THE LEFTOVERS: HBO's nondenominational post-rapture series

Brought to you by the guy who wrote COWBOYS & ALIENS and the guy who directed BATTLESHIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shn1mPejr_4

I'll just get this out of the way now...

"The Leftovers is an upcoming American television drama series created by Damon Lindelof and..."

https://i.imgur.com/MHuW96t.gif

First couple times I saw an ad for this, it reminded me of The 4400 and I wondered why it was on HBO and not the USA Network. tbh though? This looks like SyFy quality tv (which is garbage).

Looks like they needed to find something else for the true blood crowd

lol i kind of enjoyed The 4400 until i lost interest

Agree. The 4400 started off really great until they had absolutely no idea where to go with it.

Looks like they needed to find something else for the true blood crowd

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, May 21, 2014

def get that feeling from the trailer. does anyone still watch true blood?

(confession: i will totally hatewatch the final season just like i hatewatched last season. first the lured me with the promise of chris meloni and now they're luring me with the promise of this shit being over)

never seen a second of true blood tbh, I just know that every shot of every trailer I've ever seen for that show involves someone baring their fangs and leaping offscreen.

the first 8 eps of season 1 were okay and then it went downhill from there. and kept going.

could this be...good?

www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/review-hbos-the-leftovers-a-tour-de-force-of-devastation-and-grief/
http://grantland.com/features/hbo-the-leftovers-lost-lindelof/

Trailer makes it look like it has True Blood levels of boobs and sex, but I guess HBO doesn't really do Treme levels of boobs and sex anymore.

AV Club likes it as well:

http://www.avclub.com/review/leftovers-bleak-brutal-brilliant-television-206204

was curious about this until i learned about the involvement of lindelof today - gonna wait a couple years before investigating

Yeah, I'm going nowhere near this or The Strain (how Lindelof hitched his train to two new shows, let alone why the people in charge didn't think it wiser to bury that particular lede, I'll never know) until they're over and people are still raving about what amazing shows they were.

gonna wait a couple years before investigating

If Lindelof is involved, it ain't going to get better as it goes along ...

Come on! The last season of Nash Bridges was the best of them!

Did it take place in the afterlife? Did it help to understand the fundamental questions of our very existence?

Nash and Joe discover that there's a portal in West Portal.

the trailers really hit a great ominous vibe, i hope they can hold that up over the course of a whole episode. True Blood doesn't seem close to what they're going for at all.

Lost was good TV for quite a while, i wouldn't really put it past Lindelof to do something worthwhile, especially since this show is based on a book and so there's already source material to draw backstory and an ending from so less of a chance for him to screw that up.

Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll quit after a couple of seasons and someone good will take over?

I'm probably going to watch this. Even if it sucks it'll be interesting to see Paterson Joseph in a dramatic role.

apparently it's very loosely based on the book some dude. Although Perotta is heavily involved

i dunno i thought anti-Lindelof sentiment was about writing himself into a corner with a bunch of unsolved mysteries and a crappy ending a la Lost? just saying this at least has a pre-existing roadmap of sorts. maybe the sentiment is coming from people who always hated Lost and everything he's done though.

http://www.hitfix.com/motion-captured/compare-the-damon-lindelof-and-jon-spaihts-drafts-of-prometheus

So did someone read the original script before it was taken down by Fox? How do they compare? Anyway, it's really moot, because clearly Lindelof did not make it better enough to be good, so in many ways he failed even worse no matter what the original draft was like, because his sole job was to make it better, and it is inconceivable that the first version is so bad that Lindelof's is better.

Oh, I didn't click on the first link to the original script. It was quite different. The most obvious difference is that Lindelof added a lot of capitalized words and exclamation points.

lindelof is terrible and should be avoided like the plague by sensible people. not sure what the debate is

Last shot of the show: camera pulls out and we realize they're all sealed in a Tupperware container in a giant refrigerator.

his sole job was to make it better...

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, June 26, 2014

tbf we have no idea what his job was.

quite possibly his job was "please execute these specific story revs, address this set of production notes, and maybe while you're at it throw in some of that fluffy Faith Versus Science Type Stuff People Seem To Like to give it that damon lindelof feeling."

another more/less positive review: http://grantland.com/features/hbo-the-leftovers-lost-lindelof/

I can't imagine they hired inexplicably A-list screenwriter Lindelof to just make a couple of changes, but who knows? Clearly someone hired him to lend that Lindelof feeling to the last Star Trek movie and World War Z, and they both sucked, often for reasons shared with other shitty Lindelof projects. I kind of wish all he did was spell check or something rote. He could do less damage that way, though scripts would be rife with homophones.

Anyway, I like Tom Perrotta a lot, so hopefully the Perrotta feeling wins out.

hey man i am the last guy to defend lindelof as a writer.
i do think he's a professional who shows up sober and delivers clean drafts on time and would probably be totally fun to hang out with as long as he stuck to beer and pool and shooting the breeze and didn't start writing anything down on paper.

i dunno i thought anti-Lindelof sentiment was about writing himself into a corner with a bunch of unsolved mysteries and a crappy ending a la Lost? just saying this at least has a pre-existing roadmap of sorts. maybe the sentiment is coming from people who always hated Lost and everything he's done though.

― some dude, Thursday, June 26, 2014 5:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i liked lost's ending more than most people and i still hate lindelof

his writing is made entirely of crutches

sorry, *L O S T ' S

Lindelof seems like a good manager.

like i've never gotten the sense that he has any grasp on what he's doing, he just sits with a blank word processor endlessly screaming "AAAAHHH AAAAAHHH UUUUUUUHHHHHH DADDY ISSUES UUUUUUUUHHHH EVERYONE'S A SECRET MURDERER UHHHHHHHH MEANINGLESS CONFUSION AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH"

maybe smokebombs is a better word than crutches. he's got a whole utility belt of smokebombs that he uses to hide his literally nothing

he's got a whole utility belt of smokebombs that he uses to hide his literally nothing

― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Thursday, June 26, 2014

see, i think this actually does explain why he's in demand.

For sure, it's a lot easier to make movies where you don't have to explain anything to anyone's satisfaction. Maybe he's a Hollywood subversive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1YuvUQFJ0#t=24

needs more polar bears

would you guys shut up about this first episode already? you guys are talking about it too much, shut up

Anyway someone please fire whoever hired Max Richter and let him plonk away for the whole dang episode

i was about to watch this but i just read the thing lindelof wrote where he defends the lost finale by comparing himself to walter white

jk i wasn't about to watch this

Won't someone else please watch it. I feel like I watched it for nothing.

This reminds me of the time I watched The Cape.

i might watch it tonight unless I decide to watch s3 of the Killing

zing

There is an alternative. One can read the book, which I can attest with 100% certainly actually has an ending.

i watched it and I was really surprised by how much I like it!

i'm a sucker for peter berg, he makes me feel all the feels, idk. i like that no-one was standing around blurting exposition like a lot of pilots. just enough backstory to want to know more, everyone's fucked up just enough to want to see it get worse/better

also theroux is hott :)

This was good. Maybe it will start sucking later on. But maybe not!

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/t31.0-8/10454229_10152158254685079_4782378481178547287_o.jpg

lol

telling myself that having a book with a written ending might guard against lindelof lindelofing this thing up

to which mr veg said "a book is just a thing he gets names out of"

:(

i'm a sucker for peter berg, he makes me feel all the feels, idk.

--set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl)

always wondered who bought all those tickets to BATTLESHIP...

AND PROUD OF IT

actually i saw it for free lol

Yeah, not bad. Not great, but not bad. Lead actress is Whoah nelly hotness. Theroux maybe overacting a bit. White clothes people creepy.

join a cult, chainsmoke

Pilot is ok, disconcerting American Beauty vibe will hopefully wear off.

Went to bed halfway through, it seemed all kinds of turgid.

This shit is no better than Under The Dome, it has been a watershed moment for me in that I have happily/apathetically watched tons of garbage series' over the last couple of years. But this one has lead me to an epiphany event hereafter I can't even switch off any more and accept shit like this as background ambience when I am on the exercise bike.

Every reviewer has pointed to episode 3 being far better than the first two, so I'll check that one out. And I liked the first few episodes, though the American Beauty vibe is pretty annoying.

That seems to be a thing for prestige U.S. cable: the first two or three episodes are often kinda eh. Which would be more tolerable if they weren't 10 or 13 ep seasons. Not a lot of room for slack.

Better than network, though, where the first one or two seasons often suck before a show hits its stride.

xpost No way is this as bad as "Undet the Dome"

so bad i can't even spell it

Yeah, tv-series are tough to get up and running, almost no series arrive fully formed. Don't think that is so weird, really, everybody - from the actors to the writing room - has to figure out what kind of show they are making. But I don't think these two episodes have been as boring and unfocused as for example Deadwood, it's just that the third episode is supposed to be really good.

wtf man first season of deadwood is magnificent

Had to try three times to get through... But once it clicked I loved it.

Sorry, completely off-topic.

Hey Frederik, sorry if this is an impertinent question. Are you a film student? Not trying to be an arse here, just asking a question out of genuine curiosity.

"Deadwood," one of my favorite shows of all time, I recall starts out strong enough, but I felt most confident recommending people stick it out at least to the shocking death (ep 4) and then certainly to the Kristen Bell episodes (7 and 8). I told folks, basically, even if you don't like it, or don't like it that much, just wait.

Hell, I need to rewatch "Deadwood."

I re-watched series 3 recently and enjoyed it more than the first time, it is a brilliant series and I still wish there was something as good as it now.

I don't think these two episodes have been as boring and unfocused as for example Deadwood, it's just that the third episode is supposed to be really good.

― Frederik B, Wednesday, July 9, 2014

no matter how many times I read this I can't get it to make sense. is it just that deadwood shits on this vague muddle from such a great height that the turds haven't even landed yet?

i mean don't get me wrong imma keep watching and i'll be happy if it gets more focused and/or interesting because hey "THE ICE STORM meets LOST but with mystery bagels instead of polar bears" sounds pretty good to me...

lol mystery bagels

i am going to put $10 on that being "lindelof flair"

Hey Frederik, sorry if this is an impertinent question. Are you a film student? Not trying to be an arse here, just asking a question out of genuine curiosity.

― festival of labour (xelab), 10. juli 2014 03:05 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nope, way off. Cultural studies. ;) And I'm done.

If there is an ending set for this, which should be a requisite for a Lindelof series, plus the fact that it's based on a book, how many seasons are we taking? Don't the writers have to have that planned out like, before the show starts? I mean that's one of the reasons true detective was so satisfying. A set end.

Well, in this case, I think a set ending would work against the feel of the series. Kinda like with Walking Dead. It's supposed to be a never-ending nightmare.

L O S T had a set end, and where did that get us?

So did people see last nights episode? It was... something.

"Lead actress is Whoah nelly hotness" who is this then? Liv Tyler?

last night was great.

andie mcdowell's daughter

andie mcdowell isn't on the show but I guess you're talking about the teenager

oh she actually is andie mcdowell's daughter, I see

ep was indeed something. no mystery bagels, just mysterious ways. nice and tight. felt like an old twilight zone or something.

That is the second time Eccleston has played a character who finds a large stash of money and takes it into a casino to put it all on red. Referring to the episode of Jimmy McGovern's Accused from a few years back.

Is this worth watching? It's difficult to tell from this thread.

it's difficult to tell from the first 3 episodes of a show! i would say 'yes,' though, i'm sticking with it to see what happens.

seems like so far the worst thing anyone has to say about the show is that Lindeloff is involved

I liked the pilot a lot; haven't checked the next two episodes yet.

Well, some of the dialogue is too Lindeloffian in the sense of being clichéed and overwritten. But I'm okay with that. I've come to the conclusion that the third episode was brilliant.

It was the only episode I have liked so far, Ecclestone is always at his best playing broken, desperate characters.

ecclestone-centric episode is amazing, the others have been good. preview of entire series makes it look like some fucking crazy shit eventually happens.

Watched the first three of these today and although the third was much better than the first two, that didn't imply by any means they were bad. I'll keep watching, for sure. The release of information has been just about right to build intrigue without giving it all away, and there definitely aren't too many plot threads.

When the two teenage girls were following Ecclescake's sister I got a massive Twin Peaks vibe off it.

It's not the show I hoped for. It's definitely a let down, but on the other hand there is something about this show. Something about its atmosphere, the way it feels and the mood it conjures that I really like. The soundtrack is amazing.

Show is good but not enough to justify an hbo subscription. Also something off in Theroux's performance. It's almost comic somehow and seems out of tune with the other characters.

theroux's character is facepalmingly bad at almost everything in life.

the whole 'arg my shirts are missing' -- dude, go buy some fucking shirts jfc

"The soundtrack is amazing."

That Max Richter score is incredibly beautiful.

Maybe it's because it ticks all my buttons for TV, but I am loving this show. If anyone can tolerate a decent recap that says about everything I would have said about the last ep here it is.

The last episode is by far the best one yet. I love the Nora characther, and I also have hope now(for the show that is).

Going for the old "make every third episode worthwhile" approach, I guess?

Carrie Coon is awesome. (Also, apparently she is married to Tracy Letts. Neat!)

yeah Nora is great

About 20 minutes in I thought "I don't want the other characters, let's just make this show about Nora please."

otm

Forgot to obtain this week, thanks for reminding me. Although I don't know why I forgot because I love the show so far.

getting so good! last night's was pretty creepy feeling and awesome.

