THE LEFTOVERS: HBO's nondenominational post-rapture series

The Kevin in the afterlife episode was very Murakami-esque.

After S2 got nice reviews but zip in the ratings, HBO gave them one last, slightly truncated season to finish it off

That's not the way I heard it. My understanding was that the decision to let it run for three seasons only was Lindelof's.

there are a lot of "here are the lessons I learned from working on Lost" bits in the production and plotting imo

He admits that the cavemen sequence was there to troll critics (the guys from the Ringer in particular)

say more?

From Andy Greenwald:

So what a relief it was to learn, as I did last night, that I absolutely was being trolled. “There was a lot of ‘Oh, Greenwald’s gonna love this’ going around in the writers’ room,” Lindelof told Vulture‘s Joe Adalian when asked about the decision to start Season 2 on such rocky and venomous ground.

That sequence totally works thematically, though. My only issue is that surely neolithic people in North America would not have been caucasian?

There's a pretty long 90 or so minute interview with Greenwald (who hated season 1 but loved season 2) and Lindelof after S2 finished that's worth tracking down. I think it's linked upthread somewhere.

just finished the series. top 5 all time finale for me. weird season i had a hard time sticking with some stretches but really glad i did.

I should wait a couple of days before posting--literally finished ten minutes ago--but I guess I'm in a very small minority: felt let down by Season 3, finale included. I'm wondering if watching it immediately after a rewatch of Six Feet Under was a bad idea--that's a lot of metaphysical rabbit holes to process at once. Some of the penultimate episode was funny; Kevin's death-dreams always have funny stuff. The best music moment was trampoline Wu-Tang Clan. ("God Only Knows" already belongs to Boogie Nights.) I found the absence of Jill really awkward, and getting her in there sideways for a couple of minutes made it even more so--was there a contract dispute? The final line of the fifth episode, "That's the guy I was telling you about," was fantastic. I thought the third episode, the one devoted to Scott Glenn, was possibly the worst of the entire run, except for that great bit of Aboriginal music that was used throughout.

I liked the idea that Jill and her brother were just...fine, for a bit, esp in the context of the world maybe ending.

It just seemed weird to me for Jill to go from a central character to not being there. The reduced roles of Evie and Meg Abbott were explained plausibly, but I didn't think Jill's was.

It was a bit weird to see Jill just kinda disappear, but it made sense in that as a kid she was caught up in her parents' craziness and as a young adult is able to leave that behind and be normal

Catching up on what I'd avoided in this thread till I finished season 3.

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

Definitely--Caroline Coon's makeup especially in the final episode was perfect. This is one area where all shows that try something similar will take a cue (or anti-cue) from Six Feet Under's horrible makeup in the final six minutes (which were good enough otherwise that I can look past that).

I thought season 3 was wall to wall brilliant, and frequently hilarious. Sad it's over, but glad it had a proper ending. Thanks to the denizens of this thread for persuading me to plow on after the mixed bag of season 1.

i think we should get a partridge family bus equipped with loudspeakers and drive around the country preaching the glory of The Leftovers until everyone ~gets it~

this show got completely snubbed at the emmys, it was far and away the best thing on television last year. why carrie coon was nominated for her much smaller role in Fargo and not this is beyond me.

if there was any further reason that people needed to not give a fuck about the emmys, it's the fact that Carrie Coon wasn't even nominated for what is probably the single best performance I've ever seen on television

As payment, the Emmys should be renamed The Carries, and they should be given busts of Nora Durst wearing a bulletproof vest

*they = winners

Yeah after the Leftovers I honestly think she's my favourite actress right now.

bawling at the last ten minutes of this. nora's description was so perfect that i was amazed i hadn't thought of it. and even better once you've got your head around the truth (or otherwise) of it and there's a shitload to unpack there. i really liked the fact that it avoids seeming like a summing up episode, since those are generally so packed. it resolved almost everything but was really well paced, almost leisurely.

yea idk i recently watched all of this over afew wks. liked s1 the most, then s2, then s3; much preferred the sprawl of the larger cast; my fav ep was the rev matt going to atl city one; also found the recurring music & montages often cloying; still was all well acted & compelling mostly & glad i watched

yeah I can't stand the plinky-plonky max richter faux-profound nonsense.

