Y: The Last Man -- "The Day Before” - Episode 101 -- On the eve of the worst crisis in human history, Congresswoman Jennifer Brown clashes with the President. Her children Yorick and Hero reach an emotional crossroad. None of them know their lives are about to change forever. Yorick (Ben Schnetzer) shown. (Photo by: Rafy Winterfeld/FX)

(This is a review based on the first three episodes of FX’s Y:The Last Man streaming exclusively on Hulu with new episodes premiering Mondays.)

Y: The Last Man was DC Comics/Vertigo’s savior in a time where the imprint had very few new IP that lasted more than a few issues. The landmark series written by Brian K. Vaughan (Saga, Paper Girls) and illustrated by Pia Guerra examined the idea of who we could be at the end of the world. A slacker street magician named Yorrick Brown becomes humanity’s last hope, love is an idea that exists only at the moment, feminism, transgender identity; all these were concepts the comics series explored. The FX television adaptation created by Eliza Clark tries to take a tight nucleus and make the audience care about every molecule in the story.

If you’ve ever read the comics, you’ll likely be giving the show a chance. What’s in it for someone who knows how this all ends and the surprises? Basically the American version of George Lucas trade dispute. Eliza Clark tries to modernize some of the points in the material by adding new characters such as a Megan McCain allegory and a transgender friend character to Yorrick’s sister Hero. Mostly the show follows the broad beats of the comics but its largest differentiation is in the character circle. While the comics focused almost exclusively on Yorrick and his bodyguard Agent 355; the first three episodes of the series open the net so wide that people new to the material potentially see Yorrick not as the hope of an androcided species but just background. We’re supposed to be invested in the political drama of Diane Lane’s character being usurped by the wives and daughters of dead republicans. It just becomes a layer that’s too close to real-life ick.

At its core, you can still see the base premise. Everything with a Y chromosome is dead and one male magician with a monkey takes off in search of his girlfriend while trying to get to the only lab that can test him. There’s just such a disconnect in the purpose of the series. We should feel the plight of the women left to run or ruin the world but we don’t. Much of the good stuff is just passing dialogue. What are the women of earth going to do when their power plants are about to go dark? How will the radicalized women protesting react or turn into amazons?

I won’t even dive into how miscast the title character is or how the entire series is carried performance-wise by Diane Lane and Ashley Romans.

Y: The Last Man — “The Day Before” – Episode 101 — On the eve of the worst crisis in human history, Congresswoman Jennifer Brown clashes with the President. Her children Yorick and Hero reach an emotional crossroad. None of them know their lives are about to change forever. Agent 355 (Ashley Romans), shown. (Photo by: Rafy Winterfeld/FX)

Y: The Last Man has the unfortunate luck of bad timing. In order to fill 50 minutes of weekly television, the material needed more padding but this show needs to find more balance with the dystopian fantasy the comics created. In 2021, this show doesn’t feel like a much-needed escape from the political hog dick of the current real-world health crisis. I really wanted to like this show and hoped whatever changes from the material would be more tangential in the way AMC’s The Walking Dead is. Instead, what we get is Y: The West Wing Apocalypse.