I said to Mr Veg last night, if they succeed at nothing else, they seem to have pretty much nailed the sad banality of a cult

Yes I am one of those people who looked for the contents of May 72 NatGeo

Mr Veg googled May 1972 and the best he could come up with on quick notice was that it is the day that Dwayne the Rock Johnson was born, lol

Here ya go

is no one really watching this show ?

Yeah, I am and loving it. I think I haven't been commenting because I know I'm out of sync with everyone else.

I really, really like it. I still think there's more to Kevin's hallucinations than is being let on even after all the people saw tobacco chewing man in the town meeting a couple of weeks ago. I'm definitely intrigued about the voices in his dad's head and how spot on they seem to be about a lot of things. I'm kind of hoping it isn't actually related to the departed to be honest but if it is then I would posit we're actually closer to it being a conspiracy drama and the people going missing is a Philadelphia Experiment type thing.

Although I love Paterson Joseph I'm not completely digging the Holy Wayne plot, much less how Kevin's son got completely seduced by them since he seems to spend all his screen time questioning what they do.

The GRs are a great concept and I think they're going to become more important as the series continues, but to a large degree it feels like Christopher Ecclestone was only really in the show to give the GRs a more developed arc.

Kevin definitely shagged his daughter's friend, right?

oh god I hope not

I feel like they're leaning heavily on that as a thing that MIGHT happen, or that she wants to happen

also is there anything in the world more lol/terrifying than bored teenagers

xp

really enjoyed how Wayne was positioned as a total con man ... but the twist here is he actually is effective at what he does. was not expecting that

yeah that whole 'you don't remember do you' thing was really weird. not even a sinister Memento vibe, just complete elision. no way would the girl go for him though, it would have destroyed her relationship with the daughter

seems like so far the worst thing anyone has to say about the show is that Lindeloff is involved

Possibly because a lot of or at least some people are in the same position as I am: I don't want to watch because Lindelof has a habit of drawing you into promising, intriguing movies and shows and stories that end so badly, so slapdash, cynically and stupid, you regret ever watching.

it's true he is the lucy-with-the-football of popular entertainment

no way would the girl go for him though, it would have destroyed her relationship with the daughter

this is the same chick who shagged the guy her best friend had a crush on

daughter's friend has a real mena suvari in american beauty vibe )which may have been mentioned upthread)

i'm interested in how kevin's ex wife met the leader of the gr. There was a comment when they were in the diner that made me think possibly one had been a patient of the other or sth

there needs to be more naked Justin Theroux in this show

this is the same chick who shagged the guy her best friend had a crush on

whooooooops you are totally right keyes, forgot that

fucked up

Episode 8 took a huge running jump into awesome. Best show on tv in years, I'm calling it.

I'll be curious to see how the second season goes. It seems like they've already used about 75% of the events in the book.

All-flashback episode was surprisingly great. You could see where lots of it was going from quite early on - Kevin hooking up with the woman from the crash, for example - but it was still really well executed and shocking when the disappearances happened. Recognising little bits of imagery, like Nora taking the second last sheet of kitchen towel (we saw this in the episode when Holy Wayne took her grief) meant the dread built just waiting for the denouement, and from the second "let's build a circuit" was spoken you knew it would climax with the light going out for an unseen reason. Strangest part was Gladys; we're still not clear on what she lost that made her join the GR. her attachment to the dogs makes it look like it's them, but that's surely misdirection.

Was Kevin's vision with the stag supposed to invoke Saint Hubertus, maybe? (The image of Hubertus' vision is shown on the Jagermeister label.) Hubertus is the saint invoked in curing rabies, which is presumably behind Dean's (and by extension Kevin's) motivation for dispatching dogs? Bits of Hubertus' vision also following through in Kevin arguing that the stag should be saved and not killed. We don't have Dean's surname but I'm willing to bet it will turn out to be Lambert for the same reason.

I might have something longer on Lori and her reasons for joining the GR, because I was having that exact conversation after watching ep 8, and probably then also something on the significance of the house.

Not looking forward to the Memorial Day painathon in the finale tbh

I didn't see the Next Week On but I'm assuming the GR stealing all those family photos had something to do with the clothes and the carcasses in the church last week

"We don't have Dean's surname but I'm willing to bet it will turn out to be Lambert for the same reason."

wait, why?

oh I see

Uh...ok.

love this show

it's over now, yes? time to dig in?

eww do you actually wait to 'binge watch'? but yeah, the season finale aired.

binge watching the Leftovers would be pretty depressing imo

yeah after i watch an episode i definitely needed a palate cleanser of something more upbeat to watch, and a few days' break before i watched another

that was a p good finale, I thought.

As little trust as i have in the creators here, i was waiting till the end of the season so that if there was A CLEVER TWIST i could just skip it

Nothing like that

that's what i was waiting to hear... but they left it open for season two with potential to fuck it up later?

Well yeah but really that's every show, isn't it?

This show is far more brazenly not about the plot or the "mystery" than most

I hear season 2 is all new cast and new global cataclysm to mope about

xp i suppose. really really hold a lot of enmity toward the lost team still, you know?

Mr Veg and I were bracing for full-Lindelof handwavey ending shenanigans and were pleasantly surprised to find that there wasn't really any of that.

k, will try.

I don't know, I really dug this show but the finale tipped me off that they didn't really know exactly what they were doing...the whole Wayne storyline was only compelling to the extent that it portended some connection to the vanishing, plus I assumed we'd get some backstory on him before they wrote him off.

Also, I get that the remainder people are devoted to fucking with people, but when it elevates logistically & elaborately like this—that they are smuggling lookalike dummies into people's homes, there needs to be some commensurate insight into their belief system or something beyond just "Duh we're making them remember" again. The acting is so good on this show but the emotional amplitude esp. in the finale seemed independent of the storyline.

just because they wrote him off doesn't mean we won't get back story imo -- this show goes hard w/ flashbacks, and it's a good portion of the storytelling

as for the commensurate insight into their belief system
for me, part of the 'appeal' of the Guilty Remnants is that they *are* so circumspect. And I feel like I know enough about how they roll through the exposition given piecemeal here and there to take this whole event as them somehow, idk, levelling up their presence in the town. and that they did it knowing that shit would go crazy.
like, it seems like part of their motivation is chaos-driven. how do we NOT allow status quo.
or the short version of all that is that I didn't mind that there was no big explanation.

they've done such a good job developing the key characters enough for me to engage with them and their journeys, where I don't mind that i'm not getting answers to the big crazy important questions that keep arising

Probably the best prism through which to view the show: http://www.vox.com/2014/9/7/6116687/leftovers-depression-hbo

That's true, and the backstory episode was my favorite of the season. I don't really want a big explanation, I would just to feel like the characters themselves know wtf is going on, and after the finale I have this sinking feeling that the GR circumspection (which yes is appealing) is just the writers' proxy cluelessness. For example, maybe I'm thick but I still can't square away why Patti would brutally murder one of her own (lady tied to tree)—that's not a big crazy question, it's just a mechanical plot thing that for me at least was insufficiently explained and comes off more like it was thrown at the wall for effect.

xpost vg

"I hear season 2 is all new cast and new global cataclysm to mope about"

what? or is that a True Detective joke?

meh this is just L O S T except with mysterious deer instead of mysterious polar bears

tbf the mysterious deer that wrecks houses is more like the mysterious boar that wrecks the camp than like the polar bears

fine fine but the flashbacks to LIFE BEFORE are exactly like the flashbacks to LIFE BEFORE

loved the nina at the beginning

ok finished this, was a good ending, not sure what in the world they will do with next season. focus on different people?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZVUU3zbXk

new season makes Eccleston and Coon regulars while greatly shrinking the supporting cast. I'll be shocked if it's not considerably improved (and I liked s1 a lot)

i'm rewatching the first season right now, which i adore.

indications seem to be that this season will be less relentlessly bleak and more weird - basically going to a new town, one where not a single departure occurred

will there be less justin theroux hot cop

if so i will be deeply, deeply disappointed

gotta say tho i'm legit weirded out by the amount of smiling in the promo photos, it's SO WEIRD, HOW DOES JILL EVEN UNDERSTAND SMILING
http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2015/07/LEF1tumblr_nsbu2pGjpm1qz8vumo1_540.jpg

xp he's still the lead!

he's not in the teaser, i am right to be concerned

fear not
http://rack.2.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDE1LzA4LzAxL2JmL2xlZnRvdmVyczEuNGE1YjcuanBnCnAJdGh1bWIJODUweDg1MD4KZQlqcGc/97ba84f3/383/leftovers-1.jpg

i don't think he's a cop anymore though

I think this show learned from all the mistakes of Lost, which is, just relish in the weird, there doesn't need to be an answer for everything, this is the situation, here is how people are dealing.

Yeah, though part of the point of season 1 was that everyone was incredibly depressed because there was no answer to what had happened... I think The Leftovers is very aware of the human need for answers. That's what makes the whole thing so depressing.

Also: I love this show, and it really made me think that Lindelof might be the smart one, and that he was just hamstrung on Lost. Then I saw Prometheus...

Yeah, Lost was a real cautionary tale in that respect. It insisted that everything would be explained but (a) lots of things weren't and (b) the explanations that were delivered were annoying. Maybe that was a pendulum swing away from Twin Peaks and now it's swung back. The fact that Lindelof himself is part of that swing just adds another layer to his endless psychodrama over the fallout from the Lost finale. I swear his therapist is sick of hearing about it. "Time to move on, Damon. It's OK. Everybody's mad at True Detective now."

It's just entertainment. On TV.

Yeah dont go crowning Lindelof over this. This is the exception that proves the rule. He's still not to be trusted in any way shape or form.

Plus this hasnt ended yet. Theres still plenty of time to Lindelof it.

also wasn't season one mostly adaptation while going forward its all original material? harder to fuck it up when you've got a blueprint.

re: season 1, the basic situation/plot/characters are the novel's, but the emotional tone and much of what happens to the characters is new stuff written by lindelof and perrota

iirc perotta is still around in the writer's room, and it could be he's a good influence on lindelof

also man oh man almost six years later and no one's over the freakin' contents of that church at the end of LOST, dizamn

I mean, I'm mostly kidding bc I understand how that ending was frustrating (it was w/e to me, not great but about as competently executed as could be expected given how much it had sprawled? disregarding, momentarily, the question of whether it should have sprawled like that in the first place)

overall though I think lindelof is one of the better forces for speculative fiction (in TV and lesser extent in film) we have, which might stem from the fact that we have so few but he's ambitious and versatile and devoted to character and weird atmosphere.

fp'd u for that tbh

i'm sayin, no chill to be had over that ish

I agree that Lindelof's strength is in sustaining a compelling mood/tone, and hopefully Perotta's influence will keep his other, more annoying tendencies in check.

full trailer http://www.ew.com/article/2015/08/04/leftovers-season-2-trailer?hootPostID=2e93d452a3a05a5c7cbb2ff55d66de66

Showrunner Damon Lindelof has said the new season will have a stronger “narrative engine” compared to the more meditative first season.

hmmmmmm

narrative engine powered by polar bear pushing a wheel

we have to get to the cabin

is everyone returning for season 2? liv tyler?

they're getting rid of quite a few of the supporting cast but Liv is in the trailer

new reviews are largely glowing, incl. a few by people who were not necessarily high on the first season

premieres sunday night, and i mean it's not like this week's SNF is gonna be good so c'mon y'all

I've heard that all the episodes are going to be like those couple of one-character point of view ones they did in the first season, as those were the most well liked.

also the GR is pretty much gone now

remind me what the GR is

guilty remnant

oh yeah thx

ok the combo of the new intro plus that prologue this week was amazing

yeah loved this premiere.

I think this show learned from all the mistakes of Lost, which is, just relish in the weird, there doesn't need to be an answer for everything

I lol'd when I noticed that this sentiment is baked right into the show's new theme song

the bbq scene was great

I'm honestly not sure if I liked it. It was audacious, and brave, and well done, but... I really really loved season 1, why did they change everything?

It reminds me a bit of Hannibal season 2. First seasons just emotionally hit a perfect spot, and ended absolutely as good as they could. And I know, that there was no reason in repeating that, and that that would just be diminishing returns, and that I should just rewatch seasons one if I want to. But I still sorta just want more of the same...

well, it's changed because there's no book to base it on now, so it's gotta go somewhere.

Sure. Still, this would never have happened if it was on Showtime.

I am gonna spend the next little while chuckling and imagining the Showtime version of this show

Okay I'm 5 minutes into either this or Quest For Fire. Can't be sure. Will update.

showtime would have run the same fucking idea into the ground for six years! I hope twin peaks survives

loved all of this, perfect level of creepy wtfery to keep me coming back

prologue made me cry a little, v cool

glad that regina king took up the mantle of jogging places while we wait for j theroux hot cop to show up again

I loved that even in an almost Garvey-free episode they still found time for a line about how pretty Theroux is.

tbf he is a very handsome man

the first episode was wonderful, and the second, while a bit less unexpected and more in line with what we've seen earlier, is also really good bc we see kevin attempting to grow and not just react in a permanent scream as he did for most of the 1st season. (although he would prob not be this /relatively/ well-adjusted without nora's help.)

that said as soon as i saw ghost patti i was like "god damnit." ann dowd's performance as her was great but i don't know how the guilty remnant plot arc can continue beyond its logical apotheosis at the end of season 1.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if we never hear the term "Guilty Remnant" ever again

Coon still rules, loved the scene with the MIT dudes

carrie coon was robbed of a first season emmy nom - based just on her scenes in these two episodes if the same thing happens next year it'd be goddamn ridiculous. the character is also very well-written but i can't imagine it would work this well with any other actor.

re: guilty remnant i hope you're right. and while kevin's inability to let aspects of the past go even in the face of real hope, it's also believable - it's the classic arc of fighting your way out of depression. that shit doesn't want to lose.