*MAJOR SPOLIERS, DON'T READ IF YR CATCHING UP*

I understand Simon H's complaints upthread about not "seeing" any of Nora's other world adventures and, while I think this could possibly have worked, it would lend credence to the story by equating it to what Kevin went through in his other world but Kevin did (at least in his head) go through that world. Nora's story is beautiful but it's just a story. It's a story that in 2-3 minutes conjures up an amazing other world but it is a flawed construct. The world she describes is amazingly vivid in a few spare sentences. It's suggests McCarthy's The Road, to me. It's all too believable and perfect sensible until she tells you that she tracked down the man who built the machine and he knew how to do it so he built another one. He built another one in this world where 98% of the population were absent and the houses were falling down and covered in vines etc? Nora describes the vision she sees of her family being perfectly happy but in a globe consisting of 140 million (was it?) people that could not have been the dreamlike happy picture she paints of it. The people ther would not have happy families and wouldn't have the means to build world-switching devices.

Kevin believes Nora because he has lived his other world, so why would hers be any less true than his. But his WAS true. Her's is a well (but not meticulously) created construct. A lie she'd been rehearsing in her head in her years of solitude and not got quite right. It begs the question of what kind of future life Kevin and Nora are going to live together If Kevin wholly believes Nora's lie and Nora's.... well, she's Nora. Cynical and dismissive but in a very loveable way (thanks hugely to Carrie's skullfucking performance).

It's worth pointing out (and has not been mentioned on this thread, as far as I can tell) That David Burton (aka God on the boat) is played by the same actor who dragged a noose around kevin on the bridge in series two and is also the same actor who forced Kevin to sing his song in the other world to get back to his Miracle life. I don't know what that means but it's worth thinking about.

she tells you that she tracked down the man who built the machine and he knew how to do it so he built another one. - i meant to add here but we're supposedly in an alt-world where they don't have any planes because there are no pilots.

(sorry for that v rogue apostrophe)

I no longer had a problem w/ the not "seeing" after conferring w some other viewers btw lol

i meant to note that Simon. did you clock the God actor thing - I only did so after reading a thread on reddit.

I did, but only because I was watching along with some pretty hardcore nerds lol

iirc Hollywood ran out of character actors around that time so a lot of them had to play multiple roles on shows

he has a good look and few people would notice

liked s1 the most, then s2, then s3

Ha, I'm exactly the opposite. It gets much more well written, not to mention funnier, as it goes along imo.

I think my favourite season starts about halfway through 1 and extends to halfway through 2. Season 3 was definitely my least favourite.

I liked the ending of 3 and found it very moving but thought a lot of it was pretty crappy.

s2 >>> end of s3 >>> s1 >>> start of s3

why am i watching this show while high, it makes me feel stupid bc i'm on s2 e1 and WTF IS GOING ON

how can i have watched an entire season of a show and still not really get it. but s2e1 really is fucking weird tho right?? that can't just be me

justin theroux is so weird looking

it's like he's ~~too~~ good looking to be real. it makes me uncomfortable.

the cave woman scene??????????? what the actual fuck. is it supposed to be some parallel to nora taking on lily?? who is this weird new family with the psycho dad+pals, complicit wife and weird freak kids?? if 2% of the world's pop. departed, surely there'd be plenty of small towns that had no departures, i don't get why that makes miracle such a special place. and why was there a plexiglass thing over a big crack in the road??

If yr gonna post every time something weird happens in season two…

you aren't high. that's just s2. one of the greatest seasons of tv ever made. enjoy the trip.

too much s3 hate in the last round of posts

I dunno, I liked the show well enough but I don't think there was a single episode from the beginning of s2> that I wouldn't have criticised several aspects of.

relax & enjoy the ride, J <3

The finale, the orgy boat, the episode focused on the dad, and the one where Kevin and Nora have that fight in the hotel are all as good as Season two, but I just think that Season 2 had a kind of whimsy to it that was so unexpected it was intoxicating--it really felt like *anything* could happen (such possibilities!) but what did actually happen always felt like it was exactly what needed to happen, if that makes sense.

Season 2 also had what I view as the highlight of the entire run: Dead Patty having the time of her life mind-fucking Kevin.

^^^

also karaoke

Not-Evie showing up in the background on TV maybe the most unsettling image in the whole series

The s2 e1 was so fucking weird that I kept checking I was watching the right show bc there was literally NO FUCKING CONNECTION to the prior season until Garvey et al showed up

I want to commit to this show but I cannot deal with another Lost type of situation. Does the series finale have a satisfying close or am I gonna be pissed off?

The second-season theme song holds the answers.