I can’t even spoil the season premiere, but holy shit, this is an incredible show.
Saddened that this isn’t sparking more discussion, both due to the nature of its show but mainly because of its high quality. Only 6 episodes left and it’s event television as far as I’m concerned. I can see that opinion souring based upon how this season ultimately turns out, but they certainly aren’t scaling down the ambition and seem to just be going for it.
Yeah, this show is amazing. I never know what it’s going to do next and I don’t always understand everything it’s trying to tell me, but it clearly has big ideas and shows them in an interesting way. One of the few things I watch that I’m thinking about for quite some time after it’s over.
I was amazed at how Perfect Strangers has evolved throughout the seasons.
I was going to say, just the one guy from Perfect Strangers (no not him, the other guy) has had the weirdest arc over the three seasons. It’s actually kind of beautiful.
I wasn’t familiar with that show, or any of its cast, so I didn’t even realize what they’d done until reading recaps. I had no idea that the actor was playing a damaged, alternate universe version of himself. Amazing.
Oh wow, Bronson Pinchot was on that show? He would have had more of an impact, since I knew him from his roles in 80s films and True Romance, which I just rewatched on Bluray.
I’m working my way through this starting from the beginning. It’s a great show so far!
However I find the whole “guilty remnant” part … irritating. To the exteme.
- Smoking is an utterly disgusting habit. picking up this unhealthy, bad for you, bad for everyone, stinks like hell habit at the whim of some rando cult is … super fucking annoying.
- Not speaking, which is apparently also part of this rando cult, is like squaring that annoyance. Oh wait let me slow everything down and whip out my dumbass little writing pad, and take a few moments to jot you a little note, not because I have some kind of legitimate disability, but because I AM INTENTIONALLY CHOOSING TO BE SUPER FUCKING ANNOYING. Hey I hope you like facial expressions because I got those for days. Dialog is overrated! Bring back silent film! Somebody wheel out a player piano!
… so every scene with those white garbed remnant idiots I am just hating on them so damn hard that it’s actually hard to concentrate on the narrative.
I keep thinking why doesn’t someone just murder them as part of the plot, because they’re so fucking annoying. I’ll renew HBO GO for 10 years, right now, today, on the spot, if they could just film a scene of someone bringing a few tommy guns and walking through their compound, mowing every single stupid ass guilty remnant member down in glorious slow motion with “freebird” playing in the background. You know, Kingsman style, pieces of white fabric and gore and fluff and blood spraying everywhere. Glorious!
I know, I know, it’s fiction based on a novel. And these are the weirdo artistic choices of the guy who wrote the book. But god damn those bits are annoying like nails on a chalkboard to me personally.
Other than that. Great show! Very fine indeed.
The first season is generally regarded as the “weakest” season, and it probably crippled the show permanently in terms of audience. But it’s based almost entirely around the novel.
Season 2, which aired two years ago, was when the show moved beyond the novel and really took off to critical acclaim. And, thankfully, the Remnant play a smaller role.
You are having the intended reaction and will be rewarded.
Yeah I got more than I asked for. Another hallmark of a great show. A personal stoning … now that is biblically harsh.
Scott Glenn never gets much screen time, until last night.
“Come on.”
End of season 1. I enjoyed it, threw a bunch of stuff at me I didn’t see coming.
I can see now that the show had its hands tied, if you will, by the book. That has its pros and cons. The con is mainly the Guity Remnant, which make so much more sense as a cult of griefers. They would have been totally at home on 4chan.
Did anyone actually read the book? Was it materially different than season 1?
This whole people randomly vanishing forever theme certainly is a rich vein of pathos to mine in future seasons…
Really interested in seeing what you think of Season 2, which is a significant transition.
I haven’t read the book, but apparently season 1 was relatively faithful to it. Season 2+ is on its own wonderful tangent.
That said, I thought yesterday’s episode was the weakest in a while, at least until the end, when they tied it into other events – I just find it difficult to spend so much time watching a dirty, unkempt, socially awkward or outright insane lunatic.
I didn’t expect season 2 to get all 2000 B.C. on us from the very start. That was a shock. I get the geologic time connection though. It’s clever.
But the reason I came here to post. Oh my godddd Patti from the cult, that’s stuck in Kevin’s head after she commits suicide literally STARTS SINGING RICK ASTLEY’S NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP to Kevin in episode 4!
Trolls! So many trolls and griefers! I completely called this!
Season 2 is far more intimately connected to season 1 than I expected. I thought it’d be a completely different story, different characters.
I really love the intro for season 2. It so gracefully captures the off-kilter nature of this show, where something so strange has happened, that everything is questioned: science, faith, and most of all, yourself.
This is officially the trolliest of troll shows in the history of fucking humankind. Every single time, every mystery the show presents can be resolved by asking:
What’s the trolliest possible resolution to this situation? If you wanted to just straight up fuck with people, what would you do?
… annnnd then watching it happen. So those Season 2 opening credits I liked so much? Look what they did to them in Season 3:
https://twitter.com/JarettSays/status/856315067029086208
The new song used may be familiar to some: it’s called ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now’ and is best known as the theme tune of US sitcom Perfect Strangers which ran from 1983-1996.
Yep. The very same show that’s been shown as random background “someone was watching TV” in several episodes, for example in the nuthouse one where Kevin meets his dad, as I recall. The same show that has one of the real actors playing himself, in season 3 episode 2.
What The Leftovers is trying to tell us, apparently, is that sometimes the universe is just fucking with you.
It’s a series about a mystery that never gets explained. Written by Damon Lindelof. It’s the most perfect troll in the history of trolling.
“Was that hard enough or do I need another oar?”
WHO WOULD TAKE THAT BABY IN THAT SITUATION?! I was yelling at the screen for a minute there, thankfully that was resolved quickly. Even given the very powerful and specific relevance a moment like that would have for a character like Nora, the implausibility of “Hey stranger at a bus stop, hold my baby for a while” and the further implausibility of Nora going with it snapped me out of the show for a moment.
Also, just catching up on the thread, and it’s fun seeing @wumpus’s earlier reactions to the Guilty Remnant in season one since I went through the exact same thing. I gave up halfway through season one and didn’t come back to catch up until after season two—when my friends had given it enough praise I couldn’t keep ignoring it—and I’m glad I did.
Forget the baby, this whole wu-tang clan tattoo is just more icing on the troll cake. And then they jump on the trampoline, because of course they do.
Let’s see, for intro music in season 3 we’ve had:
- the theme from Perfect Strangers
- lounge version of Personal Jesus
- This Love is Over (should have been Take On Me, though)
I guess the reason this show is constantly trollin’ trollin’ trollin’ is … because the same guy wrote Lost? I was never that into Lost.
I have to admit the giant cosmic joke theme is quite apt for the book. Religion was the original “ha ha fooled everyone” troll, until this event happened that … essentially proves something is out there.
Instead of us trolling ourselves, because that we can at least understand … it’s … the universe trolling us.