THE LEFTOVERS: HBO's nondenominational post-rapture series

[I wish the protagonist in Ellison's book had lit his room with 100 less bulbs -- 1,269 -- because that would be an anagram of 9,261, which is how many spared citizens there are in Jardin, Texas, and... oh man, could've lit up the Leftovers chat boards big time with that!!]

the Jeff Wall piece is directly based on the Ellison book.

Ah, nice, thanks.

"You people and that movie!" Virgil's line about <i>The Exorcist</i> made me laugh.

One character I do miss a lot from Mapleton/S1 (and who, imo, wasn't used enough in S1) is Mayor Lucy (Amanda Warren). Was flipping through episode 1 last night, and she's really great. Also forgot that Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) from Friday Night Lights is in episode 1 as a congressman who treks up to see Wayne (and I think that's the last we see of him).

most recent episode sure ends with a bang

wow

this show just constantly leaves me in dazed wonder now

i fuckin love this season

Many things I heard about season one set off enough alarms that I skipped it, yet I've heard such great things about season two. Can I see season two without seeing season one or do I sort of need to slog through all of it to get the most reward out of the current season?

I just started with two and loved it. as long as you know the premise you'll be fine. let the mystery be, you know.

I would strongly suggest getting around to Season 1 at some point -- even if you watch the seasons in reverse, which is probably do-able. It will fill in a lot of the story, and -- much as I've been critical of it at times -- it's a pretty great season at times (it's not like anyone forced me to stick around for season 2). My guess is, if you like S2, you'll want to go back to get more -- and S1 has plenty to get. By my count (and from what I recall) there are three or four near-perfect episodes, and only a severe dropoff in a couple somewhere around the middle.

can we talk about the ending of the new episode yet or no? i have a theory

spill it!

my theory is that Michael conspired with Virgil to arrange to kill or maybe just harm/scare Kevin because Michael thinks he was responsible for his sister's disappearance

? maybe?

I think it more likely that Virgil wanted to do one last good act, and he'll be guiding Kevin back to life with some help from Michael. I think the scene of Michael leaving Virgil's place when Kevin arrives was the tail end of Michael's failed attempt to talk him out of it.

A lot of people are touting the bird-in-a-box theory; that Kevin will be buried for three days, and then...

man I hope they do that except he's just dead and smelly

kinda hoping for kevin v patty thunderdome

i hope he is just straight-up dead

NO

dudes named virgil make pretty good guides through the afterlife iirc

^^ dun-dun-DUH.

it feels on the nose but that's my take too. we'll see.

yeah i was slow on the uptake but otm

Wow.

are they gonna cut david lynch a check for this

somehow a trip to the mythological underworld makes perfect sense on this show

no one who disappeared from the world appeared in the underworld

Lynch was the biggest influence I thought as well.

Lindelof ups his troll game: "The Leftovers isn’t about answers, it’s about the frustration of not getting them and the emotional state that drives our characters to. Like throwing rocks through the windows of people we feel sympathy for or drinking poison."

I appreciated the kid being stunned at this dude he buried waking up from death

omg that episode was so good!! genuinely exciting despite it's weirdness

Dunno that it owed as much to Lynch as The Sopranos, lol. I really love the idea of a hotel as the underworld

Patty as a little girl was a great touch

Honestly quite stunned by how good that was -- as enjoyable on second viewing as on first. Whether it really advances the story in a useful or interesting way, hard to say, and I don't think I'd want a whole season of it or anything, but on the basis of pure technique (so many interesting movie references throughout) and emotion (I was extremely moved by the Patty stuff), and house-of-mirrors weirdness, it feels like the sort of tv fare you're lucky to get when you do (if you can give in to this sort of thing... I'm guessing it's way too jump-the-shark for some people).

