Neil
Episode 3 of Y: The Last Man begins with Nora and Mackenzie returning to a house they’ve been sharing with a few other families. With food running out and snowmelt running low, there’s a tough choice to make. This tough choice sees Nora and Mackenzie left behind. With Agent 355 holding down the fort with her helicopter pilots, Yorick’s presence is being kept hush hush for the time being. Only, how long can you keep something like this a secret? That’s immediately tested when Yorick goes hunting for Amp, who’s gone on the run. As the camera cycles through the corridors, it seems the TVs are still working as Marla is still up, watching old reruns. She notices the shadows out in the hallway and decides to go on the hunt. Anyway, Yorick finds his monkey but also comes face to face with Marla too. Jennifer shows up with Agent 355, feigning ignorance and claiming there’s no one there and that she’s imagining all of this. In the morning, Jennifer is concerned over the CCTV footage but 355 reassures her that everything is okay. What’s not okay though is Yorick and his presence inside the building. There could well be a massive incident on their hands if they’re not careful, with Agent 355 mentioning a similar situation in Russia that got completely out of hand. Now, given there’s apparently a food shortage, there’s not actually any shortage inside the makeshift government building. Yorick wolfs down a massive load of spaghetti, which he eventually throws up later in the episode. This is singlehandedly the most frustrating part of the episode. There are women struggling and dying outside of starvation, yet this joker eats more than his fair share without batting an eyelid. And then throws up. Anyway, Jennifer learns there’s another big issue on the table. Away from the floods in NYC, there’s a nuclear power plant crisis that needs to be dealt with. Given the lack of organized personnel with credentials able to handle this, she calls on her staff to enlist the aid of Dr. Sharon Jacobs. That’s easier said than done though as it turns out Dr Jacobs has abandoned her post thanks to grief over her sons’ deaths. In Tel Aviv, a woman named Regina awakens and she happens to be the next in line to be president. This certainly throws a massive spanner in the works for Jennifer, who so far has been leading the charge relatively well. Another coup comes in the form of Kimberly, who sweettalks Agent 355 while she’s looking into details surrounding a geneticist to handle Yorick’s presence. 355 wisely keeps the forms hidden, and smiles weakly at the prospect of a card game later that day. Kimberly doesn’t stop there though. In fact, she ends up attending a children’s center where the wife of a deceased politician happens to be. Kim asks for her support “if the time comes”, reinforcing that we could well be looking at a coup for the presidency position. With Nora and Mackenzie on their own, Kenzie ends up hurt while trying to ward crows off the wrapped bodies of her father and brother. It’s an upsetting moment, and one that eventually sees Nora dig a grave and bury the pair in the garden. Meanwhile, Agent 355 and the others decide to cart Yorick off to see Dr Mann. It’s an ironic name of course, given the circumstances, but Yorick has a condition before he goes – he wants Jennifer to find Beth no matter what. However, Jennifer is concerned given the Regina situation on her hands. The woman is completely unfit for service and even claimed once that “Jesus wasn’t vaccinated”. The group are all in agreement that she can’t be president, with her cabinet standing by Jen’s side. Unfortunately, Kimberly is against her. She believes that her and the other ladies are being squeezed out. Everything looks set to explode at any moment but thankfully the situation is diffused with some petty name-calling and huffy walkouts. Yorick being in the Pentagon isn’t exactly going to help and could well swing the balance of power away from their family. After convincing the pilots to follow suit, Agent 355 promises to stay dark and keep Yorick safe. He’s snuck out in a laundry basket and taken to the helicopter with the two pilots. Yorick and the gang fly two separate helicopters but as one of them plunges out the air and explodes in a fireball on the ground, Agent 355 doesn’t even blink as she tells the boy they “keep going”. While they leave, Jennifer manages to convince Sharon to help out with the nuclear incident, allowing everyone to breathe a sigh of relief. Caught in her own grief-stricken state, Jennifer checks out the wall of male victims after. Kimberly joins her though and holds her hand. Only, she mentions Yorick and brings up how strange it is that Marla conjured up an image of Yorick wandering the hallways, of all people. Uh oh…
The Episode Review
So it seems like Agent 355 has killed these two women in cold blood to keep Yorick’s identity a secret. While that seems like a sound plan, it may not be enough. As we see from this episode, Kimberly is about ready to make a power play and I’d imagine we’ll see her leak details of Yorick being alive, possibly after checking the CCTV cameras. After all, Agent 355’s comments about the cameras being “unmanned” is enough to see this as a light bite of foreshadowing for the future episodes. However, we could also see Kimberly team up with Regina too, especially as this absolutely crazy politician is technically next in line to take over. Either way, it spells big trouble for our main players. There’s a lot of moving parts in this and the actual post-apocalyptic issues have been largely brushed over, which is a shame. Now, I don’t know how the graphic novel handles this but given the 63 day time jump, we’ve seen nothing about how people have survived beyond thin snippets that the class divides are still in place. While Yorick wolfs down mountains of spaghetti that these officials seem to have in abundance, people outside in the city are starving. Why not quell the masses by dishing out food? How do they have enough numbers to man tanks and have officers on the ground? Despite some obvious qualms though, the ending to this episode hints that we’ve got lots more intriguing plot points for the future to ponder over. Y: The Last Man isn’t perfect but there’s enough moving parts in this to make for an interesting post-apocalyptic romp nonetheless.
