100 Favorite Shows: #31 — The Leftovers
“If we can’t have a sense of humor about you being the messiah, we’re gonna have a problem.”
Before Thanos ever graced the big screen, HBO’s The Leftovers aired for three seasons and grappled with the concept of what would happen if two percent of the planet’s population disappeared with no explanation. Later, at an Emmys panel in June 2017, Damen Lindelof, co-creator of The Leftovers (along with Tom Perrotta, the author of the book on which the show is based), remarked about the mysticism within the acclaimed HBO series. He said, “The rule has always been…if two percent of the world has disappeared, then two percent of the show can be supernatural.” This held true for all three of The Leftovers’ arcs, which ran from 2014 to 2017. As the show grew in high concept plotting, so too did its acclaim.
(Ninety-eight percent of The Leftovers is spoiled in this essay.)
The second episode of The Leftovers’ third season, “Don’t Be Ridiculous,” begins with the classic Leftovers intro montage and opening credits. The only difference is that this intro is set to the song, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now” by David (not Drew) Pomeranz. Otherwise known as the theme song to Perfect Strangers.
I’ve never seen an episode of Perfect Strangers (I am still young and beautiful, as Lana Del Rey would say while Carey Mulligan hit me in the face with a shirt), but my parents (old and beautiful) tell me that “Don’t be ridiculous” is the catchphrase of one of the characters from Perfect Strangers. So why is an episode of The Leftovers, a punishing, pseudo-apocalyptic meditation on grief, loss, and faith, so concerned with a hokey sitcom of yore?
The technical answer is that the idea came from Jacqueline Hoyt, as revealed by Damon Lindelof and anchored in an interview Alan Sepinwall conducted with this episode’s guest star, Mark Linn-Baker. (Linn-Baker, of course, starred on Perfect Strangers.) Hoyt thought it would be interesting to explore how a two percent population disappearance might affect some long forgotten cultural institutions. In the case of Linn-Baker, the other three series regulars of Perfect Strangers were taken in the departure. Linn-Baker was left behind and it devastated him. It began as a one-off, jokey aside that stemmed from the show’s lighter shift in tone from season one to two (a move often celebrated by Andy Greenwald and other such critics who felt the show was too dour in the early goings. Though, Mimi Leder’s behind-the-scenes addition and impeccable direction are the biggest influences on the shift). Eventually, the tragedy of Linn-Baker’s plight was too raw to ignore and The Leftovers devoted an entire episode of their final season to paying tribute to the Perfect Strangers gang.
It’s hilarious in concept, but devastating to watch as Linn-Baker actually suffers with the pain and survivor’s guilt of being left behind? It leaves him with the question, “Why just me?” It becomes a raw look into something ridiculous and it also becomes a way to connect with Nora Durst (Carrie Coon). Durst, too, lost everyone in the departure and only she and Linn-Baker can connect on the odds of losing everyone (it’s 1 in 128,000).
Putting aside the emotion that Linn-Baker and Coon bring to the scenes they share, it has to be one of the ambitious swings I’ve ever seen a television drama take. It helped that it was in keeping with the show’s mystical, “anything goes” tone (for example, The Wire was so grounded that orchestrating a narrative around a silly sitcom would have been a creative decision that evoked another silly sitcom: Fonzie jumping the shark), but it’s still a bold move all the same. Not only am I impressed that they pulled it off, but I felt creatively inspired. With the right kind of story, you could do anything you wanted. And having Linn-Baker as such a crucial focal point for an entire episode was exactly my tempo. (Back off, J.K. Simmons!)
What’s more, Mark Linn-Baker does not only serve to carve out an emotional truth for Nora and himself. He also helps set a story in motion that has ripple effects for the finale and true consequences for the series’ impending endgame. Linn-Baker informs Nora about an unprecedented device that’s being developed to bring people into the parallel universe that contains the missing two percent. It seems too good to be true, but it’s Linn-Baker who sets Nora on a path to Melbourne, Australia to participate in the plans herself, realistic or not. He’s not just a joke or a pay-off; he was the show’s most vital domino.
