The Leftovers: Pilot: The Old World Is Gone

June 30, 2014 9:39 AM - Season 1, Episode 1

Three years after the abrupt disappearance of 2% of the world's population, what happens next?

In setting up the series, the first episode raises many questions.

What happened to the 2%? What's the connection between those that disappeared? Gary Busey? Really?

How many cults sprung up from this sudden disappearance?
- The followers of Wayne: Who is this Wayne character? Just what kind of healing is he offering? What's with the harem?
- The Guilty Remnant: Is there anything creepier than chain-smoking mutes who stalk the locals? How does silent, peaceful demonstration incite more hatred and violence than the Westboro Baptist Church in this small New York town?

Why have the dogs gone feral? And how long before they start attacking humans?

What's with the deer/stag imagery lately (see also True Detective and Hannibal)?

Why does this unexplained event somehow bring about the most ridiculous version of every parent's nightmare vision of a teenage party? What are the other options in that spin-the-bottle app?

Have the police forgotten how to be police in the wake of this event? Or has this new society decided that good communication is optional?

Who trashed the Garveys' house? And when Jill returned to the house afterwards, how did she miss that destruction, but manage to notice the shattered glass on one of the photos on the stairway wall?

posted by MsVader (44 comments total)

Interesting that Pope Benedict was among the disappeared. He's been Pope Emeritus for quite a while now.

I also love how Garvey thought to ask the deer "were you in my house?" That does make sense considering the damage in the kitchen seemed like someone just went nuts in there.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 9:58 AM on June 30, 2014

I can't figure out how much of what's mentioned above is dream/hallucination or reality. I'm sure that's intentional but it makes for difficult viewing. For example, I guess he didn't actually hit a deer with his car, but maybe a deer did get into his kitchen and destroy it? And if the deer-car accident wasn't real, was the scene at the end, with the deer being taken down by the dogs, also a dream?
posted by chowflap at 10:01 AM on June 30, 2014

Also I want to know what the Guilty Remnant are guilty of... or believe they are guilty of.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 10:02 AM on June 30, 2014

I imagine they're guilty because they are the Left Behind (so therefore not innocent enough to be raptured). But I am totally conjecturing here.
posted by chowflap at 10:05 AM on June 30, 2014

I'm not sure why the level of violence in this bothered me more than it does in GoT. And, the instances of violence by/to animals really bothered me. I've read two Perrota novels (not this one) and liked them, I like the cast, and I'm intrigued, but this really bothered me after watching it. I'm not quite sure what I think.
posted by gladly at 10:22 AM on June 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

I wasn't going to mention the Pope thing, but it really wrenched my suspension of disbelief badly. I can see both science and religion, after three years, throwing up their hands and saying "Shit happens, we guess". But NO WAY most Christians (even non-Catholics) are going to do that if a freakin' Pope disappears too.

I can't figure out how much of what's mentioned above is dream/hallucination or reality.

Heh, watching the "This season on The Leftovers" preview, wasn't it totally obvious that it was made up of like 75% dream sequences? Oof.

Who is this Wayne character?

I was SO EXCITED that Patterson Joseph appeared in a US-set show, because it meant there was a chance we'd see a return of the bizarro American accent he used in Jekyll. Alas, no...though he did give us a little shout-out, for which I was very grateful.

Why does this unexplained event somehow bring about the most ridiculous version of every parent's nightmare vision of a teenage party?

I feel like going forward this could be an "out" that the show uses too often: "Hey, that party was totally unrealistic and basically the ludicrous thing we've ever seen and we suspect you threw it in only for lazy shock value." "No, you don't get it: this is just a reflection of how much the world has changed since the mysterious event three years ago! Now teenagers have apps that let them erotically burn each other!"

Though, if you want a single image to summarize the entire pilot, you could worse than "a teenager dispiritedly jerks off while another teenager goes through the motions of choking him, a single tear gliding down her cheek."
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:52 AM on June 30, 2014 [7 favorites]

I've seen worse pilots and I'm gonna keep watching but I don't understand why everything seems to have gone to shit so badly because 2% of the world disappeared. If that actually happened I can't see how I'd feel or behave any differently than I do right now unless, obviously, one of my close family were among the disappeared. But as the TV guy points out, 2% means that most families do not have a member of their (close) family among the disappeared.

