By: Brandon Wolfe
With “Two Boats and a Helicopter”, ‘The Leftovers’ moves into the weekly-spotlight motif that served Damon Lindelof so well on ‘Lost’. Where the first two episodes cast a wide net to set up the entire world and cast, this entry fixates solely on Matt Jamison (Christopher Eccleston), the tormented reverend whom we’ve only met in passing thus far. Matt has a very specific reaction to the Departure. He is hell-bent on proving to the public that this wasn’t the Rapture, as many believe, since he’s keen to point out that many of those who were taken on October 14th were demonstrably bad people. Matt publishes a newsletter where he documents the crimes and sordid deeds of the departed, a practice that only stirs up ill will in people, and occasionally results in Matt taking a beating from the angry relatives of those whose sins he exposes. We also learn that Matt’s wife was critically injured on that fateful day and now resides in a vegetative state where she requires constant care.
Matt has other problems as well. Due to his chronic inability to make his payments, he is informed that he is about to lose his church to the bank, which has a buyer on the hook. The kindly bank representative informs Matt that he has 24 hours to come up with at least $135,000 in cash if he wants to keep the church. He goes to his sister Nora (Carrie Coon), who had her entire family taken in the Departure and thus was compensated well enough to be able to lend Matt the money he needs. But Nora’s price - for Matt to abandon his mission of libeling the departed – is too high, so committed is he to his cause.
But one night, Matt has an epiphany on how to save his church, and it’s from this point onward that “Two Boats and a Helicopter” both comes to life and trips over its feet. Inexplicably for someone whom the episode has emphatically stated has been in dire financial straits for some time, Matt suddenly remembers that Kevin Garvey’s father gifted him $20,000 in cash as reward for publicly exposing a corrupt judge in one of his flyers, money which the elder Garvey has left buried in his backyard in a Jif container. This is a profoundly idiotic plot development, but the episode does not dwell on it, as Matt quickly unearths the cash and, driven by some pigeon-related “signs” that he has interpreted as divine intervention, heads down to the local casino to turn his Jif wad into a church-saving windfall at the roulette table.
Anyone who saw the first ten minutes of ‘Empire Records’ probably thinks they have it pegged what will happen next. Matt is someone whom life can’t seem to resist any opportunity to kick in the teeth, so we expect him to lose it all. Yet, in a sequence that really squeezes out the maximum amount of tension, Matt keeps betting on red and is a winner three times over, walking away with a cool $160,000. The episode then proceeds to get hilarious in how it continually conspires to take that money away from Matt. When Matt takes his winnings out to his car, he is accosted by the faux-neighborly dirtbag he met at the table, who beats him viciously and walks away with the envelope. But Matt outfoxes fate yet again as he pounds the man’s face into the pavement and reclaims his money. So on fire is Matt that he is instantly rewarded with a celebratory montage set to “Love Will Keep Us Together”, because ‘The Leftovers likes its tone shifts to be as jarring as possible.
But fate isn’t done gunning for Matt yet, oh no. While driving his money to the bank, he sees a man in a truck throw a rock at the head at a member of the Guilty Remnant, who have been keeping a watchful eye on Matt himself of late. When Matt gets out of his car to help the man, the same truck doubles back and conks Matt in the head as well, sending him into a hallucinatory pastiche of past pain before he wakes up in the hospital, desperate to get out and to the bank before close of business. Finding out that his car is still where he left it and his cash envelope fortuitously still inside, he sprints to the bank to find it’s closed and he guard won’t let him in. When we think that Matt will finally lose by a pittance of tardiness, the nice bank officer lets him in, but informs him that he’s not late by ten minutes, but by three days, his hospital stay having lasted much longer than he realized.
I’m doing more recapping here than I generally care to because I feel it is necessary to itemize the list of Matt’s suffering at the hands of the writers’ (and God’s?) cruelty. It’s truly funny how the episode actively plots against this man, scheming at every turn to throw some clouds over his moment in the sun, determined to see his inevitable faceplant scored to a trombone’s mournful “wah-waaah”. We want Matt to win because the show is so comedically resolute to see him fail. The episode is clearly attempting to say something about the nature of faith and those who hold it, but as with most things associated with this show, it’s enacted too clumsily to connect. And yet, watching Matt’s trials and tribulations, watching him fight off one roadblock only to be immediately thrown another, does carry a strong amount of suspense, and is certainly the most alive the usually inert ‘Leftovers’ has felt thus far. The episode also gets a boost thanks to Eccleston’s performance, which makes Matt’s anger, desperation and perseverance so deeply felt. As absurd as the deluge of miseries visited upon this man is, our sympathies are always with him because Eccleston makes him so palpably human, something no other actor has been able to do thus far on this show.
The denouement of “Two Boats and a Helicopter” sees the Guilty Remnant as the secret buyer of Matt’s church, the renovation of which they have wasted no time with commencing. Matt witnesses this and shares a simmering staredown with the group that makes one wonder what he intends to do next in the face of losing the thing that meant everything to him. The Guilty Remnant has been perhaps the most problematic aspect of ‘The Leftovers’ thus far, their motives, agenda and appeal being kept completely mysterious in that frustrating, uniquely Lindelof way and their actions coming across as passive-aggressively irksome. If the show is building toward some measure of comeuppance against the group perpetrated by a vengeful Matt, that would certainly be a more compelling angle for ‘The Leftovers’ to explore than the bagel hunts and dog shootings it’s handed us so far.
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