“Purpose.”
It’s becoming clearer and clearer how influential the Guilty Remnant is, how it’s able to pull in those–Meg, Jill–who have every reason to be pissed off at its members. We see that the GR doesn’t necessarily go out and bring these people in; rather, they find their own ways, their paths winding through meaningless and depression and loss before they converge at the same front door.
“I think I might be going crazy.”
This is a show that oftentimes favors style as a form of substance, that seems to insist on recycling similar images and ideas and character beats in order to convey the themes it wants to convey. For the most part, it’s been a compelling journey, but slight missteps like “Solace for Tired Feet” take us on a plunge into a well-developed show without the narrative cohesion that makes wonderful episodes like “Guest” resonate. However, as always, there are interesting ideas to pick apart.
“Nothing’s next! NOTHING!”
When 2% of the world’s population vanishes, there’s no predetermined way to act, no coping mechanism that every person uses, no project or blueprint or script. When the pieces of the puzzle are torn away, everything simply falls back into place, albeit in perhaps an unusual way. Maybe, for example, you’ll stalk the woman your husband had an affair with or buy extra food for a group of people who’ll never get a chance to eat it or hire a prostitute to shoot you in the chest. Is it crazy? Well, by what standard do we measure these actions by if there is no status quo?
“Doubt is fire, and fire is going to burn you up until you are but ash.”
Fire burns Gladys up until she is but ash. We see that at the very end of the episode, in which her body is slowly consumed by flames in an ATFEC compound, left to be forgotten alongside so many other people. It doesn’t matter what group she was a part of, what beliefs she held, or what disgust or anger she inspired. It doesn’t matter who they were, the bodies organized all around her. Now, the flames devour them whole.
Pictures are snapped every day with a rapidity that makes you wonder: “Will I ever really look at this?” The answer may be yes, but oftentimes, it’s the other way around; yet, that doesn’t prevent us from pulling out the phone at every chance we get and attempting to capture a fleeting moment in our lives. For, we’re a species that craves the feeling of a tangible object, a physical representation of the memories that perpetually accumulate over the years.
“My congregation: this morning, we prayed for her.”
“Well, she woke up last night.”
Perhaps no other scene better encapsulates Reverend Matt Jamison’s life right now. He’s a man trying to make sense of a seemingly meaningless life–as the rest of the world is doing–and he’s someone doing so by placing everything in a religious context. Yet, with every twist of fate that befalls him, it seems as if the God he looks up to is leaving him behind in the dust.
“They’re not our dogs anymore.”
Kevin Garvey, like many other people coping with the Sudden Departure and its implications, just wants some semblance of normalcy. He’d like to be a good cop and a good father, but how do you do that when you’re faced with your own slipping sanity, your idea of what you believe to be right coming into conflict with how everything seems to be? What happens when something as seemingly insignificant as a bagel is indicative of your mental state and ability to function, is magnified just like every little thing in a world that’s experienced a loss small on paper, but huge in reality?
“Hey. We’re still here.”
When 2% of the population mysteriously vanishes in what’s known as the Sudden Departure, we’re left with a bleak, unforgiving world, one permeated by crushing despair as people attempt to come to terms with what’s happened. Yet, this is a series that deals with the cold, hard truth: we’ll all disappear one day; we’ll all die, and we simply can’t ignore this fact. The Leftovers brings its characters face to face with the grim reality of existence, and in doing so, it crafts an intriguing look at the way society functions when its people experience loss on such a magnitude.
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