The Leftovers (spoilers)

[dbunting]

1 hour ago, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

From the very beginning when the departures happened or after Mark Linn-Baker went over? A Perfect Strangers reunion of sorts could be fun. It's kind of fucked up if Nora is telling the truth about the machine actually working. It would be awesome to deal with the consequences of people who disappeared to the 2% coming back.

Yeah, there are a lot of things that would be so different in that world. How many man made disasters happened when they disappeared? How many planes crashed, imagine being the only one on a jet liner all of a sudden, it flies on auto pilot until it's out of fuel! Nuclear subs that lost entire crews etc... Nobody would be near Jarden because in their world no one from Jarden "survived". Or would this become the center of the GR of their world? I think there would be "lord of the flies" scenarios and war lords all over. Kind of like The Walking Dead except without zombies.

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

1 hour ago, Astromech said:

They could reuse the opening credits and just reverse the departed, basically only one or two people in each photo

For a show where all but 140m people vanished I'd probably prefer the really sinister opening credits from season 1.

1 hour ago, dbunting said:

Yeah, there are a lot of things that would be so different in that world. How many man made disasters happened when they disappeared? How many planes crashed, imagine being the only one on a jet liner all of a sudden, it flies on auto pilot until it's out of fuel! Nuclear subs that lost entire crews etc... Nobody would be near Jarden because in their world no one from Jarden "survived". Or would this become the center of the GR of their world? I think there would be "lord of the flies" scenarios and war lords all over. Kind of like The Walking Dead except without zombies.

The possibilities like that are limitless.

[stonebender]

I liked the first season best.  Felt a lot more "real" than two and three.  For most of season three both the character drama and the supernatural elements felt really played out to me.   

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

That was a satisfying ending many ways. I've been a little unsure of this season, its had moments of greatness, streches of boredom and moments I couldn't decide if they were amazing or terrible. But the overall feeling is that I've just watched a fantastic, complete show that was made by people who wanted to do something different and say something interesting. 

I guess the show was about faith the whole time. The actual plot didn't matter, it didn't matter if what happened was real or not. Its about the difference in believing in something and not believing. So many elements of the show simply come down to faith. I think thats beautiful and I loved that it didn't really ever come down to something overly religious or scientific, it just ... was.

[PetyrPunkinhead]

On 6/5/2017 at 7:00 AM, Ran said:

Reading the Lindelof [url=http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/the-leftovers-finale-damon-lindelof-recap-review/]interview[/url] with Sepinwall at Uproxx.com makes me quite certain that the explanation we get from Nora is the true one . . .

Petyr,

See the interview where Lindelof already worked out why Professor Van Eeghen didn't build another machine himself. As to why no one else hunted him down and asked him as Nora claimed she did, those are other stories and we don't know anything about them. Maybe they were all satisfied with being reunited. Maybe some of them found that reunion was worse than they thought it would be and killed themselves, or ran off into the wilderness, or ... who knows.

Wow! That was a great interview. Thanks so much for the link! Lindeloff answered A LOT more than I thought he would. Even when he was being (or trying to be) ambiguous he kinda let a wink slide in there. He even answered questions I'd forgotten that I wanted answers to--like the rationale behind the scientists questions and why both Nora and "Self-Immolating Outback Man" both gave "wrong" answers. 

It also surprised me how down Lindeloff was on that first season. Granted,  the Jill & friends stuff was a bit annoying and was explored maybe more than needed, but it was not bad. I felt S2 was stronger, but I wouldn't have thought he'd say he disliked the pilot so much to the point of never wanting to see it again. Yikes. (GFY, Peter Berg!)

On 6/5/2017 at 4:40 PM, Martini Sigil said:

On a side note... I really liked Nora's little future house... broken door and all...

I thought the same thing about Nora's house. I dug the stone exterior ground floor and wood exterior second floor. I'd clean up the yard and maybe not have the pigeon coops out in eyeline of that nice bay window though. 

On 6/5/2017 at 10:59 AM, Astromech said:

. . . Also found Kevin's pacemaker funny in light of bearded Kevin removing the key from shaved Kevin's heart last week.

That didn't come up in the uproxx interview linked above, but I wondered the same thing. Does Kevin have a scar from his time in the "other place" and maybe just use the pacemaker as a cover? Looks like Lindeloff is doing the opposite of LOST and giving an interview to everyone after the Leftovers finale. Somebody let me know if they spot one where he addresses Kevin's pacemaker.

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

I think the heart attack happened while Kevin was on the other side. 

[DaveSumm]

I went back and forth on this series a lot. It has moments of greatness, the acting has been phenomenal for the most part and the characterisation is really interesting. It's just a shame it never really seemed to figure out exactly what it was. The first season seemed to try and portray a town coping with a strange type of grief, quite intentionally moving past the supernatural element and letting the characters take centre stage. Then it seemed to realise it could be something better, and completely changed its M.O for season 2. Which worked for the most part, then it suddenly tries something different again and stuttered to a finish. Some of my favourite individual episodes were from Season 3 I think, but Season 2 was probably the strongest overall.

I have a bit of an issue with how Lindelof deals with the supernatural stuff though. After the enormous focus on mysteries of Lost, Season 1 sets out by putting three years between the only supernatural part and its narrative .....except he can't seem to help himself. It's been said here and elsewhere that if you expected a full explanation for the Departure you're watching the wrong show. But Lindelof seems to want to have his cake and eat it. Don't focus on the mystery......except ooo, does this guy have magic hugging powers? How does this palm reader know this stuff? Is Kevin immortal? But you're not allowed to focus on these things, OK? The show ends up doing this constant balancing act to make sure it leaves open a 'science' and a 'faith' expanantion (right to the end, it seems) which some people have commented they find interesting.....I don't. It seems to want to say 'hey, isn't it great how science and faith are equally valid?' Well, yes it is......specifically, in this fictional world that you've rigged for just that purpose. 

If Lindelof wrote a series that was pure characterisation, I think it would be incredibly strong. And couldn't this have been that series? Maybe a natural disaster kills a bunch of people in Mapleton, maybe there's no psychics, no huggers, and Kevin has dreams of a strange other place which may or may not play into things in the real world. If he wrote a series like Lost that focused on sci-fi mysteries and landed it with a coherent ending, I think that would also be great. But it feels like he can't quite decide what it is he wants to make or what he wants to say.

But as always, it's easier to write about negatives than positives. I'm really glad I watched this show and it had some of my favourite scenes I've seen on TV for a long time. 

[RumHam]

11 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

I have a bit of an issue with how Lindelof deals with the supernatural stuff though. After the enormous focus on mysteries of Lost, Season 1 sets out by putting three years between the only supernatural part and its narrative .....except he can't seem to help himself. It's been said here and elsewhere that if you expected a full explanation for the Departure you're watching the wrong show. But Lindelof seems to want to have his cake and eat it. Don't focus on the mystery......except ooo, does this guy have magic hugging powers? How does this palm reader know this stuff? Is Kevin immortal?

I know Lindelof said that he feels since 2% of the population departed 2% of the show can be supernatural. I'd argue that Holy Wayne and Issac the palm reader are both exposed as frauds by Laurie later more or less duplicating their scams. 

As for Kevin being immortal, I don't think that was ever really on the table. He came back from the dead several times, but there was always a risk he could fail and not make it back. Otherwise Virgil, Pillar Man and David Burton would have come back after their final deaths.