THE LEFTOVERS: HBO's nondenominational post-rapture series

So good.

And yeah.

And I shouldn't have watched the "scenes from next weeks episode" bit because it was mildly spoilery.

This show is sooooo gooood.

it is. I'm going to be sorry to see it go.

The convolutions in this show seem increasingly arbitrary to me, just one Hail Mary after another. And completely OTT but not in the service of the narrative, just banking on portent and quirk.

Gonna grind it out and still enjoying parts but disappointed to find that finally it is short of smart, merely clever.

ok so this season is incredible

tough to follow-up international assassin, but i think that last episode worked splendidly

the show long ago left the idea that we'd get some 'this means this' sort of puzzle type solution; I don't expect an answer about 'where people went' or 'what is going on' and haven't since season 2. That was quite liberating for this show, I think; but I can see how, if someone expects those types of plot manipulations, they'd be disappointed.

When Kevin appeared in the other world on a beach near a hut, I couldn't resist saying "ooh, he's on the island from Lost! this show really is a sequel"

In the post-show thingy for this latest one, Lindelof says that Kevin is symbolically killing his investment in a fantasy, meaning that he needs to remove the temptation of 'the afterlife' giving him a false sense of purpose and preventing him from focusing on the real world and the people in it. I'm probably not summarizing it well but it made a lot of sense to me emotionally, and made the wackiness of this ep bearable. What the afterlife visions actually are and what they mean I think I'll be turning over in my head for a long time

Watched the Laurie ep (6, 'Certified') a few times, such an incredible episode

that was wonderful

I loved that mostly but I'm having mixed feelings about Laurie being alive

I'm also having mixed feelings about Nora's "story" being told through dialogue where Kevin's adventures to other realms were always shown to us. I'm not sure what the purpose of that discrepancy is.

I loved this and was very moved by a lot of it.

re: Nora's story, is part of the reason it's kept as dialogue maybe that it's not really true? that she really did change her mind? perhaps it doesn't matter, and I really love that ambiguity because narratives and our possibly sincere-possibly ironic relationship to them are at the heart of this season, because it really works as a parable of working through grief.

I also found Laurie being alive to be a weird choice, however. Not sure what they were going for there.

I thought it worked pretty well as a fake-out, realizing that ending Laurie's episode the way they did would make viewers think she'd died, so seeing her in this episode made it even more ambiguous for a while whether we were seeing a different reality

Laurie doing the scuba dive thing that Nora had mentioned made sense in a "we're tying up the show" way but I'm not sure her death made sense for the character

Laurie being alive doesn't really work for me at the moment, as 306 had done such a beautiful job reframing the character on her own as opposed to in her capacity for other characters. Seeing the finale revert to her alive and in that kind of role again felt false to me.

the laurie thing was a little weird but i thought everything else was fantastic including nora telling her story via dialog because a) carrie coon is fantastic at that, b) the "is she lying?" ambiguity, and c) two characters talking one-on-one is one of the things this show has always done best, and it's what makes the show human, and i'm very glad they went out like that instead of having nora do her own international assassin thing or get on a boat to new york with a bunch of naked people or whatever for the last 20 minutes of the series. an A-plus finale for me.

A triumphant conclusion to a peerless final series. Walking the line between the realist solution and the supernatural is something the series has done brilliantly and the concluding chapter was no exception. Was Kevin seeing Patti Levin in S2 or was he just mad? Was Kevin seeing Dean in S1 or was he just mad? Was Mary cured or did she just (pregnancy-related?) spontaneously come out of her coma? Did Matt just rape her prone body? Did the hotel exist or was it just near-death hallucinations? And finally, was the machine real or did Nora just chicken out? As ever, we get to interpret it how we like and the series supports us in our decision.

Kevin's reliance on the same story for why he's in Australia is brilliantly done and ties in with the underlying theme of the series. To let go. To move on. To live in the world that we have. And that's what Nora's monologue is about, it's finally laying to rest the events of the departure. Whether that came about through her sudden realisation of the lengths she was prepared to go to, or whether it was because she saw her husband in another world is irrelevant. (Actually, much as I was disappointed by the Laurie reveal that's also what happens there imo - having built the 'perfect' conditions for her suicide, she then decides it's not what she wants having been given the means of her death; a mirror for Nora in the machine having seen the previous shell.)

In more prosaic news, the aging makeup was very well done I thought, and completely convincing.

We see Nora shout as the sphere fills. Did anyone catch what it was?

Also where S03E07 used the S1 title music in closing the door, in finally dealing with Patti and Meg and their impact on Kevin and how they haunt him (metaphorically or otherwise), S03E08 using the S2 title music and "Let the mystery be" explicitly says it's not going to lecture over what happened to Nora, that it's your choice what to believe.

I think it was really well done but do have a ton of questions which i"m sure is the point

this felt like atonement for the sins of L O S T

because the atonement goat got L O S T and attached itself to a fence...hmmmm

I love the idea that after being burned on Lost, Lindelof once again decided to be coy and ambiguous in a finale, and everyone seems to say 'oh, that's a great explanation!'

