The Leftovers

The Guilty Remnant want to die, but few of them simply commit suicide. They want to drag the whole world into their depression, to make sure that no one can live free from what they suffer. Selfish, of course, but that’s a hallmark of depression. If you can’t see anything from the blinding wave of hopelessness, you can’t see others. You can’t imagine a world that’s worth anything anymore.

More than weird imagery, biblical allusions, or existential questions, The Leftovers is about depression. That’s why the show has been so, well, depressing. It’s intensely polarizing among critics because many people can’t take the darkness it swims around in. That’s not an insult to those people, it’s just taste. But in order to portray depression accurately, The Leftovers needs to grab you by the throat and hold you down in its own sorrow. Everyone in the show is grieving, everyone is fighting against the idea that things will never be alright again, that the best has come and gone and left us in the ruins of civilization.

The Leftovers dove headfirst into some of the bleakest material in television history and emerged from it in the best way possible. The world is not alright, people are not all happy, but there is light and hope at the end of the specter of sadness. “The Prodigal Son Returns” closed off the season in a fantastic fashion, delivering an emotionally intense and powerfully poignant finale, featuring some of the very best scenes in the show’s entirety.

As the episode opens, Kevin is right where we left him at the end of “Cairo”, before the flashback episode of “The Garveys at Their Best”. Pattie is dead by her own hand, and Kevin is at a loss, sitting in the cabin with blood-stained hands. He picks up a cigarette and begins to smoke just as Jill is being initiated into the GR with the same rite. Smoking in The Leftovers symbolizes a disregard for one’s life, a willful decision to just not care anymore. Yet Kevin can’t truly embrace that lack of caring, despite what he says about his own worth. He calls Matt and the two bury Pattie after Matt makes Kevin read a passage from the Book of Job over her grave. 

Kevin and Matt drive back to Mapleton, but along the way Kevin experiences a brutal dream in which he is taken to the same mental hospital as his father. He again sees the National Geographic article and talks to his dad, but this time he sees the person making the voices. Pattie is alive and tells Kevin that the two are going to leave together. Then – smash cut – Kevin is awake and it was all a dream. Was this segment just a cruel bait-and-switch for viewers, or was it setting the table for the next season? As usual, the show gives us no answers.

At a diner, Kevin confesses to Matt what he thinks is the reason behind the Departure. He wanted his family gone, therefore he was obviously a bad person, and therefore obviously doomed to stay. The 2% of the good people were taken. Matt’s newspapers have made it pretty clear to the audience that the Departure didn’t take people on basis of their morality, but Kevin’s tearful speech to Matt here is one of the show’s most powerful moments. 

Afterwards, Kevin goes into the bathroom to calm down only to discover a bleeding and dying Holy Wayne, who offers him a wish as his dying act. He’s worried that he’s been a fraud all his life, and he wants to make things right. It’s never outright stated, but given Kevin’s speech to Matt, it’s quite likely that he wished for his family to be back together. And then, with a crazed look in his eye, Holy Wayne realizes — or thinks he realizes — what Kevin wants.

“Granted.”

His head hits the side of the stall, spittle drooling out. 

Meanwhile, the Guilty Remnant has done something so horrifyingly wrong — far worse than stealing the photos of the Departed. They’ve ordered the fake bodies of the Departed, clothed them, and then placed them back in their homes, back on the street, back in the world. The look on Nora’s face as she descends the stairs in the morning to see her family, grotesquely sitting in the Uncanny Valley of creepiness, is heart wrenching and sickening. She’s fought so much just to come to a somewhat stable position, keeping her depression buried below the surface, but now it’s all come roaring back. 

As it has for the rest of the town. The straw has broken the camel’s back, the final piece has fallen, and chaos ensues. The people of Mapleton take out their anger and hurt on the GR, presumably killing many of them and injuring many others. They even cast the fake Departed back into the fire. Kevin and Matt arrive just in time to see the fire and brimstone, and Kevin fights his way to rescue Laurie. As he’s pulling her away she shouts “Jill!”, and off Kevin goes. It’s amazing how powerful the simple act of Laurie speaking is, after this whole season. The Leftovers is the kind of show that could potentially kill off Jill, so it was a tense and riveting scene as Kevin searched the burning wreckage of the GR House to save his daughter.

Even Tommy returns to Mapleton, after Christine flees and leaves her baby in a bathroom. Kevin and Jill, Laurie and Tommy – did Kevin get his wish after all? Kevin may be in a marginally better place emotionally after this experience, but Nora has given up. Seeing her family again broke her down yet again, and over a monologue letter, she leaves for…a cross-country road trip? Whatever Nora was planning to do is ultimately moot, as just when she’s ready to leave Kevin the letter, she finds Holy Wayne and Christine’s baby, and her defenses fall again. She could raise this child; have a reason to go on again. The departure has taken her children from her — but now the world has given her someone for a change.

All of this leaves the future of season two in the unique position of having quite a lot of unresolved mysteries, but not much in the way of obvious plot to cover.  The Guilty Remnant – or at least this chapter – seems to be finished or at least done with their major purpose. Holy Wayne is dead and his people have scattered to the winds. The Garvey family is back together, though perhaps not for long and definitely not without a bumpy road to emotional recovery. Nora has Holy Wayne’s baby – a purpose, a reason to live. But was Kevin really crazy? What was the deal with the judge and Matt? Was Holy Wayne a fraud from the start? Who and what is Dean? What was the purpose behind the National Geographic?

Most of the book’s plot has already been adapted for this season, which leaves Lindelof and Perotta with no road map for this next season. This current season was a strange season of television in more ways than one, but its most profound difference is it’s odd pace and structure. Season two will have an even stranger structure. What does The Leftovers lead to? Is it simply going to delve more into the mystery of the Departure, answering the questions that the book never did? Will it just become a family drama about the Garveys? When shows lose their central premise, it’s a safe bet that they drop in quality (look at most of season 3 of Homeland). Perhaps, freed from the constraints of adaptation, the show can expand and tackle fresh ideas while keeping the show’s sensibilities intact.

Tidbits:

  • Just like in the trailer for the film Zero Dark Thirty, this episode features a haunting cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”. It’s played over strings as the Guilty Remnant prepare to place the fake Departed back in the world.
  • “We have different physiques” – Matt, in the one bit of humor in this episode.
  • Thanks for sticking with these reviews and this show! It’s been a strange ride, and I’m still quite sure it was worth it all in the end. I don’t know what to think about this show – I don’t really love it, but I keep coming back and enjoying it in some capacity. In an increasingly polarized pop cultural landscape where it’s hard to say anything in between “it’s the best thing ever” or “it’s absolutely terrible”, it’s refreshing to have shows that are not only ambiguous in story, but in quality as well. Regardless, The Leftovers definitely served up some excellent cinematography, performances, and brutally emotional moments, and this was an amazing way to end the first season. Here’s hoping season two can surpass it.