*in the face of real hope is frustrating

reza azlan has a regular recap interview on vulture talking abt spiritual/religious symbolism in the show since he's a consultant. it's kinda cool - apparently kevin may or may not be a shaman which to me is a huge lol just picturing fuckup kevin burning down a sweatlodge etc

ha! i could kinda see that.

just finished episode 2 and there are def some shots that look like guilty remnant motherfuckers but that could just be to wrap up their portion of the program through the eyes of kevin's ex-wife or (ugh) liv tyler, who it appears we'll (ugh) have to see a bit more of (ugh)

interested in Timelord Matt & what's going on with him and/or that church

interested in christmas-lights trailer man

i cannot stop thinking about regina king's bird in a box from ep 1

looking forward to more of this weirdass town

this show for all it's ???? is one of the most enjoyable things on tv for me because it's so strange & challenging

should i read the novel y/n

looooooool at the last music cue and the actual Rickrolling in last night's episode. Show's troll game is peerless.

i kinda like that about it tbh

Me too! Not enough dramas that dgaf

i really like the first four episodes of this season--a lot. does that mean i should watch season 1 or is it optional?

you should watch it imo, given the way you analyze other shows on other threads i'm interested in yr thoughts

though in terms of forward momentum you don't necessarily need to

yeah it's not as if stuff is ~explained~ in the first reason that i need to know. like, i gathered that episode 3 was picking up a storyline from season 1 but it was sorta gratifying to be so disoriented and trying to figure out what was going on.

this last one really felt like a Lost episode, but in a good way

i wish there was more activity on this thread.

last 10 or so minutes of the last episode were just outstanding.

no one watches things at the same time any more. I plan on watching cos i loved s 1 but wrapping up some other shows first.

i enjoy this show, though sometimes it is just toooooo grim.
and the theme song for this season is just atrocious.

yeah it's annoying

I like this season but I'm not clear where the son went after he declared he had the prophet's powers.

also it will be interesting if that is all we see of Liv Tyler all year.

It's not clear because we don't know! He went AWOL.

i like the new theme song a lot

i like the theme song too.

the grimness works for me, perhaps because there's a clear sense of humor and playfulness in so many of the other choices.

i cannot stop thinking about regina king's bird in a box from ep 1

good payoff to this. that whole scene, from the acting to the directing to the writing, was just wonderful. this show is somehow able to pull of things that would just not work elsewhere.

Really love this show, especially current season; most recent episode, "Lens," might be the strongest yet -- so many interesting reveals, so many new twists and turns, none of it feeling rushed or overblown or scattershot. The direction and the acting is just fantastic. Not sure if, for pure emotional impact, they'll top the conversation between Erika and Nora, but then I didn't think they'd top the previous episode centered around Matt, either. I thought season one had its great moments and fine episodes and pretty great acting throughout, but I seem to recall there were some flat-out bad episodes too, not to mention the quickly tiresome Holy Wayne silliness. I'm now obsessive enough about S2, that I assume I may get more out of some of that stuff when I go back to it, which I definitely plan to do.

I love a lot of Max Richter's soundtrack music, too, plus there's been some good pop music scattered about, from Al Green in the last episode of S1 to Bellamy Bros to Rihanna in "Lens."

I think this is secretly becoming my favourite show on television. I remember trying to persuade someone to watch S1 and not getting further than saying it was a show about depression, and about the stages of grief, and about how you could only transcend them by embracing these things and accepting them as an essential part of you. That pretty much convinced them not to watch it.

Last week I said near the beginning that Matt was really a metaphor for Job. Then he went on to have that conversation about how it was his favourite book, so his sacrifice at the end was nailed on by then.

I think it's the pacing of the show that's extraordinary. As said above, the reveals happen at just the right times and - well learned, Lindelhof - there aren't too many mysteries. And even as big a theory of lensing coming in now doesn't feel forced, it might even feel inevitable as it explains the MIT purchase; for me the highlight of this week was "we believe you are possessed by the daemon Azrael" and Nora collapsing into laughter when she realised they were whackjobs after all.

Megan's rape of Tommy is obviously a key moment in S2; I'm struggling to find the motivation for it. I get the whole thing to frighten him with the petrol but... is it just a long game to create a baby related to Kevin/Lori to use as a weapon? If the GR are such a nationwide thing, why does what happened in Mapleton even matter?

It'll be a really bold step if after the best part of two seasons and the potential build of a Shaman plot Kevin is revealed to just be schizophrenic.

. I remember trying to persuade someone to watch S1 and not getting further than saying it was a show about depression, and about the stages of grief, and about how you could only transcend them by embracing these things and accepting them as an essential part of you.

i like this reading, especially of season one (which im halfway through right now). i tried to sell someone on season 2 by saying it was about the trauma of the unexplainable, which makes it sound so incredibly pretentious, which i guess it is in a way, but its working for me big-time.

i read a recap somewhere where the writer said he was completely in love with the show & into the symbolism etc but watching it with someone else in the room made him hyperaware of how much more ridiculous it all seemed, making it hard to know if the show is actually as good as you think it is

seemed kinda otm. i love it but there's no way i could convince anyone to watch it

that last episide was so great, i could watch regina king & nora go toe to toe all day

it is maybe the only drama going right now that has no detectable gameplan and seems to give zero fucks about luring in new viewers, for which I respect it tremendously

if it keeps playing to this level i may finally make my peace with damon lindelof

That's funny, I've found myself raving about it to different people in a very defensive way, sort of like, "it's totally amazing--not that I think you should waste your time with it." What I like about the show's ridiculousness, if that's the right way to put it (its suspension-of-disbeliefness?), is that -- Holy Wayne aside -- it doesn't extend to the characters, all of whom, even the crazy ones, seem grounded and real in their response to everything. Yeah, there are some wise psychic types milling about, and of course the Guilty Remnant cult, but the show goes out of its way to avoid Twin Peaks' Log Lady-type characterizations (btw, I loved the Log Lady). I sense that a lot of people got fed up with the Guilty Remnant angle in S1, but I found it compelling, in part because they were never reduced to cartoons. It feels very real-world-people-dealing-with-an-unreal-situation to me.

Re-watched some of the most recent episode, and my favourite two seconds is the look Erika shoots John after she calls him out for giving the goat killer a free pass--so classic!

yeah I think if Lindelof and co. had adopted a straight-up "fuck y'all" approach to the "mythology" on Lost as opposed to trying and failing to supply satisfactory "answers", that would have worked out better for everyone

i am loving ecclestone so so much

the biblical/faith notes they keep hitting feel, idk, right. it just wrestles with faith in such an unflinching way, the situations are ridiculous on paper but the emotions are so real

and everyone is sweaty & stressed out, i love it

Re-watched "Guest," Nora's big episode from S1. Great episode, and that opening scene has to be one of the most powerful things I've ever seen on TV ("what happened to you?" is a great line). But man, was I struck by how overall despondent the show felt in S1. Moving locales and opening things up in S2 was a really good idea, I think.

I rewatched that one too, and had forgotten about Nora saying "oh, fuck your daughter!" to Kevin, which was the best

Yeah, that was great.

Also -- Nora making out with the mannequin. Some seriously amazing and far-out acting going on there.

and everyone is sweaty & stressed out, i love it

been waiting for someone to acknowledge on the show that--given they are around an hour from Austin in the Texas hill country--it's gonna be hot as balls for a substantial part of the year.

almost done with season one, and while I like it there's definitely a huge quality leap in this new season.

gotta say that cliffhanger felt very LOSTy

what makes it Lost-y? (I never watched much of Lost)

slight comedown after last week's high but this show has been pretty consistent for me this season.

I guess LOST deals pretty explicitly with a central character making the choice between science and faith and you could argue something broadly similar happens to him once he becomes the cheerleader for one of those sides. It's certainly transformative.

Patti's troll game A1 in this ep:

The whole bit about the Egyptian cup
'Did you really think the plot would actually be solved by a magical black man?'
"I can't believe you're putting your faith in someone whose only qualification for this job is being a paedophile"

Trying not to read what Lindelof says about it, because I remember what he said about various LOST plot events when they happened.

his statement about it in the HitFix recap is honestly hilarious.

I was looking up something about this show a few days ago, and came across a quote from Lindelof saying episode 7 was (I'm paraphrasing) "the one where we jump the shark," and though I don't think the episode was quite as farout/weird/incomprehensible/whatever-he-was-suggesting as I expected, it did sort of veer into mystery-mystical-layering-bullshit territory that could potentially lose me in the long run. The main stuff -- Kevin and Patti -- was very good, but some of the stuff more extraneous to this particular episode (Laurie and Nora, especially) felt a little half-formed or something, though it's interesting how Kevin can only measure the worthiness of himself against each of them. Ending is pretty wild, but even it lacked the impact it should have? Michael continues to become more interesting. There were a couple really good jokes, and the ten seconds of the Pixies (a replay, no? wasn't that used in S1 also?) was really exciting and well edited. The kind of episode where I feel I could be persuaded by people more enthusiastic than myself. Not a dud by any stretch, but a little off.

his statement about it in the HitFix recap is honestly hilarious.

saw this and his troll game is peerless.

Chickie otm though in that there's an awful lot riding on what happens next week.

'where is my mind' has been used a ton all season. maybe last season too? can't remember. the tune is even used as piano instrumental music.

and while I like it, it does recall Fight Club a little too much

that's funny, akm, I listened to a podcast about this episode this morning, and the hosts were all, "yeah, they keep playing that Pixies song," and they mentioned something about The Fight Club, and of course I felt really dumb for not getting any of this (which i think was the point), but that's probably because a) I've never had any desire to see TFC, and b) I'm a half-hearted Pixies fan <em>at best</em>. But I do vaguely recall hearing it earlier, and will keep my ear out for it.

it also made a "memorable" appearance on Mr Robot

a friend pointed out that the design of Virgil's home evoked this Jeff Wall piece:

http://www.moma.org/wp/moma_learning/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Jeff-Wall.-After-Invisible-Man1-469x329.jpg

I wish they had just stuck to the original Richter opening score which was very nice. If you are not a fan of a certain type of twee indie Americana, some of these over-long indulgences where they play some entire song (that you don't want to hear!) are not good television and detract from a decentish series.

i love the opening credits song! and i like the graphics too

no one can seem to agree on it, but the combo of the wackadoo season prologue and the seeing the new intro for the first time is still one of the series' highlights for me

agreed!

in my memory the prologue was a cold open with the intro coming after but i found out i was sadly mistaken when i re-watched it recently.

pixies. so twee!

Love the Jeff Wall image. Have to admit, the first thing that came to mind when we went inside Virgil's hovel was some imagery in an early chapter of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, in which the protagonist describes his "hole in the basement" as being lit with 1,369 light bulbs. Not a perfect analogy for a bunch of reasons, but the image always stuck with me from the first time I read the book and it hit me immediately upon seeing it on the screen.

[I wish the protagonist in Ellison's book had lit his room with 100 less bulbs -- 1,269 -- because that would be an anagram of 9,261, which is how many spared citizens there are in Jardin, Texas, and... oh man, could've lit up the Leftovers chat boards big time with that!!]

the Jeff Wall piece is directly based on the Ellison book.

Ah, nice, thanks.

"You people and that movie!" Virgil's line about <i>The Exorcist</i> made me laugh.

One character I do miss a lot from Mapleton/S1 (and who, imo, wasn't used enough in S1) is Mayor Lucy (Amanda Warren). Was flipping through episode 1 last night, and she's really great. Also forgot that Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) from Friday Night Lights is in episode 1 as a congressman who treks up to see Wayne (and I think that's the last we see of him).

most recent episode sure ends with a bang

wow

this show just constantly leaves me in dazed wonder now

i fuckin love this season

Many things I heard about season one set off enough alarms that I skipped it, yet I've heard such great things about season two. Can I see season two without seeing season one or do I sort of need to slog through all of it to get the most reward out of the current season?

I just started with two and loved it. as long as you know the premise you'll be fine. let the mystery be, you know.

I would strongly suggest getting around to Season 1 at some point -- even if you watch the seasons in reverse, which is probably do-able. It will fill in a lot of the story, and -- much as I've been critical of it at times -- it's a pretty great season at times (it's not like anyone forced me to stick around for season 2). My guess is, if you like S2, you'll want to go back to get more -- and S1 has plenty to get. By my count (and from what I recall) there are three or four near-perfect episodes, and only a severe dropoff in a couple somewhere around the middle.

can we talk about the ending of the new episode yet or no? i have a theory

spill it!

my theory is that Michael conspired with Virgil to arrange to kill or maybe just harm/scare Kevin because Michael thinks he was responsible for his sister's disappearance

? maybe?

