Reviewed by Alicia Glass

Based on a sci-fi novel of the same name from George R. Stewart, Earth Abides tells the story of fall of modern civilization due to a mysterious illness, and the rise of a new simpler way of life, led by reluctant isolationist Ish Williams.

The whole thing kicks off very much like The Stand, or The Walking Dead, or even the brilliant 28 Days Later. Solitary geologist Isherwood “Ish” Williams (Alexander Ludwig), who prefers his own company and books to really anyone or anything else, gets himself bit by a snake while out hunting certain rocks, and while he’s attempting to recover from said snake bite alone, the world outside effectively ends. At least, the people do. Waking up to find himself alone, like somehow moreso than he’d prefer, Ish wanders down a hauntingly empty street shouting, “Hello!” to no response. He does donuts in the parking lot trying to convince himself to wake up from this nightmare, goes post-apocalyptic supply hunting in the big supply stores, and narrates his previous dissatisfaction with humanity in general while desperately trying to find any actual humans still left alive.

Yet, when Ish encounters a pair of survivors while he was skinny dipping in his birthday suit at some posh hotel in town, he isn’t exactly the most charitable soul to either one of them. Ish is blunt and, while not necessarily ungrateful, he makes it clear that his standards for humanities worth is still pretty impossibly high, even after being surrounded by so much death. In fact, Ish seems to be a good deal kinder to humans after they’re dead – witness the parents he apparently never got along with, how he carefully buries them both together in the back garden of the house after discovering their corpses, all without complaint, neither internal nor external. Honestly there is very little to commend Ish as any kind of hero or even protagonist, and the entire first episode basically centers around what a sh*t human he really is. Calling him “Ish” seems to work perfect for the character, as he’s very ish about many things – competent-ish if he’s bothered to read it from a book, caring-ish if you happen to be a dog he rescued that he inevitably named Lucky, even humane-ish but only if it’s something that affects Ish directly. And it’s a whole shame, because Ludwig is a very fine actor with a whole range of emotions, few of which are on display for our Ish protagonist.

Luckily for us as beleaguered viewers, episode 2 introduces a love interest for our Ish. Perhaps slightly unfortunately for us, fellow survivor Emma (Jessica Frances Duke) falls into another now-standard trope, particularly of world-ending survivor stories, the Sassy Black Woman ™. While Emma nudges Ish with her love of plants and her desire to actually be around other humans eventually, as she and Ish endure the tribulations of the World-After like rat swarms and a pregnant womans need for meat, even her continued presence in Ish’s new life and her insistence that not everything can be learned from books, doesn’t prevent Ish from still being a curmudgeon. Only when Emma starts having Ish’s children does Ish make an incremental step from isolationist to something else, in yet another story trope wherein the male protagonist only finds any kind of worth when he becomes a father.

Time is starting to march on, as the show begins to make whole-years jumps, and now we’re Year 6 after the disaster where the world effectively ended. Emma has had a few of Ish’s children at this point, and the reluctant leader has finally started to allow others into the small community they’re building. Jorge (Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll) and his wife Maurine (Elyse Levesque) are quiet and kind, and even though Jorge is the only character in the entire show who manages to maintain some level of spiritual faith after the world ended, Ish actually considers Jorge to be his best friend. While out hunting and gathering one day Ish encounters the non-verbal and obviously abused Evie (Jenna Berman) and takes her back to the compound that’s been dubbed San Lupo. Soon more people are showing up – the adult thruple formed of Ezra (Birkett Turton) the former nightclub owner, his wife the medical person Molly (Luisa d’Oliveira), their other wife the singer and struggling alcoholic Jean (Hillary McCormack), and their son Raif. This is the same son Raif (River Codack) that Ish’s firstborn Heather (Aleksandra Cross) will go to explore the outside world with, some years later.

The world outside San Lupo is still abiding, attempting heal as it were, but that means things like major storms go unchecked, causing the death of Ish’s poor now-elderly dog Lucky. And now some years later, drought has come to San Lupo, as the nearby reservoir has been quite some time without any maintenance, so Ish and his children and all the rest of the small community that is now San Lupo have to put their heads together to figure out what to do. Instead, a small caravan of would-be saviors that saw Ish and his people visit the reservoir turn up on San Lupo’s doorstep with a proposition – we’ll dig you a well, in exchange for some visitation and resupply.

Ish has always been reluctant to let newcomers into San Lupo, but this time his gut-check reaction happens to be right, and the leader of the bus convoy visiting San Lupo, Charlie (Aaron Tveit), is actually a very bad man. His seconds in command, Silas (Andres Joseph) and Kori (Howie Lai), are both pretty aware of Charlie’s designs on taking over San Lupo, but his machinations for the orchestrated rape of Evie serves to be too much.

The adults of San Lupo gather to discuss what to do with Charlie after the rape of Evie (which thankfully was very strongly implied by the show and not shown in any real way) and they all pretty much decide, he has to die for his actions. Only Jorge pleads for some other way, and after Ish insists it has to be a unanimous decision, do the adults of San Lupo agree to kill the villain Charlie for his actions. I had thought that since the adults of San Lupo were all armed with guns and rifles of various makes that Charlie would be offed in a clean if not abrupt fashion, but oh no. In a scene where Ish is finally moved by something other than reluctance, the leader of San Lupo beats Charlie to death with the hammer Jorge had given him as the status symbol for his leadership.

It’s one of the very few action scenes of the entire show, and of course Ish feels guilt about his killing another human foreveraftermore, especially when the mysterious illness comes raging back to infect the children of San Lupo, Ish wonders if this is something like divine retribution. Considering Ish struggled with faith or his serious lack of it throughout the entire show, it’s seems like just another attempt by the show to shoehorn in yet another trope – the atheist protagonist will receive a Divine Revelation™ at some point. Or, Ish might have, if his beloved youngest child Joey (Elias Leacock) hadn’t finally perished from what was termed the unrelenting fever that swept the earth before.

The novel the show was based on was written in 1949 and considered radical for its time because the main protagonist was a white male and his love interest was an “African-American” woman. Not a single mention of that is made in the show and that’s probably for the best, especially given their leadership status within San Lupo, and Ish and Emma’s several children. Leaning heavily into themes like how the earth would survive if there wasn’t a large human influence everywhere; a functioning nature-made biological control of the population, as in, “when anything gets too numerous, it’s likely to get hit by some plague,”; and the basic need for human societal and social interaction and community, Earth Abides tries to stuff a great many concepts into a quick-paced years-passing show with only 6 episodes to its name. How well did they manage it? You be the judge.

Watch the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of a new one, in Earth Abides on the MGM+ streaming now!