The show follows an Earth doomed to be destroyed by an incoming planet in mere months. Knowing death is inevitable, everybody on the planet has whipped out their bucket lists and indulged in their most shameless, fearless whims. Everybody, it seems, except Carol Kohl (Martha Kelly), a shy and ordinary woman who just can't get behind that mentality, sending her on an existential journey to figure out how to spend her last moments on Earth before it all comes to an end.
The ten-episode series premiered on Netflix on December 15, 2023.
Tropes in the series include:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The technology seen in the show places it in the early 2000s, with episode 5 confirming the year to be 2002 via the tombstone of David's recently deceased uncle.
- Alliterative Name: Carol Kohl.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Carol's neighbor Greg is inexplicably silver. Another person living down the same street is colored gold.
- The Anti-Nihilist: This is the attitude most of society seems to push in light of the looming apocalypse. Because humanity will soon be extinct and consequences will be short-lived, most people have dedicated their remaining time to doing what they've always wanted to do, whether it's life-risking adventures, impulsive hookups, or just wearing weird outfits.
- Apologetic Attacker: Downplayed. Carol keeps saying "I'm sorry" when she brings out her gun to threaten the party guests so she can steal the toner, and keeps complimenting how nice the party was. She doesn't actually fire it, but aims it readily to get people to back away - including Stephen when he begs her to return to Eric. Her anxious, awkward tone never wavers, and she says she's feeling a little out of control.
- Apologizes a Lot: Carol says "I'm sorry" after nearly every phrase when speaking to a stranger due to her serious anxiety.
- Asshole Victim: Downplayed with Janette, who is initially presented as Carol's Only Friend. It becomes readily clear Janette doesn't actually care about Carol and only likes getting to brag about her accomplishments and show off even before the end of the world was imminent. While Carol doesn't actually hurt her, it's easy to not care about Janette getting scared when Carol pulls a gun on her to steal her toner.
- Becoming the Mask: Kathleen The HR Lady is charged with spying on Carol who is becoming too familiar with her co-workers and causing the employees in general to bond with each other, especially after re-opening an abandoned Applebee’s so they can all hang out after hours. While she sticks to the assignment at first she eventually end up enjoying the parties and even making friends with a few of her fellow employees including Carol herself. It's ambiguous whether she shares her report, in which she pins the blame on Carol for eroding the sense of distance between the Distraction's employees.
- Black Market Produce: Luis meets a guy under a bridge and trades away some meds for what turns out to be a birthday cake. Considering the military has to run the grocery stores, bakeries likely aren’t around anymore.
- Bland-Name Product: Episode 8 has a bag of Zay's chips (Lay's).
- Bolivian Army Ending: The final episode ends a few months before the planet hits the earth, with the final shot of the series being it hanging large in the sky.
- Butterfly of Transformation: "The Distraction" is interspersed with scenes of a pulsating chrysalis as Carol struggles to fit into her new role at the accounting firm. At the very end of the episode, after she passes her evaluation and finally has a normal (albeit brief) talk with a coworker, the chrysalis breaks free to reveal a butterfly.
- Chekhov's Gun: A literal version in "The Distraction." Carol is given a gun at work for "additional assistance," and she later uses it to threaten Lisa into letting her take the toner she's needed all episode.
- Child Hater: Downplayed: Carol is uncomfortable and borderline afraid of children, to the point where she finds baby dolls creepy and even seeing pregnant women can trigger panic attacks for her. She's more comfortable around older kids and teens. However, she doesn't actually hold anything against children and when she sees an un-escorted trick-or-treater, despite being quite drunk, she follows him around so he won't be out alone and is kind when he runs off.
- Cool Big Sis: Elena views Carol as one, telling people how she's seen Carol throughout the lives simply "doing her own thing" and wishing she could have that sort of confidence in herself.