I think it more likely that Virgil wanted to do one last good act, and he'll be guiding Kevin back to life with some help from Michael. I think the scene of Michael leaving Virgil's place when Kevin arrives was the tail end of Michael's failed attempt to talk him out of it.

A lot of people are touting the bird-in-a-box theory; that Kevin will be buried for three days, and then...

man I hope they do that except he's just dead and smelly

kinda hoping for kevin v patty thunderdome

i hope he is just straight-up dead

NO

dudes named virgil make pretty good guides through the afterlife iirc

^^ dun-dun-DUH.

it feels on the nose but that's my take too. we'll see.

yeah i was slow on the uptake but otm

Wow.

are they gonna cut david lynch a check for this

somehow a trip to the mythological underworld makes perfect sense on this show

no one who disappeared from the world appeared in the underworld

Lynch was the biggest influence I thought as well.

Lindelof ups his troll game: "The Leftovers isn’t about answers, it’s about the frustration of not getting them and the emotional state that drives our characters to. Like throwing rocks through the windows of people we feel sympathy for or drinking poison."

I appreciated the kid being stunned at this dude he buried waking up from death

omg that episode was so good!! genuinely exciting despite it's weirdness

Dunno that it owed as much to Lynch as The Sopranos, lol. I really love the idea of a hotel as the underworld

Patty as a little girl was a great touch

Honestly quite stunned by how good that was -- as enjoyable on second viewing as on first. Whether it really advances the story in a useful or interesting way, hard to say, and I don't think I'd want a whole season of it or anything, but on the basis of pure technique (so many interesting movie references throughout) and emotion (I was extremely moved by the Patty stuff), and house-of-mirrors weirdness, it feels like the sort of tv fare you're lucky to get when you do (if you can give in to this sort of thing... I'm guessing it's way too jump-the-shark for some people).

- Fight scene between Kevin and the bellhop reminded me a lot of The Manchurian Candidate scene with Sinatra fighting Henry Silva (and the 'Manchurian candidate' from that movie is played by Laurence Harvey; Kevin's new alias is Kevin Harvey
- I don't know the music that was played throughout, but it was terrific. There's one soft melodic motif that kept recurring, though, that sounded a lot like a recurring motif in The Godfather films (which is alluded to elsewhere)... is that just a weird accident, I wonder?
- great little scene I missed the first time: whoever chose the Mapleton cop outfit walking by Kevin with a bag over his head
- I'm on record often as dismissing Holy Wayne from S1, but he is quite funny here, I think

just watched it a second time as well and it's just outstanding. fun to watch and fun to think about. this is one of the strongest runs for a tv show in recent memory I think. hope they can finish strong.

the show wouldn't make a lick of sense without watching season 1 before season 2; don't even attempt that.

didn't love that episode, but I like the idea that the afterlife is more logical / rule-based than life itself

Not the most remarkable of episodes last night (centers around the two major characters I am the least interested in, and some of the plotting felt contrived and way too convenient), but: a) that's a judgement based at least in part on the ridiculously high standards the show has set most of this season; b) it did, in fact, add some interesting shading to both of those characters; c) a handful of good songs were used, two quite awesomely (incl. a country song by Sturgill Simpson I'd never heard of). So much to say about Olivia Newton-John, but anyway.

lol i love that sturgill simpson song to bits (it's a cover of a not-country song, but it does find the country song that was always hiding in the original) and i was like "aw man there goes the neighborhood" but i'm stoked if it gets him paid.

this show has an uncanny way with its music choices.

liked this episode a lot (more on second viewing), even though it risked disappointment in taking us away from the building momentum of the other plots. i think their commitment to keep each episode relatively focused on just a few characters pays off here--seeing this plot strung out over the season would only have diluted the stronger episodes.

I guessed the final scene about halfway through. The big question obviously is whether they were in on it from the start or have been converted.

i have a feeling that the finale is gonna be extra-long or something to tie everything together, like 90 minutes maybe

would be totally fine with that tbh. can't believe this show has managed to pull all the gambits it's pulled and not only avoid falling off a cliff but in fact get better with each chance it takes.

i utterly despise meg and yet even her episode was fascinating and engaging all the way through. it's p clear that on some level she was always less than sane, that aspect of her personality waiting for an excuse to explode. she couldn't give a fuck about the world forgetting or remembering the departure - she wants it to remember her and hurt like she used to.

xp in sepinwall's review he seems to think they might've been GR at least since the start of the season http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/review-liv-tyler-makes-a-terrifying-impression-on-this-weeks-leftovers

That was my first thought after it's been made clear Meg isn't big on the whole not speaking thing.

i want to know what her mother's last words were!!!

Probably one more mystery left to dangle about, but my assumption is it was something really banal; in any case, Meg clearly didn't hear what she was looking for (profundity?), and didn't Isaac kind of indicate as much upfront?

<i>she couldn't give a fuck about the world forgetting or remembering the departure - she wants it to remember her and hurt like she used to.</i>

I love this, it opens up her performance for me a bit, the nihilism etc. (I am glad the GR are back; the cult aspect of the story interests me a lot. I would've been bummed if it had been dropped.)

Argh, now I see the link "show formatting help." Will try and get that right.

whether they were in on it from the start or have been converted.

I feel like they helped execute the plan. Remember how inconsistently they were acting throughout "Axis Mundi"?

Liv Tyler fucking killed it in that episode - who knew? Loved her spitting and her evil smirk walking away from the schoolbus.

Megan and the son are the best characters so far, so little exposition until now and they have been so devoted to the causes of others

A lot of the reviews I've seen of this ep have put it down as scary but meaningless; I thought it was especially rich. Forgive me if some of this is incoherent and repetitive!

Tom/Laurie and Megan are very similar in that they've hijacked their 'believers' to ameliorate some private pain – Laurie takes advantage of the Wayners to atone for her family, Megan constructs a schism from the Remnant to make sure that everyone is in as much pain as her.

Megan's splinter group's mission is like the Remnants' – to be a reminder – but she's refined it into a direct trauma-delivery mechanism, discarding a lot of the Remnant's superficial ('pointless') doctrine (silence, chainsmoking) along the way. The purpose seems to be less to remind people of the Departure than to show them that all life or joy is essentially meaningless. Not only the bus, but the scene in the roadside bar illustrates this for me, where she seems to hold out the possibility of pleasure, comfort, company, or just basic humanity to Tom and immediately withdraws it. (Tom goes gamely along with her because he can't imagine himself doing anything but following; his only experience as a leader was also as a fraud. Megan mocks his lack of self-reliance: 'hug yourself'.) The new Remnant group follows a typical pattern in terrorist organizations; each radicalized group growing out of the established, comfortable last is bent on being more shocking, more extreme (and strangely less devoted to an actual politically realizable goal).

The girls look to have been part of the organization for at least a year, possibly two. The current time of the show is the fourth-year anniversary; when Evie and Megan meet, it's been two years since the Departure. The cricket in the Murphy's house is most likely the phone, or a phone, that Evie uses to communicate with Megan (It's interesting that not only Evie but Erika as well are very insistent to John that he 'can't', not 'won't' find it). All the frolicking the girls were up to as seen in the first episode of the season were cover, so that they wouldn't be suspected as suicides a la Bridgend.

Why are the girls so distraught if they didn't suffer direct loss as a result of the Departure? This actually makes them perfect actors for Megan, because if they respond to the Remnant even if the Departure didn't touch them, they're an indication that the existential nausea and horror felt in response to the world is permanent and pervasive, the suffering universal and inescapable, and not just something you feel after a tremendous but momentary loss. Megan herself seems nihilistic no matter what her circumstances, present or past – it's just that now she's found a setting and a stage to allow her to spread a little of that pain around. (John Murphy is also of this type though not as severe; he seems anxious to prevent anyone from believing in salvation, not only to prevent people being hustled.) I believe that Megan actually did receive the answer she wanted from Isaac – the show is consistent in showing that the supernatural is very real, despite the doubts it leaves open – but, just as he warned her, the answer does nothing to address the anguish she's in.

If Kevin is a shaman, preparing for a 'battle', that battle wasn't with Patty, who was just an appetizer in service of showing Kevin what he's capable of. Patty had real human needs, feelings, and troubles which she responded to by being vicious along with continually broadcasting her distress. Megan on the other hand is just out to inflict harm with as little small talk as necessary, and we have no real sense of her having facets to her personality. The pure nihilism she embodies is the real Adversary.

What the plan is involving the girls and the bridge, I can't see; the three nooses on the bridge in the episode before might be foreshadowing, but the girls sacrificing themselves in public would have less impact than letting everyone stay convinced the girls Departed. Though if they did announce that while they were 'spared' they wish they hadn't been, before they died that would be hard for everyone to take. The explosives I think are a red herring for the bridge plot; I think they have more to do with the earthquakes or water being drained, though I have no idea how. It's possible the girls won't simply be sacrificed but that the townspeople themselves will be roped in and not simply be an audience. In Megan's conversation with Matt, Matt's suspicions of her are confirmed when she says they're both interested in the town 'because it's safe' - meaning that she's interested in destroying that sense of safety. She wants Miracle to be yet another place where horrible things can happen, and it might not have anything to do with the Departure or the Departed at all. Maybe that 'changes everything' but it seems a stretch.

And with all this I'd completely forgotten the cavewoman opening scene of the season, which might just be 'it has ever been thus' symbolism and might never be referred to or called back again!

So much to like in that post, thanks.

I don't think anyone's getting blown up 'killed', if that was going to happen the school bus would have provided the test run for that. Hanging might still be an option yet.

Is it possible that one of her other plants in the town has been raping Mary? Matt doesn't start using the video until after the 'special night'.

im sort of skeptical that they can wrap all this up in an (artistically) satisfactory manner in just one episode, but then when you realize that the core events of the season have all taken place over a few days (a week at most?) then it starts to seem possible. if they stick the landing in even just an adequate way this has to be one of the best seasons of a tv show in recent memory.

im sort of skeptical that they can wrap all this up in an (artistically) satisfactory manner...

l i n d e l o f !

I can't fully express why but my sense is that Tommy will be killed off possibly while engaged in some act of (perhaps not immediately obvious) heroism, I.e., doing something to fuck with a particularly nefarious part of Megan's plan. He is a kind of formless character, he doesnt look like he can handle much more confusion and pain, and I'm not sure where else his story can go anyway. I will be surprised if there are no casualties, though one which will feel like a greater loss to people on the show, ie Jill and Laurie, than to people in the audience. For that reason alone, I can't imagine the girls getting killed or (especially) committing suicide - they're still quite young and I just don't see the show inflicting that on the audience, though who knows? The show is pretty fearless.

i'm not fully up to speed w/ this thread, cos i'm not fully uts with this season, but i'm really loving this show. all the ambient details of how the culture is shaped and continues to flow out of this huge trauma, so smartly imagined.

i have to say i'm liking s2 a bit less than s1; less of an unfolding mystery vibe than a waiting-for-the-scare-moment. i don't have much faith in lindelof. but we'll see!

xxp aaaaand there it is lol

i think the first season was wrapped up well enough as one thing (albeit w the convenience of a book-based foundation) to dim concerns about them all ending up in a multidenominational church

i'm not fully up to speed w/ this thread, cos i'm not fully uts with this season, but i'm really loving this show. all the ambient details of how the culture is shaped and continues to flow out of this huge trauma, so smartly imagined.

catch up!

i liked season 1 more than most but 2 somehow keeps the deeply moving emotional undercurrents and mixes it up with a greater playfulness and vibrancy--it's not so monochrome this season. plus it's just so wonderfully acted and directed and written, almost without exception. i dunno beyond just feeling "i like this, I am vey moved by this" im having trouble explaining to myself or others what's so great about this show other than its uncanny (using that word again) ability to create compelling situations that are simultaneously character driven and just about as broadly relatable as something can be.

it's not at all plot driven and i wonder if that's a big problem for it in the instant recap era of tv. it's hard to endlessly speculate about a show when just about anything is possible. actually, i havent noticed recaps so much for any show these days--have they mercifully fallen off?

Chickie otm i think in that Tommy will play a key role in the finale.

It's a pain trying to link from my phone but the final episode trailer is on YouTube and it's... Obscure. Though: Mary!

Also, having expressed out loud that Tommy will die I now fully expect nothing of the sort will happen. Elimination by speculation, I call it.

worth nothing that the finale is supposedly 75 minutes.

that's good, i figured they'd need some extra time

Is it possible that one of her other plants in the town has been raping Mary? Matt doesn't start using the video until after the 'special night'.

I think that would violate Ebert's Law of Economy of Characters (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=361247)

i dunno beyond just feeling "i like this, I am vey moved by this" im having trouble explaining to myself or others what's so great about this show

It's so thematically and symbolically rich, but if you're immune to taking that trip and focus just on the actions and attitudes of the characters it's exceedingly grueling. Everybody I've tried to turn on to the show reacts like I've just shoved their arm in boiling water

Also cosigning on Tommy's upcoming demise. Aside from Jill he's the worst offender in not having an arc or any development

Take that back about Jill, she is obviously not nearly as tortured and self-destructive as S1. Though a lot of that has to do with her in-a-family circumstances

everyone's covered my thoughts abt this ep so well itt, all I have left to say is

U GUYS, THIS SHOW

re: Jill, I loved the scene a few episodes back where it was revealed that she and Michael had been seeing each other for a little while offscreen. So many unimportant would-be preceding scenes, shaved right off.

