D.C. for the Brown family matriarch. Immediately after a touching scene in which she gives her assistant Christine (Jess Salgueiro) a (difficult to obtain) can of oranges, and Christine tells her that she is pregnant, President Brown (Diane Lane) is confronted by a group led by Regina Oliver (Jennifer Wigmore), who are intent on removing her from office.
Just as the right-wing cabal is about to seize power (and totally by coincidence), Yorick’s ex-girlfriend Beth (Juliana Canfield) leads a bunch of would-be revolutionaries into the Pentagon through a barricaded subway entrance which they clear with explosives.
Nora tells Roxanne about rumours of a man in a gas mask traveling with a bodyguard in a nearby city with electricity.
What happens next is a bit of a jumble. Regina Oliver keeps insisting she is the President, and finally blurts out that Jennifer’s son is alive. The leader of the revolutionaries is not prepared to believe such a thing and shoots Oliver in the head to shut her up. (Then, extending the theme of the episode, she throws up all over the memorial to lost men in the corridor.) The rebels burn all the files and communiques they can locate, destroying any paper trail about Yorick in the process.
With her leader gone, Kimberly (Amber Tamblyn) suddenly rises to the occasion and decides it is her role to protect Christine and her unborn child. (Christine could easily become the unifying factor that could bring the remaining right-wing elements in the government together with President Brown.) At episode’s end, Jennifer and Beth are at the subway entrance. Beth gives the President her hoodie so that she can conceal her identity. Kimberly and Christina are somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon.