The Leftovers - Season 3 - Page 14 - OOTV -- Two Plus Two Poker Forums

1. the doctor/patient confidentiality thing (though we know Laurie has breached that in the past). but i mean, Nora was pretty damn adamant they she wanted to be left alone. would be fairly ****ed up to go against that as well.

2. DL also talked about this in the Sepinwall interview:

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Sepinwall: So why is Laurie not telling either Kevin or Nora about Kevin’s Australia trips?

Lindelof: We wrote a line when Kevin is explaining to Nora what he’s been doing showing her picture around, “And I tell everybody back home that I’m going horseback riding, or mountain climbing, or going on these adventure trips, because I’m too ashamed to tell them that I’m looking for you.” Theroux was like, “I don’t want to say that line because I think it’s implied.” I was like, “Well, in the spirit of clarity, because this may be an important issue, can we just shoot it and decide editorially?” Wisely, an actor knows when they hear that, they know that it’s going to end up in the show, because it’s “Well, now you’re ignoring me.”

The day that we shot that scene was the same day that we shot the final scene, where Nora talks to Kevin. Because of makeup logistics, and light, and control of what the oncoming weather was, etc., the decision was made to shoot the final scene first. Nora tells her story was first in the day, and then Kevin confronts Nora was up second that day. Both scenes, degree of difficulty was immensely high, and I could tell that Justin didn’t want to say the line, and I was forcing him to do it, and that it was inhibiting him from being inside the performance that he needed to be in, so on the set I said, “You do not need to say that.” What ended up happening was, in a couple of early takes we had it, but I feel like Justin gave an incredible performance in that scene, but we used all the latter takes where he didn’t say the line. I felt that now if I stick the line in, I’m betraying Theroux. I am willing to take on a little bit of ambiguity surrounding it, and I can go out into the world and tell the story that I’m telling you now, but Laurie did not know that Kevin has been searching for Nora all this time. I hope that the audience jumps to that conclusion independent of reading this. There’s patient confidentiality because you gave me a pack of cigarettes once, and then there’s just being super abusive to someone. I think if she knew that Kevin was suffering to the level that he was, she would have said something.

tend to agree with JT that it wasn't necessary, and easily could have been very clunky to shoehorn in

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Figure 2 weeks vacation times what...20 years

Sepinwall figured it might have been 15 years if they used Scott Glenn's age as KGS'

but maybe not

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Random Note:
Is that town having that many weddings that Nora can make a living selling doves?

renting

but fair point lol

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06-05-2017 , 02:46 PM

#327

Vagos

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Originally Posted by JudgeHoldem

so if nora was lying, then matt knew she backed out, and presumably even though they went separate ways, maybe they stayed in touch and thats why she didnt go to funeral? just trying to parse it out.

She said something like "we said our goodbyes in person". I think they were happy with how they parted. Not going to his funeral would be kinda ****ty but if she's that committed to being a recluse, and given the finality of the goodbye they were able to have with each other, it probably wouldn't bring any extra closure.

It's also interesting to note that she asks Matt what he'll tell people about what happened here and he says "whatever you want me to". And then that scene just ends. So what does she want him to tell people? In the Laurie episode, she tells Laurie to not tell people that she did this. So, whether Nora actually went through or not, Matt probably tells a similarly vague story. Maybe he privately tells Kevin something closer to the "truth" (since Kevin knows about the LADR machine). All we really know for sure is that Matt is the only witness to what happened to Nora and that Kevin doesn't really believe whatever he tells him.

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06-05-2017 , 03:21 PM

#328

72off

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also

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Lindelof: Let me just say this: If The Leftovers becomes a global sensation now — in other words, it doubles its ratings from 11 people watching it to 22 people watching it —and there’s a massive demand suddenly for Leftovers conventions and it just becomes like what Star Trek did after it was canceled, and people are just like, “There has to be more Leftovers, I will make one season of Nora and Mark Linn-Baker’s adventures through on the other side.

Sepinwall: Is this a promise?

Lindelof: If all of those things happen, yes, but in no way does that promise validate that Nora’s story is true. That entire season will take place and you’ll still not know whether or not it really happened.

would watch the hell out of that obv lol

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Sepinwall: It’s Nora telling a bedtime story to someone.

Lindelof: It is. It’s The Princess Bride. It’s actually Nora telling that story to a grown Fred Savage.

lol

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06-05-2017 , 03:34 PM

#329

72off

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oh and last thing for now, the Robin Trower song "I'm Out To Get You" that played as Nora arrived at the dance wedding was one of the few this season that really made an instant impact for me. and that was before i checked out the lyrics, the riff is just that cool.