I dunno, maybe it's because I already recognize the universe is arbitrary and capricious but I don't get it.
posted by Justinian at 12:08 PM on June 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

I am processing my thoughts about the show, but a few highlights:

1. I guess the party is indicative of the hopelessness than teens are really feeling. The adults want to keep a normal facade on everything, but just below the surface, the kids are all "whatevs."

2. I don't understand the significance of the baby disappearing. Did all babies vanish? Why just some? Was this kid baptized in a particular religion that his mother didn't belong to?

3. I sincerely hope that Amy Brenneman gets to do more than gesticulate and smoke and stare. She deserves more than that. (Full disclosure: she is almost certainly a distant relation on my mother's side, so I am somewhat biased.)

4. Condy Rice? Seriously?

5. Peekskill!

6. I am giving this show a very short leash on the weird/fantastic/myth-building crap. No way am I going to watch another version of "Lost."
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 12:25 PM on June 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm getting the sense that the GR folks select the people they stalk based on some perceived transgression - whether it's one they want someone to atone for, or things they're atoning for themselves, or both, I'm not sure yet.

When the woman in the bar asked Garvey, "where were you" and it cuts to the shot of him having sex with....someone....and then later connect that Lori of the GR is his wife, you're wondering:

1) Was he cheating on Lori and that's why she left to join the GR?
2) Is Liv Tyler's character eaten up with guilt about stuff, and she's turning to the GR?
2a) Was Liv Tyler's character the one Garvey was screwing?

I suspect it's gonna be something along those lines.

Finally - while the pilot was a bit uneven, I'll give them MIGHTY props for their use of music and sound. It was really excellent - the music was perfect scene by scene and gave the show a surreal quality that reminded me of Donnie Darko.

Looking forward to the next couple of episodes.
posted by Thistledown at 12:26 PM on June 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh - another thing - I was really amazed at how much I hated the GR folks, because I am not prone to irrational things like that, but I easily fell for what the show wanted from me. And that was more than a little surprising.
posted by Thistledown at 12:27 PM on June 30, 2014

I don't understand why everything seems to have gone to shit so badly because 2% of the world disappeared

Same for me. It would certainly be a huge international pre-occupation and would raise a lot ofquestions, but I kinda feel like it wouldn't fundamentally change things. Maybe more religion I guess. But people do tend to move on, don't they? After 3 years?

Also is it me or does Liv Tyler always seem like she's high?
posted by Hoopo at 2:53 PM on June 30, 2014

It sounds to me like the people who disappeared were randomly distributed across the population. That doesn't sound like a religious event to me. But I suppose to someone predisposed to see it as religious they could justify it somehow.
posted by Justinian at 4:03 PM on June 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

The mysteries of this show are really intriguing and I'm finding myself already invested in the show. So much potential for some really cool shit!

However, I should prepare myself for the inevitable Lost-style shiny god-cave ending. From the worst ending ever, at least I learned this: there's just no way to resolve that much awesome fantastical mystery.
posted by MsVader at 5:20 PM on June 30, 2014

Man, so far this is instantly disappointing.

Thistledown: "Was he cheating on Lori and that's why she left to join the GR?"

Which would be a really lame and boring and a stupid revelation pretty much in keeping with the tone set by this first episode - oh, the good guy was cheating at the exact moment when the big thing happened, one act of betrayal tragically tearing their family apart, blah blah blah. We have seen that stupid plot a billion trillion times before, which is why we need less than a second of flashback for it to telegraph clearly as OH OH HE'S CHEATING. Lazy, bad writing. At this point, it would be subversive for a TV show to show a guy having sex with his actual wife, because apparently that's not a thing that really happens in the world.

So I really hope it isn't that cheating thing.

Honestly, there are much more interesting possibilities right in front of the writers' faces. I was really annoyed that it turned out his wife was actually in the cult - because a more interesting thing would have been for him to be in the midst of sex with his wife when she disappeared. Then the moral dilemma in that moment in the bar - how can he tell people where he was at that moment if he was cheating? - would have become much more strange and difficult in an interesting way - how can he tell people his wife, whom he loves and presumably wants to honor in memory, was in the midst of sex when she disappeared? Could he tell his children? The authorities? Certainly not strangers. Some people certainly could tell others with no troubles; others might not be able to. It's interesting in itself, wondering how people make that decision.

