Like pretty much every episode of The Leftovers, this episode exists to show us he mental states of
people
Which are pretty much obvious anyway, but hey let’s have
an entire episode of random encounters and mood music so we can emphasise what
these emotions are all so we can have an hour long episode in which virtually
nothing substantive happens so we can say, yet again, how the Depature left everyone
in emotional pieces. Again.
This is what we’ve been doing for 2 seasons and barring a
whole lot of Kevin hallucinations, not much has happened
This episode is all about Nora. Nora, she who lost nearly
her entire family to the Departure and has now become a hard nosed fraud
investigator for the Department of the Departed, ready to cut through all the
myths and legends that have risen up about it
So when the old guy who has been up a tower since the
Departure began finally falls off that tower and dies she and Kevin are quick
to investigate. His wife, clinging to her faith and desire to believe, insists
the man Departed. Kevin is happy to leave it at that because it makes everyone
happy and peaceful while she gets right in there, forces Matt to admit he
helped the wife cover up the death and they buried the body in secret. Then she
has that body dug up and takes photos of it
She’s also pretty good at shooting down any of the other
fictions that are rising up. Including the idea that Kevin is a messiah which
she mocks gloriously (much to Kevin’s discomfort) and even has an awesomely
effective moment when she praises John for the book. But she praises it as “exciting”.
She’s praising it as a work of fiction.
Nora has no time for fiction and lies and even
self-delusion around the Departure. This is underscored when someone contacts
her offering her a means to contact her departed children. She’s furious and
gets her boss to fund her to follow this up intending to expose it
While still hoping. This tiny, desperate hope that maybe
this would be true – that tiny hope that keeps hurting her.
She follows it up and finds a man who is very like her. He
lost several members of his family as well – and he looks like he’s a true
believer in this method even as Nora believes he is a victim of a fraud. He
angrily shoots her down when she tries to psychoanalyse him – because he lost
all those members of his family and it was completely arbitrary. This is a
major element of the Leftovers and
the Departure – there’s NO REASON. It’s completely random and there’s apparently
nothing you can possibly do to avoid it or figure out why. He angrily tells her
that what he’s doing is to try and gain some control
Obviously this is a parallel. Because Nora storming
around and shutting down any fallacies around the departure is pretty much the
same thing. She is seeking her own control – putting the Depature in the past
and slamming everything that may change that.
She checks the testimonials of the many people who have
taken this means to join their family and it’s painful – either seeing all
these people who were desperate to see
their families and were defrauded, or all these people who actually managed to
be reunited with their loved ones. Of course Nora is deeply affected by this
While visiting she watches a playground full of children
while clearly torn up about it. She also visits Erika for booze, tramlining and
talking about loss and how Nora still feels she is falling apart after the loss
of her children. Erika lays it out simply – she had Evie to bury when she died,
but Nora didn’t. Nora had no closure
She also explains her broken arm – she did it herself to cover her new tattoo. It was a tattoo of her children’s names: but then she realised this would be something people talked about forever – she would always be asked about and have a display of her lost children forever. She would always be Nora Cused, the woman who lost her entire family.
And it’s all powerful and meaningful and deep but my gods
we KNOOOOOOW. We know this. This has been established by Nora over and over and
over again for 2 seasons and we’re having yet another episode of excellently
acted, very emotional, very well written and well done to not actually advance
the plot so much
Thus established, Nora returns home and she takes that
picture she took of the corpse and publically displays it. Including front of
her grieving wife.
This is Nora, a woman who has lost so many she loved who
refuses to hope and is angry at anything that gives people false hope. She’s
angry about all the lies and the deceptions and the frauds and even the
self-delusion people have. Because she still has that crumb of hope and it
still hurts her and she’s trying to get past the narrative of “Nora Cursed” the
woman who lost all of her family and move on to a new life – but she can’t. And
all those little hopes and delusions will keep pulling her back, because, as
was clear with Erika, she doesn’t have closure. She had no body to bury. She
still has that hope
But she’s also brutal – because she came through fire and she kind of has no patience for those who were singed. Because she doesn’t really see the collateral damage in her quest to stop all the lies and the false hope.
And this episode did a great job of showing all that –
but we already knew this, didn’t we? We’d already seen this?
When she comes home she also runs into Zack who tells
her, somewhat randomly, about his opinions on being adopted and also finally
explained what happened to Lily (her mother wanted to reclaim custody). She
also finds out about Kevin’s self-suffocation thing. She doesn’t over-react
about this: she doesn’t even demand he explain. She knows that they’re all
hurting and dealing with it in different ways. She doesn’t expect him - or
herself – to be all healthy here
Which is why she bursts into peals of laughter when Kevin
suggests they have a baby. She has no illusion about how ready they are for
that
So now that’s all the character development done (again)
it’s time for the plot – she gets a call from this person purporting to be able
to send her to her children and they tell her she has to go to Australia. Which
she agrees to and Kevin wants to come along
So to Australia where we have a weather report apparently
predicting hellfire, locusts and blood (I’m assuming this is normal for
Australia), a police chief who is a bit of an arsehole and runs over kangeroos
(because why not) and is kidnapped by a bunch of women who drown him (also, no
no no need for the c-slur. Really, this edgy nonsense is unnecessary, bigoted and
encourages the perpetration of these words as acceptable. There are so many
alternatives that don’t have the weight of this word)
They’re trying to drown him because he’s a police chief named Kevin so it’s time to tie him to a board and lower his head into the water. It was not eaten by a crocodile, stung by a jelly fish, bitten by a sea snake or savaged by a koala. So I don’t think this is being filmed in Australia.
We also see Kevin’s dad has moved to Australia as well
Look I get this episode is so incredibly powerful and
emotional and thematic. This is something that The Leftovers is so very good at. So incredibly good at it. It is,
I can’t and won’t for a second deny that. The horror of the Departure, the
uncertainty around it, everything be forever in doubt and the emotional
wreckage it left in its wake – it’s all so very powerful. But it has been very
powerful for 2 seasons now and I need something to go with this powerful
background.