Quote:

I'm out to get you,
Create a disturbance in your mind
I've been sent to select you,
From another place in time
It's gonna be something new,
And you better not hesitate
For the first time in your life,
You can celebrate

Close your eyes, count to ten
Make a wish and we'll be there
Turn around, and maybe then
Your whole life can start again

So the world keeps on turning,
Through the years that lie ahead
From it's pages we're learning.
By it's wisdom we are led
It's gonna be something good,
And you should understand
So it was, and so it is,
Since time began

Close your eyes, count to ten
Make a wish, and we'll be there
Turn around, and maybe then
Your whole life can start again

pretty spot on

nice find

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06-05-2017 , 04:29 PM

#330

jipster

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Quote:

Originally Posted by renodoc

The more I digest the finale, the more I feel marveled at its simple brilliance

Yup.

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06-05-2017 , 05:57 PM

#331

rafiki

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Still not sure how I feel about it. But the doves part is some sort of reference to the end of hard times. When the doves came back to Noah it meant they would find land (so another flood reference).

Having trouble digesting the idea that Kevin's best plan in all those years was the amnesia schtick. Thought the best part of the episode was the concept that all the departed last everyone.

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06-05-2017 , 06:28 PM

#332

Vagos

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http://www.vulture.com/2017/06/lefto...exclusive.html

Some great stuff in there about how they created the finale, basically top to bottom. I chose to clip some parts that shed some light imo on the intent of Lindelof/Perotta in regards to whether or not Nora is making the story up.

Quote:

Perrotta had said adamantly and publicly that it didn’t matter what happened to the vanished 2 percent, but he knew Lindelof was at least a little inclined to answer the Ultimate Question. One very Lost-ian idea the showrunner had clung to from the very first episode was the possible existence of a mirror world, where 98 percent of the population disappeared instead of 2 percent. While filming his pilot’s first scene, during which a baby disappears from a car seat, Lindelof asked director Peter Berg if they could shoot an alternate version, “where we stay on the baby and then we tilt over to the front seat and the mother is gone.” Berg asked why. “That might be the way to end the series,” Lindelof had said. They didn’t have time to film it.

But in that pre-room Lindelof revived the idea of showing the Other Place. “He made it so ****ing compelling,” says Perrotta, “and everybody in the room is going, ‘Yeah!’ And I’m sitting there going, ‘No!’ ” Lindelof, comparing his writers’ room to 12 Angry Men, says that “Perrotta became Juror No. 8” — the lone dissenter who brings the room around. Perrotta gave a version of his Leftovers stump speech: “It was always just a given for me that there is this mystery, the same mystery of where do we go when we die, and the idea that there’s one authoritative answer seems palpably ridiculous to me.”

Quote:

Plotting out what happens after the wedding required what Lindelof calls “a very late night figuring out how Nora has shifted and she’s ready to tell the story.” Even though the story itself was sketched out months earlier in the pre-room, Lindelof actually sat down to write it while in Australia prepping for episode seven. By then, the room had reached a verdict on whether Nora’s story is true. “We have a unanimous feeling as to which one of those realities is real and we will never, ever, say, ‘This is what really happened,’ ” says Lindelof. “Kevin believes, or says he believes, the story; that’s the whole point of the series. That’s what religion is.”

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“Yesterday morning felt very quiet, very calm, very sad,” he says. “I was trying to put aside my expectations for the scene and just be there. But the prevailing emotional sentiment that started to push through the day was: How big of a deal is this ‘Do I believe her or not’ thing gonna be? If I could build a machine that could tell people how to think, it would essentially be that 50 percent of the people believe that what Nora is saying happened and 50 percent think she’s making this up, but all 100 percent say it doesn’t matter.”

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Of course, but it was too late, and she thought he’d never believe her. “I believe you,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re here.”

After Coon’s second take, Lindelof turned to Perrotta and said, “I think I believe her.” At the hotel he tells me, “Let’s say you wrote something that you knew was not true, but then somebody else recites it and they believe it. Does that make it true?” He adds that he and Co.on “have very purposefully avoided the subject” of whether or not Nora really went through.

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Does the dryness (musical and emotional) make Nora’s story more or less believable? Lindelof doesn’t ask the question that way. He simply waits until Richter finishes praising the finale and asks, “Do you believe her?”

“I completely believe her,” Richter says. “Goddamn it!” says Lindelof, half-joking.