But no, as far as we know, he was cheating or whatever, which makes him bog-standard good-guy-who-made-tragic-mistake, and thus far we seem to be in the midst of his self-discovery as a primitive or something. Which is... boring, because we've seen it before in pretty much every single thriller show and movie in the past few decades.

computech_apolloniajames: "I am giving this show a very short leash on the weird/fantastic/myth-building crap. No way am I going to watch another version of 'Lost.'"

Or another "Prometheus," for that matter. I am already pretty much fed up. The only character movement is with characters that are flat and uninspired (which is to say, pretty much only the Chief) and all the women just sit around smoking, talking robotically, and staring at walls. Which is annoying, because this is an interesting premise, even if it has been done a few times recently with various variations. There was a French film that was turned into a television show, both called "Les Revenants" (the title of the film was translated as "They Came Back," the show as "The Returned") that is similar in premise: on one day, millions of dead people around the world suddenly reappear. The film was understated but (I thought) quite good, particularly in being an intriguing sort of set piece; I am told the television show, which I haven't seen yet, is much better.

This premise, people disappearing, seems like an interesting thing to play with. There is much room for doing so. But they haven't at all - they've only messed around with flat characters that don't draw you in even a little bit, while hoarding the premise as some sort of secret that I guess maybe they're going to reveal later.

It'd be cool if this were a world where actual people had actual discussions and actual arguments about what they're actually feeling and about what is actually going on, but the world Lindelof and Perrotta are writing obviously isn't that kind of world. It's a blatantly flat TV-world where people just kind of experience things in whatever way the plot needs them to, without thinking too hard or talking it out or experiencing too deeply or doing anything that seems too real.

The only thing that will save this is if every single mystery they've set up is explained completely in the next episode and the show is allowed to move to a place beyond those. But somehow I doubt that will happen.

This feels like it's going to be the same old mistake we're all worried it'll be.
posted by koeselitz at 5:36 PM on June 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

I loved the book and was looking forward to this and was really disappointed. My problems with it were mainly that it was insanely heavy-handed and overdramatic yet also somehow boring. Plus, is it really that hard to find actual teenagers to play the teenagers? One of those girls had wrinkles. I don't know. I'll give it another episode.
posted by something something at 6:45 PM on June 30, 2014

The daughter is thankfully an actual teenager. Her friend is older, though.
posted by Justinian at 6:51 PM on June 30, 2014

computech_appoloniajames: "2. I don't understand the significance of the baby disappearing. Did all babies vanish? Why just some? Was this kid baptized in a particular religion that his mother didn't belong to?"

That scene was there to serve two purposes:

A.) to show that humans disappeared, regardless of race or age or religion or gender or anything else. How better to say, "This wasn't a religious event" than to show a baby disappearing? I'd say this is backed up by how the next person (that we see) disappeared is a father that was apparently pushing a shopping cart. Innocent baby, man old enough to be a father - two sides. Anyone could vanish.

B.) to show that the Event was soundless and instantaneous. Baby is crying, so you can hear it and know that it's in existence even when off-camera, and then all the sudden it's gone. Same with the scene with the kid and the rolling shopping cart, looking for his dad.

I'd put money down that that's it. There's no greater significance to the baby.

Thistledown: "When the woman in the bar asked Garvey, "where were you" and it cuts to the shot of him having sex with....someone....and then later connect that Lori of the GR is his wife, you're wondering:
1) Was he cheating on Lori and that's why she left to join the GR?"

When Garvey is climbing the stairs and looks at the picture of his family and shatters it with his elbow the fracture in the glass is over the face of the mother. This is to keep us from knowing who the mother is. Likewise, when he's asked, "Where were you?" we see him in bed with someone. At this point - based on how he's acting, the empty spot at the dinner table, how his daughter's acting - we're supposed to assume his wife disappeared during the Event. How messed up would that be? You're having sex with someone and poof? They're gone? Total mind-melter.

