By Eric Goldman
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
“Crickets” was decent, though not quire as strong as Last Man on Earth has been the past few weeks since Season 2 began.
There were moments that stood out, but some of them felt like they could have used some elaboration. For instance, Erica’s probably the least defined of the characters, so her issues with Carol was a good way to give her a bit more of a spotlight – and it was certainly nice to see how she ended up handling things with Phil, noting his flirting with Carol was making both Erica and Carol too uncomfortable (having realized it wasn’t right to be angry at Carol about it).
But just a bit more time with her could have shown her point of view better leading into that scene with Phil, beyond simply seeing her scowling at Carol as much as we did – though I did enjoy Carol and Melissa bonding over horrible puns about Erica’s eye rolls.
As for the central plotline of Tandy discovering Todd’s bacon stash, it was a funny idea – and certainly it was very fun both how Tandy finding the bacon played like a horror movie and the “bacon porn” that followed as he and Todd ate together, most notably the choir music playing when Tandy first ate some of the bacon. And beyond the basic logic issue (no one came looking for Todd and Tandy during these times? It seemed anyone could have found them quite easily), it was nice to see Tandy at least get Todd back in his good graces.
I do wish we’d seen signs of anything on Todd’s end, before the Tandy tried to take the fall for Todd, to indicate it wasn’t “just about the bacon” as Todd insisted, but certainly Todd had to have been struck by how far Tandy was swilling to go to save him – and one of the funniest moments of the episode involved Tandy declaring he pulled a gun on Todd, because “you guys know I do that from time to time.”
As for the episode’s title, Carol’s attempts to turn crickets into food was amusing, if not hysterical, in its straight up grossness – though the running gag of her being nauseated by the sight of blood felt fairly mundane.
“Crickets” offered a bit of a one step forward, one step back situation for Tandy, who got one more person back on his side, but had to get locked up again in the process. The moments with Erica meanwhile served as a reminder that it’s probably time we get to know some of the supporting characters better than we have up until now.
