THE LEFTOVERS: HBO's nondenominational post-rapture series

I get that, I suppose I just find it really hard to relate to

Xp

omg mark linen-baker I’m dying

There are some really amazing scenes in this show

Erika and Nora on the trampoline

ha, that was one of my least favorite sequences in the series. the wrong side of cutesy

I’m a third of the way into s3 e7 and SHIT IS FINALLY GETTING REAL

Now it makes sense why he was always trying to kill himself in his sleep!!!!!!

Omg the penis biometrics!!!!!!

erica& norah on the trampoline was all-time gr8

That’s why they didn’t care about the dude going overboard!!!!

Oh god the baby cancer question makes sense!!!!!

My head is exploding right now

I can’t even deal with this

I don’t even know if I totally love this or totally hate this

I’m two thirds in and I’m pausing to explain the entire show to my husband bc I need to process this with someone

ok i'm finished

i can't believe how much this show paid off - i think i was so traumatized by LOST i couldnt comprehend this actually answering pretty much all the questions. i'm sure there are some gaping holes and maybe i'll be pissed off about stuff later, by right now i'm feeling incredibly satisfied.

good work keeping this to 3 short seasons and not dragging it out A++

Glad you enjoyed it, I was getting a bit concerned there. Explaining the plot must have been....something

ahhh I was secretly terrified I might have led you astray. so glad it came together.

it really feels like a journey/full experience - there is a v beautiful wholeness/completeness to the end of the series that you dont often get in tv. not that ends are tied up neatly but just that things now move on. or something. idk

i went back and read this whole thread today and now i feel pretty dumb for feeling like my mind was melting when it's revealed no one disappeared, there was just some sort of split - it barely rates a mention by anyone in this thread!

i've been ruminating on this show since i finished it last night - i barely slept. i never rewatch anything bc there's always so much new stuff out, but i think i def want to rewatch this whole thing and drag my husband into it (even tho i spoilered the whole thing last night).

i don't think i really gave enough thought to the whole premise - what it would be like to live in a normal world where suddenly this massive, inexplicable, civilization-changing event happens - until season 3, and now i'm thinking about it a lot, mostly bc i was too consumed with all the weird stuff that seemed like non-sequiturs to me. i've always been really horrified by the idea of some kind of apocalyptic event (i mean, i guess everyone is, but it's a particular fear of mine). i watched Mad Max and Quiet Earth (a new zealand film) at way too young an age, and have always been disturbed by the idea. Hard Sun could've been great if it'd explored this more deeply - it's sort of the opposite, bc the apocalypse hasn't happened but the knowledge is out that it's going to.

i'm thinking about all the unanswered stuff, but i still def feel like the finale gave enough closure, enough answers, to make me feel like the writers knew what they were doing from the get-go.

this was one of the most compelling, interesting, creative and well-crafted shows i've ever watched, even though i felt like i was dying of frustration through most of it - the payoff was worth all my agonizing!!

well, to people on both sides, there was a disappearance! everyone with firsthand knowledge of the other side is such an unreliable narrator that I think it’s worth considering that the world where nearly everyone disappeared is a fiction within the narrative. and the machine to go there was completely fake

idk, the question about killing a baby to save cancer + kevin having to kill an innocent civilian in order to start WWII seemed to signal it was real

i can't remember - does nora tell kevin about that question?

Idk there were enough signals that Nora’s story could be a myth that was helping her cope, and Kevin’s acceptance of it was a sign of love. I really feel like every theme that was hinted at in Lost was explored fully here to the point where I can barely separate these two shows. The main theme being that there is a world/universe going about its business and there happened to spring up this species of overthinking animals who will endlessly wrongly violently try to interpret that business.

completely otm, Leftovers is 100% a less constrained extension of Lindelof's Lost-era concerns.

i love nora's house in the end so much because its that great fantasy fiction house where everything is perfectly rustic but also really clean. i really wanted to live there.

also it was nice to see that liv tyler was finally an adult in this instead of that perpetually ethereal child-woman that it feels like she was for decades. people age slower now.

i had to think that nora's story at the end was just a story she made up because you would think she would want to tell people that there was a way for everyone to come back otherwise....

