Ties hang like gallows from railings, black leather shoes stand like tombstones between candles: in the comic film adaptation of “Y: The Last Man” all men were canceled. Every living being with the Y chromosome covered in blood collapsed in an unknown catastrophe. What remains are the women and a single man who for some inexplicable reason did not have to die: Yorick Brown, hobby magician, dreamer and good-for-nothing, who now roams the emasculated world with his trained monkey. Could have ended worse with the last man on earth.
The makers have decided they’d rather not dare
Billions of women, a single man and, yes, the survival of the human species must be ensured: “Y” would offer the potential for an exciting sociological thought experiment. Or for some soft porn. The creators have decided, at least in the first episodes, not to dare to dare. The series looks like archival footage from “House of Cards” and “The Walking Dead” has been edited together. People in suits and uniforms discuss serious matters in underground command centers, camouflage is the color of the season. It is very important who has what to do with whom. Everyone who doesn’t work in the command center has a nice big house somewhere on the east coast. At Disney one seems to be calculating with the recognition value of these pictures.
The figures for this look as exaggerated as the scenario: a black agent who fights terrorists using terrorist methods, a mentally unstable paramedic who has a relationship with her married colleague (yes, they have sex in the ambulance), a disbanded staff member who, after the Death of the Chauvi President is no longer really needed. In the first episodes, the series manages to ask all uninteresting questions with this wild mix of characters: How do you keep the electricity running? Who has to clean up? And where is Yorick’s monkey anyway?
“Y” degrades your own scenario to a backdrop
The more exciting questions were well hidden: Professions such as engineer, soldier or pilot are mainly carried out by men, why exactly? What made all men die? And is all of this feminist somehow now? However, the series does not dare to pursue the premise it has set for itself of a half-depopulated world now ruled by women, but instead falls into familiar narrative patterns of the same (family) conflicts, loosened up with a little slapstick. “Y” misses the much-cited role models, “House of Cards” and “The Walking Dead”, which also worked so well because they developed their plot from the narrated world and did not simply put a scheme over the chic images. “Y”, on the other hand, degrades your own scenario to a backdrop. Why do a series in an almost purely female world that doesn’t stand out in anything but the majority of actresses? At least that could be turned in a positive way: Maybe men and women aren’t all that different after all.
Y: The Last Man, new episodes on Wednesdays, on Disney +