By: Brandon Wolfe
The pilot episode of ‘The Leftovers’ proved to be an exceptionally divisive one. While some were instantly taken with its enigmatic debut, many others found it confoundingly vague. I fell somewhere in the middle, enticed by the eeriness of its post-Rapture (or is it?) world, yet recognizing that many blank spots still needed to be filled in. The second episode finds me shifting my position nearer to the frustrated portion of the viewing audience. As ‘The Leftovers’ begins to color in its world, which in itself is interesting on a conceptual level, the feeling starting to spring up is that maybe the handful of characters designated for us to follow is simply not interesting enough to match it.
Take Liv Tyler’s Meg Abbott, for instance. Last week, she was stalked by the Guilty Remnant cult and, without explanation, had opted to join up with them by episode’s end. This week, she is put through an orientation that includes the assignment of chopping down a tree with an axe. Meg is frustrated by the banality of this task and begins to waver on her allegiance to the group, but in the final scene, she’s swinging that axe with a newfound purpose, now seemingly recommitted to their cause, whatever that is. That’s terrific, but why do we care? We don’t know two things about this character as of yet. We don’t know why the GR wants her nor why she is drawn to them, but more importantly, we have no sense of her in general as a person. It’s fine to draw out a mystery, but not when that mystery leaves a character we know nothing about in a prolonged state of blank-slate stasis.
There is also Tom Garvey and his association with a mystery man called Holy Wayne, whom some claim can heal people with the power of his hugs. During a federal raid on Wayne’s headquarters, Tom shoots an agent who threatens the life of a young woman named Christine. Tom and Christine take off on the road and meet up with Wayne, who implores Tom to keep Christine safe because of how important she is. The nature of Christine’s, and even Wayne’s, abilities or significance are fine to remain in the dark for awhile, but again, we know nothing about any of these people on any fundamental level. ‘The Leftovers’ is in such a rush to establish its various Lindelofian mysteries that it’s bypassing the most basic act of character establishment to get to it.
The best and only remotely interesting thread thus far belongs to Justin Theroux’s Kevin Garvey, who is still after that strange, dog-killing bald man from last week. Because Kevin opted to join the bald man in shooting a pack of wild dogs, the Mapleton mayor and Kevin’s fellow police officers have grown very concerned about him, and he has been ordered to endure sessions with a haughty psychiatrist. Inexplicably, both the shrink and the other cops have formulated a theory that the bald man does not exist, which is very strange. The episode itself asks us to question the veracity of the man’s existence, which is fine, but there’s no reason at all for the other characters to suspect that the man is fiction at that point in the story. Upon paying a visit to his mentally unstable father, perhaps out of fear that he too is losing his marbles, Kevin is told by his old man (who appears to be talking to thin air) that he’s been informed that a visitor has been sent to help Kevin. This opens up the possibility that the bald man is some metaphysical representative from another plane of existence, which is the sort of intriguing wrinkle ‘The Leftovers’ could really use right about now. Better that than watching Kevin’s daughter and her obnoxious friends stalking a woman they’ve randomly found fascinating, as we are also treated to this week.
As with last week, the only bit of lightheartedness to be found in ‘The Leftovers’ belongs to a revelation of which celebrities were taken during the Departure. This week, we find out that all four principal actors from ‘Perfect Strangers’ were taken on that day, which is the kind of oddball little touch that adds some much-needed flavor to this dreary world. Other than that, ‘The Leftovers’ remains an austere mope-fest, something that it could potentially get away with being were the show doing a better job of establishing who all of these people are why we should be paying attention to them. ‘The Leftovers’ revolves around a truly fascinating event, but it seems like everything it has set up to happen in the wake of that event is dull as dishwater and in no great hurry to take shape. Perhaps this is premature, but if ‘The Leftovers’ doesn’t get its characters and story threads into gear soon, it’s going to witness the Departure of its viewing audience.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe on Twitter at @ChiusanoWolfe.
Please Leave A Comment-
Comments