- Fight scene between Kevin and the bellhop reminded me a lot of The Manchurian Candidate scene with Sinatra fighting Henry Silva (and the 'Manchurian candidate' from that movie is played by Laurence Harvey; Kevin's new alias is Kevin Harvey
- I don't know the music that was played throughout, but it was terrific. There's one soft melodic motif that kept recurring, though, that sounded a lot like a recurring motif in The Godfather films (which is alluded to elsewhere)... is that just a weird accident, I wonder?
- great little scene I missed the first time: whoever chose the Mapleton cop outfit walking by Kevin with a bag over his head
- I'm on record often as dismissing Holy Wayne from S1, but he is quite funny here, I think

just watched it a second time as well and it's just outstanding. fun to watch and fun to think about. this is one of the strongest runs for a tv show in recent memory I think. hope they can finish strong.

the show wouldn't make a lick of sense without watching season 1 before season 2; don't even attempt that.

didn't love that episode, but I like the idea that the afterlife is more logical / rule-based than life itself

Not the most remarkable of episodes last night (centers around the two major characters I am the least interested in, and some of the plotting felt contrived and way too convenient), but: a) that's a judgement based at least in part on the ridiculously high standards the show has set most of this season; b) it did, in fact, add some interesting shading to both of those characters; c) a handful of good songs were used, two quite awesomely (incl. a country song by Sturgill Simpson I'd never heard of). So much to say about Olivia Newton-John, but anyway.

lol i love that sturgill simpson song to bits (it's a cover of a not-country song, but it does find the country song that was always hiding in the original) and i was like "aw man there goes the neighborhood" but i'm stoked if it gets him paid.

this show has an uncanny way with its music choices.

liked this episode a lot (more on second viewing), even though it risked disappointment in taking us away from the building momentum of the other plots. i think their commitment to keep each episode relatively focused on just a few characters pays off here--seeing this plot strung out over the season would only have diluted the stronger episodes.

I guessed the final scene about halfway through. The big question obviously is whether they were in on it from the start or have been converted.

i have a feeling that the finale is gonna be extra-long or something to tie everything together, like 90 minutes maybe

would be totally fine with that tbh. can't believe this show has managed to pull all the gambits it's pulled and not only avoid falling off a cliff but in fact get better with each chance it takes.

i utterly despise meg and yet even her episode was fascinating and engaging all the way through. it's p clear that on some level she was always less than sane, that aspect of her personality waiting for an excuse to explode. she couldn't give a fuck about the world forgetting or remembering the departure - she wants it to remember her and hurt like she used to.

xp in sepinwall's review he seems to think they might've been GR at least since the start of the season http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/review-liv-tyler-makes-a-terrifying-impression-on-this-weeks-leftovers

That was my first thought after it's been made clear Meg isn't big on the whole not speaking thing.

i want to know what her mother's last words were!!!

Probably one more mystery left to dangle about, but my assumption is it was something really banal; in any case, Meg clearly didn't hear what she was looking for (profundity?), and didn't Isaac kind of indicate as much upfront?

<i>she couldn't give a fuck about the world forgetting or remembering the departure - she wants it to remember her and hurt like she used to.</i>

I love this, it opens up her performance for me a bit, the nihilism etc. (I am glad the GR are back; the cult aspect of the story interests me a lot. I would've been bummed if it had been dropped.)

Argh, now I see the link "show formatting help." Will try and get that right.

whether they were in on it from the start or have been converted.

I feel like they helped execute the plan. Remember how inconsistently they were acting throughout "Axis Mundi"?

Liv Tyler fucking killed it in that episode - who knew? Loved her spitting and her evil smirk walking away from the schoolbus.

Megan and the son are the best characters so far, so little exposition until now and they have been so devoted to the causes of others

A lot of the reviews I've seen of this ep have put it down as scary but meaningless; I thought it was especially rich. Forgive me if some of this is incoherent and repetitive!

Tom/Laurie and Megan are very similar in that they've hijacked their 'believers' to ameliorate some private pain – Laurie takes advantage of the Wayners to atone for her family, Megan constructs a schism from the Remnant to make sure that everyone is in as much pain as her.

Megan's splinter group's mission is like the Remnants' – to be a reminder – but she's refined it into a direct trauma-delivery mechanism, discarding a lot of the Remnant's superficial ('pointless') doctrine (silence, chainsmoking) along the way. The purpose seems to be less to remind people of the Departure than to show them that all life or joy is essentially meaningless. Not only the bus, but the scene in the roadside bar illustrates this for me, where she seems to hold out the possibility of pleasure, comfort, company, or just basic humanity to Tom and immediately withdraws it. (Tom goes gamely along with her because he can't imagine himself doing anything but following; his only experience as a leader was also as a fraud. Megan mocks his lack of self-reliance: 'hug yourself'.) The new Remnant group follows a typical pattern in terrorist organizations; each radicalized group growing out of the established, comfortable last is bent on being more shocking, more extreme (and strangely less devoted to an actual politically realizable goal).