- Cosy Catastrophe: For a world within a year of ending, this is remarkably pleasant. Most people have quit their jobs and daily lives in order to do whatever they want, but electricity and water are still on, grocery stores are kept running by uniformed soldiers, and while there's regular looting of other stores and breaking into restaurants etc there's very little interpersonal violence or stealing from people. Still, particularly towards the end of the miniseries as time grows shorter there is some indication of grief and despair, like when the whole office breaks into a fit of tears.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: After Carol spends the entirety of "The Distraction" hunting down the perfect toner, going to every run-down Office Depot in the city and pulling a gun on Lisa just to steal hers, her coworker Donna later informs her that there's a closet full of toner on the 43rd floor of the office building.
- Creepy Twins: Carol's managers in "The Distraction" are a pair of identical men in business suits who stand side-by-side (a la the twins in The Shining) and loom over her in the days before her evaluation. The main difference is one has glasses.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Carol gets tipsy on wine at the start of "Holidays" because she misses going to work and feels alone at home.
- Dying Alone: The reason Eric so desperately wants Carol to stay with him is because he's terrified of dying alone during the apocalypse.
- Elective Mute: One of Janette and Lisa's party guests in "The Distraction" is a monk named Dennis who has taken a vow of silence, as well as never blinking. His staring makes Carol quite uncomfortable. He breaks the vow to say "Oh, shit," when he sees Carol with a gun.
- Formula-Breaking Episode:
- “The Life & Times of Bashiir Hassan” is the one episode to not feature Carol, instead being A Day in the Spotlight for Eric, Steven, and the passengers aboard the Grand Coda.
- Saltwater Lullaby: A Surf Odyssey, the second-to-last episode, features an adventurous Carol globetrotting and meeting up with old friends and lovers in search of the perfect wave. This is very out of character for the timid Carol, who lied about taking up surfing in order to make her parents happy. Surfing Carol has green eyes, and the many shots of the sky don't include the planet that dominates the sky in the rest of the series, so it comes off more like she's reading from someone else's surfing memoir.
- Friendless Background: Carol seems to have always been a lonely person. Her high school yearbook has no signatures except from her mom and dad, and the only friend who keeps up with her, Janette, mostly just wants to brag about her own accomplishments. When someone at work talks to her once, she begins fixating on actually befriending her so someone will support and comfort her.
- Funny Background Event: Quite frequent, as many inhibitions have vanished long enough ago that Carol barely registers things like suburban skydiving and random nudity.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: Janette uses Tibetan phrases a lot to flex about her trip, but the subtitles show she's actually repeating phrases like "Please put your camera away" and "Please put that down, that is not for sale" instead of insightful phrases.
- Holiday Episode: "Holidays" serves as a Halloween Episode, Thanksgiving Episode, and Christmas Episode — due to the impending apocalypse, people are celebrating all holidays around the same time in April.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: The bosses at Carol’s workplace are dressed identically. The only difference is that one of them wears glasses.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Carol looks quite similar to her actor, Martha Kelly, particularly in her eyes and body type.
- Just Before the End: The main premise of the series is that an incoming planet is due to hit the Earth in several months and that it will cause the end of all life.
- Life-Affirming Aesop: The Earth is doomed to be destroyed by a planet in months, and everything in the world will inevitably face death. People try to do everything they can on their bucket list, whether unabashed or daring, before the end. Everyone is trying to live before the end comes in months.
- Lying to Protect Your Feelings: Carol claims to have taken up surfing as a hobby to keep her parents from being too concerned about her emotional well-being. She later claims to Janette that she's learning to play bass.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Men and women alike are shown casually nude as the apocalypse has rendered all taboos moot. One man in "Holidays" is shown jogging with no shirt, pants, or underwear, his penis flopping with every step.
- Nice Girl: Social awkwardness aside, Carol is shown to be a rather warm-hearted woman who strives to befriend other people and form a community where everyone is included and welcome.
- No Nudity Taboo: One of the cultural shifts of pre-apocalyptic Earth is an increased number of citizens walking around naked simply because they can. This includes Carol's parents, and even she doesn't react to it - they're naked in a family photo in a background, so they might even have been nudists before the end of the world became imminent.
- One-Person Birthday Party: Luis celebrates his birthday alone in "Holidays" with a cake he purchases by exchanging a few loose pills.
