Sweet Tooth “The Ballad Of The Last Men”

This is the last episode of the season, and it’s a good reminder that for all this show has a fairy tale feel to it, it can get dark when it wants to.

Case in point:  Dr. Singh tries to kill himself by sitting in an enclosed room with those poisonous flowers.  It’s dark, kinda scary, and incredibly effective.  Even moreso when the reveal of what saved him pops up:  the Animal Army and the Last Men fighting outside the room broke the window and let fresh air in.

So, the Animal Army wasn’t completely useless.  They did take out quite a number of the Last Men in a fight.  They just all died in the process.  That fits.  It also means the Last Men invading Yellowstone is a much smaller, more manageable group, one that Gus, Aimee, and Big Man can take out.  There’s a tragic and somewhat predictable end to General Abbot’s kindhearted brother Johnny, and a set-up for what looks like an even nastier villain for the final season in Rosalind Chao’s Mrs. Zhang.

In the meantime, a booby-trapped Yellowstone means most of the Last Men are taken down one by one, and this isn’t the sort of show where these guys are allowed to live.  Bear takes on Abbot’s female assistant after confessing to Pigtail that they’re sisters and saved the other kids, and then there’s Abbot, a guy who gets beat on by the Big Man before pulling out a sneak attack to get by, gets smacked around a bit by a desperate, dying Aimee, and finally, looks like he’s going to kill Gus.

Then Gus apparently summons a herd of bison to run the guy over while leaving Gus unscratched.  An arrow to the back from Abbot’s crossbow is there to make the audience think Gus died when the next cut is to a funeral, but it’s for Aimee because the Sick kills some people faster than others, I suppose.

The narrator does tell us this is the end of the Last Men, that Gus and Dr. Singh have a destiny of some kind that will change the world, and so forth.  Gus has a destination in mind, a place where Birdie probably is, and he has Big Man, Bear, and Pigtail for company.  Singh has hope, his (ex?) wife Rani looks happy on her end, and Zhang has something viscous in a cage that eats raw meat.  Whatever’s coming next, I am looking forward to it.

But wait, what now?  So many of the shows I set up for Tuesdays have come out.  Good Omens, Jack Ryan, Black Mirror, and The Wheel of Time all came back.  But for now, I need something a little shorter to help me catch up since I’ve fallen a bit behind in my general posting rate.  Besides, I think I’ll go from one delightful thing to another with Only Murders in the Building.

OK, there’s homicide and all, but there’s actually a smaller body count than Sweet Tooth has had.