Streaming Spotlight by Cindy Summers
Y: The Last Man – FX on Hulu
3 out of 4 palm trees
Y: The Last Man is based on DC Comics’ acclaimed series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, a 60-issue science fiction comic book series published in 2002 in which a worldwide event kills every male mammal on the planet but for one cisgender man and his pet monkey. This plunges the entire planet into a post-apocalyptic world full of dystopian realities.
For some unknown reason, every man in the world died of some sort of plague all on the same day, leaving women to assume the roles previously held by men who were no longer alive. The many deaths in the chain of command for the United States government left Senator Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane) in charge. That very same day Agent 355 (Ashley Romans) was sent out on her first day to guard the president, and when the chain of command changed, she informed President Brown that she was at the service of whatever sitting president.
There was chaos everywhere caused by the instantaneous death of men such as planes falling from the sky and mass casualty car pileups, which also killed many women. All normal operations had gone offline, including power, and those left in the cities began to protest and riot in an effort to gain answers to what had happened thinking somehow the government was involved. President Brown gathered a team of dedicated women and setup to get some basic resources online while also try to find the cause and deal with the outcome of this cataclysmic event.
President Brown had a daughter named Hero (Olivia Thirlby) who she had strained relations with and was a paramedic in New York. Hero was traveling on foot with her friend Sam (Elliot Fletcher), who was transgender and experiencing prejudice due to looking like a man. Hero refused to reach out to her mother for any assistance, and had not even contacted her since the event. President Brown sent Agent 355 to retrieve Hero and bring her back to the White House.
When Agent 355 returned she didn’t have Hero, but did have Yorick (Ben Schnetzer), President Brown’s son, which seemed impossible as it was believed that all mammals with a Y chromosome on the planet had died. Yorick also had his pet Capuchin monkey Ampersand with him, which also seemed miraculous as he was also male. Though President Brown was overjoyed to see her son, the situation presented a huge number of issues, including some believing it could be used as validation for the public’s conspiracy theories regarding government involvement in the event.
Agent 355 convinced President Brown that it was too dangerous for her son to be discovered there, and agreed to secretly get him to a geneticist and cloning expert Dr. Allison Mann (Diana Bang) in Boston who they believed could shed some light on why Yorick and Ampersand were still alive. Unfortunately the only lab that had what Dr. Mann needed was in San Francisco.
While this was happening it was discovered that former cabinet secretary Regina Oliver was alive in Israel, having been injured and in a coma since the event. She of course was looking to return to run the country rightfully in the line of succession, and had very conservative views similar to those of the recently deceased president and in direct opposition to those of President Brown.
Season 1: 9 – 50min episodes