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“What do you think of the episode,” Lindelof asks Richardson. “Do you believe her?”

“Yeah,” she says.

“You do?”

“Shouldn’t I? Obviously in real life I don’t believe it, but I believed her.”

“Okay, okay,” says Lindelof.

“What’s the answer?” she asks.

“There is no answer. I’m just curious.”

“I feel very resolved. I’m glad you didn’t leave me hanging.”

“And now you know where everybody went,” says Lindelof.

It was an irony as satisfying as anything in the show: Lindelof had summoned up the courage to set aside the burden of Lost and craft yet another deliberately ambiguous series finale—only to discover that almost no one thought it was ambiguous at all. And that, he tells me, is fine with him. Or anyway, it has to be. “My own precious artistic intentions aside, whether Nora is telling the truth may not be up to me anymore,” he says. “It’s interesting to imagine that whoever’s watching this in June is just going to take it at face value, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.”

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06-05-2017 , 06:48 PM

#333

DudeImBetter

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If Nora's story is true, Dr. Van Lindquist in the Upsidedowm just needs to do the following:

A) Come thru his machine, then announce to everyone in our universe that their loved ones will be returning shortly and are generally fine.

B) Start shipping the most needy from Upside Down back to Reality, like orphans etc.

C) Enlist literally everyone in Upside Down to replicate his magic machine to send their asses back to Reality.

D) Profit.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

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06-05-2017 , 07:05 PM

#334

hemstock

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Is this show any good? I stopped watching after a couple of episodes in season 1 thinking about starting it again.

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06-05-2017 , 07:08 PM

#335

Wooders0n

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Good finale, horrible season tho

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06-05-2017 , 07:13 PM

#336

jipster

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Originally Posted by Wooders0n

Good finale, horrible season tho

Incorrect. Stick with season one through to episode 5.(i think) matts story. If you dig that you'll love season 2.

Season 3 is much weirder but phenomenal too. Perhaps not quite on the level of season 2 but brilliant none the less.

Breaking bad obviously peaked with the gus storyline, it doesn't mean the rest of it wasn't worth the ride.

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06-05-2017 , 07:15 PM

#337

Gaddy

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As a non-believer, this was a series I always thought could lose me in the end, but I enjoyed the ride. I compare it to Battlestar Galactica in this regard. As happened with Battlestar Galactica, I pretty much expected that the ending of The Leftovers would take away from what I thought of the series overall. But that wasn't the case. The ending enhanced my view of the series, which was really an allegory for the loss we all experience with people disappearing from our lives, and how we deal with this loss or the inevitability that it's coming. Six Feet Under is a good comparison.

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06-05-2017 , 07:28 PM

#338

NeueRegel

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One very Lost-ian idea the showrunner had clung to from the very first episode was the possible existence of a mirror world, where 98 percent of the population disappeared instead of 2 percent. While filming his pilot’s first scene, during which a baby disappears from a car seat, Lindelof asked director Peter Berg if they could shoot an alternate version, “where we stay on the baby and then we tilt over to the front seat and the mother is gone.” Berg asked why. “That might be the way to end the series,” Lindelof had said.

If that's true should have just ended the series with a shot of a dead fetus lying on a hospital bed.

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06-05-2017 , 07:28 PM

#339

JudgeHoldem

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If the other mirror world is true, then the side story about the cave woman getting bit by the snake seems to make more sense

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06-05-2017 , 07:38 PM

#340

DudeImBetter

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Originally Posted by NeueRegel

If that's true should have just ended the series with a shot of a dead fetus lying on a hospital bed.

Not sure a single episode has passed without me thinking about the poor fetuses. Tainted my ability to enjoy the show TBH

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06-05-2017 , 07:51 PM

#341

72off

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don't even get why anyone cares if Nora is telling the truth or not, doesn't seem to matter in the least

also i keep seeing ppl referring to S3 as weird/strange or whatever, when it's probably the most straight-forward of the 3 by some distance
(mostly just crazy ppl being faced with the fact that they're crazy, and the show not being too ambiguous about any of that)

Quote:

Originally Posted by hemstock

Is this show any good? I stopped watching after a couple of episodes in season 1 thinking about starting it again.

yes it's good

most ppl seem to like S2 the best and S1 the least

Quote:

Originally Posted by JudgeHoldem

If the other mirror world is true, then the side story about the cave woman getting bit by the snake seems to make more sense

how's that now?

think i know what you mean, but it's been a thread throughout the entire series

(also it seems certain that they didn't have the ending written until the break between S2 & S3)

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06-05-2017 , 08:14 PM

#342

Vagos

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Originally Posted by 72off

don't even get why anyone cares if Nora is telling the truth or not, doesn't seem to matter in the least

Ultimately, it doesn't, but it's interesting to discuss - and to me, interesting in terms of how they broke it creatively. (That article I linked had basically all the writers wanting to straight up shoot the scenes of Nora in 2% land and Perotta fought it fiercely - thought that was an interesting nugget).

