Thought it was a fine ep. Can't fathom the people complaining. I thought it was slightly weaker than "International Assassin" (I wasn't a huge fan of the twin Kevins, I think that could've been done in more sensible ways), but still a great ep. And most importantly, I'm just really happy and relieved that this season / series wasn't about the is Kevin Jesus 2.0 / will he stop the flood etc plotline because that would've been a real disappointment. I'm super happy that all that is more or less over with and the finale is going to be about finding out what happens to all the characters, and hopefully, about Kevin and Nora. That's all I ever wanted.


PS. I wonder how annoyed the writers were when they saw the new Twin Peaks, which aired almost simultaneously with this ep--

TWIN PEAKS S3, EPS 1-4 SPOILER BELOW


PS2. The Leftovers is one of my favorite shows of the decade but in some way I'm almost relieved that next week it'll be over. It's always such an emotional burden and while I wouldn't change anything about the show and its tone, after each ep I always feel like watching Parks & Rec or something to recalibrate my psyche.


PS3. Any guesses on what the opening credits song will be? My money is on "The End" by The Doors.

I think given that they went with Season 1 theme this week, next week will be "Let the Mystery Be"

Actually mine was probably a terrible guess, I'd forgotten it was already used to perfection in Apocalypse Now and it'd be suicidal to try to pull that off. I was just thinking about songs that have something to do with the end and that was the obvious first thing that popped into my head.

Hmm

I guess we might also get some really cheesy song along the lines of "All you need is love", depending on what'll happen in the episode I guess. Or they might troll us one more time and use some absurd death metal song or something.

They've done a horrible job showing Kevin and Nora as being in love. He and Laurie seem a lot more in love in their scenes.

I think Nora is one of the most poorly developed and overrated characters on the show. Very little consistency in what motivates her and how she behaves.

I agree that the show began as a thought experiment about our world and how our world (and the people in it) would react to a major event. I wrote in the season one thread:

Ultimately the "real exploration of life" side of the show turned out to be trite. We have no idea how politics and world affairs changed after the Departure. Never got a sense of how people changed other than seeing their visible grief. The whole world got verifiable proof that God exists and the result was a tweak of people's behavior and religiosity levels.

Kevin's own existential crisis was so under-explained that his kids didn't merit a mention during the final reckoning he had with himself in that underground bunker. In many ways his tragic case of boredom mirrored that of Jack at the end of Lost, who was so distraught by his idyllic doctor's life that he hopped on a plane every weekend in hopes of being sent back to the damn island.

In lieu of a meaningful real-world storyline a lot of viewers (and the show itself) focused on the battle between Heaven and Hell that we knew would be unresolved. Easter eggs like the car of Guilty Remnant members who knew something bad would happen before the Departure occurred, God showing up at a karaoke bar, the MIT research into Nora, and Wayne's holy baby were what sparked our interest and kept us watching. Real people going through real things, despite being the ostensible focus of the show, were there in service to the pointless easter eggs given that's what everyone really cared about.

It's a rather ingenious form of hucksterism that's no less creative for having done it twice. We probably shouldn't be mad given that we happily watched a second television show knowing it was happening again. But I think it's fine for us to call it out for the scam it is

Old Nora didn't look particularly pleased when hearing his name at the end of Ep 1, so hopefully the season is true to that and there isn't a Lost-like contrived happy ending coming. Already had that at the end of S2 anyway.

solid post

I guess I missed that part.

This is the single most nonsensical critique of the show I've ever seen. The bolded part in particular isn't just stupid, but you're using "we" pretty liberally. There are tons of people who loved this show and are captivated by it each week and I can assure you those people aren't captivated by what the MIT guys are gonna do with Nora's old house. I mean, judging by your post, those people do exist, but lol them.

There's nothing huckstery at all about the show. And the fact that Lindelof already told a story like this once and then when he did the same thing again, but this time with much more overt signals that that's what he was going to do, complaining that you got "scammed" again says a lot more about you than it does about the creative people behind the series.

Lame that hbo recycled God Only Knows so soon. Big Love was elite; great finale

The show itself never once did this. Anyone describing the logline of The Leftovers as "the battle between Heaven and Hell" should have a CAT scan.

And if you remove the (and the show itself) part, then I would say those viewers are idiots.

