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

That's what I suspected--which to me makes the second season even more impressive, that they had to create that from scratch. I assume Tom Perrotta continued to stay involved in the second and third seasons.

Perotta did stay on and is heavily credited.

Great scene at the end of S2, E5 (the one where Matt and Mary are locked out of Miracle): Matt headed back to the encampment with the kid, explaining to John that yes, Mary did wake up, and that if he makes it back to town again, he'll sit down with John and have a talk. The contrast between Matt's restored assurance and John's anger/befuddlement is memorable. (I'm sure there are, in addition, specific biblical analogies that are lost on me...I get the crucifixion part--I'm not that much of a pagan.)

"the one where Matt and Mary are locked out of Miracle"--and if that doesn't jog your memory, the Bellamy Brothers episode.

Anyone rewatching or watching S2 onwards, definitely check Reza Aslan’s recaps & explainer pieces he wrote for Vulture at the time

He gives great insight into the religious/spiritual angles of the show (he was an adviser for s2 and s3)

This is the first one he did for s2e1
https://www.vulture.com/2015/10/leftovers-mysteries-religion-reza-aslan.html

Behind a paywall, but I'll use that Google trick to access it. Found the next episode--rocks through the window, the fundraiser, Freddie Rumsen, Simon & Garfunkel--very absorbing.

I've mentioned how you can see imperfect but clear pandemic parallels in The Leftovers. I'm surprised there hasn't been a Miracle pop up the past month in the news--a city or town that COVID has completely passed by. My own town feels a little like that--two positives and holding for two months--but I don't see a caravan of people flocking here, and nobody's slitting any goats yet in the town square.

When Kevin asks Patti "What do you want me to do?" and she launches into her Egyptian story, that has to be the funniest thing in the whole series. I burst out laughing knowing what was coming.

Found the next episode--rocks through the window, the fundraiser, Freddie Rumsen, Simon & Garfunkel--very absorbing.

This was the first episode when it explicitly occured to be me how delighted and fascinated I was by this show.

Here's the Egyptian thing I referred to above--obviously, don't watch if you haven't already seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LRQEzVaNw8

The look on Kevin's face as he takes this all in brings me to tears of laughter. Unfortunately, the poster cut the clip before the punchline: Patti bursts out laughing and says "How the fuck should I know what you're supposed to do?"

Finished S2 last night. I'll stand by my admiration for S1, not a favourite on this thread--I didn't mind the extreme somberness at all this time, and still give it a slight edge. But I loved S2, too, more than the first time; everything just fit together. Meg dancing with Tommy at that roadside bar was great--maybe the only time Meg transforms into a humane, open person in the entire first two seasons, and wow, Liv Tyler was so beautiful for those 10 minutes. (Obviously she always is, but I think they photographed her with a hard edge the rest of the time.)

Now, the hard part: S3, almost none of which I remember, and which I really didn't care for the first time (a few moments, yes).

s3 rules! too short, tho

Finished S3--I'll get some thoughts down later. I had to laugh at this, though (from a piece on CNN's site this morning), having been talking about COVID parallels I kept finding second time around.

Boosting markets' optimism Tuesday, US biotechnology company Novavax (NVAX) announced that it is starting a human trial for a Covid-19 vaccine candidate in Australia.

Kevin stepping up to save the world one more time.

All you have to do is step into this little pod here...

What I wrote three years ago about S3:

THE LEFTOVERS: HBO's nondenominational post-rapture series

Removed from high expectations, it did improve a lot. I don't like it better than the first two seasons. My favourite episode remains E8 in the first season (life just before the departure), and the single scene I find most moving would be Kevin singing "Homeward Bound" in S2, not Nora's monologue at the end. But it didn't seem nearly as arbitrary (if that's the right word) this time--it held together and meshed with the first two seasons.

I think I was really thrown by the two most out-there episodes the first time, the Kevin Sr. episode and the one on the cruise ship. I can now see (especially with the first) how some of the reviews I've been sampling experienced them as tour-de-forces. The two things I did love initially--that wild Aboriginal music ("Rain Dance," an obvious tribute to the Guess Who) and Matt's episode-closing line aboard the ship ("That was the guy I was telling you about")--were as great as ever. I appreciated the humour more in Kevin Sr.'s episode (loved "Are you kidding me?" when he gets hit with the dart), and the he-says-he's-god subplot aboard the ship, that felt more meaningful this time, not just a clever joke.

I'm normally an against-interpretation kind of person, but ultimately it all felt very much like Six Feet Under from a different angle: carpe diem, because you never know when it will all end. You can't miss that in Six Feet Under, where you have all those freak accidents to start each episode. With The Leftovers, it's three seasons of false leads and fake prophets and self-serving explanations. I really liked Nora's description of the other side: all the departures wondering where 98% of the world has gone.

Was really glad they returned to familiar opening-them music for the last two episodes. Except for the one hip-hop song, those rotating opening themes in S3 were pretty bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhPENXCcK9A

Couldn't find it on Soulseek, so I downloaded the video and converted it to an mp3.

The alternate world where 98% of people disappeared sounds pretty cool.

pvmic

Started rewatching yesterday, first time since the beginning of COVID in 2020 (when everything felt especially resonant). The first episode is so depressing, in a great-art way.

I think this is the first time that I realize Max--the guy who Jill is supposed to choke at the party--is played by the same actor who was Matthew, Stan Beeman's son, in The Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Flaherty

Those twins with the sportscar are one of the funniest things in S1.