Just got caught up with ep9. What the faaaaaaaaaaack

Wow

that was p much perfect

yeah loved it. laughed out lout a surprising number of times, particularly at "Because it's STUPID!" and the Verdi starting up again.

so good

I am feeling pretty optimistic about the show's renewal chances but I would be TOTALLY ok with that being the series finale

god that was beautiful & hilarious & heartbreaking & weird & joyous

i just want to cry and think about this show

spoilers obv but when you are ready, def read this breakdown with Reza Azlan abt the finale

http://www.vulture.com/2015/12/the-leftovers-season-two-finale-questions-reza-aslan.html

and remind me I want to talk about John & Kevin as neighbors

god that was beautiful & hilarious & heartbreaking & weird & joyous

i just want to cry and think about this show
--Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl)

this is kinda what I wanna do with the rest of my life tbh

this was amazing.

maybe the best episode of any show i've seen this year.

I jumped on this after the first fifteen mins of the pilot. Worth the effort to try again?

yes

Every single thing I read about this makes it seems like a "John From Cincinnati"-level neo-conceptual mess.

uh, no

never saw JFC but The Leftovers takes is a show that takes wild conceptual gambles and routinely has them pay off.

Just wondering, going by the weird reactions to this last episode, if it were the series finale would you be satisfied?

yeah it works very well as a series finale, but that's because it completes a really satisfying arc for the more-or-less main character. but there's a lot of other characters who could carry the show. hoping next season (being hopeful) focuses more on Nora, personally.

yeah the only real downer for me about the last few episodes was that she took a real backseat, though her emphatic "shut the fuck up!" was a delight.

it is the only thing I've seen that gives equal weight to the faithful, the doubtful and non-believers... allows them
all to exist together, even problematically... but also acknowledges that those states can also be experienced by one person sometimes simultaneously

it's so spiritually rich, layered with symbolism & meaning and as mentioned upthread, a lot of it pays off. it's not just for show

yeah i like how it takes faith as a serious thing, but as an everyday thing, too. really glad they allowed matt the priest to soften from a driven prig -- like oh great, another snarling preacher character -- to something more admirable over two seasons. and poor janel maloney! what a thankless acting job.

ecclestone said in an interview that Matt is his favorite character he's played

look, i still harbor huge fears that if this thing goes on it will just fall apart under its own weight because l i n d e l o f. but for now i'm really impressed that all the interlocking stories, the flashbacks, the layers, are just so well fitted together

xp oh nice :)

is there some danger this won't get renewed?

are we left to imagine that the three disappeared girls were seduced into the GR via some kind of self-radicalization process on the internet, a la ISIS?

yeah the show takes place in a kind of heightened reality but it's using that idea to simply clarify the stakes of everyday life. like, with people's varied reactions and responses to the departure i often think "yeah, people do cope (or not) that way" and it's often tremendously cathartic to recognize that.

there's a great deal of danger it wont be renewed. praying there's some exec at hbo in lindelof's corner.

are we left to imagine that the three disappeared girls were seduced into the GR via some kind of self-radicalization process on the internet, a la ISIS?

this is what i thought. teenagery discovery of adult hypocrisy finds ready outlet.

i'd love for it to be renewed but if not it was a fine series finale

re: the girls, it seems like Megan poached them pretty directly.

re: renewal - no talks yet; the ratings weren't good but it also aired against The Walking Dead this season. I personally think it'll be back but we might have to wait till early '17

never thought i'd get anything out of someone singing simon and garfunkel. i had something in my eye.

I watched the first 4 eps of S1 and then dropped out. Can I start fresh on S2?

fuck yeah that was beautiful

i spied Prince's 'I would die 4 u' on that wheel but I knew that was too good to be true

I went back and freeze-framed, here's what I could spot:

Homeward Bound
I Would Die 4 U
Like a Prayer
Livin' on a Prayer
Don't Stop Believin'
Angel of the Morning
All My Ex's Live In Texas (<--looooool)

oh, and Bohemian Rhapsody.

haha

bet that was a lively day in the writer's room.

"I watched the first 4 eps of S1 and then dropped out. Can I start fresh on S2?"

no. I mean you could but you should watch all of season 1. S2 was better but S1 was very good also.

I think Reza Aslan had a lot to do with the richness of the spirituality subtext that makes S2 so rewarding.

per a lindelof interview, the initial idea was for KG to sing "like a prayer" but madonna wouldn't grant them the rights

i saw it on the spinning wheel.

From the avclub:

Nobody is watching The Leftovers. Like, seriously nobody is watching it. “International Assassin” was beaten in its time slot by an episode of Law And Order: SVU. Not a first-run episode, not a sweeps-month crossover with Chicago [Insert Municipal Service], just a regular old repeat on USA, perhaps an episode where Olivia and Munch have to pose as a married couple to infiltrate a dog-fighting ring or some shit. Premium cable networks don’t excel at concealing their enthusiasm for a show, and HBO has never been bashful about handing out additional seasons to a show if they believe in it. Hell, the fact that The Leftovers got a second season is evidence of the latitude the network will grant to shows and storytellers they’re invested in. But HBO has yet to breathe a word about The Leftovers season three, even as the second season has earned a deeply passionate, if tiny following. This could very well be the end of the series, and if “I Live Here Now” is the series finale, it’s a really odd note to end on, and another deeply polarizing, spiritually playful series finale for Damon Lindelof to add to his resume.

Anyway, I haven't seen a minute of it, partly because everything I read about it makes it sound like a combination of spiritual, silly and surreal, a combo I have a hard time wrapping my head around. Like, this one had a purgatory karaoke bar or something?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/arts/television/damon-lindelof-on-the-leftovers-finale-the-shows-future-and-his-afterlife-obsession.html?_r=0

Will there be a season three of “The Leftovers”?

At the moment I do not know. We’re starting to have preliminary conversations with HBO. I think that I’m a pragmatic individual. I understand that television is a business first and foremost, and the ratings — I don’t want to use the phrase “apocryphally bad.” But let’s just use that phrase.

HBO’s response to the creative of the show has been overwhelmingly positive and they’ve been immensely supportive in letting us do some pretty wacky stuff. I think that I definitely want there to be more show, and hopefully we’ll have some clarity as to whether or not that’s going to happen in the coming weeks, before the new year.

him not knowing what "apocryphally" means is lessening the blow tbh

lol i was just reading the primaries thread and mention of 'cozzen larry' is reminding me of mark linn-baker showing up in this for real.

http://i.imgur.com/HGY2UTD.jpg

maybe not the best idea

Nora yelling "Fix this, Jesus!" and trashing the cd player followed by an immediate tremor was some well-timed levity.

The neighbor John's arc from being this angry guy who we only knew had gone to jail and was so edgy he seemed he could flare up violently at any moment -- and did at anyone he could justify targeting -- makes the neighborly wave from the porch at the end so much more genuine than the same one he did at the beginning of the season. The character always seemed at cross purposes -- trying so hard to keep his family together and denying the spiritual element his father-in-law and townspeople are so into but still seeming broken. All of it being real at the end, with his daughter having ditched out, the town's sanctity broken, and someone who he killed coming back was a good ending.

also lol @ lindelof using cool words he doesn't really understand, that pretty much sums up his plotting direction

ha, or the transcriber really fucked him over? i mean, surely he meant "apocalyptically"? thank god i dont have to give interviews...

it's funny, i find lindelof really disarming in interviews. but then i didnt watch Lost and dont really have any baggage with him other than Prometheus, which i am on record here as vigorously defending. but this season is the best thing he's done, where all that rube goldberg plotting and his own temperamental self-criticism and uncertainty actually works as a resource and not a limitation.

"best thing he's done" = assuming that, since i havent seen Lost.

like "is this right? will this work? who knows! #yolo" is kinda what the characters are going through at any given moment.

there's a lot of "metaphors 101" class that's actually reasonably well-executed

the bridge isn't the only way into jarden, it's the only thing keeping people out! meg doesn't really blow up the bridge, she metaphorically blows up the bridge! omg

This was great. Really great.

I'll be more than ok with that as the end of it.

there's a lot of "metaphors 101" class that's actually reasonably well-executed

and it's really playful this way! hence the "because it's STUPID" bit which made me laugh.

I took "because it's stupid" to be he final instalment of Lindelof trolling his own writing.

kevin fails to kill himself in water. kevin is killed, comes into the afterlife in water. comes back to life through the dirt. gets killed again, enters the afterlife through water, then back to life on... the floor

"denying the spiritual element his father-in-law "

it's his father though, not father in law, correct?

I was mixed on that, I thought it was his dad but I swear they said otherwise at some point

I think you're right

Virgil was Erika's father.

Great finale. If the show really is gone, I'll miss the unique feelings of wonder, dread, intense sadness and rapturous happiness that it inspired in me, often at the same time.

from way above: "(incl. a country song by Sturgill Simpson I'd never heard of)"...really? it's a cover of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIphTYxQRwE

while we're on the subj i never liked the iris dement song

I fucking hate it

If there is one criticism I have for this series it is the winsome indie overkill in some episodes, like playing the whole wretched tune is not good at all and it does this crime a few times. But respect for maintaining max weirdness without ever truly letting the viewer know wtf is going on.

I mean that sincerely as well

Thanks, akm, I got lambasted by a couple folks on facebook for admitting I was unfamiliar with When in Rome. Big radio/dance/pop fan, too, so who knows... just the randomness of what I know, I guess.

Some parts of the last two episodes did not come together for me, I gotta be honest, but I still thoroughly enjoyed them overall (my nitpicking tends to recede when I re-watch them, which is why I characterize it as "nitpicking"), and I completely loved the entire middle section of the season, as much as I've loved any show. Probably my most nitpicky thing from last night: I'm definitely glad Mary's pregnancy turned out to be what it was hoped to be, but the way it was revealed was way too pat ("yes, Matt, of course I remember"). That definitely seemed like a part written as such in the event that there would be no season 3 (which I guess means I understand WHY it was handled the way it was, but it was a fairly unimaginative playing out).

but...why *wouldn't* she remember if she was conscious for it

You're right. I watched it again, and the scene in particular does not bother me -- maybe it's just the tying of all loose ends at once I found a little unnerving (on the Garvey/Durst/Jamison side -- quite the opposite on the Murphy's side, of course).

The karaoke scene really is amazing -- and btw, the 8 songs listed above are definitely all of them--between a couple different shots, they all come into the frame pretty clearly.

It took me the whole season to make the connection, but the season's prologue reminds me of the frustrated Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. "No, no, it starts...at the dawn of time!"

does that intro scene have anything to do with what's going on in the present day? it is a ~mystery~

I was worried that the earthquake was gonna knock down the Garvey house and kill the whole family like the rockslide killed the caveman clan in the beginning of the season

Then I thought "even The Leftovers wouldn't be that depressing"

I dunno why but I thought they would still be in the trailer on the bridge, I yelled at the tv when Kevin didnt follow the dog lol

same

me too. i don't really get that story beat tbh.

maybe the dog just ran over there when they were filming and they thought it seemed somehow poignant

the dog was like "fuck this shit, I'm outta here"

dog makes a good point

i have no idea what it means either, but it's gotta have something with the dog not being able to (and then not wanting to) enter Jasper. it can't come "home," etc?

first thought was that it was another moment of frustration for the viewer: dog goes to nora, the baby & tommy, and kevin thinks he has to go into town

second thought was that this was just a confusing and badly staged moment. dog runs off, kevin has to get to the clinic

third thought is that (not shown) the dog running to the trailer lets nor and tommy know that kevin is probably a live (?) and they should head into town themselves

dog wasn't lassie

i get really unhappy with shows where people don't or can't explain themselves, where 'dramatic irony' is based on people being fucking inarticulate or asking each other stupid questions, so i gotta say a lot of the patty haunting and handprint plots got on my nerves. (but it's not as bad as game of thrones, woo doggy)

lmao i mentioned lassie in my first draft of that post and deleted it

you think i could have fixed some of those typos huh

i get really unhappy with shows where people don't or can't explain themselves, where 'dramatic irony' is based on people being fucking inarticulate or asking each other stupid questions, so i gotta say a lot of the patty haunting and handprint plots got on my nerves.

i think i know what you mean, but i didnt get much of that from this show--though i have stars in my eyes and refuse to accept any flaws for now. im sure i'll be more objective in 6 weeks or so. was actually pretty moved by the darting-eyes desperation of theroux's performance. if one of the major themes was family as what patty called a "life jacket" (and i actually think the show posits that she is right about this) then there's a tension between a notion of family as something that has to be protected at all costs (and then the inevitable need to evade, hide the truth, hide your own trauma, etc) and something that can absorb all that. that's why nora running off and coming back was really moving as well, as embodying that tension. also the neat contrast of the garvey's coming together just as the murphy's are spinning apart.

also, patty as "destroying family" and megan as "family is everything" are kinda two sides of same coin. megan cannot grasp family except as pure loss, hence her nihilism.

also re: at least patty's inarticulatness (or just her own inability to explain what she's doing there and why) works out if you think of her as not just a reflection of kevin's own mind but as the seductive voice of his own beliefs that he cannot process as his own and must disassociate from.

