By: Brandon Wolfe
From the start, ‘The Leftovers’ has struggled with trying to figure out just what it wants to be. Though the series was sold on a humdinger of a premise – 2% of the world’s population vanishes inexplicably into thin air – the meat of the show has dealt with the small town of Mapleton and its mopey, grief-riddled denizens. That tug-of-war between that tantalizingly fantastic high concept and the low-stakes misery of its characters, with the misery handily winning out, has led to an inert, relentlessly unenjoyable viewing experience. The series could just as easily be about the aftermath of a mass shooting or a pipeline explosion to the same effect. It’s a series about sadness and loss, and little else. Its faux-profundity and all-thumbs approach to symbolism do little to assist with the fact that ‘The Leftovers’ is a vehicle running on the wispiest of fumes.
In the immediate aftermath of Patti’s spiteful suicide, Kevin has called Rev. Matt to assist him, for reasons that don’t make the greatest amount of sense. There hasn’t been a previous indication that Matt has been any sort of trusted confidante to Kevin throughout the season, and certainly no reason for Kevin to immediately think of him as the best person to trust with the disposal of a body. The choice seems to have made so that Matt can make Kevin read an achingly lengthy Scripture passage over Patti’s unofficial gravesite as the mournful score swells up over Justin Theroux’s teary face. Classic ‘Leftovers’. As the two arrive back in Mapleton, Kevin receives a shock when a burly pair of orderlies yank him from the car as Matt cops to turning Kevin in. Kevin is hauled into a locked cell as his cries of innocence are ignored. After he quiets down, he is allowed to leave his cell and finds that he has been placed into the same home for the mentally disturbed as his father, who greets him in a rec room as he watches ‘Perfect Strangers’ on TV (the recurring ‘Perfect Strangers’ motif, by the way, is easily the most enjoyable aspect of this entire series, at least from where this viewer is sitting). As Kevin protests to his father that he isn’t crazy or a bad man, his father begins to speak to a party behind Kevin that we automatically presume is all in the old man’s head, but who turns out to be Patti, whom Kevin can also see and hear plain as day. Suddenly ‘The Leftovers’ has our attention. The Garvey boys can see and communicate with ghosts! Finally, something we can work with. So immediately the series course-corrects itself by revealing that this entire side-street has merely been a dream Kevin has had while still riding shotgun in Matt’s car. ‘The Leftovers’ gets interesting for a second only to yell “Psych!” in our faces as it plops us right back into Dullsville. This show isn’t just boring and pointless, it’s mean.
Stopping at a roadside diner, Kevin confesses to Matt about his affair years earlier and how he was once prepared to abandon his family before the Departure changed everything. He also insists to Matt that the reverend’s quest to reach the Guilty Remnant is a fool’s errand because they do not want to be saved. Kevin then excuses himself to use the restroom and, lo and behold, finds none other than Holy Wayne himself bleeding to death a stall. Of all the men’s rooms in all the world. How and why Wayne is bleeding is left unsaid, obviously, but Wayne is fading fast and agrees to grant Kevin one final wish before he goes. Kevin silently makes this wish, but we do not find out what it was. We probably never will. Such is the way of Damon Lindelof.
If Kevin wished for peace in Mapleton and an end to the Guilty Remnant’s hijinks, then Wayne didn’t come through for him at all because when he and Matt pull into town, it’s pure Bedlam about. We finally learn what the GR was planning for their big Memorial Day event. The life-model dolls we’ve heard about throughout the series have been put to use by the GR as replicas of every Mapleton resident taken in the Departure, inserted into their loved ones homes as they slept. When Nora walks downstairs, she is destroyed by the sight of the dining room table populated by mannequins resembling her lost husband and children. The rest of the town has not taken kindly to this, either, and the GR are being beaten in the street, their houses set aflame. Kevin tries to navigate his way through the chaos and comes upon Laurie being assaulted. Kevin rescues her and receives her first spoken word in ages: “Jill!” Kevin realizes that his daughter - unbeknownst to him, the GR’s newest recruit - is trapped inside a burning house and he must go inside to rescue her. He does and the two shamble home, shaken.
The riot momentarily brings the episode to life. The series has made the GR such a relentlessly unpleasant force, so irritating with their passive-aggression and their constantly note-scribbling, that watching them pummeled carries a certain satisfaction. They, more than anything else, have become the driving force of the series, since they are the only source of true conflict around, and yet they are so recessive as antagonists that they don’t provide enough of a kick to give the series some fire. This cruel stunt marks the most active the GR have been thus far. It recasts them as villains more than the irksome irritations they’ve been all along. But “The Prodigal Son Returns” still doesn’t crack the code of what the series intends to do with them. The efforts made by the government to dispose of such cults doesn’t come back around in the finale and we do not get any fallout from Patti’s death. If the series plans to make any grand statement about the GR or put them to any real use beyond having them exist as a perpetual nuisance, it’s going to have to wait until next year. And for a series this listless, that perhaps isn’t the shrewdest move.
The finale does end on an uncharacteristically hopeful note. Tom Garvey has been stuck with Christine’s baby after the fearful mother has absconded into the night, and he decides it’s finally time to return home, encountering his own mother during a reflective moment. The baby, however, he has left on his father’s doorstep, found by Nora Durst as she comes to deliver a farewell letter to Kevin written after the GR stunt has led her to the decision to end her own life. But Nora seems to reconsider her decision upon discovering the baby, joyously beaming for the first time in a long while. While it is nice to see Nora (or any of these miserable wretches) find a rare moment of happiness (and Nora is probably the show’s best character, so killing her off would have been inadvisable), ‘The Leftovers’ heads into the slumber of its hiatus without enough energy expended to make us care to return in 2015. And that’s the core problem here. People wallowing in misery and self-pity, in the absence of anything else, does not make for great television. Great actor showcases, sure, but not great television. This is a lesson that ‘The Leftovers’ will need to learn for its second season, in the unlikely event that its viewing audience hasn’t vanished by then.
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