The Truth
On ‘The Leftovers’ series finale.
Simply put, HBO’s The Leftovers is one of the best shows in television history. Hearing that the show is called The Leftovers and then hearing that it’s about life after “only” 2% of people disappear from Earth was meant rip a hole through some people, most likely those that became die-hard fans. I don’t want to call this sucker punch of a show “Prestige TV,” because that could almost give it a negative connotation, and suggest that this was anything other than natural greatness. This show was never trying to be anything; it just was.
The Leftovers didn’t follow the traditional path to success for a TV show, loosely basing its first season on a book of the same name, before creating more to the story for a second, then third and final season. I’ve written before about what it means to to have a creative team who truly loves the art of television, and looks beyond simply having a show deemed successful by industry standards. The team never tried to pretend that this was a “twenty-eight hour movie,” like so many shows based off of books have done recently, nor did they force cliffhangers in each season finale. The final episode of every season ended with unanswered questions and Kevin coming home to a tearful, smiling Nora, which was telling of the series finale, although that didn’t become clear until after the show's conclusion.
I’ve always trusted the show’s creators, Tom Perrotta (the author of the book) and Damon Lindelof, but it was still such a relief to witness the June 4 masterpiece of a series finale. It was on par with the final episodes of The Wire, Breaking Bad, Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, Mad Men, and Six Feet Under. This triumph was celebrated across almost all news platforms, which was expected, since some of the greatest champions of the The Leftovers were TV critics, who — in the eyes of the shows creators — might have even helped persuade HBO to sign on for a third season. The criticism, interviews, and even recaps were thoughtful and passionate, producing commentary that was often personal and defensive of the show, as if the authors had something at stake in the series’ treatment.
Lindelof even credits film and TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz with helping the show get a third season, thanks to a Vulture article that he wrote arguing that the the show is one of the great American dramas and deserving of another season. HBO renewed the series that same day.
Including shipping, I spent $34.99 on the May 1972 edition of National Geographic. That’s five times the display price for a standard issue of the magazine, but it — like so many things with The Leftovers — is worth it. As Dustin Rowles at Pajiba pointed out, there are some small details in the series that match up with the stories in the issue, but there was never any “big reveal” in regards to what the specificity of the magazine was really about. I’m still not quite sure what The Leftovers was even about either, but I think that’s OK. It was a show presented through the lens of grief and loss and belief and pain and purpose and feeling like you’re going crazy, and why we should even give a fuck in the first place. It was a show that dealt with caring too much and not caring at all, and how one is often the result of the other. Half of the show is characters just figuring out ways to kill themselves, or almost kill themselves, and then trying to find reasons not to go through with the plan.
The penultimate episode, in which Kevin kills himself in the “real world” twice and then murders himself again in the “afterlife,” was surprisingly telling of the general message of the finale. I never thought I’d be relieved to see Patti Levin, or Meg Abbott, but their cameos were perfect (down to Kevin shooting Meg because she was being annoying). Meg also, surprisingly, was the one fighting the good fight in this simulation of the afterlife, all because she did, in fact, feel pain and love.
This seemingly benign admission becomes relevant in the following and final episode, which makes no attempt to wrap up the greater existential mysteries, with the why of the 2% never being solved and the what only being determined by how much we believe what Nora described when she crossed over and then back. Not believing Nora while still following Kevin’s other-worldly life is impossible, which brings viewers to the point of having to choose whether any of what happened was real. And then, does it matter?
In regards to the legitimacy of Nora’s narrative in the final scene, at the ATC Television Festival, Tom Perrotta said, “If it is a story, it’s a story that reflects some true insight that she had about the possibility of rejoining her kids, which is why we believe her. We believe her the way we believe a good piece of fiction, which is, it tells the truth too.”
Those final moments, where Kevin earnestly tells Nora that he believes her because she’s “here,” is The Leftovers getting at the truth, the heart of the matter, regardless of fact or fiction. For a show that attempted to grapple with the greatest questions of existence, it finished as a simple love story, and I think that’s answer enough. This is what matters.
