With all of the competition on Sundays, it is probably unfair to measure ‘The Leftovers’ based on live ratings alone. At the time it aired, last week’s season two ‘The Leftovers’ premiere was the series’ lowest-rated and least-watched episode on record. This week’s episode posted even weaker numbers. We’ll have to see what happens when DVR recordings, multiple airings, and On-Demand viewers are accounted for. I know many DVR-It…BUT, you need to be watching this show.
To get you up to speed, 2% of the world’s population disappear. ‘The Leftovers’ tell’s the story of a broken family, the Garveys. It’s about people dealing with loss and coping with the fact that they will never find out what happened. The mystery of the first season is why the family is so depressed that this event happened when they didn’t even lose anybody. Five good episodes, Two great episodes, and Three damn near-perfect episodes (ep 3, 6, and 9). Light on plot and action, heavy and character and theme. the show’s not for everyone but if you like original and quality television you will like it.
Two episodes in and again and SO MUCH is suggested this week. I love the way this show is playing it’s mysteries so far. Subtleties…like the rental house being burned, Kevin Sr. moving to Australia, the whole “matter of geography” theories, and then that ending.
But first a little speculation, I do think the possibility of it happening AGAIN is more than a little intriguing. I don’t know for sure if the MIT guys were foreshadowing that the event could go down again, but Nora definitely thinks so. She is paranoid she will lose her new second family and that clearly the reason why she goes to such extremes to get them into Miracle (and the previews show this is going to come crashing down no her hard and fast). When the guys from MIT said that it was geographical it all clicked for me. A crack pot hypothesis is that cracks formed between the spiritual world (another plane of existence) and the real world. People that disappeared during the departure were close enough to these cracks so they were ‘taken’. They still exist on earth but ‘most’ people just can’t see or hear them…maybe like when we die and people become ghosts to the real world. The exception is some people have the ability to see and hear them like Kevin and his father. Kevin’s dad admits he still hears his voices, the only thing that changed is he is now listening to them (ominous). He is also going to Australia at their behest. In episode one the wizard looking guy living in the tower in Miracle sent a letter to Australia. Coincidence? Also, I believe that Miracle had departures but they were kept secret for reasons to come out. Time will tell if this theory pans out but it seems like as good an explanation as any at this point.
Overall excellent start to season two. IMO, the only fitting ending to the show would be for the very last scene of the series would be flashback shots of the woman taking her baby to the car, nora’s family sitting around the table etc and then have Nora, the mother, Kevin, etc vanish From this perspective the 2% experience the 98% vanish as some sort of scientific split dimension occurrence. In the backgrounds cars crash, planes go down, the baby is locked in the car and all hell breaks loose with so many people vanishing The show is bleak and this would be a great “the grass is not always greener on the other side” ending because as Kevin, Nora, etc dwell in grief in this version the 2% really got the raw end of the deal. I just love watching this show. Each episode is self contained, but still a piece of the larger mosaic. I don’t pretend to try to figure out everything that’s going on, but it’s all so captivating all the same.
-Dagobot
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