I stand behind this statement as a valid summary of The Leftovers.
I really have never seen a show quite like it, and I continue to highly recommend it.
Well, I’ve given it another 2.5 episodes, but had to switch it off now (ie made it halfway through ep 5). Not sure if I’ll return to it.
Just tell me if ANY of the supernatural / weird occurances ever get satisfactorily explained?
Whats with the bloody smoking?
Guess I don’t have the patience for “mystery box” shows anymore.
Let me ask you a hypothetical question: how would you feel about a show that asked a lot of interesting questions but didn’t bother to answer any of them?
I can’t decide if I’m supposed to answer this.
I would say you don’t get all the answers, but you get enough.
How about… you don’t get all of the answer… but you don’t care that you didn’t.
Again, season 2 is really where things kick off.
And you get more answers than you might think. Regardless, it’s definitely not a burn - you aren’t just jerked around.
Obviously late to the party here, but holy cow this show. My wife and I burned through season 1 and 2 over the last month. On season 3 now. It’s a compelling show that sticks with you.
And I normally hate mystery box shows that don’t have a plan. I noped out of Lost in season 1 because I could tell they had no idea where they were taking things. Here? I don’t care. Not having the answers is sorta the point.
Only 7 episodes left.
That’s exactly it. If you go into this hoping to get everything wrapped up in a bow in the final episode, you’re bound to be disappointed. But if you can go with the flow, it’s a hell of a ride. I really need to watch it again. It’s been long enough that the details are fuzzy.
The final episode is fantastic.
The Leftovers is my favorite television series ever. When I think about it I’m sad that I can’t watch it again for the first time. Just incredible television, like it says on the box.
Just started watching this and I’m almost done with Season 1. Tried watching it with my wife a few years back, but it developed too slowly for us, and was a bit more grim than we usually like, but after hearing folks say for awhile that they really managed to stick the landing I just got too curious. And it’s pretty incredible! It does almost feel like Damon Lindelof trying to prove that he’s not just a charlatan who can conjure up questions but doesn’t know how to answer them. Some really weird stuff from earlier in the season is starting to have some kind of payoff. Although they’re introducing new weirdness at least as frequently.
A few random things I really enjoy:
- For some reason, I really like the dynamic between the mayor and Justin Theroux. They’re always supporting each other and also complaining about it at every turn.
- Boy, Ann Dowd (Patti, the GR leader) is good.
- I thought I was going to be irritated by Nora (Carrie Coon), especially when she strikes up a relationship with Theroux, but they’ve somehow painted her as a really human character going through a lot of changes in perspective and attitude under some extreme circumstance.
- The deer breaking into houses and trashing the place is an incredible recurring image.
You’re making me want to rewatch this.
Get ready for Nora (Carrie Coon) to be your favorite character, and season 2 is even better than season 1.
Carrie Coon should have been nominated for every acting award there is for this role. She’s incredible.
Boy, the new Season 2 title sequence sure feels like a change of tone. And so delightful to unexpectedly hear the voice of Iris DeMent!
I made it through the entire series over the last couple weeks, and it was really satisfying. Cuse and Lindeloff seemed to really have learned their lesson with Lost. I got a lot of the same cues from the characters - they’re all broken in some way, and through the series we learn how they got to be where they are when we first meet them.
Spoilers below, but I think it’s fair to not blur them since the series ended more than two years ago.
But what’s missing is the sheer number of dead-end teases we got in Lost. I never expected to learn why people disappeared, so when we actually did that was nice, and the explanation was plausible and opened up my mind to a whole new way to look at the show. I really would have liked a season about the 2% and how they made things work.
(One other note: in the first episode there’s a clip of some scientist basically saying “we have no idea what happened, we can’t help you,” but in reality a split of the universe seems like it would have been one of the very first theories trotted out. Of course there would be no way to prove it, but it seems weird that they’d suggest that there was no theory by “science” about the disappeared.)
Nora’s story at the end is slightly troublesome. I’d agree that it seems unlikely that society would remain intact after 98% of the population disappeared, down to street lights working and people still in the homes they were in seven years ago, but it does tie up the narrative nicely.
I also didn’t love the whole pretend amnesia thing - not sure what the point of that was, but again, it was short lived so acceptable.
I’m pretty sure that we’re supposed to be somewhat skeptical of Nora’s narrative. The whole show is about narrative and how we try to exercise control over our lives by telling stories about the things that happen. I tended to think that’s what Nora was doing. Emily VanDerWerff had a really good writeup of the show after the finale aired:
The series begins with the sudden disappearance of 2 percent of the world’s population, but its objective isn’t to answer the question of where those people went. Whatever the answer is, regardless of whether it’s simple or mind-bogglingly complex, will pale in comparison to the fact that when millions of people just up and vanished one day, everyone on Earth was reminded that much of existence is basically random, meaningless, and out of our control. What do you do when you’re confronted with that fact?
Well, you start trying to rationalize. You try to put a narrative on what happened. You find an explanation, whether scientific or religious or something else altogether, and you try to fill in the gap between your need for control and your complete and utter powerlessness. Everybody alive can relate to the feeling of wanting to be in charge of our lives, only to realize that the systems that surround us are waiting to idly flick a fingernail and send us ricocheting through the rapids of chance.
Such an incredible show. Damn, now I want to watch it all again from the beginning.
Yeah, it is interesting to hear a story of the 2%, but it’s likely intended to be a way of Nora just letting go and finding closure, as she didn’t actually go through with the “experiment” at the last minute. It’s pretty dark: the people trying the experiment are essentially committing suicide, and people are profiting off of it, because people can’t keep going without knowing the truth even though they may know they’re deceiving themselves. It’s pretty evident by Nora hiding afterwards, and some of the goofiness in the story (2% of population left, but people living in the same houses; reconstructing a dimensional portal somehow, etc.). It’s all about closure, just as the entire series ultimately is.