The Last Man on Earth recap: Fish in the Dish

Part of the reason Carol and Phil — or Tandy, as she still affectionately calls him despite the fact that the second Phil is long gone — wed in the first place was so they could have sex and make babies to begin the process of repopulating the earth. Two seasons in, and nothing has happened so far — and there’s a reason for that: Phil is sterile.

It all begins when Carol tells Phil, “I need you to masturbate.” She’s picked up a whole bunch of male fertility tests from the store and wants him to test his sperm to see what’s taking so long. He obliges, but when Carol finds him sprawled on the bed with a spread of porn magazines, she says she’d prefer he accomplish the task with the help of a book of drawings she made. These drawings, she promises, are full of “highly erotic women.” Once they open it up, though, Phil discovers pictures of “a sexy CEO,” “a sexy lady judge,” and the first female president with her female partner by her side. None of them are dressed, uh, provocatively. None of them seem to excite Phil the way he would like them to.

This isn’t all Carol prepared for Phil’s session: She then takes him to what she dubs the Masturbatorium, a section of the house filled with even more drawings of strong females (this time they are real-life women like Amelia Earhart and Condoleezza Rice​) and, confusingly, a collage of baby photos to “keep your eye on the prize.” Oh, Carol, sweet Carol. A Masturbatorium is no place for baby photos!

Despite the less-than-ideal environment, Phil gets the job done only to test the semen and find out that his sperm count is…nonexistent. They test it again and again until finally they decide to test some of Todd’s to see if maybe the tests are just old and malfunctioning. Nope. Todd’s comes back positive, and Phil momentarily returns to his Old Phil tendencies and lies to Carol, telling her that he’s not sterile, after all, and here’s the test to prove it. But then Carol starts poking herself with too-thick needles in an attempt to do some acupuncture because she thinks she’s the problem now (apparently acupuncture helps with fertility?), and Phil starts to feel guilty.

WANT MORE? Keep up with all the latest from last night’s television by subscribing to our newsletter. Head here for more details.

Also feeling guilty: Todd. He’s been sleeping with Melissa and Gail, and each time he tries to tell them what’s going on, he finds himself back in bed. His confidence is so through the roof that he later kisses Erica — after she says that Phil (the dead one) wanted Todd to act as the baby’s father once it arrived in the world. Wonder if Phil would still be such a fan of Todd after this?

Eventually, Todd tells all the ladies what’s been going on, and they, understandably, don’t react well. Instead of just letting them process the news, though, Todd basically proposes that they try out polyamory. If their world ever gets enough people to start up television again, Todd should totally be the next Bachelor star.

After Todd breaks this news, Phil admits to Carol that he’s sterile. It’s strange that he chose to do this in front of everyone else, especially because he’s still in the process of trying to win them all back and revealing that he lied to his wife isn’t the way to do that, but it ends up being okay because there’s a pretty huge distraction when Carol spots Mike, Phil’s brother, jogging down the beach toward them. She probably doesn’t realize it’s Mike — he’s fairly far away, and she’s likely only seen that one photo of him — but Phil does and begins running toward his long lost brother. Once they finally meet, he greets Mike the only way he knows how: with a punch to the nuts. D’awww.