THE LEFTOVERS: HBO's nondenominational post-rapture series

fwiw I watched this whole series and wouldn't really say I liked it. It's ambitiously weird and sometimes compelling, Carrie Coon is excellent, but everything is always amped up so much. It never really gelled with me. Also hate hate hate that "let the avocadies be" song

yes you definitely need to be down for, or ideally in pursuit of, up-to-11 emotions at all times

Don't read this unless you're finished.

Moved onto S2. I've talked about ghost Patty lots in this thread, but her first line ("What the fuck was that?" after they let Kevin walk after he turns himself in) and her last line ("Uh-oh") in the second episode are both series' highlights.

holy wayne's scene in the final episode of season 1 was intense

we've done season 2 now. definitely an improvement on the first but not sure I quite understand all the hosannas. do enjoy how overwrought everything is all the time though, and the relationship between kevin and nora is genuinely kinda moving

season 2 also actually funny in places

justin theroux really levels up his performance in the second series too, kinda has to given his character's pretty incredible storyline

Has anyone read the novel? I'm wondering if it's all there in the novel, or if, when they got to the second season, they had to start adding stuff just for the series. When a TV series goes on the air, they have no way of knowing if they're going to be around for a second season.

My wife read the novel. It’s only the first season and there’s less there. That affected my watching if the series, she told me in the beginning that the book offers no explanations.

That's what I suspected--which to me makes the second season even more impressive, that they had to create that from scratch. I assume Tom Perrotta continued to stay involved in the second and third seasons.

Perotta did stay on and is heavily credited.

Great scene at the end of S2, E5 (the one where Matt and Mary are locked out of Miracle): Matt headed back to the encampment with the kid, explaining to John that yes, Mary did wake up, and that if he makes it back to town again, he'll sit down with John and have a talk. The contrast between Matt's restored assurance and John's anger/befuddlement is memorable. (I'm sure there are, in addition, specific biblical analogies that are lost on me...I get the crucifixion part--I'm not that much of a pagan.)

"the one where Matt and Mary are locked out of Miracle"--and if that doesn't jog your memory, the Bellamy Brothers episode.

Anyone rewatching or watching S2 onwards, definitely check Reza Aslan’s recaps & explainer pieces he wrote for Vulture at the time

He gives great insight into the religious/spiritual angles of the show (he was an adviser for s2 and s3)

This is the first one he did for s2e1
https://www.vulture.com/2015/10/leftovers-mysteries-religion-reza-aslan.html

Behind a paywall, but I'll use that Google trick to access it. Found the next episode--rocks through the window, the fundraiser, Freddie Rumsen, Simon & Garfunkel--very absorbing.

I've mentioned how you can see imperfect but clear pandemic parallels in The Leftovers. I'm surprised there hasn't been a Miracle pop up the past month in the news--a city or town that COVID has completely passed by. My own town feels a little like that--two positives and holding for two months--but I don't see a caravan of people flocking here, and nobody's slitting any goats yet in the town square.

When Kevin asks Patti "What do you want me to do?" and she launches into her Egyptian story, that has to be the funniest thing in the whole series. I burst out laughing knowing what was coming.

Found the next episode--rocks through the window, the fundraiser, Freddie Rumsen, Simon & Garfunkel--very absorbing.

This was the first episode when it explicitly occured to be me how delighted and fascinated I was by this show.

Here's the Egyptian thing I referred to above--obviously, don't watch if you haven't already seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LRQEzVaNw8

The look on Kevin's face as he takes this all in brings me to tears of laughter. Unfortunately, the poster cut the clip before the punchline: Patti bursts out laughing and says "How the fuck should I know what you're supposed to do?"

Finished S2 last night. I'll stand by my admiration for S1, not a favourite on this thread--I didn't mind the extreme somberness at all this time, and still give it a slight edge. But I loved S2, too, more than the first time; everything just fit together. Meg dancing with Tommy at that roadside bar was great--maybe the only time Meg transforms into a humane, open person in the entire first two seasons, and wow, Liv Tyler was so beautiful for those 10 minutes. (Obviously she always is, but I think they photographed her with a hard edge the rest of the time.)

Now, the hard part: S3, almost none of which I remember, and which I really didn't care for the first time (a few moments, yes).

s3 rules! too short, tho

Finished S3--I'll get some thoughts down later. I had to laugh at this, though (from a piece on CNN's site this morning), having been talking about COVID parallels I kept finding second time around.

Boosting markets' optimism Tuesday, US biotechnology company Novavax (NVAX) announced that it is starting a human trial for a Covid-19 vaccine candidate in Australia.

Kevin stepping up to save the world one more time.

All you have to do is step into this little pod here...

What I wrote three years ago about S3:

THE LEFTOVERS: HBO's nondenominational post-rapture series

Removed from high expectations, it did improve a lot. I don't like it better than the first two seasons. My favourite episode remains E8 in the first season (life just before the departure), and the single scene I find most moving would be Kevin singing "Homeward Bound" in S2, not Nora's monologue at the end. But it didn't seem nearly as arbitrary (if that's the right word) this time--it held together and meshed with the first two seasons.

I think I was really thrown by the two most out-there episodes the first time, the Kevin Sr. episode and the one on the cruise ship. I can now see (especially with the first) how some of the reviews I've been sampling experienced them as tour-de-forces. The two things I did love initially--that wild Aboriginal music ("Rain Dance," an obvious tribute to the Guess Who) and Matt's episode-closing line aboard the ship ("That was the guy I was telling you about")--were as great as ever. I appreciated the humour more in Kevin Sr.'s episode (loved "Are you kidding me?" when he gets hit with the dart), and the he-says-he's-god subplot aboard the ship, that felt more meaningful this time, not just a clever joke.

I'm normally an against-interpretation kind of person, but ultimately it all felt very much like Six Feet Under from a different angle: carpe diem, because you never know when it will all end. You can't miss that in Six Feet Under, where you have all those freak accidents to start each episode. With The Leftovers, it's three seasons of false leads and fake prophets and self-serving explanations. I really liked Nora's description of the other side: all the departures wondering where 98% of the world has gone.

Was really glad they returned to familiar opening-them music for the last two episodes. Except for the one hip-hop song, those rotating opening themes in S3 were pretty bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhPENXCcK9A

Couldn't find it on Soulseek, so I downloaded the video and converted it to an mp3.

The alternate world where 98% of people disappeared sounds pretty cool.

pvmic