The Leftovers

[insertnamehere]

SEASON THREE!

DAMON LINDELOF REDEEMING HIMSELF FOR LOST BY MAKING A BETTER TELEVISION SHOW!

THE SPRING OF CARRIE COON IS NIGH!

BARRY JENKINS DIRECTED 2016'S BEST PICTURE AFTER WRITING FOR SEASON TWO, WILL A WRITER FOR SEASON THREE DIRECT 2018'S BEST PICTURE?

JESUS IMAGERY!

BEARDS!

THE MAYBE-APOCALYPSE!

THAT THING DAMON LINDELOF SAID WOULD NEVER BE REVEALED, MIGHT BE REVEALED!

ANOTHER WEIRD SUBMARINE IN THE FINAL SEASON OF A DAMON LINDELOF SHOW! HOPEFULLY, IT DOESN'T KILL ALL THE INTERESTING POC CHARACTERS THIS TIME!

ABBA!

AUSTRALIA!

KANGAROOS!

HYPE!

But seriously folks, there's gonna be a fucking giant inflatable Gary Busey in this next season. How anyone can't be excited for this show is beyond me.

[Ricochet]

Calm ya tits, you know I'll watch it, anyway, even if it went wheels up on "International Assassin". Still gutted by the "down to earth" big s2 finale twist, though, so that's coo'.

BARRY JENKINS DIRECTED 2016'S BEST PICTURE AFTER WRITING FOR SEASON TWO

I didn't know that.

Also, minus 20 meme points for not using Portishead's version.

[insertnamehere]

Just been rewatching Season 2 in anticipation of tomorrow.

Still really, really good.

And International Assassin is still fantastic. I call poppycock on Rico's negative insinuations.

Ughh it seems The Leftovers finally couldn't resist the idea of veering into old Lost bad habits. The execution of this week's episode wasn't bad by any means, but it undeniably dipped my enthusiasm for what the show values more: walking a thin line between grounded intense drama and mystery-shrouded belief testing or simply toying with mysteries and the supernatural.

I see no way in which IA doesn't faithfully continue the shows' exploration of the former. The episode would be completely ridiculous if it weren't for the actual pathos and quite frankly, tear-inducing unraveling of Patti's psyche. Nevertheless, it goes off like gangbusters, managing to combine real, genuine emotional revelations with gonzo, winking existential craziness that cryptically tests Kevin's belief in, well, everything.

I'll also go to bat for the finale too.

Season 2 of The Leftovers is damn near untouchable in terms of quality in my eyes. It's in a pantheon along with Season 4 of The Wire, Season 1 of True Detective, and Season 1 of Utopia.

[Ricochet]

You call poppycock on every occasion I dare call a smidge on these high art shows. C'est la vie.

Re-reading that quote, I still stand in retrospect by what I said. It's true to what I felt going into and through this episode at that time. It was a skid off the rail attempt, compared to the grounded drama with metaphysical burdens stuff, and it didn't bring euphoria watching it. It had some quest for closure (the episode's ending, for sure), but it still happened after what was basically "hey let's go on a wacky purgatorial bottle adventure". The script and the fantasy envisioning dilluted or lost the message in the process. And when a second ride happened in the finale, my forehead instinctively went in search for a nail in which to plunge.

Otherwise, the mix of emotionality and faith-testing, existential craziness that you mention was fulfilled in the finale itself... but in the real world narrative. That pillage of Miracle was fairly gut-punching, for a season-long mystery and drama resolution. That was fine. But the extra, out-of-body-experience, supernatural topping was discordant and it was Lostian.

Anyway, pre-reviews of season 3 seem laudatory so there's reason to hope for the best, starting on Monday local.

[insertnamehere]

The worst thing about this board being down, other than it meaning my game being delayed indefinitely, is that I haven't had the opportunity to talk about how utterly stupendous this last season has been.

Only The Leftovers can make an episode centering on a furry-orgy-sex boat, and make it be an emotional exploration of Christianity, and mankind's relationship to what we call "God."