Wouldn't the post departure world be 100x more nuts than depicted in this show

yeah i mean, the cavewoman sequence to open S2 was the show in a nutshell. some unexplainable terrible event happened ... now what?

the S2 theme song told us to let the mystery be.

the "Great Disappointment" Millerite sequence to open S3 warned us that the 7-year anniversary might be a big nothing.

Lindelof said from the start that he wouldn't answer the questions of the Departure.
(wasn't sure if he was deflecting or would change his mind on that, seems not)

it was a show about people coping with mystifying grief. a little strange if people expected something much different than how it's played out.
(unless in response to whatever happened on LOST, but even then, that seems like a lot of projecting)

even if the finale doesn't satisfy my few nitpicks, i've still greatly enjoyed the journey. many memorable moments and great episodes of tv. a better and more interesting show than just about everything else. i have no complaints, really.

heh, i was thinking about that after the previous ep when they were all getting into hi-jinx, how there should be a lot of that randomly going on (e.g. the French navy guy going nuts and nuking an island). but obv time is limited, so you can't waste much showing a lot of that for no real reason. maybe if they got more than 28 eps...

(and all the GR and other cult + government reaction stuff from earlier was a window into that)

eh, my main complaint is in a season like this one, I'd love a build in quality from start towards end. Instead feels like we saw the best of what the show had many episodes ago. Just got unnecessarily weird (for me).

Probably but since the departure is a metaphor for random tragedy, the show might not be as good if it went that route.

Think about 9/11 or the 2004 tsunami as similar unspeakable tragedies on a smaller scale. How do we just continue to find meaning and happiness in a world where things like this happen? How do the loved ones of those randomly killed find a way to go on? The world doesn't change that much, people just try to find meaning and a way forward, each in their own way.

I think having Mapleton seem so (relatively) normal and small-town, in the aftermath of the departure, added an interesting element to the show. If people were just going nuts and wailing in the streets it would not have been a realistic picture of how we deal with random tragedies.

I totally get that point, but those events don't prove God like the departure did. I think once people know God exists, craziness ensues.

I'm still holding out that the departure was some kind of collective mental breakdown, like a massive groupthink / hypnotism. I know that isn't the frontrunner and unlikely but I think it would be pretty cool. Just if everyone involved is crazy.

If anything IMO the Departure wouldn't be so much evidence for traditional theism as it would for our reality being somehow Matrix-like.

exactly, great point. so you'd have some people believing it was religious/God, and you'd have other people now fully convinced we are in the matrix. I'm sure there would be many other things "confirmed" as well. It would be everyone's belief systems turned up beyond the limit. I'm sure the world would go completely insane.

I shouldn't have said "proved God" (as in to everyone) as much as "proved something else was going on".

I thought the GR was a great vision of what would emerge.

Would be amazing if the writers went full troll and did explain it with something HORRIBLE. I admit that would be funny.

finale spoiler based on a couon interview:

Given the writers said during Season 1 there would never be an explanation for the Departure, anyone watching hoping for one and getting upset when it never arrives is an idiot

Do you guys think we'll get an answer re: whether Kevin has superpowers or is just nuts?

i think we just got it

Well, crazy doesn't come back to life.

It's funny cause various reviews and reddit posts had this past episode "confirming" that he was magic or "confirming" that he wasn't. Personally, I think it leaned heavily in favor of the latter, only without the confirmed part.

I mean, I think the takeaway (one of them, anyways) of the episode was that Kevin's fantasy quest for self-importance was a character flaw - and that'd be sort of negated if he had the power to obliterate the actual metaphysical place where everyone goes after they die in furtherance of his own personal growth. Open to interpretation though, I guess.

I can't really explain how he comes back to life all these times. I mean, people do survive gunshots to the chest. And these drowning incidents - the first one was aborted and the second one we don't really know what happened. Sr. said he left Kevin in the tub because he got scared, I think? But we don't know what happened after that. Maybe John or Michael (who both started to waver on doing this to Kevin) resuscitated him?

Coming back from being buried alive kind of defies all plausible explanation though. Maybe Miracle does actually have some kind of supernatural thing going on (Erika's bird, Mary's recovery), but in terms of the place where Kevin goes when he's having these near-death experiences, I think this past episode strongly insinuated that it was Kevin's thing.