Y: The Last Man review, Episode 7: “My Mother Saw a Monkey”
By now you’d think that things would be getting a bit easier for Yorick and company as they trek across the country in Y: The Last Man, but in “My Mother Saw a Monkey” things continue to fall apart for everyone in this crazy apocalypse.
For some strange reason, Agent 355 was allowed to drive a camper while Yorick and Allison chatted in the back. She falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into a tree, and they’re captured by a bunch of women who were formerly incarcerated before the world fell apart. And they know Yorick is a man.
At the Pentagon, Kimberly continues to gather information because she knows something isn’t right. When the soldiers who went after Agent 355 return and report that there was someone with her with a monkey, it gets back to the first lady, who realizes that she wasn’t hallucinating when she saw Yorick in the hallway.
Beth shows up at the Pentagon hoping to see Jennifer and possibly Hero. She’s in the war room when the first lady bursts in and accuses Jennifer of gaslighting her about what she saw.
In other words, it’s all unraveling very quickly.
The wheels are coming off in Y: The Last Man Episode 7
It’s interesting that the women from the prison are living the utopian life on a farm while the former cop is holing up in a Costco, stoking the anti-male sentiment among her followers. The prisoners have a very different outlook on life and how to do things, and their nonchalance is kind of refreshing. They’ve found a way to have electricity (and toast!) and they’re living a good life while so much of the world has collapsed.
In last week’s episode, Yorick thought Agent 355 was simply sleepwalking, but clearly there’s something far more serious happening because after the accident she starts having hallucinations about a car crash long ago when her parents were killed. Since she’s the one in charge of the mission, it’s troubling that she’s not thinking clearly, especially knowing that she hasn’t communicated their whereabouts to the President.
And as if there wasn’t enough happening, at the end of the episode two things happen that will have major bearings on the rest of the season. The first lady, having been vindicated about what she saw, takes her own life. Kimberly finds the note she left behind and starts screaming in the hallway. Kimberly was a big threat before and she’s an even bigger threat now.
In the final moments we see Beth as she leaves the Pentagon. She goes outside, past the protestors, and gets into a van filled with a group of rebels like the ones Yorick encountered in Boston. They wanted to know what was happening on the inside, and Beth was investigating for them. Beth reports that it won’t take much for the Pentagon to fall apart.
Y: The Last Man needs to explain itself
Things just keep getting worse and worse and worse. At some point, the show needs to slow down and address what’s actually happening because it’s very unbalanced. Some people are doing okay while others aren’t. What are the protestors after and why isn’t more being done to address their concerns? What are we getting at with this story?
Don’t get me wrong, I find Y: The Last Man to be an entertaining and a faithful adaptation of the comic. But I don’t want to arrive at the end of the season only to find that there are no answers to these questions. There’s a lot happening and the list of problems only seems to keep growing.
I love a good dystopian story as much as the next person, but after years of wishing I knew more about what happened to cause the undead to rise up on The Walking Dead, I’m hoping that Y: The Last Man doesn’t leave too much more to the imagination.
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