ALL HAIL KEV-O

[Ricochet]

Nah.

[Ricochet]

Ok, the one this week worked.

[Matahari]

I'm dying for the finale, and dying because it's the finale. Best show I've seen in years!

[DharmaHelper]

One of my favorite shows of all time by far.

[DharmaHelper]

OK so I know I said The Leftovers was one of "my favorite" shows, but this is objectively one of the *best* scenes of any TV show of all time

[Ricochet]

Embed vids don't load on mobile hmm...

I'll save thoughts for post-finale, if any, I suppose, but it definitely seems season 2 was both a wonder and a fluke of a near flawless blend of high octane, but well structured emotional drama, depths of concept and philosophy and magic realism-like odd events. Season 1 never had it perfect and I've got mixed feelings about how s3 delivered as well.

[DharmaHelper]

Well that was a very familiar feeling

[insertnamehere]

Well that was a very familiar feeling

Spoiler: show

I mean, seeing how most of the episode, from the beginning with Nora being told not to lie, to the nun saying something along the lines of "it may not be real but it makes for a better story," and Kevin's whole fake act, was concerned with the difference between truth and lies, and how we choose certain lies to believe and build our lives around, I don't think we're meant to take Nora's story at face value.

The first episode of this season was The Book of Kevin, in which a belief is presented that's centered around Kevin which explains and soothes people with a positive version of the afterlife, where Kevin "frees the dead from their pain."

I saw this episode as a sort of distaff counterpoint, right down to the title. Nora presents another belief that we can either buy into or not buy into which explains and soothes people with a positive version of what happened to the Departed, where they're living their lives happily as "the lucky ones."

Something which this show has done since the pilot is a sort of aggressive cross-cutting between someone telling a story, and the actual events. E.g. "cleaning out a gutter," and the shot of Kevin Senior running around naked.

If the writers wanted us to fully believe Nora's story, it would have been insanely easy for them to cut to Nora waking up in the parking lot, and show her wondering around Australia and Mapleton. It was a conscious choice not to prove, or necessarily disprove Nora's recounting.

Something something Let the Mystery Be.

But yeah, there were some shades of the LOST finale, and I was worried for a moment or two that the small Australian town was the Afterlife, and Lindelof was going to the exact same well. Still, it was nice to see Laurie, although I may have preferred for her to have just suddenly showed up as the Vice President in Kevin's Presidential excursion, just to see the drama that would ensue.

I think the only fault of this season, in my estimation, is due to HBO giving them 8 episodes instead of 10. I would have loved to see a Murphy-centric episode, and perhaps instead of being instantly droned out of existence, an Evie/Meg manhunt episode which has the same end result. I feel like all of those characters got short shrift this season. Such is the reality of being a low-rated drama with a massive ensemble cast. Some people are gonna be under served.

I'm interested to hear what our resident Leftovers grumpy gus buzzkill non-International-Assassin-liker thought of this episode.

[DharmaHelper]

Well that was a very familiar feeling

Spoiler: show

I mean, seeing how most of the episode, from the beginning with Nora being told not to lie, to the nun saying something along the lines of "it may not be real but it makes for a better story," and Kevin's whole fake act, was concerned with the difference between truth and lies, and how we choose certain lies to believe and build our lives around, I don't think we're meant to take Nora's story at face value.

The first episode of this season was The Book of Kevin, in which a belief is presented that's centered around Kevin which explains and soothes people with a positive version of the afterlife, where Kevin "frees the dead from their pain."

I saw this episode as a sort of distaff counterpoint, right down to the title. Nora presents another belief that we can either buy into or not buy into which explains and soothes people with a positive version of what happened to the Departed, where they're living their lives happily as "the lucky ones."

Something which this show has done since the pilot is a sort of aggressive cross-cutting between someone telling a story, and the actual events. E.g. "cleaning out a gutter," and the shot of Kevin Senior running around naked.

