by Xavier Gonne
The Leftovers is a HBO (hurrah!) show about people who disappeared in the Rapture (boo!) written by Damon Lindelof of LOST and Prometheus fame (boo!). Problem is, it’s not about people who were Raptured away. It’s about very stupid people making very stupid decisions in the face of a couple of mysteries which, like LOST before it, have no hope of being answered.
The Leftovers is a HBO (hurrah!) show about people who disappeared in the Rapture (boo!) written by Damon Lindelof of LOST and Prometheus fame (boo!). Problem is, it’s not about people who were Raptured away. It’s about very stupid people making very stupid decisions in the face of a couple of mysteries which, like LOST before it, have no hope of being answered.
A brief tangent. At the moment, there is a trend on the US Broadcast Network for “comfort viewing”: shows which you’ll tune into week-after-week, but from which you don’t get what it says on the tin. You tune into the Big Bang Theory, but no longer laugh at the jokes. You tune into Castle, but with the “will-they-won’t-they” transitioning into a pale romance, you realize that each Castle episode is pretty damn identical to the one which went before (If the heroes are interviewing two people, the killer will be the one who speaks less – 78% of the time)*. But that doesn’t matter, because Jim Parsons and Nathan Fillion are your TV friends (I miss House).
The Leftovers is “discomfort viewing”. Why do I say that? I’m glad you asked. We’re halfway through the first (unfortunately, there will likely be a second) season and to start off episode 1.05, a group of masked men tied a woman to a tree and threw rocks at her head. This was graphic. Shameful. And gratuitous. There was no point in showing it except to fill column inches with how “daring and shocking it was” and “screw it, it’s HBO!”.
The Leftovers is “discomfort viewing”. Why do I say that? I’m glad you asked. We’re halfway through the first (unfortunately, there will likely be a second) season and to start off episode 1.05, a group of masked men tied a woman to a tree and threw rocks at her head. This was graphic. Shameful. And gratuitous. There was no point in showing it except to fill column inches with how “daring and shocking it was” and “screw it, it’s HBO!”.
Even before (and after) this horrific moment, the show exemplified the notion that all the characters are foolish, self-destructive, and mean-spirited. Even the nice ones are fucking mean, but they do it in a nice way. The (now former) Reverend, played by DW’s Christopher Eccleston, is trying to convince people that the people who have magically disappeared were not Raptured away, that they were abusive or drug dealers or (in the case of his brother-in-law) adulterers. There is no hero, which is not a requirement, but those who fall into the role of protagonist (depending on the episode) can’t seem to get out of their own ways. They are the cause of their own problems and they can’t see it.
It’s about a mean world with mean people in it. That’s it. Have no hope. Have no love. Almost nothing you want will never come to you and if it does, it will be the palest version of it. You’ll take that first bite of the apple, munch away happily, but when you look back to size up your next bite, you’ll see half of a worm wiggling back at you. The message is, inside everything you love, is poison.
It’s about a mean world with mean people in it. That’s it. Have no hope. Have no love. Almost nothing you want will never come to you and if it does, it will be the palest version of it. You’ll take that first bite of the apple, munch away happily, but when you look back to size up your next bite, you’ll see half of a worm wiggling back at you. The message is, inside everything you love, is poison.
Answers to the question of where certain people or certain messages or certain prophetic dreams came from (or where the vanished people went) will likely never be answered (thank you, Mr Lindelof – your consistency is your only redeeming quality). All that is left to consider, to value, is the path to those non-answers. And sure, one can find value in the journey. But that journey is a hateful one. And… and yes, I’m going to question the character of anyone who considers themselves a fan of this show. It’s akin to being a fan of road-kill… while it’s being killed. It’s like being a fan of car crashes; you don’t give a damn about the occupants, it just makes you feel better that you’re not in one of the cars AND you get a show, with maybe some fire. You like fire, don’t ya, you sociopath!?
It’s dog-gone awful.
*(All statistics were made-up at the time of writing of the article)
It’s dog-gone awful.
*(All statistics were made-up at the time of writing of the article)
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