This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world
ends. This is the way the world
ends; Not with a bang, but with cryptic mysteries, several cults, and a bunch
of dog murders. Or, at least,
that’s how HBO’s new series The Leftovers
would have us believe it will go.
Allow me to explain with mild spoilers for just the first episode.
The end of the world will be shadowed dramatically.
The Leftovers
begins with a Rapture-like event on October 14 of some nameless roughly modern
year whereby 2% of the world’s population, from babies to old women, suddenly
vanish, clothing and all. Three years later, the small town of Mapleton, NY, is
planning their “Heroes Day” remembrance parade to commemorate the missing and
Police Chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) is concerned that a group called the
Guilty Remnants, one of the many nascent cults that have sprung up since The
Disappearance, will make problems at the event. Kevin’s teenage daughter Jill (Margaret Quailey) is both
despondent about her shattered family and wrestling with her own teenage demons
while her brother, Tom (Chris Zylka), is estranged from his family and working
for a charismatic cult leader who claims to be able to heal people.
The Guilty Remnants, meanwhile, are indeed planning a
silent but antagonistic protest of the parade. The GRs are notable for wearing all while, never speaking,
and being required to always smoke a cigarette. I know.
Weird. But, you know. Cult. Regardless, despite being led to believe that the Garvey
family was shattered by the disappearance of Mrs. Garvey, we learn that she is
actually very much appeared but is a key member of the GRs and actively working
to recruit a new member in Meg Abbot (Liv Tyler), a woman about to be married
but for some reason not terribly excited about that prospect. The four family members form our core
characters and the myriad others radiate from their hub.
Just your average Chief of Police, chief-ing away.
So what we have is a thinly disguised interpersonal drama
set against the backdrop of a fantasy story wherein something extremely
mysterious has happened and lots of people with interweaving backstories
connect. If you’re thinking that
this maybe sounds a lot like something else that you’ve seen recently there’s a
reason: the show is the product of Damon Lindelof, the former Executive
Producer and head writer of Lost. And boy oh boy, does it ever show.
The Leftovers
layers on the mysteries. What was
The Disappearance? We don’t know,
but we’re told that it emphatically was probably not actually the Rapture, or
else how else to explain how it is that in addition to all the sinless and
blameless babies that Disappeared along with them went a fair share of jerks,
scumbags, moral miscreants and other general bad people. (A news program runs a humorous “In
Memoriam” segment of the famous who Disappeared including Pope Benedict,
Condoleezza Rice, Solomon Rushdie,
Jennifer Lopez, and Gary Busey.) Why does the religious healer receive visions that
tell him “the Grace Period is over”?
Why does Garvey have disturbing dreams about animals embedding themselves
into his car? And what’s up with
the pack of dogs that supposedly went feral and now live in the woods and why
is a man with a massive speech impediment trying to hunt them all down and
shoot them? “You can’t just shoot
our dogs,” Garvey tells the man upon seeing him go after a pack of the dogs
that seem to appear out of nowhere.
“They’re not our dogs,” the man mumbles cryptically. “Not anymore.”
All of this adds up to a show with a fair amount of
potential, especially given that this is HBO which is far more willing to let
its shows be experimental and intense than national networks are. And the first episode does a good job
establishing the world and teasing out the key questions of the series as well
as making us if not care about the main characters, at least have more than a
passing interest in seeing what happens to them. The big problem will always remain Damon Lindelof himself.
"We're going to have to have everything not-explained to us by Allison Janney, aren't we?"
Lindelof really, really wants to write smart, provocative
shows that use fantastical and supernatural elements to tell very relatable
human stories. That’s a fine goal,
but the problem is that he tends to trip over his own shoes when he attempts to
meet it. He wants us, the viewers,
to be more interested in the characters he creates than the mystery that brings
them together. That’s absolutely
what should happen, but unfortunately the man has a history of succumbing to a
need to add complexity upon complexity for no reason other than to make the
story interesting or cool. Lost collapsed under its own bloated weight
for this exact reason. To put it
simply, you can make a show about a big supernatural event and then tell the
audience not to care about that event.
Characters and interactions will always trump plot when creating a TV
show, but you can’t expect people not to want to know about the thing that was
the show’s pitch to begin with.
I’m watching The
Leftovers for now, mostly just to see if Lindelof and the other writers
have achieved a sense of maturity about how they write fantasy and sci-fi. If they can avoid the strawman
arguments that Lindelof tends to set up in his own writing by having one
character argue religion and another argue science as if that were a debate
that had never happened before, they’ve got the kernel of a good story
here. If, on the other hand, a
smoke monster shows up at any point, I’m out.