"she's not in you, she's on you" was a particularly rich line, i thought.

that's the funny thing about this show: all of the mystical and magical shit that happens to people can all be explained away with some realistic plausibility, except for the fact that all these people disappeared three years ago, it keeps you guessing what the "rules" are

I figured the dog smelled Nora & company had been in the trailer and went to go check it out because dog

they did keep us on the fence for a long time about whether anyone had any actual mystical experience in Jarden - did the lady in a coma wake up, or was it wishful thinking? Can this medium really talk to people on the other side, or is he a fraud? Both seemed really unlikely until the end of the season. I was actually surprised by the reveal of Meg's previous visit to Jarden where she received a message from her dead mom -- I figured John was right about people being frauds in the town.

other underrated scene: Kevin talking to his dad, who is on a drug trip in Australia, through the television in the hotel underworld

who knows if this is the intent but the show makes you want to believe in the mystical because it's the only way kevin makes it to s3 alive

Meg is the antihero of this thing, right?

other underrated scene: Kevin talking to his dad, who is on a drug trip in Australia, through the television in the hotel underworld

Scott Glenn is always great

My God, just like Fargo this is an already excellent series stepping it up a level for season 2. Also the only time My Mother comes to visit me is to watch this, so I'm hoping for another season just for the human connection. And we have different uh religious beliefs but this covers all our bases, and appeals to both our... cognitave dissonance?
I can't really add to all your opinions above but Goddamn...

renewed! for just one more season, but that's how lindelof wanted it, apparently.

Three seasons feels right. I'm just hoping it's a full season and not a quickie a la Treme.

I'm so happy!!

yeah i think it's good news on both fronts...i think they have one more potentially great (nora-centric please!) season in them.

they have to spend some substantial time in Australia this time around right? i need at least one episode where i can trip along w/ Kevin's dad

I just hope that whatever s3 is turns out to be as much of a formal/spatial leap as s2 was from s1

yeah for sure

fish out water stoner comedy with scott glenn in the outback, brief mentions of previous seasons only. "mad shit in texas mate" "yeah buddy"

would watch

I made the mistake of reading a couple of post-season interviews with Lindelof, the Sepinwall one and the Mo Ryan one, my God this man is an insufferable tool. "Yes that meant something very specific, we had a very clear idea all worked out, but I am not going to tell you the answer. But rest assured I am a genius". Considering he also spends a lot of time apologising for Lost you'd think he might have approached his interactions with his audience even slighty different this time. Also he seems to have fundamentally misunderstood some of the proper deep shit that Reza Aslan brought to the show (which was all explained very openly by Aslan in his own interview, can't remember where). It kinda reminds me of Donnie Darko, where I had the whole thing sussed out and was appreciating it until I heard the director's commentary, and then saw the director's cut, and it's like oh wow, this guy really doesn't understand this thing he actually wrote, and doesn't seem so smart as I assumed.
Still, yay for 3rd season, cos by accident or design (or more likely the skill of Lindelof's collabarators) this was on fire that whole season, and I will happily swallow whatever pseudo-spiritual bullshit I am fed next season, and just tack my own interpretation on top of it. The renewal makes me genuinely happy.

I kinda liked the 'yeah there's this obscured stuff in there, but I'm not holding your hand to find it' bits in the interviews. Rather than annoying me it was pretty intriguing since the stuff he mentions I completely missed. It's probably pretty obvious that I have a large tumbler of Kool-aid here on the side table. I can totally see how that would feel obnoxious, though. Really happy to hear about the renewal too

i've thrown so much shade at Lindelof that i'm kinda ready to just let the light in this time

this season was like therapy for me, i have nothing but love in my heart for this weirdass show & old baldy

and it feels like a jinx even saying it out loud

like PSYCH season 3 is a giant spacewheel and polar bears mwahaha

Amen to that - let the light in! I'm just scared of being hurt again. So often with the various series I watch I'm like a battered spouse, always returning to my abuser with the same excuses - "oh but he's so nice to me some of the time...", "it was my own fault really...". I should've kicked Lost to the kerb long before our relationship petered out to it's natural conclusion, and I THINK this mid-season break from The Walking Dead will be sufficient for me to walk out that door for the final time, but Imma keep coming back to The Leftovers, cos it's been nothing but good times up til now. Maybe if this is the final season as suggested then afterwards we can remain friends, occasionally get together for a drink, watch the old home movies and reminisce about our relationship with a wistful smile...

Like that deathtrip episode in the hotel I was getting major polarbear-wheel vibes, and I was very uneasy sitting through it, but everything turned out great! (Still not gunna say anything nice about Lindelof himself tho cos seriously fuck that dude).

Listened to the first bit of this Andy Greenwald interview with Damon Lindelof and it's...interesting:

https://soundcloud.com/channel33/ep-17-the-andy-greenwald-show

Four episodes to go. Still baffled and fascinated and waiting for explanations, if any are forthcoming. And noticing the music, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDW6v9OsVlI

Mom: "I don't understand."
Evie: "You understand."
Clemenza: "No, really, she doesn't, and neither do I."

Everyone crosses the bridge in order to...set up camp on the other side and recreate the golden calf scene from The Ten Commandments? Was the idea simply to put an end to the idea that Miracle was anything special? I'm sincerely confused.

I did like this, though. No idea where they take it for a third season. Lot of good performances. Scott Glenn was my favourite, and he's never been anyone I take much notice of; Carrie Coon, Ann Dowd (having just watched True Detective too, she's a major trouble-on-the-way red flag right now), and Jasmin Savoy Brown (Evie) were very good too. I thought Justin Theroux really grew into the role: kinda bad in the first few episodes (overly grim and dour, scowling at everyone), after which he got better and better. The minister's resemblance to Al Bundy and the brother's to Justin Bieber were a bit disorienting for me. Scott Woods has a piece up on the music that I haven't read yet:

http://www.watchingtheleftovers.com/blog/2015/12/16/the-leftovers-music-in-season-2

I loved the song above, Patti doing Rick Astley (reminded me of Dean Stockwell in Blue Velvet, and "I Am a Rock"; there seemed to be a lot of good '60s/70s soul stuff I didn't recognize.

"Was the idea simply to put an end to the idea that Miracle was anything special?"

More, I think, to mock the idea that Jardin wasn't impacted by the sudden departure. And/or just to fuck the place up (Meg has basically gone full-blown Trump with the G.R., and Evie and her seem to share disdain for the town's self-righteousness?).

re: the conversation between Evie and Erika, I think there are different things to infer from that, some of it related to Michael's story about the bathtub, suggesting that Erika turned a blind eye to problems within. Might have something to do with abuse, which we know happened in the Murphy family though it's still unclear who was abused (we only know that Virgil was the abuser). I think there might be something telling about Erika proclaiming early in the season that "no one would ever hurt Evie." Possibly it means no more than that. Always a lot of loose ends at work here (though I think the season did a satisfying job of answering a lot of them.

Fight scene between Kevin and the bellhop reminded me a lot of The Manchurian Candidate scene with Sinatra fighting Henry Silva (and the 'Manchurian candidate' from that movie is played by Laurence Harvey; Kevin's new alias is Kevin Harvey.
― Chickie Levitt, Monday, November 23, 2015 10:59 PM (1 month ago)

Good call--thought of the same thing (though not the Laurence Harvey part). Also suspect that the Guilty Remnants' practice of stoning people (maybe an overstatement--it comes up twice) was lifted from Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."

we all want to relate stonings to that story, but I am pretty sure there was a book where they were mentioned that the GR try to clown

Probably everything eventually traces back to that other book--might even be a hidden weapon planted behind a tree Corleone-style somewhere--but I haven't read it, so I gotta stick with what I know. (You're right, of course.)

I think Evie knew Erika was planning on leaving. So even without any people being lost to the departure, she lost her father to jail and was about to lose her mother to her fleeing.

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53865adce4b04631a5de6077/5674732cb204d55fb336be0f/56747362c647ad126efdb15f/1450472293133/5.jpg?format=750w

wait, those tattoos are real? lmao

max richter's piano theme in this series is one hell of an earworm

the concept for this show always seemed very intriguing, so I finally got the first disc of s1 from Netflix. Watched the first episode and I'm done. Way too dark and depressing to want to carry on. Didn't particularly like any of the characters and the awful world they inhabit. I don't usually bail on a show so quickly, but just getting through the one ep was a chore.

yr call obvs but it does get a lot better.

Yeah the first ep is certainly punishing, but i tend to find even the first season remarkably cathartic if you can hang in there. not to everyone's taste of course.

only show i've seen that hit me somewhere i don't really know how to talk about... completely in love with justin theroux and carrie coon

Moodles you should at least give ep 3, "Two Boats and a Helicopter," a try before you give up on it. I was kinda meh on the initial episodes but that one and "Guest" are something else.

The Nice Guys' plot hinges on Margaret Qualley/Jill Garvey's character. She's not particularly good; even with a two-part Nixon joke, neither is the film. I don't generally turn into Tipper Gore when I go to the movies, but some of the stuff involving Ryan Gosling's 13-year-old daughter struck me as tasteless. Russell Crowe plays John Goodman.

8-episode final season premieres 04/16

Yeah, I saw it flash by in an HBO promo the other day. Looking forward to it, no clue as to where they go from here.

Actually (almost a certainty with the upcoming House of Cards season), I wouldn't be surprised if Trump is somehow lurking in the background. Mood, a new character, something.

:D

Here you go--Trump's flying the plane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=37&v=qj1tpBYiHnU

I though Justin Theroux did reasonably well will a silly character in The Girl on the Train.

No Beach Boys, louder and more hysterical:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HzCWqPhi0o

(Not sure why, but my link above takes you to the very end of the clip.)

that one is some sort of fan edit or something

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L9w0sz5y83k

So excited for this.

I would say that with trump related end-of-world anxiety this show may find itself in the zeitgeist but it'll always probably have limited appeal. I have tried and failed many times to get people to watch it.

v excited

I didn't see Patti anywhere--I want ghost Patti to show up.

http://i.imgur.com/RnUkPGw.png

rewatching, for some reason my life has become detached from relating to the show

this scene in season one where kevin speaks to his dad because he feels like he's losing his shit, then goes back to the police station to disassemble the toaster because he thought he might have hallucinated losing his bagel

and then the euphoric music swells as he removes the back of the machine and discovers his bagel

excellent

I didn't love this show. Continually going back and forth over whether supernatural things are happening didn't interest me. guilty remnant was a great idea though.

http://variety.com/2017/scene/vpage/justin-theroux-carrie-coon-the-leftovers-season-3-premiere-hbo-1202023241/

This is it; we left no dangling threads, no to be continued, no spinoff possibilities. We made pretty sure that this was going to be the last season of the show,” Lindelof assured Variety on the carpet before the screening. “The audience deserves as satisfying an ending as we can give them. I don’t think anyone wants to see a question mark at the end of this.

Can't see any reason to doubt Lindelof on this.

And then it ends with a dude on a beach and a dog running past him anyway.

Kinda hope it's not as conclusive as all that. If any show can satisfyingly end with a question mark it's this one.

I don't think they're ever going to directly explain the departure, at least I hope they don't. But I could see them explaining a lot of the ancillary mysteries, like about Mary and about what caused Scott Glenn's character to go insane

or maybe it is the world that has gone insane

two things can go insane

I almost gave up on the show. I found the first season frustrating and wanted to know the mystery. My wife, who had read the book, kept saying "that's not the point, you're never going to find out" and I was like "I know and I can't handle that!"

Anyway glad I kept with it because the second season was so totally fucking awesome and I can't wait for this one.

i lost steam almost exactly like you did, watched s1, watched a couple of s2 and stopped but the fact that this is the final season and they are ending it makes me want to start over again

C'mon Lindelof, leaving no question unanswered was what made Lost so bad

Won’t read this, but promising.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/reviews/leftovers-season-3-review-final-episodes-1202029489/

people I trust are all saying very nice things

i have very high expectations. Sepinwall says that there's nothing quite as wild as the opening scenes of last season or the "International Assasin" episode...but i think last season discovered a kind of tone or style that I've never quite seen on tv before...and just exploring that for 8 more episodes is an exciting prospect for me.

It's only 8? That's probably good.

Well, that was great.

Yeah, several jaw dropping moments. And one laugh out loud moment ("...canine DNA" *score stops dead*)

I'm slightly apprehensive about flash-forwards given Lindelof's previous work but I'm willing to believe it'll work out

Yeah i arched my eyebrow at the very end (loved the rest obv) but they have my trust.

Those those two panning shots which seamlessly traveled forward in time were really lovely I thought.

the drone bombing was very o_O and at the same time, not implausible

so good. I guess Liv Tyler is off the show now. Or maybe she'll be ghosting back?

The 3 year jump was alarming as well. Took me some time to even recognize Kevin's stepson.

so, how about those Millerites at the beginning? seems like another historical framing device like the ancient cave-in and baby in season two. that season had a child adopted who is now gone (explanation pending) to echo the frame

this frame has the lone pious believer, which seems to line up with the flash-forward, but I am thinking that's a red herring

"the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and cults"

alcohol, tobacco, firearms, explosives, and cults, IIRC. I've been rewatching s1 and there's a scene where they offer to "take care" of the GR in Mapleton

yeah, I think whoever was stating it in this episode (a protestor at the spring demanding the truth about the drone strike) left that bit off

it's disturbingly fitting which agency got authority on cults

You guys I don't think Kev is ok lol

That whole '59th St Bridge Song' as she's riding off the on the bike and I'm like yeah Kev's going to do something dumb/crazy/life-threatening and HOLY FUCK, SHOW DELIVERS

All I could think about was the mechanics of convincingly acting that whole thing. Like you basically have to almost suffocate to do it realistically and uuuugh just thinking about scared the crap out of me (also as a child who spent the first 5 years of her life being told by her parents not to put those plastic record bags over my head and constantly wondering what would happen if I did, this was a very weird scene to watch)

Insane

yah did he REALLY do that? fucking terrifying.