Before Nora takes off for Australia, though, she was forced to reconcile her resentment for the rest of the world. Early seeds of this can be seen throughout the show, but it mostly clashes with other survivors in “Don’t Be Ridiculous,” when Nora attempts to fly to Missouri and encounters a flurry of transgressions at the airport. Judy Garland’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” plays oppressively in the background of the scene while Nora takes her frustrations out on airport attendants who are just going about their normal days. The only thing is, that’s exactly the problem.
On the day of the departure, Nora lost everything. It would’ve been unfathomable enough if they had just been killed without the mysterious implications that left her unable to truly rest. It’s the not knowing that eats at Nora over the course of the show until she becomes so bitter and miserable that she refuses to let anyone hold onto hope.
For a lot of people, Pillar Man (Turk Pipkin) became a promise of this sort of hope. Nora reacts cynically to him because he’s providing solace to people who need it and she’s so demolished by grief that she could never give herself over to the idea of solace. After Pillar Man’s wait for a miracle comes to an end and she shows those in Jarden Square a photo of his corpse, she unleashes her own cynicism upon them. It’s a dispiriting moment and it’s crushing to watch Nora basically give up in the face of adversity. But is she so wrong? Her adversity is unknowable. And in the wake of her immense loss, so many cults and bullshit religions sprang up to try to capitalize on the departure. She’s right to be cynical, even if she’s not right to strip hope away from others.
This misery manifests in the airport when she sees that society is still intact. Nora always knows that the world kept spinning after she lost her family, but sometimes, it’s just too much to bear when it’s so directly in her face. The workers at the airport go about their business with smiles and faux senses of helpfulness. To Nora, it’s all fake. It’s a manufactured routine and a false sense of joy in a world that’s given her no reason to feel such a thing. How can society be intact if Nora’s not? The idea of something like air travel remaining unchanged when her entire world has imploded is not just something to balk at. It becomes an outright source of rebuke.
It reminds me of the world we experienced in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. After a month or two, it became crushingly sad to talk about the pandemic or the virus, but how were we not supposed to? It was an event that captured the attention of the entire world and we were just supposed to pretend like everything was going to be okay once it went away? Things like viruses and grief don’t just go away and we can’t just move on from them. Nora knows this better than most.
Over the course of The Leftovers, Nora grew in the show’s estimation. What began as a semi-ensemble series that was mostly led by Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) and, when needed, Holy Wayne (Paterson Joseph) eventually became the Kevin and Nora show, with little sprinkles of Matt Jemison (Christopher Eccleston), Meg Abbott (Liv Tyler), and Laurie Garvey (Amy Brenneman) here and there. Coon was more than up to the task and she made a name for herself as one of the most overlooked actors in the history of the Emmys and television viewerships. But those who knew, knew.
There was precedence for Nora supplanting Kevin as the series’s lead (to the point where the finale is literally called “The Book of Nora,” mirroring the season three premiere, “The Book of Kevin”), though. Especially on HBO. In season two of Succession, Shiv took over main character responsibilities from Kendall. On Deadwood, Al Swearengen seemed a more prominent character than Seth Bullock by the end. Even on The Wire, it began as a Jimmy McNulty-led show and eventually became, well, everyone’s show. Of all these instances, though, Nora’s rise to prominence on The Leftovers might have been my favorite.
Sure, I loved Coon’s performance, but I also felt that every scene featuring Nora became emblematic of the show’s overarching sense of cosmic wonder. It was always obsessed with the belief that there was something bigger than the departure or Earth out there. And by the end, Nora mirrored this. She became bigger than The Leftovers. After all, she was the only one to actually cross over to see how the two percent lived.