Season one is sort of what's putting me off a rewatch - I found it a slog first time round, but loved 2 & 3.

The theme and title sequence are so OTT gloomy in the first season, it sort of enforces the idea that it’s going to be a humourless slog. Which it is! Although it gets better and better as it goes along. It reminds of Halt and Catch Fire, where they kind of lampshade the bad writing of the first season into a commentary on the characters in the later seasons: “look how far we’ve come!”

Theroux is very good at being the straight (ish) man in the middle of the chaos without being the boring straight man — he’s doesn't Matthew Fox it

The first season is for sure gloomy, but in the best possible way, I'd say.

i never watched the last season of halt and catch fire. i don't know why. maybe i'd had enough. i did like it a lot.

i don't know if i could watch the leftovers again! as much as i loved it.

The first season was the only one based on the book

Rare case where the writing got better after the source material ran out

Halt got better and better

i'm not even a fan of tom perotta. his books all read like movie pitches. but this show did go deep in the weirdest ways.

i will watch last Halt season. i promise. nothing beats that computer trade show though! i loved that so much for some reason.

The theme and title sequence are so OTT gloomy in the first season, it sort of enforces the idea that it’s going to be a humourless slog. Which it is! Although it gets better and better as it goes along. It reminds of Halt and Catch Fire, where they kind of lampshade the bad writing of the first season into a commentary on the characters in the later seasons: “look how far we’ve come!”

There was a really great audio interview that Lindelof did with Andy Greenwald (who hated the first season) after season 2 where he talks about how he was so in his head about making sure it was as depressing and serious as possible and then when he saw the criticism and got out of himself, he really discovered the show.

yeah that was a great interview

Haven't seen the show, but really enjoyed the novel!

Apropos for this thread to get bumped. I've been thinking about The Leftovers a bunch lately, in particular about the Guilty Remnant and especially why Evie joins it. this show was possibly the best depiction ever of the breadth of reactions to despair and faithlessness, and with the GR in particular how and why people engage in self-destructive and nihilistic behavior under those circumstances. I'm pondering outlets for emotion, how do you find agency and feel some sense of control when unspeakably existential and seismic events beyond your control are dictating your life. tbh I think this show was pretty damn charitable to the GR, at least more than we should be to any real-world analogues, but I'm feeling like this show is a good text to try and make sense of the present moment in the USA, the world, the planet... might be time for a rewatch.

All those down on S1, I'd give it another try and watch it through the prism of the first few months of COVID. Even Meg's situation fits in perfectly: the person who lost someone due to non-departure/COVID reasons and who never got to grieve.

Just starting S3 on this rewatch. They make reference to Lily not being there anymore...I've completely forgotten the explanation, if there is one.

i think season 1 was great tv but hard to watch in a way that the following seasons weren't. it's deeply soulful, raw nerve stuff, which does make it hard to take in. they found a balance between that feeling and other, less unpleasant feelings in the 2nd and 3rd seasons

h I think this show was pretty damn charitable to the GR, at least more than we should be to any real-world analogues

well yeah, but then they dispatch them early in season 3 with a drone strike, not sure how charitable that is haha

I think the GR, broadly speaking, are deserving of some sympathy. Not their methods (the stalking, the mannequins especially), but they're non-violent, and their core message--this happened; stop pretending it didn't--has some merit. And when you learn of Patti's past, and the likelihood that many in the GR have similar stories, even more so. Megan and Evie seem more inscrutable to me than Patti.

I'd watch the series again just for the ending, which I won't spoil here of course but I thought was one of the better ones.

oh yeah, forgot about the event you mention there voodoo chili, lol. good call.

clemenza, yes they are deserving of sympathy in the context of the show. when i posted last night i was honestly thinking about trumpism and the reactive "burn it down" attitude that comes from desperation, in contrast to finding a path forward that continues to grasp at values, make meaning out of suffering, believe that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. i was on a bit of a flight of fancy and in the light of day the GR is at best an imperfect comp for the destructive death cult of trumpism but that's where my head was at. poignant either way

No, there are times when the GR have a strong Trump vibe too. Thinking in particular of the Jan. 6-like chaos they create at the bridge to finish S2 (aired even before Trump takes office the first time).

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.

― akm, Wednesday, May 31, 2017 10:48 AM (seven years ago)

this post from a few days before the series finale aired is otm times a million. i think about this a lot. thinking about it now in the context of severance season 2, which i thought was good but nowhere near great, and i think that show's growing compulsion to unravel its own mysteries has a lot to do with that. letting the mystery be can indeed be quite liberating, but it's also incredibly hard to do, for a million reasons both internal and external to any given show, and i appreciate the leftovers' commitment to its own mystery more and more with every passing year.

I thought of The Leftovers a few times during Severance, including at least three specific points of overlap (will save them for an upcoming Zoom). Agree totally with your evaluation of Severance S2 as good-not-great; I think The Leftovers is the superior show to this point.

Severance comes from more of a Dickian Sci-fi tradition than the Leftovers, which is more explicitly a parable or fable - I think it's fair for the audience to expect more in the way of solid explanations from the former.

TIL the show was based on a book??? How did I completely miss that.

Tom Perrotta co-created the series, too. (Haven't read the novel.)

Possibly the only case where the show improved after the source material ran out

I think my friend told me S1 covered the novel, S2 and S3 were written for television.

Yeah. I think the book’s author was involved in the later seasons but they’re not based on books.