Television Review: The End is finally upon us in the final breathtaking chapter of HBO’s “The Leftovers”.
Spoilers ahead. Can’t say I didn’t warn ya.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and no, everyone does not feel fine. War is imminent, hatred and ignorance are everywhere you look, a deluded, incurious man-baby is the leader of the free world, and citizens the world over are having their basic human rights attacked on a daily basis. It would not be unreasonable, at this point in our history, to look out your window and deduce that the apocalypse is finally upon us.
All of which is another way of asking: has there ever been a more appropriate time for “The Leftovers” then now? Has a show about the literal end of existence ever felt as eerily prescient as it does in 2017? I don’t mean to reduce our dire collective state as a planet to the level of hype for an eagerly-anticipated and divisive HBO drama: I merely intend to highlight the bizarre confluence of circumstances that make this particular year the most appropriate time in recent memory for a “Leftovers” comeback.
Not that it ever really went away, mind you. Damon Lindelof’s shattering, controversial dramatic meditation on grief and salvation has been the subject of innumerable editorials and think pieces since it premiered in 2014. I was on record as pretty much hating the first season, while the second season placed #4 on my list of 2015’s greatest T.V. shows. It is one of the most consistently rewarding small screen dramas to watch on a weekly basis, and unquestionably one of the most difficult to write about.
That’s because “The Leftovers,” though it inspires reaction pieces every Monday after an episode airs, transcends academic analysis. To try and comprehend the show on a macro level is a pointless act, because “The Leftovers’” own sense of logic — of what makes sense, at least in the topsy-turvy world of this show, adapted from Tom Perrotta’s novel — is so given to shape-shifting to fit the show’s unpredictable moods, that traditional scrutiny seems all but unachievable.
The best way to enjoy “The Leftovers,” I’ve found, is to know that you are in the hands of a gifted storyteller and to simply let the story itself play like music: that is, to enjoy it as pure sensation and not worry about the examination of the show’s capital-T themes as you process it. We are entering an age where the fanboy theorizing that surrounds certain popular shows (“Westworld” and “Mr. Robot” are just two recent examples that jump to mind) is threatening to eclipse the artfulness of the shows themselves. And yet, with “The Leftovers,” Lindelof — who was also one of the main brains behind “Lost,” another fantastical television parable that provoked as much ire as it did awe — has ensured that over-analyzing “The Leftovers” is practically impossible. Like a chess wizard, Lindelof is at least two or three steps ahead of his critics, resulting in television that is out-there and impossible to predict as it is occasionally ludicrous (in spite of loving season two, I was decidedly not a fan of that season’s most ambitious chapter, the hour-long hallucination that was “International Assassin”).
Each season of “The Leftovers” has shifted locations, while retaining more or less the same cast of central players, as well as sustaining the show’s trademark mood of pessimism and dread. Season one unfolded in the leafy upstate New York suburb of Mapleton, while season two relocated to a dusty, underpopulated Texas town called Jarden — more specifically, to an old-world haven called “Miracle” that was said to be the only place on earth not affected by The Departure. For those who’ve never seen the show, I don’t know why you’re reading this review, but here’s a little bit in the way of basic background: The Departure was a global catastrophic event in which 2% of the world’s population simply vanished, without a trace, off the face of the earth.
Scientific reasoning behind The Departure remains deliberately fuzzy, even three seasons in. The first two rounds of “The Leftovers” mostly examined the crippling effects of The Departure as seen through the lens of the Garvey clan: a mostly normal nuclear family led by the grim and determined Mapleton police chief, Kevin (Justin Theroux, who I’d like to see more of in films and T.V. in general) and his girlfriend, Nora Durst (the lovely Carrie Coon). Kevin’s arc in season one began with him as a tormented and unusually sensitive soul, unable to make sense of the surrounding world’s slowly eroding sense of normalcy, while season two seemed to suggest that he was some kind of messianic man-god who could access … well, if not exactly the afterlife, then at least this show’s very unusual version of it.
Season three’s near-perfect first episode, “The Book of Kevin,” addresses the growing Garvey myth in two unusual ways. Midway through the episode, we see Kevin, still in Jarden, drinking beer on a porch with his friends: a group that includes Christopher Eccleston’s pious and devoted preacher Matt Jamison, as well as John Murphy (Kevin Carroll), the mysterious head of Jarden’s volunteer fire department. The men wax nostalgic about times before the Departure, and all the promise that life held for them in their youth. The mood in this scene is, especially for a show this consistently dour, uncommonly light. Of course, just two scenes later, Kevin is dressed in his Jarden’s police uniform, duct-taping a plastic bag over his head in what looks like a particularly hideous suicide attempt. However, a more probable estimate is that Kevin is trying to “cross over,” as he did in “International Assassin,” and maybe realizing that this isn’t the kind of thing that can be accessed at will. And I haven’t even gotten to the hilarious reveal that Matt is penning a sort of new religious scripture starring Kevin as the Jesus figure. When Kevin insists to Matt that he is not, in fact, the modern incarnation of Christ, Matt’s priceless reply is “but you have to admit, the beard looks good on you”.
Welcome back to the weird, wonderful and insistently haunting world of “The Leftovers,” where traditional explanation is as futile as hope. This is not meant to suggest that all of “The Book of Kevin” is a humorless doomsday party — far from it. In fact, if the first episode of the show’s third and final season is any indication, this may be the funniest that “The Leftovers” has ever dared to be. Consider a scene that comes in the first act, where Kevin gets a surprise visit from his old Mapleton “hunting buddy” Dean. Those who’ve seen the first season will be able to connect the dots on how these two know each other, but Dean — dig this — is somehow convinced that murderous packs of canines have evolved to the point where they can take on human form and attack the living.