He doesn't want to talk about where he was during the Event because he was having a perfectly normal day, having sex with his wife, who didn't disappear ... at least not that instant. Turns out she couldn't deal with the reality of what happened and left to go join a cult.

But what was Garvey to say in the bar? "I was having sex with my estranged wife (who I clearly still love and miss) who is now a cult member and you just reminded me of how sweet that moment was for me?" Better to just brush that question aside and keep going.
posted by komara at 7:32 PM on June 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

(but my perception of Garvey and his problem is filtered through the lens of Hurricane Katrina. When asked, "Oh, man, where were you when it happened?" all I can think about is how I was able to evacuate to a safe place. I didn't lose any loved ones, I have all my photo albums and keepsakes, my health is good ... I just lost some stuff is all. How can I even pretend that I suffered when there were people who lost their entire houses, their entire families, or their lives? I feel like Garvey is processing things the same way - he didn't technically lose a loved one during the event, in fact he was enjoying himself, safe and sound. It's been three years and he's probably learned that this is never the right answer to share with someone who brings up the question because there's a good chance they lost far more than he ever did. Even if his wife has joined a cult she's still alive.)
posted by komara at 7:38 PM on June 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

About the deer imagery, in the scene where the police chief is returning the dead dog, just before he leaves he looks over at the dog's owner's wife's front yard. At first I thought he was just thinking of stashing the dog there, but did the stuffed deer that he saw when he first walked up there disappear? Or was that actually a live deer and it ran away?

I'm on the fence with this one. I didn't love all the acting in it, but the plot's got me intrigued enough to stick around for another episode or two (but I liked Lost and didn't feel too let down by its ending). And it does have some actors I really like in it, like Michael Gaston and the auto dealer from Friday Night Lights.

I didn't get the impression that everything had gone completely to shit because of the disappearance of 2% of the populace, society seemed to be working in more or less the same way, just with everyone kind of freaked out. The "Heroes Day" celebration did seem like an incredibly realistic depiction of how America deals with national tragedies: terrible art, appeals to patriotism and hagiography of the victims, genuinely heartfelt speeches, then let's all go beat up some people we don't understand.
posted by whir at 8:35 PM on June 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm giving the premise the benefit of the doubt. Sure, two percent of Earth's population doesn't seem like much, but I can believe people would lose their minds, especially in America.

America has long been prone to odd-ball mysticisms. Something like a few million people just vanishing into thin air one afternoon? If anything I think the country in this story handled it better than our real country would in 2014. The way things are these days, we'd be lucky to keep the lights on in the aftermath I think.

The one unrealistic thing is no real police department in the U.S. would put up with the Guilty Remnant or whatever the silent people are called for more than about 18 hours.

P.S. I am so, so very tired of the inappropriate use hand-held camera shots.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:48 PM on June 30, 2014

2% isn't enough to impair the structure of institutions, no. But look (in the US) at the changes wrought by 9/11. That was only about 3,000 people. 2% is about two thousand 9/11's in the US alone, and in a way that dovetails with some of the Western world's more extreme religious ideas. I don't have any trouble at all imagining that it would be a less civil, more lawless place. There's still a chief of police, but it's a less "due process" kind of job.

My problem is that there no one I like or care about, and when there's not, the plot or setting have to be very well done indeed. I'm not ready to give up yet, but this show isn't getting a lot of rope from me.
posted by tyllwin at 8:51 PM on June 30, 2014 [5 favorites]

What tyllwin wrote. 2% is a small number, but it's 2% of everyone, everywhere and, more importantly, it undermines everyone's comprehension of reality. All of the religious folk who might accept the supernatural will find that the lack of conformance to their particular beliefs will be deeply challenging. All of us who aren't believers will find that what appears to be a supernatural event is deeply challenging. This event conforms to almost no one's beliefs/expectations. (Some believers in alien abductions excepted.) It's directly witnessed by enough people that everyone will know someone who experienced it firsthand. Yeah, the universe is arbitrary and capricious but not like this.