If the writers wanted us to fully believe Nora's story, it would have been insanely easy for them to cut to Nora waking up in the parking lot, and show her wondering around Australia and Mapleton. It was a conscious choice not to prove, or necessarily disprove Nora's recounting.

Something something Let the Mystery Be.

But yeah, there were some shades of the LOST finale, and I was worried for a moment or two that the small Australian town was the Afterlife, and Lindelof was going to the exact same well. Still, it was nice to see Laurie, although I may have preferred for her to have just suddenly showed up as the Vice President in Kevin's Presidential excursion, just to see the drama that would ensue.

I think the only fault of this season, in my estimation, is due to HBO giving them 8 episodes instead of 10. I would have loved to see a Murphy-centric episode, and perhaps instead of being instantly droned out of existence, an Evie/Meg manhunt episode which has the same end result. I feel like all of those characters got short shrift this season. Such is the reality of being a low-rated drama with a massive ensemble cast. Some people are gonna be under served.

I'm interested to hear what our resident Leftovers grumpy gus buzzkill non-International-Assassin-liker thought of this episode.

Spoiler: show

I quite liked the episode. I sorta figured Nora was bullshitting about her experience in the machine, especially as they cut just around the time she was about to say "stop" i believe. My only critiques would be similar to yours actually. I would have liked to have seen 10 episodes, with a little more breathing room and cleaning up on some characters. I was glad to see they returned to the usual theme song for the finale. I think I would have actually been more disappointed if Nora had gone through with it, and wound up in some bullshit version of the world a la the weird dumb Purgatory that Desmond woke people up from or w/e. I like that Leftovers was about looking for meaning rather than actually finding the shit out.

[DharmaHelper]

inb4 The Leftovers mafia

[insertnamehere]

I really, really want to host Leftovers Mafia. As you can imagine, I have more than a few ideas regarding the mechanics.

I've even put together a tentative list of roles, because I have no life.

[DharmaHelper]

Sidenote, International Assassin was better than The Most Dangerous Man in the World (And His Identical Twin Brother)

[insertnamehere]

Sidenote, International Assassin was better than The Most Dangerous Man in the World (And His Identical Twin Brother)

Agreed. But, I feel like they had to return to that place in Season 3, and Most Powerful Man was about as good as an IA sequel could hope to be.

Most of the power of IA comes from its sheer randomness and abrupt introduction of bizarre supernatural absurdity. The initial magic does kinda rub off the more they go back.

[DharmaHelper]

Sidenote, International Assassin was better than The Most Dangerous Man in the World (And His Identical Twin Brother)

Agreed. But, I feel like they had to return to that place in Season 3, and Most Powerful Man was about as good as an IA sequel could hope to be.

Most of the power of IA comes from its sheer randomness and abrupt introduction of bizarre supernatural absurdity. The initial magic does kinda rub off the more they go back.

Spoiler: show

Nice touch with the pacemaker though

[Ricochet]

Well, real quick, I'll say that the finale was great. And that I kinda believe Nora.

The wild rant that follows is not compulsory to open and read.

Spoiler: show

That still doesn't change the fact that at least half of this season drove me nuts. The most desperate sensation was that Lindelof was graced a third season out of the sheer prestige of the show and for five episodes it felt like he took that opportunity and just used it to crank up the crazy: The Book of Kev-O, self-asphyxiation, anti-Flood voodoo chanting, marine guy running nude on the deck of a submarine, boat orgies... All for what, the idea of a lingering malaise in the psyche of post-departure humanity, alongside a mounting end-of-days-looming credo, surrounding the magical, on-the-nose biblical milestone of seven years? Pls. I mean, I'm among the last to complain about having crazy in my arts, but that's not truly what I wanted in my cup of Leftovers these past three seasons. I'll get on that shortly.