- Poster-Gallery Bedroom: When Carol visits her and Elena's shared childhood bedroom, Elena has cute fairy lights and a big stuffed snake on her bed to establish her silly and adventurous personality, as well as trophies and a bulletin board full of photos of her having fun with friends to establish how social and accomplished she is. Carol's side of the room doesn't have anything nearly as interesting, barring an assortment of corny old books and one stuffed rabbit in the corner.
- Purgatory and Limbo: Luis believes the monotonous office is only still running because they're actually all dead and in purgatory, which Donna doesn't buy, though Carol is intrigued at the notion and wonders how she may have died.
- The Quiet One: Carol doesn't speak much, which is implied to be due to self-consciousness. When she does speak, she often sounds like she doesn't fully trust what she's saying. Much of the show is conveyed through her silent actions and what's happening around her.
- Race Against the Clock: At the top of the show, it's estimated that there's about seven months before the planet crashes into Earth, giving people enough time to plan out their final moments. Each chapter notes exactly how much time is left at that point.
- Remarrying for Your Kids: Eric tries to goad Carol into marrying him because his son Stephen needs a "feminine" role model in his life now that Eric's wife is gone. This only seems to put Carol off further.
- Serious Business: Carol gets so attached to her simple office job in "The Distraction" that she drives across the city to every abandoned Office Depot just to find the right toner to refill the printer. When she finally finds the right kind at Janette and Lisa's house, she pulls a gun on Lisa so she can get away with taking it.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Carol and her sister Elena have very different approaches to life. As teenagers, Carol was always more introverted and socially awkward, while Elena was very outgoing and social. This has carried over to the present, as Carol is still quite shy and doesn't have any big ambitions, while Elena uses the apocalypse as an excuse to go globetrotting and take daring but rewarding risks.
- Shout-Out:
- In episode 5 "David", a redheaded woman with purple gloves and a sleeveless red dress can be seen.
- Donna's license plate reads CL-2NE1, a reference to influential k-pop girl group 2NE1 and its leader CL.
- Shrinking Violet: It takes great lengths for Carol to make significant changes in her life or even so much as talk to a stranger without constantly apologizing.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Zig-zagged. Carol follows an office woman to an accounting office, fascinated by her put-together appearance, and ends up being hired on the spot as an administrative assistant. Despite the monotonous environment, Carol is very satisfied with the job, because it provides her with a sense of normalcy and purpose that she hasn't been able to find since the apocalypse began. However, she soon realizes everyone is too caught up in their own work to pay her any attention, so she's just as lonely as before. This comes to bite her when the copier runs out of toner, leaving her unable to do her job, but people just pile more papers for her to copy without any care. They also give her a gun for "additional assistance" shortly after telling her about a looming performance review, represented by a pair of Creepy Twins managers stalking her.
- Soulless Bedroom: The bedroom of Kathleen the HR lady has no tchotchkes or personal effects, save for a metronome on her nightstand which she uses for white noise. It fits her initial characterization as aggressively impersonal and professional.
- Teen Pregnancy: Donna mentions she was pregnant with her child Marlon at seventeen, which may contribute to her grounded personality.
- That Came Out Wrong: Carol has an Imagine Spot where Donna gushes about how good her banana bread is, including one where Donna shows off a sweater that says "Death By Banana Bread." As Carol gets to know Donna in the real world, she awkwardly mentions "Death by Banana Bread" and Donna briefly panics because it sounds like Carol might've poisoned her.
- Unflattering ID Photo: In "The Distraction," Carol is thrust into an administrative assistant position at an accounting firm, so her ID photo has her visibly confused and squinting at the flash, though the woman who takes her information seems proud of it. Apparently she made a very similar face for her high school yearbook photo.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Carol throws up onscreen in "Holidays" due to being drunk.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Donna's interactions with her family imply she was frequently absent due to her working multiple jobs to raise five kids as a Struggling Single Mother. It's actually her retroactive shame about this that gets more focus, as she now realizes how much she didn't know about her kids' talents and everyday lives while they were growing up. However, her adult children hold no ill will against her for this, knowing she did as much as she could.