How this all relates to the Departure is sort of tangential, but watching Theroux’s amazingly deadpan reaction shots to this man’s growingly insane story is funny in and of itself… that is, until Dean shows up later with a high-powered assault rifle, looking to take out both Kevin and his grown son Tommy, now a rookie recruit on the Jarden police force. The stunning second episode, “Don’t be Ridiculous,” mostly follows Nora as she travels to St. Louis to investigate a possible scam operation related to the Departure, while also making room for a cameo from character actor Mark-Linn Baker and a gloriously unironic use of the Wu-Tang Clan cut “The Jump-Off” (the show’s use of music is still without parallel in television drama, even if the opening credits remain as head-scratching as ever).
The reveal of Matt’s new Kevin-starring religious tome and Nora’s new Wu-Tang tattoo are just one of the many examples in season three’s first two episodes where the creators seem to be embracing a newfound levity — letting a little holy light into this perpetually pitch-black universe. It’s as if Lindelof — who is one of the only showrunners I can think of aside from Lena Dunham who is consistently asked to explain his more polarizing creative decisions — is stripping the show of the portentous, self-serious patina it had when it premiered in 2014 and saying “hey, the world’s about to end, might as well get a few laughs in while we can, right?”
The main action of “The Leftovers’” third season is set to unfold in Perth, Australia. You can see why the show’s creators would want to head to the outback for the show’s final run of episodes: with its primal majesty, awe-inspiring desert vistas and the topography’s air of natural timelessness, Perth does occasionally suggest the literal ends of the earth — at least the way the show’s regular directors (Mimi Leder, “Waking the Dead’s” Keith Gordon “Compliance’s” Craig Zoebel, among others) are choosing to shoot it. The fact that Lindelof has alluded to both Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” and George Miller’s “The Road Warrior” as thematic touchstones for this new season should indicate that the showrunners are swinging for the fences here — even more than they usually do, which is saying something.
“The Book of Kevin,” like season two premiere “Axis Mundi,” opens with a visually ravishing and mostly wordless prologue set in the 1800’s. We follow the comings and goings of a small but devout village of religious zealots as they ready themselves for a coming flood. After this brief but evocative teaser, the action flashes forward to the events immediately following the conclusion of season two’s shocking climactic episode, “I Live Here Now,” where a missile literally annihilates the Jarden Visitor’s Center. Of course, the Guilty Remnant — the silent, eerie cult who are, in their own very strange way, bucking the logic of the Departure itself — had set up camp there some episodes earlier, including the Murphy family’s teenage daughter Evie (Jasmin Savoy Brown).
In a creative decision that’s startling even by the nebulous standards of this show, Lindelof then chooses to jump three years into the future. Kevin and Nora are still in Miracle. People can now come and go from the camp as they please. Matt Jamison is still preaching to his legions of loyal acolytes, but he believes the water in the town reservoir has been poisoned. And don’t even ask me about the episode’s confounding, gorgeous coda, in which a woman who looks very much like Carrie Coon in old-age make-up is seen wandering the blighted badlands of rural Australia (“does the name Kevin mean anything to you?”)
Season two cemented Regina King and Carrie Coon as two of the show’s MVPs in terms of acting, while also extending Theroux the chance to develop Kevin’s inner life and backstory beyond the relentless macho glowering he was required to do in season one. This trend continues in the show’s third season, as Lindelof and Perrotta continue to afford their actors the opportunity to bare their souls to the viewer. Whereas the mood of the show’s first season often felt pent-up and confused, like an angry teenager looking for a proper outlet for all their doom and gloom, “The Leftovers” can now safely be called T.V.’s most luminous and arresting drama.
The main difference I can think of between this season of “The Leftovers” and the last one is that the creators don’t have to completely re-invent the show. For Lindelof’s show to have been successful beyond a first season, “The Leftovers” would have to develop its characters more, find a sense of humor and expand the scope without losing the story’s core tone — all of which was accomplished beautifully in the show’s second season. Already in the first two episodes of season three, there is a palpable sense of the clock running out. Whispers of an apocalyptic flood coming on the anniversary of the Departure circulate throughout these first two episodes, though viewers expecting for the show to double down on spectacle might end up being left in the lurch: Lindelof has never, not once in his career, been one to give his audience the easy payoff. It feels safe to say that we can expect the show’s brain trust to take the most roundabout way of getting to their final destination — though when a show is as alive with feeling and unpredictability as ‘The Leftovers” so often is, anything and everything is on the table.
There are few shows on television that I get such a sense of joy from watching every week. What “The Leftovers” represents is a glorious freedom in the possibilities of the television storytelling medium: liberation from tepid convention, from antihero posturing, and from the demands of a paint-by-numbers narrative. I’m sure there will still be people who find the show too opaque, too depressing, too frustrating in its refusal to provide explanations or easy answers. I can imagine many viewers throwing their remote controls on the floor in frustration, bellowing, “I just don’t get what all the fucking hype is about”.
And that’s okay. I was that person, about midway through the first season. So, if by some small chance, there are those reading this who have yet to find a way into this challenging and brilliant work of television art, I say this: take it slow.Television should not be about the process of providing answers and inventing background simply so you feel smart for “understanding” the story to some ostensibly greater degree. If that’s all there was to the formula, television would be a very dull place indeed (watch “Westworld,” , 2016’s most beautiful boring show, if you don’t believe me). The very fact that Lindelof is raising these big questions at all — questions about faith, about God or the absence of a God, about our collective hopes and dreams as a species — makes “The Leftovers” more urgent and essential than 99% of what’s on T.V. right now. After wrestling with the show’s many complications and its poetic, bracing, deliberate irregularities, I can now finally say: I believe.
Grades: “The Book of Kevin,” A. “Don’t Be Ridiculous,” A.
