The Last Man on Earth - Gender Friender - Review

This week, The Last Man on Earth gave us a mediocre episode, full of plot devices that served the only purpose of seeing Gail and Erica getting married. Let's review.

So yes, Gail (Mary Steenburgen) and Erica (Cleopatra Coleman) got married in "Gender Friender," but how exactly did we get there? Well, the episode started with a storyline around Tandy (Will Forte) and feminism. After he called the ladies "guys," Carol (Kristen Schaal) pointed out to him that with the three baby girls, there are now a lot more females in Tandy's life than males. Therefore, he realizes that it is time to reverse the gender rules and make it a female world. That involves, according to Tandy, saying "gals" instead of "guys" and changing all the words using the syllable "men." In classic Tandy fashion, he goes overboard with the whole thing and quickly annoys everyone else.

But Tandy is not the reason why Gail and Erica get married. No, it actually all started with Carol telling Gail that she doesn't like that her mom spends more time with Dawn instead of her granddaughters when she isn't even married with Erica. So Carol gets mad, and that pushes Gail to casually mention marriage to Erica as this ridiculous idea, which makes Erica mad. Then, quite out of the blue, Gail realizes that she actually wants to get married with Erica and proposes to her. Next thing you know, Tandy is officiating their wedding, and Carol is still mad, because she thinks that seals the deal on the fact that Gail will not spend time with her grandchildren anymore. It's Erica who manages to convince Carol that she is wrong and brings peace back into this strange family.

While all this is going on, Todd (Mel Rodriguez) is still obsessed with the babies, and Melissa (January Jones) suggests that if he wants to spend time with a child so bad, maybe he should try to bond with Jasper (Keith L. Williams). Thankfully, someone is finally getting interested in the whereabouts of that kid! So the two of them hang out and play catch and in a father/son fashion, Todd teaches Jasper how to shave (by having him shave his back, which is a little weird but, oh well, this is Last Man on Earth after all. The growing relationship between these two characters makes sense and is a nice touch, but it's the only thing that does not seem forced in this episode. The feminist storyline, while not surprising for Tandy's character, is unnecessary, and the marriage just seems to come out of nowhere, for no reason. All in all, "Gender Friender" is an okay episode of The Last Man on Earth, one that doesn't advances the story much as whole, but still has some entertaining moments.

That's my take, what did you think of this episode?