I have to force myself not to look at this--now I know "Feelin' Groovy"'s on the way (which I absolutely love) and it won't be a surprise. (Not blaming anyone, my own fault.) I'm going to rewatch 1 and 2 as soon as 1 gets here in the mail, so I won't be starting for at least a month. No more peeking!

xpost Yeah idk I was trying to figure it out. Like maybe they had an air tube coming in from behind somehow on a quick/slow release trigger to help between takes or something but he still sucked it all the way into his nose & mouth like fuuuuuuuuuuck nope

sorry clemenza

yeah i wondered the same thing too. I suppose eomeone was just ready to rip it open once they got the shot

there were similar shots in the OA, with people's heads completey drowned inside helmets...how the fuck did they do that? so claustrophobic, I'd freak the fuck out if I were acting that.

I mean, you still try to breathe shallowly once you pass out, it's not like you pass out and immediately need cpr

just don't do the asphyxiation thing with no one else around

the water one, that is not as good

I was going to drop some auto-erotic asphyxiation jokes until I realized it's stressing everyone

I get kind of irrationally angry when writers review episodes and things that are supposed to be concrete references get hand-waved. The intro is definitely the Millerites (I first thought Seventh Day Adventists, but they were later and kind of a post-Millerite group) due to the setting and the exact dates that kept being show -- those are the dates the Millerites chose. An episode review kind of glossed them over as "some cult"

I don't think it was glossed over, it's just not that well-known a thing. I only figured it out cause someone at work linked the Wikipedia article the following morning for unrelated reasons (which was hella spooky)

you're a writer! they showed a series of actual dates! pause it and use google!

i watched this a second time and some of theroux's line readings are just so good. "what you think is happening...isn't."

he carries so much of kev's character just in his physicality, being so twitchy & fake-calm & haunted, it's really impressive

carrie coon for president

goddamn this show

also major crush on carrie coon. glad she's in two shows now

Loved the little detail of departure day in Australia being October 15th.

I would never have expected that Nora scene but I absolutely loved it.

The trampoline thing was a little on the precious side, but the reveal of Lily's whereabouts was so logical that I'm shocked I didn't think of it.

There's something quite interesting about the tattoo covering up another tattoo, some tenuous balance between remembering and forgetting that seems essential to grief.

I totally need to watch this again because I was high on NyQuil and other substances and thought i was losing my mind when the opening credits started.

the wu-tang band

the writing credits were interesting. in addition to the perfect strangers theme song. also, mark lynn baker did a great scene

http://i.imgur.com/rjKa7vK.jpg

Such an awesome strange show

Sepinwall said that those nicknames in the writing credits came from a Wu-Tang name generator--the same one that Donald Glover used to create Childish Gambino?

Richard Cheese!

The musician?

Know some of the guys in that band

music over the credits iirc

I now have a weekly Leftovers watching engagement with a friend where we trade viewing locations every other week. This week was intense, thought I was going to lose it during the monologue about the children

Kevin's dad's quest in australia was the best or worst shaggy dog story. I hope we hear more about Tony

we also now know weetabix can be taken to wherever the departures went

music over the credits iirc

they certainly made "The Last Wave" associations more explicit this time! Though maybe killing off "Chris" means it was a headfake.

it was a real trip to see this episode after spending much of the day reading Robert Bellah's "Religion in Human Evolution" and in paritcuar the chapter on ritual and the aborigines.

Poor Chris. He never deserved that, even if the moment where Kevin Sr. fell off the roof and hit him was hilarious

That last scene was really masterful and perfectly encapsulates the show. This dirge like monologue of shattered illusions and grief, the silence of God, meaningless of suffering --> "you just had the wrong Kevin"

Hard to put my finger on why, but this season is just not working for me. Frustrating, because there's been great stuff in each episode (I loved the shot of Evie on TV tonight), but only the first one felt satisfying as an episode (and even it was a bit rambly); unlike the previous seasons, I haven't been compelled to re-watch any of them. Feels like they're chasing after a whole lot of nothing? What I liked about season 1 was that for something with such a crazy, sci-fi premise, it felt incredibly grounded and realistic. What I liked (even more) about season 2 was that it fucked more with the crazy and outlandish but in a fun way. S3---going out on a few too many limbs here?

I have been loving it, but I think perhaps what you're talking about has to do with that freedom that comes from not trying to win any new converts. All the dramatic arcs are on the upward swing, there's been precious little catharsis, and it's impossible to tell where it's heading, and it's just getting weirder. And it feels like only with this episode have we arrived at the central conflict (in terms of the relationships between the characters).

It's obvious by now, but I was really struck this episode by the effectiveness of the departure as a literary device--how it perfectly literalizes how freud defined depression/melancholia as "an inability to mourn." "The'yre not dead...they're gone" being a distinction that's meaningful only to those still in the process of grieving. There's something thrilling to me about how this show almost operatically (and by no coincidence there was a lot of opera in the background of this episode--anyone know what it was?) hyper-dramatizes those emotions. That final shot!

Oh, and I have re-watched each episode and it's really allowed them to breathe a bit. They are a bit much to take in on one viewing.

what was the significance of "take on me"?

ha i was just looking up the lyrics. seems....apropos.

incredibly on the nose

Your arguments already make me feel a little more generous towards it, ryan. I suspect if i do re-watch some of these, it may pull together a little better. But there's a strange disconnect in spots, that I just can't...well, connect.

A couple specific things haven't worked for me. The opera that you mention in last night's episode was a problem; it was amped up too high, like much of the show seems to be this year. (In fact, I haven't been drawn to a single bit of music in the series. I liked the a-Ha piano version last night, but nothing has really gotten to me, and I thought the "Personal Jesus" cover a couple episodes back was annoying.) Also, I have completely lost interest for some reason in Laurie, which is too bad as she was one of the things I liked most about season 1 (her role in season 2 was much diminished and a little less interesting). Her and John---it just feels like a convenience to keep them both around?

I did love one line from Kevin Garvey Sr. (which I think is repeated a couple times, and he may have even said it in S2): "It's not that the voices went away, it's that I started doing what they told me to do." That's a fantastic thought--especially given how deliberately he carries it out.

a "single bit of music" this SEASON, I should specify.

This was great

Yes. With Matt's conversation with "God" I am starting to see that withholding of catharsis that I mentioned above as deliberate. Looks like next week will be a Laurie episode, which is a nice complement to Matt episodes.

they're doing a good job of puzzling out the most insufferable character might be with these single character episodes

kevin sr.'s shaggy dog tale on his episode about how he ended up learning rain dances was great, especially the fake-out when you thought he was going to say he saw his son's image on tv. nope, a chicken!

this was one of their best eps

(have not seen the latest one yet)

i was p disappointed with the kevin and nora separation moment. not that some kind of fracture wasn't plausible or dramatically necessary but the writing seemed a little entry level. i thought they were smarter in dealing with each others' bullshit than that.

It worked for me because the whole episode (and really the first two episodes) showed Nora pulling further and further away (Theroux's reaction to Nora's silence at "are you together?" was incredible). This separation anxiety leads to Kevin's breakdown, Nora's implacable grief and thus distance from all connection, and so his explosion makes a lot of sense even if it feels abrupt. Kevin's great fear is that connection is impossible or pointless, so of course he's drawn to this unreachable woman who commuted last season what to him is an unforgivable sin: she abandoned him. It's classic traumatic repetition compulsion (and kinda makes the frightening argument that all romantic relationships are). His big mistake in the argument is saying the truth out loud.

I've just finished season one and i like it a lot but it would have been nice to have 5 straight minutes of airtime where someone wasn't almost getting into a car wreck.

That is very good priming for season 2, actually.

into season 3 now. the music on this show is lol.

this was a LAFF RIOT

wife read some article's comments where people were pointing out that"god" was referenced a bunch in season 2, that the guy in the tower had michael send him a letter, that there were news stories about him on TV, talking about how the afterlife is a "hotel" etc.

I'm still trying to figure out if the possible dog-person politician that crazy shoots-dogs guy was talking about was actually the same congressman that Tom drove to meet Wayne in season one

did everyone forget to watch this this week with twin peaks starting? I did (caught it last night)

I'm assuming Laurie is dead now

Yeah I think so. Pretty brutal way to close out that character.

Oh wow I forgot! Tonight!

So good.

And yeah.

And I shouldn't have watched the "scenes from next weeks episode" bit because it was mildly spoilery.

This show is sooooo gooood.

it is. I'm going to be sorry to see it go.

The convolutions in this show seem increasingly arbitrary to me, just one Hail Mary after another. And completely OTT but not in the service of the narrative, just banking on portent and quirk.

Gonna grind it out and still enjoying parts but disappointed to find that finally it is short of smart, merely clever.

ok so this season is incredible

tough to follow-up international assassin, but i think that last episode worked splendidly

the show long ago left the idea that we'd get some 'this means this' sort of puzzle type solution; I don't expect an answer about 'where people went' or 'what is going on' and haven't since season 2. That was quite liberating for this show, I think; but I can see how, if someone expects those types of plot manipulations, they'd be disappointed.

When Kevin appeared in the other world on a beach near a hut, I couldn't resist saying "ooh, he's on the island from Lost! this show really is a sequel"

In the post-show thingy for this latest one, Lindelof says that Kevin is symbolically killing his investment in a fantasy, meaning that he needs to remove the temptation of 'the afterlife' giving him a false sense of purpose and preventing him from focusing on the real world and the people in it. I'm probably not summarizing it well but it made a lot of sense to me emotionally, and made the wackiness of this ep bearable. What the afterlife visions actually are and what they mean I think I'll be turning over in my head for a long time

Watched the Laurie ep (6, 'Certified') a few times, such an incredible episode

that was wonderful

I loved that mostly but I'm having mixed feelings about Laurie being alive

I'm also having mixed feelings about Nora's "story" being told through dialogue where Kevin's adventures to other realms were always shown to us. I'm not sure what the purpose of that discrepancy is.

I loved this and was very moved by a lot of it.

re: Nora's story, is part of the reason it's kept as dialogue maybe that it's not really true? that she really did change her mind? perhaps it doesn't matter, and I really love that ambiguity because narratives and our possibly sincere-possibly ironic relationship to them are at the heart of this season, because it really works as a parable of working through grief.

I also found Laurie being alive to be a weird choice, however. Not sure what they were going for there.

I thought it worked pretty well as a fake-out, realizing that ending Laurie's episode the way they did would make viewers think she'd died, so seeing her in this episode made it even more ambiguous for a while whether we were seeing a different reality

Laurie doing the scuba dive thing that Nora had mentioned made sense in a "we're tying up the show" way but I'm not sure her death made sense for the character

Laurie being alive doesn't really work for me at the moment, as 306 had done such a beautiful job reframing the character on her own as opposed to in her capacity for other characters. Seeing the finale revert to her alive and in that kind of role again felt false to me.

the laurie thing was a little weird but i thought everything else was fantastic including nora telling her story via dialog because a) carrie coon is fantastic at that, b) the "is she lying?" ambiguity, and c) two characters talking one-on-one is one of the things this show has always done best, and it's what makes the show human, and i'm very glad they went out like that instead of having nora do her own international assassin thing or get on a boat to new york with a bunch of naked people or whatever for the last 20 minutes of the series. an A-plus finale for me.

A triumphant conclusion to a peerless final series. Walking the line between the realist solution and the supernatural is something the series has done brilliantly and the concluding chapter was no exception. Was Kevin seeing Patti Levin in S2 or was he just mad? Was Kevin seeing Dean in S1 or was he just mad? Was Mary cured or did she just (pregnancy-related?) spontaneously come out of her coma? Did Matt just rape her prone body? Did the hotel exist or was it just near-death hallucinations? And finally, was the machine real or did Nora just chicken out? As ever, we get to interpret it how we like and the series supports us in our decision.

Kevin's reliance on the same story for why he's in Australia is brilliantly done and ties in with the underlying theme of the series. To let go. To move on. To live in the world that we have. And that's what Nora's monologue is about, it's finally laying to rest the events of the departure. Whether that came about through her sudden realisation of the lengths she was prepared to go to, or whether it was because she saw her husband in another world is irrelevant. (Actually, much as I was disappointed by the Laurie reveal that's also what happens there imo - having built the 'perfect' conditions for her suicide, she then decides it's not what she wants having been given the means of her death; a mirror for Nora in the machine having seen the previous shell.)

In more prosaic news, the aging makeup was very well done I thought, and completely convincing.

We see Nora shout as the sphere fills. Did anyone catch what it was?

Also where S03E07 used the S1 title music in closing the door, in finally dealing with Patti and Meg and their impact on Kevin and how they haunt him (metaphorically or otherwise), S03E08 using the S2 title music and "Let the mystery be" explicitly says it's not going to lecture over what happened to Nora, that it's your choice what to believe.

I think it was really well done but do have a ton of questions which i"m sure is the point

this felt like atonement for the sins of L O S T

because the atonement goat got L O S T and attached itself to a fence...hmmmm

I love the idea that after being burned on Lost, Lindelof once again decided to be coy and ambiguous in a finale, and everyone seems to say 'oh, that's a great explanation!'