The girls look to have been part of the organization for at least a year, possibly two. The current time of the show is the fourth-year anniversary; when Evie and Megan meet, it's been two years since the Departure. The cricket in the Murphy's house is most likely the phone, or a phone, that Evie uses to communicate with Megan (It's interesting that not only Evie but Erika as well are very insistent to John that he 'can't', not 'won't' find it). All the frolicking the girls were up to as seen in the first episode of the season were cover, so that they wouldn't be suspected as suicides a la Bridgend.

Why are the girls so distraught if they didn't suffer direct loss as a result of the Departure? This actually makes them perfect actors for Megan, because if they respond to the Remnant even if the Departure didn't touch them, they're an indication that the existential nausea and horror felt in response to the world is permanent and pervasive, the suffering universal and inescapable, and not just something you feel after a tremendous but momentary loss. Megan herself seems nihilistic no matter what her circumstances, present or past – it's just that now she's found a setting and a stage to allow her to spread a little of that pain around. (John Murphy is also of this type though not as severe; he seems anxious to prevent anyone from believing in salvation, not only to prevent people being hustled.) I believe that Megan actually did receive the answer she wanted from Isaac – the show is consistent in showing that the supernatural is very real, despite the doubts it leaves open – but, just as he warned her, the answer does nothing to address the anguish she's in.

If Kevin is a shaman, preparing for a 'battle', that battle wasn't with Patty, who was just an appetizer in service of showing Kevin what he's capable of. Patty had real human needs, feelings, and troubles which she responded to by being vicious along with continually broadcasting her distress. Megan on the other hand is just out to inflict harm with as little small talk as necessary, and we have no real sense of her having facets to her personality. The pure nihilism she embodies is the real Adversary.

What the plan is involving the girls and the bridge, I can't see; the three nooses on the bridge in the episode before might be foreshadowing, but the girls sacrificing themselves in public would have less impact than letting everyone stay convinced the girls Departed. Though if they did announce that while they were 'spared' they wish they hadn't been, before they died that would be hard for everyone to take. The explosives I think are a red herring for the bridge plot; I think they have more to do with the earthquakes or water being drained, though I have no idea how. It's possible the girls won't simply be sacrificed but that the townspeople themselves will be roped in and not simply be an audience. In Megan's conversation with Matt, Matt's suspicions of her are confirmed when she says they're both interested in the town 'because it's safe' - meaning that she's interested in destroying that sense of safety. She wants Miracle to be yet another place where horrible things can happen, and it might not have anything to do with the Departure or the Departed at all. Maybe that 'changes everything' but it seems a stretch.

And with all this I'd completely forgotten the cavewoman opening scene of the season, which might just be 'it has ever been thus' symbolism and might never be referred to or called back again!

So much to like in that post, thanks.

I don't think anyone's getting blown up 'killed', if that was going to happen the school bus would have provided the test run for that. Hanging might still be an option yet.

Is it possible that one of her other plants in the town has been raping Mary? Matt doesn't start using the video until after the 'special night'.

im sort of skeptical that they can wrap all this up in an (artistically) satisfactory manner in just one episode, but then when you realize that the core events of the season have all taken place over a few days (a week at most?) then it starts to seem possible. if they stick the landing in even just an adequate way this has to be one of the best seasons of a tv show in recent memory.

im sort of skeptical that they can wrap all this up in an (artistically) satisfactory manner...

l i n d e l o f !

I can't fully express why but my sense is that Tommy will be killed off possibly while engaged in some act of (perhaps not immediately obvious) heroism, I.e., doing something to fuck with a particularly nefarious part of Megan's plan. He is a kind of formless character, he doesnt look like he can handle much more confusion and pain, and I'm not sure where else his story can go anyway. I will be surprised if there are no casualties, though one which will feel like a greater loss to people on the show, ie Jill and Laurie, than to people in the audience. For that reason alone, I can't imagine the girls getting killed or (especially) committing suicide - they're still quite young and I just don't see the show inflicting that on the audience, though who knows? The show is pretty fearless.