3. The Leftovers
October 14th, 2011. 2% of the world's population vanish, seemingly for no reason at all, leaving everyone who remains to try to make sense of something so tragically random. That's where The Leftovers starts, and it only gets stranger from there. I've said it countless times over the course of this list, but TV's great advantage is longform storytelling. The best television isn't immediate. It trusts its audience to be patient, to invest in it with the promise of the great reward of lasting emotional resonance. One thing I love about Damon Lindelof is that he understands that it's not what we get out of something that matters, but what we put into it, and that's exactly what The Leftovers is. There are no answers, no easy explanations, and if you read the synopsis of the last episode and spoil the ending for yourself, it wouldn't really affect the experience of watching it all that much. This is a show that needs to be seen, to be experienced. Lindelof is writing purely from the heart here; he knows that great stories deal in feeling, not logic
I'm not the first to say that this isn't a show about answers, but questions. And that's the very thing that makes The Leftovers stand out, not just among the dystopia genre, but for TV in general. Lindelof knows that the journey is always going to be more satisfying than the destination, so he denies his characters conclusive answers and forces them to navigate what comes next. Right from the start, this is a show about the ways in which people cope. Police chief Kevin Garvey is tasked with dealing with the Guilty Remnant- a chain-smoking cult who style themselves as living reminders of the countless lives lost- but is what they're doing actually wrong, or just a response to mass grief? Nora Durst lost her husband and kids in the departure and is desperately seeking something that can help her move on, but is that even possible after such a total loss? Nora's brother Matt is a priest who is constantly experiencing obstacles and hardship; are these tests from God or is he just massively unfortunate? And then there's Holy Wayne, who can take people's pain away from hugging them. He could be the real thing, or maybe he's a fraud, but if it makes people feel better, does it matter if it's real?
All of these are questions that don't necessarily need to be answered for them to mean something. Instead, the show has the characters navigate life in the wake of a tragedy that doesn't have any easy explanations; if you're frustrated by a lack of answers, how do you think they feel? The Leftovers is one of the greatest depictions of what it is to grieve ever put to screen. That world-shaking loss that's impossible to undo, that's the feeling that this show homes in on, and over the course of the first season, Lindelof really masters these huge expressions of gut-wrenching anguish that makes such a strange premise feel eerily plausible. It's a study in how we respond to catastrophe, and how that affects our ability to connect with each other. None of the Garvey family departed, but they all lost each other because in processing this tragedy, they all became entirely different people, because that's what disaster does. The Leftovers isn't interested in those who departed because Lindelof knows that the real pain is felt by those who were left behind
And if this is all starting to sound a little hopeless, then consider the show's second season. A soft-reboot of sorts that sees the characters relocate to Miracle, Texas: a town where nobody departed. The first season was a study of grief and pain but the second completely shifts gears to tell a much looser story about a community struggling to make sense of a series of mysteries. This time, the narrative focus is on three girls who go missing, but thematically, this is a season about the importance of keeping hope. Without spoiling anything, this is where the show starts to tease out its more mystical elements, from a miracle that strengthens Matt's faith to the increasingly supernatural situations that Kevin finds himself in, and it's when the show starts to lean into the spiritual and surreal that it goes from being a good show to being one of the greatest ever made
The second and third seasons are just such a massive improvement on the show's first run. Not that it was bad, it's pretty excellent in its own right, but by loosening the show's tone and opening itself up to the supernatural, The Leftovers is able to cover so much more ground and really let Lindelof's singular sensibilities shine. The show hits onto moments of real profundity while still being full of bizarre, strangely funny and oddly moving plot beats. Justin Theroux singing bad karaoke to escape from an otherworldly hotel doesn't sound like it should be heartbreaking but Lindelof excels at finding so much meaning in the seemingly ridiculous that it ends up as one of the standout sequences in the show. There's just so much creativity on display here, each individual episode packed with so many ideas and images that drip with thematic heft, and it's consistently awe-inspiring how casually Lindelof throws out these moments of insane genius to expand on the story and themes in entirely unpredictable ways
Conceptually, it's just a goldmine, with so many episodes that display how thoughtfully the show has developed each of its ideas. Personally I'm a sucker for the trilogy of episodes that see Matt's faith tested in frustrating and massively unfortunate ways, as well as the penultimate stunner that sees Kevin on an insane quest to prevent further catastrophe, but if we're talking about individual episodes of The Leftovers, then it has to be said that this show features two of the greatest hours of television ever made. The first is International Assassin, a massively bold artistic gamble that sends Kevin barreling through a thematically stuffed world, the true nature of which won't be spoiled here. It's the kind of risky conceptual storytelling that most shows wouldn't dare commit to, but it works because it's no gimmick. It introduces ideas that become fundamental to the show, shaping what's to come while redefining everything that came before it, particularly in how it reframes a crucial character, turning what could have been a one-dimensional villain into a person motivated by fear and trauma, and the result is a singular and beautiful hour of storytelling
The second episode that I think really defines how excellent this show is would be the show's finale, The Book of Nora. Whereas most final outings wrap up a show's story and provide satisfying endings for each of the characters, The Leftovers parks the narrative in the second-last episode and dedicates its final lap to serving the ideas, and most importantly, the emotions, that Lindelof has been playing with since the pilot. It's a completely stripped back and somewhat uneventful ending on one level, but it's a perfect finish for the show precisely because of how low-key it is. The Leftovers is a show that proudly wears its cerebral and creative uses of concept on its sleeve, but like most great stories, it's not what it does to your mind that matters, but how it touches your heart, and The Book of Nora cuts straight to what's been motivating the show since the word go: love. It sheds any clear explanations of what has happened in its ten-year time jump in favour of characters talking about how it made them feel. Again, this isn't a show about answers, but about how chasing questions turns us into the people we're meant to be, for better or worse, and there's a quiet beauty in how it delivers that
It's just a beautiful, unforgettable run of TV and it's only 28 episodes long, which turns it into a real advertisement for the power of brevity. Lindelof is wise enough to never wear out any of his ideas, instead making the most out of each one of them with perfect pacing and story structure. It's a huge exploration of the spiritual concepts that we'll never fully understand, but by keeping the stakes of the story rooting in feeling rather than logic, The Leftovers is able to become a hugely universal story about grief and love and faith without sacrificing any of its gorgeous complexity, a reminder that against the overwhelming uncertainty of life, sometimes the best we can do is just let the mystery be
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