Summary
Earth Abides finally introduces some conflict in Episodes 4 & 5, but also becomes much stupider as a result.
Earth Abides Episodes 4 and 5 aired together, and I can see why. In many ways, this double-bill is a two-part lesson in why you shouldn’t see the best in people, which is the mistake that all of the survivors in this show have been getting away with constantly. That lack of friction made previous episodes feel much too convenient and idealistic, so I respect “Predators” and “The Return” for introducing some real conflict. The problem is that this results in the stupidest two episodes of television in recent memory.
We’re, like, 14 years into the apocalypse at this point, by the way. I’ve mentioned this already but this show is really bad at depicting the passage of time. I’d genuinely lost count of how many kids each couple had. It was a bit of a mess. Luckily, Episodes 4 & 5 don’t really do the time-skipping thing very much, instead revolving around a narrow slice of drama, most of it concerning the introduction of another new group that turns out to be less ideal than the last one by quite a margin.
This Show Has No Idea What It’s Doing
We’ll get to the meaningful conflict in a minute since there’s a fair amount of dopey silliness to deal with in the meantime. And this is the stuff that makes me feel like Earth Abides doesn’t really have any idea what it’s doing, at least when it comes to crafting a coherent narrative and dragging audiences along with it in a way that makes sense and is satisfying.
For instance, the previous episode ended with Ish being attacked by a mountain lion. He survives this, albeit with some bad injuries, and is nursed back to health by Molly, who admits that she was never a real doctor in the first place and just kind of adopted a fake-it-until-you-make-it attitude. Which is fine in theory, but it doesn’t amount to anything since she’s a good enough doctor to patch Ish up and save his life. He ends up being fine.
There’s another brief sequence where Emma takes revenge on the mountain lion, but then we skip time again. So the moral underpinnings of this, not to mention the logistics of Ish’s recovery, are all just skipped right over. And then we’re expected to accept, more or less out of nowhere, that Heather and Raif are so sick of being confined to San Lupo that they want to leave and go exploring, and Ish and Emma allow this after chewing it over for about five minutes. This is where the show’s time-skipping structure really hurts it. There’s just far too much material to adapt in six episodes.
Water Sports
Anyway, the main problem in Earth Abides Episode 4, and part of Episode 5, is water. San Francisco is drying up at an alarming clip and they need to find a new water source before they all dehydrate. Luckily, Charlie and a convoy of other survivors arrive with the right equipment to drill for water, and so are enthusiastically welcomed into the community despite the fact that Charlie is obviously a nutcase.
We’ve been through all this before. In previous episodes Ish’s suspicions were later revealed to be unfounded, so Emma reminds him of that constantly whenever he gets a funny feeling about Charlie. But it’s clear from the jump that this guy is too handsome and charismatic to be trusted. He says weird Darwinian stuff about how the strong survive and the weak are wiped out, he’s covered in scars, and he starts being all macho in front of Ish’s kids to undermine him.
I think we’re supposed to feel like the group’s desperation for water has made them complacent, but this doesn’t work very well since Charlie turned up randomly like two seconds after they discovered the water issue, so nobody had the chance to get thirsty. So nothing about the climactic scenes of striking liquid gold with the drill – while everyone sings Oasis’s “Don’t Look Back In Anger” – really takes.
Aaron Tveit in Earth Abides | Image via MGM+
Charlie Is Dealt With
It was obvious that Charlie wasn’t going to move on as promised once the water was discovered. But he tips his hand so quickly that it borders on ridiculous. After a celebratory evening, he rapes Evie with no subtlety whatsoever. He’s so blasé about it that he must just assume that because he saved the community’s water supply, they’ll allow him to do whatever he wants.
This is such a lurch that it feels cheap. Charlie goes from charismatic and charming but obviously villainous to cartoonishly evil in about five minutes. The rest of the San Lupo group assembles to discuss what is to be done about this, and it’s eventually decided that Charlie must be killed. It’s Emma who’s most sure about the idea, but everyone comes around eventually, which to be fair is understandable. The pushback, which comes almost exclusively from Jorge, rings really false.
Nowhere near enough is made of how adamant Emma was about trusting Charlie in the first place. She shoulders zero responsibility for that. And it’s Ish who ultimately kills Charlie by beating him to death with a hammer, which apparently goes largely unnoticed by Charlie’s crew and the kids, despite it being really obvious. There are multiple guns in the camp – why not just shoot him? I’ll tell you why. It’s because a violent death like that creates more internal moral conflict for Ish. There’s no other reason.
In the aftermath of this, most of Charlie’s group is allowed to stay in San Lupo, which is nuts, and we’re supposed to entertain the preposterous notion that Alex is really angry with his dad for killing cool Charlie because Ish inexplicably refuses to tell him that he deserved it. It’s all just very strange. Silas, who kept guard while Charlie raped Evie, initially leaves out of loyalty to Charlie, but he eventually comes back all apologetic. Ish doesn’t let him back in, wisely. And then there’s another time jump.
Pandemic 2.0
Content at having skimmed over yet more meaningful character development, Earth Abides Episode 5 ends with the reintroduction of the virus that wiped out most of humanity in the first place.
There’s no explanation for why this occurs or why some people contract it and others don’t. Instead, it’s used as a kind of mechanism for two key things – Ish’s worsening guilt over murdering Charlie (he thinks the virus is his penance), and Alex’s worsening jealousy over his brother Joey, which is compounded by Joey contracting the illness and almost dying from it.
This is an outrageously selfish viewpoint and it’s impossible to feel remotely sympathetic to Alex about it. He was already in support of a rapist – now he’s annoyed his own brother is dying because it takes attention away from him. Is this guy a psycho?
The double-bill ends with Ish taking a moment while gathering supplies to talk to Jesus, despite being a staunch nonbeliever, and Heather comes home alone with the reveal that Raif has died during their ill-advised off-screen adventure. At this point, who cares?