That is, if you believe her. The Leftovers came much closer than Lindelof’s other premier series, Lost, to providing concrete answers for fans by the finale. Still, it was up for debate, though. You could either believe that Nora had crossed over and seen that, for the two percent, it was like ninety-eight percent of the world vanishes. Or you could not believe it. For me, I trusted Nora. And seeing her old in Australia after the time skip at the show’s end (which had been hinted to with early appearances of “Sarah” and people looking for “Chief Kevin,” which actually turned out to be flash-forwards of our weathered protagonists) cemented that trust. Nora had proven, time and again, that she could not shake off her grief or forget about it. When she smiles at Kevin, she had to have found closure somehow.
When Nora heads down under to Victoria, she’s accompanied by Kevin. By this point in the series, Kevin is in full-on messiah mode. There is a prevailing belief on The Leftovers that Kevin is the second coming of Jesus, on the basis that he had seen the afterlife multiple times and come back to tell the tale. I’m not so inclined to believe this (I mostly believe Kevin dabbles with the trait known as “psychotic,” as he’s endlessly haunted by Patti (Ann Dowd)), but then I think of Lindelof’s quote in this essay’s opening paragraph and I pause. If two percent of the show could be natural, why can’t this be the two percent? Why can’t the afterlife just be a ritzy hotel with a karaoke bar? Sounds a hell of a lot better than some of the alternatives.
Although I am skeptical about Kevin’s true role in The Leftovers, Matt Jamison goes all in on the messiah rhetoric. So much so, in fact, that he also decides to go to Australia because he believes Kevin is in need of his help. (When I landed on an Australian tarmac almost two years ago, I just put on The Weekly Planet podcast and some Men at Work. I didn’t need old sitcom actors or religious promises to get me there.) This presents Leftovers fans with the central juxtaposition of the series: grief v. faith, as represented by Nora and Matt, respectively. Nora and Matt are siblings and they are the ones who embody the show’s two biggest themes. Nora, ever so grief-stricken, becomes a stand-in for those who have lost. Matt, endlessly devoted to God and the belief that his purpose on Earth is to be a missionary, becomes a stand-in for those who refuse to believe that the departure was random.
Matt is the star of his own episode in the final season, “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World,” which sees the desperate lengths he goes to just to make sure he gets to Australia in time for whatever Kevin needs (he probably should’ve also wanted to check in on his sister, but he was well past that with his manic slavishness to religion by this point). When a plane stops off in Tasmania, hours from Melbourne, Matt (and Laurie, who jumps at the chance to tell a dirty joke about a panda) resourcefully works his way onto a sex boat. (I mean, the show was already so dense with detail and rich with ambition that a sex boat made perfect sense. A submarine explodes, Mark Linn-Baker survives an ABC culling, one town in Texas (home to Erika (Regina King)) witnesses zero civilians departing. Why not throw a sex boat into the mix? And oh yeah, the orgy also features a tiger named Frasier.)
By this point, it was clear that the setting of Australia was bigger than any one character. It was ground zero for the show’s most important exports of symbolism and religious metaphor. Prophets predict a massive flood in Melbourne just two episodes before Matt gets on a boat with a lion? If this is a coincidence, then I’ll boil the Old Testament and eat it for dinner tomorrow. (I mean, shit, the episode even begins with the Ashrei prayer. If it wasn’t so glorious and moving, I’d say it was resting atop the nose.)
Regardless of whether or not this boat ride is a pilgrimage or an attempt at portraying Australia as a more natural, chaotic region than the United States (in terms of fucked-up looking animals, it is), the lion is introduced early for an important reason. He is the only creature on the boat that is capable of taking down the most dangerous being in the orgy: David Burton (Bill Camp).
“It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World” was not Burton’s first appearance on The Leftovers. He turned up in Kevin’s psychosis before and had been steadily referenced offhandedly throughout the run of The Leftovers. In “Axis Mundi,” Pillar Man wrote a letter that was addressed to David Burton, resident of Sydney. Two episodes later, in “Off Ramp,” the news furtively reported that a man had emerged from a cave, claiming to have been resurrected. His name? David Burton.