The funny thing is that they could have shot those scenes and there'd STILL be room for interpretation (is this real or is this Nora's imagination we're seeing?) So not shooting those scenes is absolutely the better choice imo.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 72off

also i keep seeing ppl referring to S3 as weird/strange or whatever, when it's probably the most straight-forward of the 3 by some distance

Ya, I didn't think it was any weirder than other seasons, really. If anything I would say s2 is weirder only because the Kevin stuff really does walk the tightrope between magical and plausible. S3 sort of removes some of that mystique and it's all foreshadowed by the Millerite opener.

It'd be hard for me to "rank" seasons for this show. I know that unquestionably the first 4 episodes of the series is my least favorite stretch of the series, but "Guest" is still one of its finest moments for me. I also loved the s1 finale at the time, and I think it probably had as much impact on me as any of the other finales. Might have something to do with expectations too.

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06-05-2017 , 08:19 PM

#343

JudgeHoldem

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Originally Posted by 72off

how's that now?

think i know what you mean, but it's been a thread throughout the entire series

That conceivably the people on the other side who are left alone, well, really werent left alone, and found other people to take care of them.

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06-05-2017 , 08:57 PM

#344

Wooders0n

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S3 is legitimately the worst season of television I've ever watched. S2 was very good and S1 was ok. The series finale was good. There was nothing brilliant about season 3 it was largely walrus idea balls. None of it had any impact on the story or even any of the characters. It was atrocious.

The series was carried by the music effects and a few really strong acting performances.

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06-05-2017 , 09:19 PM

#345

72off

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Originally Posted by JudgeHoldem

That conceivably the people on the other side who are left alone, well, really werent left alone, and found other people to take care of them.

ya i figured that's what you meant, and it's possible they reverse-engineered that, but at the time it seemed to be about Lily mostly

but throughout the series really children being ok without their parents is a dead horse beaten over and over and over, on re-watch it's a little surprising how often it comes up

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06-05-2017 , 09:34 PM

#346

revots33

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Originally Posted by Wooders0n

Can't really disagree more... I would agree S2 was better than S3 but this season was excellent as well. Probably the only ep I didn't care for was the Matt episode with the sex lion party on the boat. Seemed quite silly as if the writers were just trying to one-up each other with ludicrous ideas in the writers' room.

But the other eps were pretty elite and the acting was incredibly good even if they didn't advance the plot all that much. For ex. the Kevin Sr. and Laurie episodes both didn't add much story-wise but I thought they were fantastic hours of television nonetheless, with great performances.

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06-06-2017 , 12:09 AM

#347

dankhank

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I thought Nora's explanation of two universes and her reasons for moving back and forth between them were satisfactory until I remembered that we were told in season two that the demon Azrael had chosen her as his earthbound instrument. None of her actions since the fire in the hotel room showed any evidence of Azrael whatsoever.

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

I agree with those who said they felt nothing while watching the finale.

Last edited by dankhank; 06-06-2017 at 12:23 AM.

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06-06-2017 , 10:55 AM

#348

Chuck Bass

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Stunning finale, amazing series. If there ever was any doubt, the finale cemented this show's place as one of the greatest TV dramas of all time if you ask me. I get that it wasn't for everyone, just like the entire show isn't, but I couldn't have asked for anything more from the finale. I was pretty emotional throughout, and can't think of any show in the history of TV that would've moved me as much as this show did. The Leftovers had its flaws (just like BrBa had, for example), but it also had a sort of magic to it.

Good catch by someone ITT about how the scene with Nora inside the chamber was cut differently in real time and when she was telling the story to Kevin. I'd say she was lying and never went anywhere, but it just doesn't matter at all.

It was a little annoying that they were in old people makeup the whole time, obviously there's no way around that, but I agree it would've been nice to see the characters once more as younger versions of themselves.

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06-06-2017 , 02:48 PM

#349

SoCalQuest

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Fantastic show and top tier finale. I'm really glad this show didn't have much of a following as I would have hated seeing the story dragged out. Three seasons was perfect.