ALSO: i don't think a single person on here mentioned one of the best characters:

https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/leftovers-brett-butler.jpg

anyway, we just finished this last night.

still catching up on HBO shows after being HBO-less for years. might watch Deadwood next. haven't seen Game of Thrones either. and did want to watch True Detective but now there is some sorta horrible internet backlash or something? i thought everyone loved it. or maybe they did and now they don't.

also might re-watch Sopranos. never saw last season. i've been watching Boardwalk Empire on my own. enjoying that.

also yeah sheesh nora. how is she not famous? so good. i hope that doesn't end up being the best part of her life. though it might be. kinda hard to top.

First season True Detective good. Second season bad.

Nora was really good as the requisite Marge Gunderson character in the most recent season of Fargo, too.

Yeah, Carrie Coon has been getting more parts, including inexplicably voicing like three lines for a computer animated Marvel movie character(hope she got paid good)

maria wasn't feeling deadwood after the first episode. she liked the first episode of true detective though.

deadwood made me nostalgic for hell on wheels! i loved that show. sometimes i felt like the only one who did. someone else must have watched it. it was on for awhile. hell on wheels also had a very satisfying last season!

the preacher in the leftovers kinda reminded me of the swede on hell on wheels a little. especially the way they both would get aggro and nutso. though the swede obviously a psychopath.

http://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/the-leftovers-nora-hulking-out.gif

deadwood made me nostalgic for hell on wheels

never thought a sentence about Deadwood would make me sad

I'd really love to see a stage production with CC

Started rewatching tonight, probably just the first season. Eerie parallels with what's going on now.

Enjoyed the first season so much, I'll carry on--and hope that I'm as moved by the final episode this time as everyone else was.

E9 in the first season, the episode where they flash back to life before the Departure--which occupies the last five minutes--is, I think, one of the greatest single episodes of TV I've ever seen. The way they casually introduce Patti as one of Laurie's patients, or Doris as the dog breeder, the way Jill is a goofy outgoing kid so different from her later moroseness, the hints throughout (either Patti's verbal warnings or weird things like the passing car that asks Kevin if he's ready) that something's about to happen, the Jody Reynolds song that begins the episode as Kevin's jogging, and the ending with Laurie looking over at the ultrasound (and the way they wisely don't even cut to the image), it's all so good.

I watched this show in its entirety for the first time a couple of months ago and loved it. one of my favourites

i love it so much, maybe i will do a quarantine rewatch

thinking the same tbh

I’m considering watching this after reading rave reaviews but is it all dark/sad or are there some lighter touches ?
We might not want to get into too heavy stuff at the moment...

just started watching this. the stoning scene in season 1 is one of the most visceral things I've ever seen on TV

The first few episodes and other parts of the first season are pretty dark (and in some parts, edgy in a slightly cruel and silly way). But the show gets funnier and warmer as the seasons go on, and there are some Lost-like mysteries to keep you distracted (with much better resolutions). All three seasons are terrific in different ways. The stoning mentioned above is the (pretty horrible) cutoff point, and after that, nasty things still happen occasionally, but without the sadism. Not sure if that sounds like a good writeup, but this was prob my favourite show of the past 5+ years alongside Better Call Saul & Halt and Catch Fire.

The first season, for the most part, is very somber. Kevin has a line midway, something he texts to his daughter, that's maybe the funniest line in all three seasons, but that's about it. Lots of humour is S2, courtesy Patti. I don't remember S3 as well, although Matt has an episode-ending line on a cruise ship that was great.

And of course Meg has a horrifyingly funny line to Tommy (S2, I think) that is one of the show's greatest.

Holy Wayne or whatever his name is was funny in s1

Scott Glenn, too...maybe more humour than I first indicated.

I was a iffy on the Holy Wayne subplot both times I watched. I understand its importance symbolically (at least the questions it raises), but I was always impatient whenever they cut back to that story. In my COVID analogy, Holy Wayne is hydroxychloroquine.

Couldn't handle Holy Wayne because I couldn't get his Peep Show character out of my mind.

re: funny lines, s1 also has Carrie Coon's "oh, fuck your daughter!"