Another thing that spooked me was the resurface of some all-too-familiar Lostian tropes. That flashforward in episode 1? F**k you. Pointless, too, considering how the real denounement was constructed in the finale. Nora's interview with the scientists in "G'Day Melbourne" being siked, in a "yeah, I'm not going to tell you things all the way through" fashion? Almost threw my Pepsi at the screen. It was really bothersome for Lind-O to still show such fixations, when his overall vision on ambiguity and letting-the-mystery-be-ism was employed so much better and wiser employed in these series.

Now, as to clarify why I'm so agnostic towards the extravagance and craze part of the show: because it never mattered to me that much. I was in it for the heartwrenches, which were copiously provided by the mostly inspired writing and often extremely inspired performances, and for the occasional twists, reveals and rug-pulls that would fuel even more heartwrenches.

S1 was about grief, coping and... sort of, depression in general. I think the season was only bogged down by some less exciting or cohesive episodes in the grand sequence and the sense that some characters were not fully fleshed out and/or purposed.

What I liked so much, then, about S2 is that a way was found to craft a drama that was more unified and tight (certain, cough, afterlife experiences notwithstanding) - and do it out of improvised, freer new material, since the book adaptation had been exhausted. I remember not being able to breathe or feel any impulse to tune out during the first seven episodes, that's how impeccable and impressive it was. S2 on the whole was about faith and challenging it to its core, with all the blessed feeling of safety, self-indulgence and self-importance of Miracle/Jarden being shaken up (or, better yet, questioned in a deep way altogether) - it even redeemed the GR as a whole as an implaccable, dispiriting opposing force in the show. "Some people just want to watch the world burn", as Alfred would tell Bruce. S1 had some twists and blow ups, but I'm pretty sure I never want to watch again what S2 delivered at the end.

So, given this... what was S3 really about? The closest answer would be closure, especially since the lostian format of character-centered episodes was combined with the idea of driving every character, as much as possible, towards some sort of closure. But in this regard it still felt like a throwback to S1's choppy, sprawling format, rather than S2's organic ways.

What I found good about the season was its concept of quickly defusing (or, rather, de-mythologizing) some of the urges for mysteries, ambiguities and other trickery:

-- first minutes were "oh wow, so we're start off where we left, with the GR and all"? nope, blast them away with a nuke
-- alien dog rulers conspiracies? nope, cut the music off right away and tell Dean to go take a hike
-- that man up in the tower being worshipped as a departee? nope, show us his death right away and leave Nora to debunk it story-wise
-- that S2 end scene that appeared like a flashforward to older Kevin being hunted down by wannabee apostoles? nope, just a plain aussie cop getting drowned
-- the idea of a cult of Kev-O growing among women in frakin' Australia of all places? nope, just a freak conjuncture
-- Evie still alive? nah

Of course, though, they didn't go all the way through with this, which became obvious as soon as Kevin dillydallied on burning right away a ludicrous book written on him. He needed four more episodes to do such a simple thing and his story or conflict with this "gospel-thingy" didn't even progress much past that...

My one exception to wearing the no-extravagance hat was probably Ol' Garvey's episode ending up among my faves (#3 spot, in fact), but that was because he was already way damaged and past believabe in his actions. So it became more fun and less perplexing to just watch him do his thang, much like watching a whole movie with Jack Nicholson going on a half-senile self-discovery escapade ("About Schmidt", in case the references isn't clear).

My one shock was the Matt-centric episode not turning into a fave, as per tradition during the past seasons. Here the extravaganza kinda burned me out and turned me resentful. Matt's episodes always included a trial of faith or a test of character of some sorts coming via God, but to concoct such a blunt face-off with a dilly nobody claiming to be YH in an je-me'n-fiche embodiment - felt so on the nose, just in order to make Matt finally calm the frak down and find some clarity (or abandonment) in his goals, ideals and everything. On top of which, the whole boat thing was loud confetti, really.

