The Leftovers, “Pilot”

New television shows pop up every season, multiple new species fighting for survival. The strong ones – those that rake in enough money or good criticism – live to entertain or annoy us for another year, while the vast majority die before getting a chance to prove themselves. HBO’s  The Leftovers is the strongest candidate for best new show of the summer, and it looks like it has all the makings of a prestige cable drama. A large cast of characters, overarching mysteries, secret cults, and angst. So much angst.

The Leftovers begins by showing and then telling us of a global Rapture-like event that snatches away 2% of the world’s population in an instant. Three years later, the world – and for the purposes of the show, one small town – is left to deal with the aftermath. While 2% of the world’s population isn’t anything to write off, 98% of people are still alive and the world is still functioning more or less as usual. Yet the most unnerving aspect of the whole experience is how shrouded in mystery it is.

The disappearance is not based on religious belief, age, sex, nationality, or any other factor that anyone knows about. There’s no scientific explanation either. What’s left when science and religion can’t come up with anything, can’t provide a semblance of comfort?

The Leftovers’ story seems, at least judging from the pilot, to center on the Garvey family. Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) is the alcoholic police chief struggling to hold his family and the town together. His wife, Laurie (Amy Brenneman), has joined the mysterious cult known as the Guilty Remnant, while his son Tom (Chris Zylka) has joined a different cult led by a strange and potential magical man and his daughter Jill sinks into depression.

Meanwhile, a woman named Meg (Liv Tyler) flees an impending marriage to live in the cult, despite the fact that they’ve been stalking here. More interesting characters make brief appearances; Matt (Christopher Eccleston) who steadfastly shouts at any who will listen that this is not, in fact, the biblical rapture, the mysterious dog-shooter (Michael Gaston), as well as a steely mayor and a woman who lost both her children and her husband.

Who among these characters will turn out to be the most important is still, like this entire show, a mystery, but they seem interesting enough that future episodes will likely be able to flesh them out in unique ways.

The Guilty Remnant, which seems like it may exist outside of the just the town, is easily the biggest mystery of the show outside of the Rapture event itself. Members of the group wear white bathrobes, chain smoke, stalk and watch seemingly random strangers, and take vows of silence. Kevin spells it out for us early in the episode, as he wonders aloud about who they are, what they want, where did they come from. We know that they’re new, having just sprung up in the past year, but what they hope to accomplish is still completely shrouded in mystery.

The GR’s appearance at the Heroes’ Day memorial service calls to mind other annoying protests by crazed fringe groups like the Westboro Baptist Church. It’s hard not to sympathize with the enraged crowd, as a group insulting the memories of loved ones while also refusing to speak or reason is a boiling pot of rage inducers. We want to be in that crowd attacking them because they’re just wrong, and they can’t do this, and we have a right, right? Yet seeing normal citizens going savage and beating up a group of people who don’t fight back, who don’t even seem to use the threat of suing as a shield, is deeply troubling. The dogs have gone mad, and the people are getting madder by the day.

Are they really that different than the pack of dogs piling atop the deer at the end of the episode?

The Leftovers is blessed and cursed by the presence of its showrunner, Damon Lindelof, famous or infamous for being one of the primary showrunners for ABC’s Lost, another show centering around many overarching mysteries, an alcoholic trying to put his world in order, and a ton of angst. Lost remains a modern classic, yet it’s still deeply flawed in many ways. Disgruntled fans claimed – with good reason – that it used mystery for mystery’s sake and didn’t follow up adequately, instead resolving in a hodge-podge of spiritual garble. The Leftovers obviously echoes that show, especially with its no doubt deeply entrenched theme of science and religion, but these echoes mean that the show needs to win over those people who felt betrayed by Lost.

Can The Leftovers thrive on mysteries and yet eventually reveal them? We don’t know, but the fact that the story is based on a book – presumably with an actual end to the story – means that the mysteries will indeed add up to something that’s more or less already known by the writers. Game of Thrones, Dexter, Justified, True Blood and many more shows based on books have the luxury of drawing from a wide pool of novels, but The Leftovers seems different in that there’s only one book. For the show to exist as more than a miniseries, it’s going to make a lot of changes and take the story in wild directions. Let’s hope that they can be interesting and still be resolved.  

Tidbits:

  • If The Leftovers follows the general rule of introducing characters in a large ensemble cast like this one, it stands to reason that the next episode will delve deeper into the stories of Matt and Meg at least. Well, those are the ones I want to know about the most. Why does Meg want to join the group that’s been stalking her?
  • I could be wrong of course, but that party seems a bit too on the side of “I’m an adult trying to write about what happens in high school.” Do people actually have parties like that in high school?
  • Final note: I will not be spoiling anything from The Leftovers, the novel by Tom Perrotta, because I haven’t read the book, and most likely won’t until the show’s done. Now I understand what it’s like to be a show-only watcher of Game of Thrones.