This show also moves at such a fast clip that we the audience don’t even really get an opportunity to process everything that these characters have been through, let alone the condensed timeline that it’s all taken place within. I sort of love the idea of these people eventually all developing their own neuroses due to their respective losses. At one point Erica says, “We’ve been through a lot. I think we’re all starting to come apart at the seams a little bit,” and this episode grabs those seams and begins to pull. I of course want to see these characters be happy, but it could end up making them all stronger in a band of misfit toys sort of way. Regardless, the cracks in everyone’s sanity are beginning to show. Even something as innocent as candy-made dioramas are now full of suicidal jellybeans.

The episode takes a considerable, albeit somewhat expected turn regarding their final destination having a few kinks in it. What I love here, though, is that rather than the complete decimation of San Francisco having something to do with plague-related side effects or environmental factors like water levels rising or dropping off, it’s instead just one idiotic Rube Goldberg-like action from the Tandyman. We also get what might act as the show’s first flashback, and although seeing the “Two Years Earlier” prompt initially worried me, the episode again defies expectations. You’re not getting some glimpse of a world freshly dealing with the plague or gaining any new insight on things, instead you just get a very solid throwaway gag. I’m all for doing gratuitous flashbacks in that sense.

Of course this all leads to the topic of where the group is going to go live next. This conversation has come up enough times on the show at this point that I’m glad that this isn’t something that’s belabored over for long. It’s great to watch Last Man on Earth go through this transition period into its next phase, but I’m also kind of happy that it might already be there. That being said, I wouldn’t put it past this show to make this entire season a road trip, with the whole year being about them trying to reach some place that they can call home. I’d kind of love that, and while it’d definitely be limiting to the show in some sense, it’d also be something that I’ve never seen done before.

In the end the episode’s biggest obstacle is perhaps how damn obnoxious is in it, to the point that even Carol is having trouble tolerating him. This regression in Tandy territory is a little frustrating, but ultimately it seems to be a necessary step. You’re supposed be annoyed with him here. It’s exactly the reason why Gail gets pushed over the edge and can’t take this anymore. Her actions are a big, big move for the show to take, and one that it nearly pulls the trigger on. There’s some deep poignancy in the idea that an episode that’s all about re-building and finding a new home ends up seeing someone nearly leaving and an irrecoverable void forming in the gang. Sometimes pushing an idea and wanting something so badly can become the pressure that snaps it in two in the end.