One reason I think that some people are having trouble with the premise that this would be so socially destabilizing is because of genre. When we read/watch genre that includes the supernatural, we experience it with radically altered expectations. Just as we do with, say, murder mysteries or police procedurals. Realism would include the disruptive emotional trauma surrounding a murder, but the audience doesn't want to keep experiencing the horrible reality of informing a loved one that someone was just brutally murdered. With the supernatural, even those who are inclined to "believe" that the supernatural exists would be hugely upset at actual experience of it.

In Stephen King's It, he had one young character who simply couldn't deal with the reality of a supernatural monster. He had a memorable speech of "don't you guys understand what this means?" I've seen that reaction depicted only very occasionally since, and one reason why writers almost never include it is because it in some sense challenges the audience's suspension of disbelief because it's more realistic. It challenges it because it forces the audience to recognize that the fantastical premise is fantastical instead of accepting it as given. We sort of relish the surprise of a character being challenged by the existence of the supernatural for the first time, but we expect them to quickly get over it and get on with solving the problem.

Genre has led us to expect that if 2% of the world's population literally disappeared into thin air, that most everyone would just accept that this unexplained thing happened and move on, excepting those who were directly affected. But societies of humans don't actually work like that. Much smaller events have often had profound social consequences; one that directly touches almost everyone in some sense, and which challenges everyone's conception of reality, would be transformative. But some of the audience isn't going to like this because that's not how people in genre normally act. Usually, characters in genre just react to the proximate — supernatural antagonists (or in science-fiction, alien invasions or whatever) are simple immediate, practical problems to be solved, not existential psychological and cultural challenges.

That's not to say that, superficially, in the real world in the aftermath of such an event, most people don't just deal with the proximate and mostly continue living their daily lives. That's true, too. People don't immediately drop what they're doing and riot in the streets, either. Instead, they're initially stunned, then they try to go about their lives, but the event works its way through people's psychologies and through the culture and small cultural and personal changes accumulate. In some cases that means changed directions and differences in quantity, in other cases it causes an eventual discontinuity where something changes all at once.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:33 PM on June 30, 2014 [29 favorites]

The Guilty Remnant have a website.
posted by homunculus at 10:39 PM on June 30, 2014 [5 favorites]

Some contemporary accounts about the alleged aliens who crash-landed at Area 51 in 1947 hold that they were, in fact, Russian teenage aviators in some kind of tricked out small aircraft. The theory goes that these kids were starved and/or subjected to plastic surgery so they would resemble pop culture depictions of Martians, etc. The goal: destabilize the US which, based on the reaction to the War of the Worlds broadcast, would promptly suffer social and economic meltdown upon learning of the "invasion" by an inherently superior species. I've also seen accounts that claim that the US instantly understood the intent because we had similar plans.
posted by carmicha at 7:57 AM on July 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

I completely agree with Ivan. I think the disappearance of two fucking percent of the world's population in an instant, for unexplained reasons, would be wildly destabilizing.

I'm reminded of the pilot episode of a show with a somewhat similar premise, Flash Forward. There, the whole world simultaneously blacks out for a couple of minutes, tens of millions die as a result, and at the end of the episode, one of the main characters (a doctor) manages to make it home and just sigh that she had a really awful day. No way, man! She wouldn't have made it home given that everyone driving a car at the time got into a wreck, and she'd have been working till she dropped to save lives. But it also would have been waaay more than an ordinary bad day. Infinitely worse. Incomprehensibly worse. But as Ivan says, TV almost never shows us that.

Which is why I kind of liked that Leftovers skipped ahead three years, because I think conveying the mass panic would not have worked well on TV. That said, I have a lot of the same complaints others have here (the teenage party was just eye-rolling), and I thought that calling it "Heroes Day" was beyond idiotic. Wouldn't people call it "Remembrance Day" or something like that? But I'm still willing to give this show a bit of a chance. But short leash, indeed.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:50 PM on July 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

By the way, that Guilty Remnant website appears to be connected to the book rather than the TV show, so it has what might be considered minor spoilers for stuff that we haven't learned about yet on the show. I trust that all of this show's threads will be considered "show only" and that people won't introduce stuff from the novel, yes?

