THE LEFTOVERS: HBO's nondenominational post-rapture series

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