Thanks. Originally, instead of Pitbull’s yacht, we were thinking Tandy blows up The Queen Mary. But people said it’s common knowledge that the Queen Mary is not seaworthy, it’s just sitting on pylons in Long Beach. I’m not sure it’s common knowledge, but whatever. We blew up Pitbull’s yacht. Incidentally, our inside joke for the name of Pitbull’s yacht is “Snatch A Wave.” Pretty sure that’s a Tim McAuliffe joke. Shout out to Tim for being funny one hundred percent of the time.

We learn that Mike Miller has been in space for three years in this episode. That’s some time before the virus broke out. Did you guys figure out what his mission in space was exactly? Was it virus-related in any way?

No, he’s just a scientist up there hatching worms. We had talked about delving into what happened. We talked about how Mike is up there with a crew and it’s before the virus, or maybe when the virus just looked like a smaller epidemic, and then they’re getting reports about the virus and NASA is telling them they’re going to keep them up there longer until the virus dies down, and then everyone at NASA starts dying and all that. And then his crewmates off themselves, but he can’t bring himself to do it. But ultimately, none of that moves the story forward so we’re not getting into it. You can just keep it in your back pocket like we’re doing.

Now this is a cliffhanger! I’d say that the first season of the show almost made a game of trying to top itself when it came to cliffhangers. It seems like Melissa is being genuine here, and the Shawshank callback is a great touch. Did you guys have a real discussion about what Todd’s answer to her proposal would be, or was it already figured out? In spite of what’s happened, there’s still a very real connection between Todd and Melissa.

Yes we had lots of discussion about his answer, basically gaming out how it would go if he said yes, or if he said no, or if he couldn’t answer. And we had strong arguments for each possibility. But we had to choose one, and the one we chose is going to lead to some of that good Melissa stuff I talked about earlier.

The Last Man on Earth Season 2 Episode 10 – “Christmas (AKA Silent Night)”