It reaches its apex on the orgy lion boat, though, because we actually see Burton claim to be God. (In case of confusion, he produces a business card that says, “Yes, I am God” on the front and “No, I didn’t make unicorns” on the back.) Of course, Matt has spent the entire series enamored with God. Anyone he met, he preached the good word to them, telling them all about who God was and how he was going to save them and how the departure was not just a meaningless act. So when David Burton, who appears to just be a random Aussie, claims to be God, it’s nothing short of a personal affront to Matt.
For his entire life, Matt has wanted God’s attention. He’s endured miracles and anti-miracles and considered them both to prove God’s existence. He’s desperate to be right about his belief in God (perhaps for his own sanity). He really just wants to make sure his life has meaning, even as he lay dying. But all of this is done for the wrong reasons. It’s a parade of good deeds (spreading gospel, saving lives) that is done with the motivation of moral dessert. Matt doesn’t act the way he does because he’s a pious man — he does it because he believes it’s the way God wants him to act.
God (David Burton) tells him as much when Matt finally binds David Burton (God), intent on giving him hell. Burton puts him through the ringer first.
Burton: “Where’s my book?”
Matt: “I threw it overboard.”
God: “It was just getting good.”
Matt: “You know how it ends.”
It’s this interaction that makes me believe David Burton is actually God, acting through the body of an Australian man (Burton) who actually did die. Throughout the rest of Matt’s confrontation, God needles at Matt’s insecure faith. He denies paternity for Jesus and eventually evades the tension by telling Matt, “Ta-da. You’re saved.” But this isn’t what makes me think Burton is truly God. Instead, it’s how devastatingly accurate God is with investigating Matt’s introspection. He knows that Matt’s reasons for piety are corrupted. It’s something Matt had only barely known and tried to suppress. It’s a scene that goes exactly the way God expected it to. And oh, what the hell, right? The Leftovers was a heavy drama with a fantastical premise that churned out some of the most insane stories. Why couldn’t a guest spot from God be one of them, too?
Following this, Matt’s determination to get to Melbourne has completely faded away. There’s no more pressing business because for Matt, there’s no more God. So what good is Kevin? (This is another fundamental misunderstanding for Matt. He sees no meaning without God, but damn man, you’re still about to see your sister. Doesn’t that count for something? You don’t have to be at peace yet.)
By the end of the episode, though, there’s literally no more God. The Supreme Jubliees’ “Do You Believe” kicks in as Frasier (the lion) breaks free from his captivity and chases down God, who is fleeing from the police. He sprints from his orgy partners and is chased down by Frasier almost immediately. As Frasier devours God (depicting yet another strong piece of evidence for God’s existence (formerly) because a natural creature is the only one to achieve domination over God), Matt turns around, looks directly into the camera, and remarks, “That’s the guy I was telling you about.” God himself couldn’t have written a more perfect episode.
“That’s the guy I was telling you about.” I tell you, man, that’s a perfect quote. It’s funny; it’s poignant; it’s a perfect line to close the episode on. But it also speaks to show’s third major theme. The Leftovers is mostly about faith and religion with a ton of grief sprinkled in. However, it also places a profound emphasis on the stories we need to tell ourselves to survive.
Matt searches for meaning in the world through God and the two percent departure becomes a catalyst for his spiritual quest. I think he would’ve been wrestling with these questions to the same degree, even if the population remained intact. The search for meaning in the world is an evergreen motivator. The search for meaning inspires us to keep our lives meaningful. Whether or not a cosmic event cascades upon the planet, we’re still going to search for meaning. And we’re gonna tell each other whatever stories we can to help it all make sense. (Because the truth is, the whole “life” thing is too cosmic to ever make sense.)
Pillar Man told a hopeful community the stories they needed to hear so they could just get through the day. Matt told the world the stories they needed to hear to believe that something grander was planned for all of us. And at the end, Nora told Kevin the story he needed to hear to believe that sometimes, closure is exactly what you expected it to be. Knowing is what’s most important. When you can’t know, you trust. When you can’t trust, you believe. On The Leftovers, belief and trust could often be good for nothing. Neither ever led to peace and joy, but they did lead to acceptance. That’s the only way to leave reality. That, or getting eaten by Frasier (the sensuous lion).
