The Leftovers 3.2: Nora’s Wacky Wu-Tang Adventure
Sometimes The Leftovers just baits us to laugh; to stop taking it seriously; to hop on Twitter and bemoan that it has “jumped the shark”. But we never do. Because, no matter how silly this show gets, it never loses its overall spirit of unbearable sadness and confusion: the very emotions that motivate two middle-aged women to jump on trampolines while one of their husbands sits at home asphyxiating himself.
This week, the show’s perspective shifted back to Nora — evidence of this season’s uncharacteristically rapid pace; it usually takes until at least Episode 3 before we get such a Kevin-lite episode. What I’ve noticed is that, whenever Kevin isn’t the star of an episode, Justin Theroux seems to play him as a distinctly less multidimensional figure: in his few interactions with Nora, he seems dull, vapid, not the deeply troubled figure we spent last Sunday evening in the company of. When Nora returns to Jarden after her trip to St. Louis and discovers Kevin with a plastic bag wrapped around his head, the show performed the same “Oh Yeah, What Was He Doing All This Time?” that we got in Season 2 when he confessed to Nora, after a full-episode absence, that Patti was talking to him. The way in which Damon Lindelof is able to move briskly between different characters’ personal spaces and alter the angle from which we perceive them — as he did so skillfully on Lost — is truly remarkable.
Nora hasn’t had such a big solo episode since midway through Season 1, when she travelled to New York for a conference and ended up buying a magic hug from Holy Wayne. Through her journey in this hour, we learn how she broke her arm, what happened to Lily (thankfully she isn’t dead) and the face that befell Erika (Regina King). We also get a damn good story of Nora — who I generally consider the most overtly-damaged character on the show — coping with new, as well as old, forms of loss and incomprehension. Carrie Coon plays every scene with exceptional grace; in many ways, The Leftovers is Nora’s tragedy as much as it is Kevin’s epiphany. Her meeting with Lily, who does not recognise her, her encounter with Perfect Strangers’ Mark Linn-Baker (who I must confess I’ve never heard of) and that iconic trampolining scene with Erika are sensational displays of her talent. Noah Hawley must be feeling the heat as he tries to write Coon equally-challenging moments on Fargo.
Other notes: The new music that accompanies the opening titles, which seems almost ironic in its ill-fittedness, is extremely grating. I hope they use a different song every week, because there’s no way I’ll get used to that one.
The final scene of the episode, which went on at least 5 minutes too long and featured a strange cameo from Lindsey Duncan (my favourite Lindsey Duncan performance is as the sneering theatre critic in Birdman; what’s yours?), was almost as weird as last week’s, though had much less of an impact on me. I’m definitely interested in the ‘Book of Kevin’ thread and I’m excited to return to it in the next episode. It’s also great to see Scott Glenn returning as the OG Chief Garvey.
