The Last Man on Earth 4×10: “Paint Misbehavin’” Review

Tandy and Todd arrive home and ask the ladies if they had any luck finding Jasper. When they say they didn’t, Tandy says that he and Todd had luck, and asks them to follow him. Tandy pulls back a curtain and Karl jumps out to scare them. Tandy pulls out a gun and shoots Karl a ridiculous amount of times before Karl drops to the floor. He pops up and says “Hi, I’m Karl,” and Tandy reveals that they were just blanks. He tells the ladies that they found Karl while they were looking for Jasper, whom they did not find.

Getting to know more about Karl, Tandy asks how Karl was trapped in the prison for all of those years when he’s a guard and guards have keys. (Icymi: Karl was not a guard. He was a cannibalistic serial killer.) Karl says the prison was mostly code-based and that his co-workers often called him ‘The Code Forgetter.’ He claims that he was stuck in the prison with a serial killer. He tells the story about becoming friends with the serial killer, which is the closest thing to the truth he’s said all night. Because he’s a lying weirdo, Karl emphasizes that he is strongly against “people-eating.” When Melissa points out how much he’s emphasizing that point, he says that they used to call him ‘The Point Emphasizer.’ Gail says that he must be pretty forgiving to have befriended a cannibal, and Karl says that’s why they called him ‘The Everyone Forgiver.’ Erica’s points out that that’s a lot of nicknames, and Karl says they used to call him ‘The Nickname Accumulator.’ He takes this moment to head off to bed.

In the morning, Karl walks into the house and says something smells delicious. Gail says he must be smelling something else because she just burned her hair and finger on her curling iron. (Get it? Burned flesh smells delicious to him because he likes cooking and eating flesh.) He fakes disgust poorly, but it goes unnoticed. Gail, remembering that Karl used to paint, asks if he’d consider painting a portrait of her as a present for Erica’s birthday. He responds that he doesn’t paint anymore, and advises Gail to ice her burn instead of the bandaid she’s currently putting on. She throws the bandaid away and Karl looks at it longingly. He’s trying to behave as a non-people-eater and doesn’t want to risk his last chance at human companionship.

Karl sits at a piano crying over his struggle to stay on his human-free diet. Tandy walks in and Karl instantly starts spewing more lies, saying he met his wife at a dueling piano bar. Tandy asked if he plays, and Karl says he played semi professionally. He plays a horrendous, lengthy rendition of Benny and the Jets. When he’s done, he gets up and walks away, leaving Tandy with a skeptical stare.

Todd, Erica and Carol gear up to search for Jasper, but Melissa suggests that they leave him be. Todd thinks that’s unacceptable, but Melissa points out that Jasper survived on his own for years before finding the group, so he’ll be fine. If they bring him home, they’ll just ground him for running away, and then he’ll run away again. No one agrees with Melissa, and they head out.

Karl creeps around like a creep until he gets to Gail’s trash can with Gail’s bandaid. Tandy catches him once he’s rifling through the garbage. Karl claims he was going to take the trash out ‘because it’s full.’ Tandy doesn’t buy this excuse and tells Karl that ‘something’s a little weird about you.’ Karl says that that’s because he was trapped in the jail for six years. Tandy thinks he’s found valuable information in Karl’s mixup, seeing as the virus struck only four years ago. Karl insists that the mixup was because it felt like six years.

Tandy tells the rest of the group that Karl is weird and shows them the notes he took about the situation. (It just says ‘TRASH!!! ‘) (Also, it’s important to note that Tandy is referring to Karl as ‘gal’ and ‘chick’ because in Gender Friender, Tandy swore he would use female nouns instead of the typical ‘Hey guys!’ etc.) Erica thinks Karl was just being a good housemate, and Gail remarks that if Tandy doesn’t like Karl, it probably means Karl is a good guy, since Tandy has been wrong about his initial opinion of every person they’ve met so far. Carol asks her husband to just give Karl a chance.

Tandy seed Karl taking a sip of tea and tries to make conversation. With the way Tandy treated him the last time they interacted, Karl is overly defensive. Tandy says that whenever Karl is ready to become friends, so is he. He walks away and Karl gets back to his tea. Tandy turns back and sees Karl pull a bandaid out of the tea and start sucking on it.

Karl sees Gail treating her burn with an ice cube and suggests that she get a fresh ice cube. Once she hands over the used one, Karl slurps it down. He tells Gail that he’s ready to paint again.

Melissa drives to an unknown location and drops off a cooler. Once she drives away, Jasper comes out and wheels the cooler off.

Tandy brings lunch to Todd, and it’s a plate of used bandaids. Todd is disgusted so Tandy takes the platter for himself and digs in. He asks Todd why he doesn’t like eating bandaids, and Todd says ‘because it’s disgusting and weird!’ Tandy says he’s confused because he just saw the ‘fully normal Karl’ chewing on a used bandaid.

While painting Gail, Karl asks if she told anyone that she was out here doing this. She says that no one can keep a secret, so she didn’t tell anyone. Karl pulls out a knife behind the easel, but then puts it down and rushes out of the room. Gail walks over and looks at the terrible painting. Tandy and Todd come in looking for Karl, and Gail points in the direction that Karl went.

Karl drives down the road, talking to himself about how there has to be another way than eating his new friends. Little does he know, Tandy and Todd followed him. Karl comes by a cemetery and has an idea. Tandy and Todd watch as Karl digs up a grave. Through binoculars, they see Karl rip a chunk off of a corpse and eat it, thoroughly horrified.

Ahhhhhh! What’s going to happen next?? Tune in to The Last Man on Earth Fridays on FOX!