L O S T finale wasn't coy or ambiguous. Just stupid.

there was nothing in the leftovers that needed explanation!

otm

LOST spent an entire season explaining that two supernatural forces were at war with each other on an island and then did some shenanigans to explain shit

leftovers was still like "idk people disappeared and we explored some about the how and why but left those open, because it's about people"

let the mystery be, and whatnot

The Leftovers was spectacular, one of my favorite series ever. few shows could make me feel such a range of emotion, often in quick succession. But I think the greatest achievement of the show is introducing the world to Carrie Coon, who might be the best actress on the planet.

I haven't watched Fargo, but she's definitely arrived.

she's been underutilized in fargo this season IMO, but it has some nice references to her character in the Leftovers in the first few episodes.

leftovers was still like "idk people disappeared and we explored some about the how and why but left those open, because it's about people"

― mh, Tuesday, June 6, 2017 10:53 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right? I feeling like a dreadful person for thinking it was only 2%. Chill the fuck out.

But other than that Scott Glenn was the shit.

oh and John Murphy sure went from let kill and burn everything down to I just cant get this damn smile of my face so fast I got whiplash.

Also, shout out to Jill because see is the queen.

I would have really liked a couple more eps to deal with John and the kids. I would also really have loved to get an ep about Mary at some point.

there was nothing in the leftovers that needed explanation!

Except for, you know, the whole "where did 2 per cent of the world's population vanish to?" thing.

that's the premise, not the question!

if you go with Nora's story being true, it sounded like our (living) world got split in two, and over there everyone thinks 98% of the population vanished

Kevin's alt-world appears to be the actual afterlife. which would explain why only people known to have died were there. he never ran into anyone who had disappeared during the departure, right?

I think giving a possible answer, not a definitive why or how, was more than enough

if you get down to it, every story begins in medias res, unless you start every story at the beginning of life on earth or w/e

/there was nothing in the leftovers that needed explanation!/

Except for, you know, the whole "where did 2 per cent of the world's population vanish to?" thing.

o_O

I never noticed how that Robin Trower song turns up on the Rub n Tug Campfire vinyl, but not on the mix CD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3P8nZTS4hA

Ok I was majorly behind and I finally finished s3 yesterday

Goddamn I love this series so much, like I hope that I will cherish it for years afterwards because of how hard they swung for the fences with the ideas they explored and the writing and the acting and just the remarkable fact that we got a whole show that wrestles not with Religion but BELIEF

someone up thread, Simon maybe?, wondered why we se Kevin go through his journeys but that Norah's was only told verbally and it felt like her character was cheated somehow by that. IMO the idea that Norah is *telling* Kevin a story at all is WAY more important than us seeing it. The events of the story itself are somewhat immaterial. Because Norah, maybe aside from Laurie, is the character who for the whole series has been actively anti-story. She challenges the stories she's told and exists to uncover only the lies that those stories are based on. She was dealing only with truth/lies in such a determined way that it reached the point of reckless mania by the end. It means more for us, and her, to finally be telling a story of any kind. That she has experienced something personally, something that has shaken her worldview and is now moving her in a new direction, and moved her to the point to become vulnerable enough to tell that story to Kevin and share it with him is the whole point. It's the Book of Norah.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's why I love this show

yeah I've talked about it with a few people and I am no longer aggrieved at that idea. pretty brilliant finale even if I am a bit o_0 at the Laurie scene

I never expected that she would actually commit suicide even though that was the tone they were going for when she was on the boat etc. i wasn't all that surprised to see her again tbh

Yeah, I might feel differently if I rewatched the season knowing where it's headed. At any rate it was a great finale and a v v strong last season

the acting was so phenomenal

VG otm

awesome show great job

I was wondering what he'd get up to next:

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/damon-lindelof-the-watchmen-hbo-1202473414/

I suppose this is intended to be the post Game of Thrones blockbuster for HBO.

Watched season one. Mixed feelings. Very well acted (Carrie Coon in particular is excellent). Good dialogue on the whole. I'm not sure any of it really means anything though, which would be fine if everything wasn't so dripping with portent. They haven't explored the intriguing premise in a particulary truthful or insightful way yet imo.

My favourite two episodes were the most self contained, the one where Matt tried to buy back the church, and the one where Norah went to the weird convention.

You'll be pleased with where the show goes, I think. S2 throws some curveballs pretty much immediately.

Thanks, slightly more enthused now.

S1 totally hooked me and was probably the least interesting season. i kept wondering why i was watching this relentlessly nihilistic enterprise. and yet i kept watching. S2 is where they seem to figure out what the show is about.

and yeah the matt trying to buy back church episode is fantastic.

S2 is a kind of a high water mark for TV in the last decade or so, imo. watching it unfold was a real pleasure so try to avoid spoilers if you can.

yeah I agree with that. and s3 is almost as good.

I am listening to the soundtrack on a train and logged on to post how much I miss this show now it's done, but also totally wouldn't want any more because it's perfect as-is. I adored the way it finished.

I watched the first season at the time and was pretty nonplussed, so left it there. Came back to s2&3 recently and they really were wonderful. It really made me think a lot about my own familial loss and how I and my family dealt with things. S2 is totally worth starting.

And the score, my god.

yeah s1 was great but looking back it feels very removed from all the emotion & richness of s2 & 3

like s1 feeld like it's almost *too much* narrative somehow?

it's weird to even think that

You lot are right, S2 is next level. Just watched the Matt episode, which for once deserves the adjective Kafkaesque, followed by the one culminating in the face-off between Norah and Erika, which is one of the most multi-layered and emotionally rich confrontations I can remember seeing on TV, and which I had to read a couple of recaps of to even begin to unpick. Stunning.

Also it's much funnier than season 1!

i had a nightmare about this show the other night.

I was just thinking about the Leftovers as the anti-Game of Thrones, since when LO ran out of source material it actually got better.

I'm loving the new twin peaks but all the articles about how it's a new level for tv and changing everything again etc just makes me think of the leftovers. I mean they're different kinds of art TV for sure but the leftovers combines humor and drama in a way less wacky way, and has levels of humanity, of questions about human nature and suffering and grief and desire and religion and spirituality that just make me wish more people paid attention.

Did it only run for three seasons intentionally or cancelled?

After S2 got nice reviews but zip in the ratings, HBO gave them one last, slightly truncated season to finish it off

followed by the one culminating in the face-off between Norah and Erika, which is one of the most multi-layered and emotionally rich confrontations I can remember seeing on TV, and which I had to read a couple of recaps of to even begin to unpick. Stunning.

this was the exact moment in the season--which I had been enjoying quite a bit without really reflecting on just how good it was--when i realized it was something special.

The Kevin in the afterlife episode was very Murakami-esque.

After S2 got nice reviews but zip in the ratings, HBO gave them one last, slightly truncated season to finish it off

That's not the way I heard it. My understanding was that the decision to let it run for three seasons only was Lindelof's.

there are a lot of "here are the lessons I learned from working on Lost" bits in the production and plotting imo

He admits that the cavemen sequence was there to troll critics (the guys from the Ringer in particular)

say more?

From Andy Greenwald:

So what a relief it was to learn, as I did last night, that I absolutely was being trolled. “There was a lot of ‘Oh, Greenwald’s gonna love this’ going around in the writers’ room,” Lindelof told Vulture‘s Joe Adalian when asked about the decision to start Season 2 on such rocky and venomous ground.

That sequence totally works thematically, though. My only issue is that surely neolithic people in North America would not have been caucasian?

There's a pretty long 90 or so minute interview with Greenwald (who hated season 1 but loved season 2) and Lindelof after S2 finished that's worth tracking down. I think it's linked upthread somewhere.

just finished the series. top 5 all time finale for me. weird season i had a hard time sticking with some stretches but really glad i did.

I should wait a couple of days before posting--literally finished ten minutes ago--but I guess I'm in a very small minority: felt let down by Season 3, finale included. I'm wondering if watching it immediately after a rewatch of Six Feet Under was a bad idea--that's a lot of metaphysical rabbit holes to process at once. Some of the penultimate episode was funny; Kevin's death-dreams always have funny stuff. The best music moment was trampoline Wu-Tang Clan. ("God Only Knows" already belongs to Boogie Nights.) I found the absence of Jill really awkward, and getting her in there sideways for a couple of minutes made it even more so--was there a contract dispute? The final line of the fifth episode, "That's the guy I was telling you about," was fantastic. I thought the third episode, the one devoted to Scott Glenn, was possibly the worst of the entire run, except for that great bit of Aboriginal music that was used throughout.

I liked the idea that Jill and her brother were just...fine, for a bit, esp in the context of the world maybe ending.

It just seemed weird to me for Jill to go from a central character to not being there. The reduced roles of Evie and Meg Abbott were explained plausibly, but I didn't think Jill's was.

It was a bit weird to see Jill just kinda disappear, but it made sense in that as a kid she was caught up in her parents' craziness and as a young adult is able to leave that behind and be normal

Catching up on what I'd avoided in this thread till I finished season 3.

In more prosaic news, the aging makeup was very well done I thought, and completely convincing.

Definitely--Caroline Coon's makeup especially in the final episode was perfect. This is one area where all shows that try something similar will take a cue (or anti-cue) from Six Feet Under's horrible makeup in the final six minutes (which were good enough otherwise that I can look past that).

I thought season 3 was wall to wall brilliant, and frequently hilarious. Sad it's over, but glad it had a proper ending. Thanks to the denizens of this thread for persuading me to plow on after the mixed bag of season 1.

i think we should get a partridge family bus equipped with loudspeakers and drive around the country preaching the glory of The Leftovers until everyone ~gets it~

this show got completely snubbed at the emmys, it was far and away the best thing on television last year. why carrie coon was nominated for her much smaller role in Fargo and not this is beyond me.

if there was any further reason that people needed to not give a fuck about the emmys, it's the fact that Carrie Coon wasn't even nominated for what is probably the single best performance I've ever seen on television

As payment, the Emmys should be renamed The Carries, and they should be given busts of Nora Durst wearing a bulletproof vest

*they = winners

Yeah after the Leftovers I honestly think she's my favourite actress right now.

bawling at the last ten minutes of this. nora's description was so perfect that i was amazed i hadn't thought of it. and even better once you've got your head around the truth (or otherwise) of it and there's a shitload to unpack there. i really liked the fact that it avoids seeming like a summing up episode, since those are generally so packed. it resolved almost everything but was really well paced, almost leisurely.

yea idk i recently watched all of this over afew wks. liked s1 the most, then s2, then s3; much preferred the sprawl of the larger cast; my fav ep was the rev matt going to atl city one; also found the recurring music & montages often cloying; still was all well acted & compelling mostly & glad i watched

yeah I can't stand the plinky-plonky max richter faux-profound nonsense.

*MAJOR SPOLIERS, DON'T READ IF YR CATCHING UP*

I understand Simon H's complaints upthread about not "seeing" any of Nora's other world adventures and, while I think this could possibly have worked, it would lend credence to the story by equating it to what Kevin went through in his other world but Kevin did (at least in his head) go through that world. Nora's story is beautiful but it's just a story. It's a story that in 2-3 minutes conjures up an amazing other world but it is a flawed construct. The world she describes is amazingly vivid in a few spare sentences. It's suggests McCarthy's The Road, to me. It's all too believable and perfect sensible until she tells you that she tracked down the man who built the machine and he knew how to do it so he built another one. He built another one in this world where 98% of the population were absent and the houses were falling down and covered in vines etc? Nora describes the vision she sees of her family being perfectly happy but in a globe consisting of 140 million (was it?) people that could not have been the dreamlike happy picture she paints of it. The people ther would not have happy families and wouldn't have the means to build world-switching devices.

Kevin believes Nora because he has lived his other world, so why would hers be any less true than his. But his WAS true. Her's is a well (but not meticulously) created construct. A lie she'd been rehearsing in her head in her years of solitude and not got quite right. It begs the question of what kind of future life Kevin and Nora are going to live together If Kevin wholly believes Nora's lie and Nora's.... well, she's Nora. Cynical and dismissive but in a very loveable way (thanks hugely to Carrie's skullfucking performance).

It's worth pointing out (and has not been mentioned on this thread, as far as I can tell) That David Burton (aka God on the boat) is played by the same actor who dragged a noose around kevin on the bridge in series two and is also the same actor who forced Kevin to sing his song in the other world to get back to his Miracle life. I don't know what that means but it's worth thinking about.

she tells you that she tracked down the man who built the machine and he knew how to do it so he built another one. - i meant to add here but we're supposedly in an alt-world where they don't have any planes because there are no pilots.

(sorry for that v rogue apostrophe)

I no longer had a problem w/ the not "seeing" after conferring w some other viewers btw lol

i meant to note that Simon. did you clock the God actor thing - I only did so after reading a thread on reddit.

I did, but only because I was watching along with some pretty hardcore nerds lol

iirc Hollywood ran out of character actors around that time so a lot of them had to play multiple roles on shows

he has a good look and few people would notice

liked s1 the most, then s2, then s3

Ha, I'm exactly the opposite. It gets much more well written, not to mention funnier, as it goes along imo.

I think my favourite season starts about halfway through 1 and extends to halfway through 2. Season 3 was definitely my least favourite.