As for You-Know-What in terms of off-the-rail entertainment, my issue may well be that I don't believe that much in Kevin Garvey and in how he was crafted and pumped up since S1 to be this alpha lead, above average, potentially destined for bigger things figure. What were Kevin Garvey's trials and plight, really, apart from some potential mental loose screws (that Laurie, ever the agnostic, was keen to point out)? It was clear what Nora's or Laurie's were. It was clear why Patti served as both an antagonist and as a tragic figure. But Kevin...? In S1 his arc and importance were sort of uninteresting, apart from being placed in direct conflict with Patti/the GR as a force of chaos. Him being stuck with Ghost Patti afterwards and becoming more troubled and moanier was creditable enough. Heck, even him being required to undergo a passage in order to solve this issue was fine on paper. But why such bombast, afterwards?

Ultimately, though, I did like the fact that for Kevin, this season's whole christ-like Kev-O shtick was itself de-mythologised. Alas, it took seven episodes of self-indulgent fantasy.

You folks say you would have liked a Murphy-centric episode as well, but I personally don't know what more could have been developed there, enough for a whole introspective chapter. With Erica a distant coper and Michael seeming composed enough, that left John, whose sole drive for closure dealt with gaining certainty of Evie's fate and such. Plus, the element of his troubling, violent past had been already cut short itself within the structure of the narrative and the show.

Nora and Laurie, in the end, were the most relevant characters of this show, since they remained linked all the way back to the core idea of post-departure loss, grief and infinite-like turmoil. Nora lost everything and Laurie, unbeknownst to anyone (even us until nine episodes into the first season), lost something she didn't even get to fully bond with. That's so fascinating. Both of their closure episodes in S3 were done exquisitely. Laurie's particularly was a sort of bitter delight. I would have been ok with either conclusions to her shedunit cliffhanger. In fact, I find myself picky with suicide as a characterial trope being the solution (as in it being real hard to sell such a conclusion), but in this case, I think all the elements were neatly in place for Laurie's choice to be understandable.

As for why I would tend to believe Nora, several reasons go through my head, more than reasons for which to doubt her. Regardless, of course, the idea is, still, that it doesn't really matter (#letthemysterybe)- which Kevin put it in a poetic way during the episode. I acknowledge there are clues left to discredit
the veracity - including the "about the say Stop" detail; nice catch, DH - but also think their placement is intentional. Otherwise, believe it or not, I really liked the concept of a dimension tear which left both sides missing the other. On to my pro arguments:

1. I don't think Nora, even in choosing a reclusive life (as punishment?), would have coped with the unsatisfaction of not going through with it. This unsatisfaction was the foundation of her three-seasons long trial - which she was even honest in confessing (to Kevin). I don't even think she would have managed to really lie to Kevin about it.

2. This is something I'm borrowing from AVClub, since after all I'm not that great at getting deep impressions out of my own first watch(es), but Nora was constantly an agent of skepticism and calling out on others' bullsuit. Why would the twist be that, all of a sudden, she's the one crafting the most phantasmagorical spin of a narrative?

3. Not really sure how to properly explain this one, but I don't think it would be fair to doubt Nora's story, simply due to the we-never-saw-her-going-through mechanic, in comparison to believing whatever Kevin went through, by having witnessed two episodes and a half (cumulatively) of limbo'ing hard. Think of it, characters within the universe could well believe or not Kevin's transcending journeys, depending on their POV: Laurie didn't, but John had facts that were hard to contest; meanwhile, Matt, Michael and Ol' Garvey dived into gospelizing, while Nora took it as more of a material for banter. But us, the viewers... we've been sent across with Kevin, without any sense of ambiguity. Why not trust Nora to have had a similar experience? Admitting how intentional the evidence around Nora's take were left in the fog should not really imply any intentional lean on distrusting it.

Woow, text so long. Anyway, what else. Oh, I enjoyed that the score eased up on Richter's aching violin or piano themes during each sobbing or tense moment. Alas, I hated the music shuffle during the intros. And getting back to the original two, by the end, was too late.

And the last shot with the doves was total cheese, which was surprising given the way Mimi Leder helmed most episodes. Oh well.