We had made our bed with the finale last season. We had Pat and two people in hazmats coming up the beach. So we always knew that this episode would be continuous action from there. But we had no idea who the other two hazmat people would be or what the story would be. Most of us were assuming we’d do a battle. Melissa in a Ghillie suit, and Tandy and Todd running and getting tanks, and everything climaxing in a firefight. But the more thought about it, we decided the big fight would be not quite our thing. Will wanted to open on this big scary scene, but then settle into the kind of story that’s more in our wheelhouse.

One plan we had was that the two other hazmat people would get killed or scared off, and that Pat would remain in the show as a weird neighbor. He’d live on his boat and stop by for sugar once in a while. Just a weirdo conspiracy theorist who had a crush on Gail who would show up from time to time to disrupt stories. But we weren’t quite sure we could commit to having Pat as a regular. He’s such an intense character, we wouldn’t want to neuter him by making him a familiar sight. So we decided to exit the character in a way that would allow us to bring him back at some point if we had the story to support it.

I really like where we ended up with this one. John, Dave and Will hunkered down and re-worked this story a lot until they had it the way they wanted it. I love Tandy falling for Pat and being so wrong about it. It’s a perfect Last Man story.

With how past premieres have gone, I half expected this episode to follow Pat, Louis, and Darryl on their trip up to Malibu before they meet everyone…