(This review contains spoilers. Also, too many instances of the name “Phil Miller.” Having two characters with the exact same name makes writing hard!)

I wrote about The Last Man on Earth roughly halfway through its season in my “Deep End” section, which you can read here. At the time, the show’s success or failure was still in question, as it was changing its status quo on a near-weekly basis. Now that the season is complete, it is a little easier to put everything into perspective. The Last Man on Earth may have been built on a high concept (the extinction of the majority of life on Earth), but it ultimately settled for a pretty standard premise.

While many praised the early episodes of the series, focused on Will’s isolation and his forced relationship with Carol, the season started to derail around the time the character of Melissa showed up. From that point on, every episode could be summed up by saying “Phil wants to have sex with _______, but _______ is getting in his way.”

To be fair, they played around with the blanks in that sentence quite a lot. First it was “Melissa” and “Carol,” then “Melissa” and “Todd,” then “Erica and Gail” and “everyone else,” then “Erica and Gail” and “Carol,” then “Erica and Gail” and “Phil”, then “Carol” and “Phil,” but really, it was the same damn story, over and over again.

It’s sort of a shame, because The Last Man on Earth has a lot going for it. First, the cast is excellent. Will Forte, Kristen Schaal, January Jones, Mel Rodriguez, Mary Steenburgen, Cleopatra Coleman, and Boris Kodjoe are all extremely talented, but only a few are given enough material to work with. Forte is strong throughout, but starts to feel a bit static once he settles into the role of the villain of his own show. Kristen Schaal is a delight from start to finish, Mel Rodriguez is given more shading than I initially expected, and Mary Steenburgen is fantastic with even the smallest amount of material. But ultimately, the framework of the season, which was constantly introducing new characters, meant that most of them were short-changed. Jones was never given any real comic material to work with, Steenburgen and Coleman might as well not have existed once Phil Miller (not “Tandy”) settled with Carol, and Kodjoe’s character felt like a slave to the narrative rather than a complete human being.

The joke writing is quite strong. Even when repeating similar stories or writing Forte’s Phil “Tandy” Miller as a bit too much of a villain, this is a funny show. Phil, Carol, and eventually Todd are all specific and interesting enough to serve as sources of humor, and the apocalyptic scenario leads to some good gags (dinosaur skulls on kitchen tables, Monet paintings in suburban houses) that could not be done on other shows.

The end of the season is both a strength and a weakness. After Boris Kodjoe’s Phil Miller leaves Phil “Tandy” Miller to die in the desert, Carol goes to join him. Forte’s Phil Miller sings Carol a sweet song he wrote for her, and Carol justifies her decision to leave the other Phil Miller because of him being capable of murder. The problem is that, despite spending a full season with Forte’s character, he has never really done anything worthy of Carol’s care and devotion. That he tried to kill Todd but couldn’t go through with it is a pretty weak justification for hanging onto him.

And yet, Carol’s decision theoretically reboots the show to its strongest period, and shifts the dynamics enough that it could lead to a better second season. Phil and Carol both care for each other now, and have a reason to stick together. The writers (including new showrunner Dan Sterling, who is hopping on to alleviate some of Will Forte’s pressure in running/writing/producing/starring in his own show) have an opportunity for a fresh start, should they choose to take it. There are enough strong points in The Last Man on Earth that, with a little re-configuring, it could be great.