L O S T finale wasn't coy or ambiguous. Just stupid.

there was nothing in the leftovers that needed explanation!

otm

LOST spent an entire season explaining that two supernatural forces were at war with each other on an island and then did some shenanigans to explain shit

leftovers was still like "idk people disappeared and we explored some about the how and why but left those open, because it's about people"

let the mystery be, and whatnot

The Leftovers was spectacular, one of my favorite series ever. few shows could make me feel such a range of emotion, often in quick succession. But I think the greatest achievement of the show is introducing the world to Carrie Coon, who might be the best actress on the planet.

I haven't watched Fargo, but she's definitely arrived.

she's been underutilized in fargo this season IMO, but it has some nice references to her character in the Leftovers in the first few episodes.

leftovers was still like "idk people disappeared and we explored some about the how and why but left those open, because it's about people"

― mh, Tuesday, June 6, 2017 10:53 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right? I feeling like a dreadful person for thinking it was only 2%. Chill the fuck out.

But other than that Scott Glenn was the shit.

oh and John Murphy sure went from let kill and burn everything down to I just cant get this damn smile of my face so fast I got whiplash.

Also, shout out to Jill because see is the queen.

I would have really liked a couple more eps to deal with John and the kids. I would also really have loved to get an ep about Mary at some point.

there was nothing in the leftovers that needed explanation!

Except for, you know, the whole "where did 2 per cent of the world's population vanish to?" thing.

that's the premise, not the question!

if you go with Nora's story being true, it sounded like our (living) world got split in two, and over there everyone thinks 98% of the population vanished

Kevin's alt-world appears to be the actual afterlife. which would explain why only people known to have died were there. he never ran into anyone who had disappeared during the departure, right?

I think giving a possible answer, not a definitive why or how, was more than enough

if you get down to it, every story begins in medias res, unless you start every story at the beginning of life on earth or w/e

/there was nothing in the leftovers that needed explanation!/

Except for, you know, the whole "where did 2 per cent of the world's population vanish to?" thing.

o_O

I never noticed how that Robin Trower song turns up on the Rub n Tug Campfire vinyl, but not on the mix CD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3P8nZTS4hA

Ok I was majorly behind and I finally finished s3 yesterday

Goddamn I love this series so much, like I hope that I will cherish it for years afterwards because of how hard they swung for the fences with the ideas they explored and the writing and the acting and just the remarkable fact that we got a whole show that wrestles not with Religion but BELIEF

someone up thread, Simon maybe?, wondered why we se Kevin go through his journeys but that Norah's was only told verbally and it felt like her character was cheated somehow by that. IMO the idea that Norah is *telling* Kevin a story at all is WAY more important than us seeing it. The events of the story itself are somewhat immaterial. Because Norah, maybe aside from Laurie, is the character who for the whole series has been actively anti-story. She challenges the stories she's told and exists to uncover only the lies that those stories are based on. She was dealing only with truth/lies in such a determined way that it reached the point of reckless mania by the end. It means more for us, and her, to finally be telling a story of any kind. That she has experienced something personally, something that has shaken her worldview and is now moving her in a new direction, and moved her to the point to become vulnerable enough to tell that story to Kevin and share it with him is the whole point. It's the Book of Norah.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's why I love this show

yeah I've talked about it with a few people and I am no longer aggrieved at that idea. pretty brilliant finale even if I am a bit o_0 at the Laurie scene

I never expected that she would actually commit suicide even though that was the tone they were going for when she was on the boat etc. i wasn't all that surprised to see her again tbh

Yeah, I might feel differently if I rewatched the season knowing where it's headed. At any rate it was a great finale and a v v strong last season

the acting was so phenomenal

VG otm

awesome show great job

I was wondering what he'd get up to next:

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/damon-lindelof-the-watchmen-hbo-1202473414/

I suppose this is intended to be the post Game of Thrones blockbuster for HBO.

Watched season one. Mixed feelings. Very well acted (Carrie Coon in particular is excellent). Good dialogue on the whole. I'm not sure any of it really means anything though, which would be fine if everything wasn't so dripping with portent. They haven't explored the intriguing premise in a particulary truthful or insightful way yet imo.

My favourite two episodes were the most self contained, the one where Matt tried to buy back the church, and the one where Norah went to the weird convention.

You'll be pleased with where the show goes, I think. S2 throws some curveballs pretty much immediately.

Thanks, slightly more enthused now.

S1 totally hooked me and was probably the least interesting season. i kept wondering why i was watching this relentlessly nihilistic enterprise. and yet i kept watching. S2 is where they seem to figure out what the show is about.

and yeah the matt trying to buy back church episode is fantastic.

S2 is a kind of a high water mark for TV in the last decade or so, imo. watching it unfold was a real pleasure so try to avoid spoilers if you can.