Last Man On Earth recap: Season 3, Episode 5

After all these survivors have been through, they could use a win (or several). And they finally get one in this episode, when they enter the lit-up building they stumbled upon last week and find it has electricity, flushable toilets, and frozen pizza. Civilization!

As it turns out, this structure is a self-sustaining office building that looks like it was intended to house a Google-style company, but the virus apparently hit before anyone could move in. This means there’s plenty of space, enough for everyone to have their own area — kind of.

There are five floors. Tandy and Carol call the bottom, Erica gets the second, Lewis gets floor three, and Gail calls four. But then Todd jumps in and volunteers to bunk in four, too…before Gail very strongly hints she wants to be alone. Let’s not forget that just an episode ago, Gail was ready to ditch everyone and live in complete solitude. Despite this, Todd still seems shocked Gail wouldn’t want to live with him and tries to act cool by saying he’ll just stay with Melissa on the top floor. No big deal!

Except it is a big deal. Later, as Todd showers underneath a fire sprinkler (that he set off by lighting a torch directly underneath — innovative!), Gail breaks up with him, saying she’s ready to be alone again and he’s better off with Melissa — someone he has a real connection with. Todd is visibly crushed, and so he does what anyone would do in that situation: Go to his other girlfriend for solace. Too bad his other girlfriend is Melissa, who’s busy shooting up office chairs.

Back to the frozen pizzas: Everyone’s basking in the power of having electricity when it goes out…with only three minutes left until said frozen pizzas are done cooking. Forget about the deaths of Gordon and Phil and whomever Jon Hamm played; this is real tragedy. Despite this, Tandy’s still all about staying in the office building for good. Carol isn’t, though she tries to hide it at first.

NEXT: Tandy starts a beef with the wrong person

Thankfully, Tandy fixes the electricity the next day, and everyone is able to resume flushing their toilets and using blenders to make frozen margaritas. But in place of the electricity, other things start going wrong. An elaborate and heavy piece of art falls from the ceiling, nearly crushing Carol. The water stops running mid-sprinkler shower. Tandy accuses Lewis (poor Lewis) of being behind all this, because Lewis had recently expressed hesitation about moving into a sterile office building — so that obviously means he would nearly kill Carol in an attempt to prove they needed to find some new digs. But nope: Carol’s the one who’s been sabotaging the building, and Tandy finds out right as he’s trying to kick Lewis out. Again, poor Lewis!

Carol has good reason — or at least, sentimental reason — though. She tells Tandy she always pictured raising her family in a little house with a white picket fence, in a home that felt like home. A five-floor office building doesn’t exactly evoke that feeling she’s looking for, but she also realizes her fantasy is unrealistic. “Wherever you are is the perfect home,” she sweetly tells Tandy. Aww. Regular Jim and Pam over here!

Carol fesses up to the group that she’s the one who’s been messing with everything, and they’re pretty cool about it. She, however, insists on punishment — they are, as she says, “a society” — so off she heads to the stocks. Her punishment isn’t too bad, though: Later, Tandy wheels her to an area and reveals a tiny house with a yard made of AstroTurf and, yes, a white picket fence. Who knew Tandy would turn out to be one of TV’s greatest husbands?

And on that note, who knew Melissa would turn out to be one of Last Man on Earth‘s most, uh, surprising characters? At the end of the episode, Todd finds her shirtless in the yard. When he asks why she’s topless, she points to a pile of burning shirts she decided to set on fire just because. It’s important to note she’s creepily smiling bigger than she’s smiled in episodes as she explains this. Then it gets weirder: She, still smiling, tells Todd she’s finally ready to have a baby…in a moment straight out of a horror movie. Judging by Todd’s face, he is definitely not ready to have a baby — at least not with gun-toting, shirt-burning Melissa. Now he just has to tell her that, preferably when she’s away from guns, fire, axes, knives…

Episode grade: B