Also, I thought it was possible that the police chief was both cheating *and* whoever he was having sex with disappeared on him. That would make it super weird. But I suspect the show isn't going be that creative.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:04 PM on July 1, 2014

I liked that they got the "In case of rapture this car will be unmanned" joke out of the way right off the bat.
posted by fuse theorem at 7:00 AM on July 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

Also, I thought it was possible that the police chief was both cheating *and* whoever he was having sex with disappeared on him. That would make it super weird. But I suspect the show isn't going be that creative.

It did show a flashback of him running through a backyard naked, with the implication that he'd had a psychotic break, no? I thought the implication that his mistress disappeared during sex was pretty clear.
posted by chrillsicka at 8:05 AM on July 2, 2014

The guy they depicted running naked was the chief's father (he says this to the lady he tries to return the dog to, IIRC).
posted by whir at 8:23 AM on July 2, 2014

whir: "The guy they depicted running naked was the chief's father (he says this to the lady he tries to return the dog to, IIRC)."

Well, that's what he claimed. I don't know that I believe him. The shot of the naked guy was from directly behind, after all, so we quite deliberately couldn't see his face.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:40 AM on July 2, 2014

Yeah, I got the feeling the Chief was lying about it being his father. I think it's a good bet it will turn out to have been him.
posted by Justinian at 9:00 AM on July 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

What I want to know is did the Feds bail out the insurance industry?
posted by Gyan at 12:00 PM on July 3, 2014 [3 favorites]

Can't remember if the naked guy in the running scene had the full-back tattoo like the chief clearly does.

Can't believe I didn't make the possible connection there.
posted by Thistledown at 1:45 PM on July 3, 2014

I didn't think the naked running guy was as fit as the Chief, either as he was shown "today" or during the sexytimes flashback. Speaking of the sexytimes, did he have the full back tattoo then?
posted by carmicha at 8:22 PM on July 3, 2014

I haven't read the book; I inferred from the scene of Jill picking glass out of the picture frame that her sister was one of the 2% and that was why Lori joined the GR.
posted by brujita at 2:25 AM on July 5, 2014

I thought there were only four people in the broken picture: mom, dad, son, and daughter. Did I mis-see that?
posted by Night_owl at 4:01 PM on July 5, 2014

I thought it was another girl with blond hair.

I did see in the wiki synopsis for the novel that Matt and Lori have an older son away at school.
posted by brujita at 5:57 PM on July 5, 2014

brujita: “I did see in the wiki synopsis for the novel that Matt and Lori have an older son away at school.”

That's homeslice that drove the congressman in the van and bought candy for one of the girls in the cult compound, no?
posted by ob1quixote at 6:02 PM on July 5, 2014

Yeah, that's the son.
posted by Justinian at 6:26 PM on July 5, 2014

If I had to describe this I would say it's "insultingly symbolic." I didn't expect much from Lindelof, so it's not surprising really. So many bad, cringeworthy scenes. So much bad acting. Such an unrealistic and hammy execution of the premise.
posted by codacorolla at 8:23 AM on July 8, 2014

I just find it unbelievable that someone would cheat on Amy Brenneman
posted by fullerine at 4:58 AM on July 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Okay, i'm late to the boat on this one but over the last few days i've begun to catch up.

I agree with just about everything you guys have written here, but there's one positive aspect of it that I think has been neglected. And that is how fun it is to try and describe this show to people.

I highly recommend it as a sort of cousin to Cleolinda's Horrify The Twilight Noob ethos.

(My attempt after the pilot went like this:

My buddy, E:
But WHY?

There's a million fantastic shows out there. Drama, comedy, horror, you name it.

Why waste time on another Lost clone?

P:
Because this one combines VERY SELF-SERIOUS TONE with the wackiest bullshit you've ever seen.

And I love nothing so much as seeing people taking batshittery very, very, very seriously.

P:
There is an Ominous Magical Housebreaking Deer.

And the most outlandish teen party in the world, where they are BURNING EACH OTHER FOR FUN.

There is a Magical Black Man (trope bingo!)! And a Silent Cult!

OH, and an awesomely rude, sulky teen who elbows bitches in the mouth and then calls them cunts to her teacher, because sure!

And this is all presented with the gravitas of a Schindler's List.

E:
Really? They're presenting all that with a serious tone?

Even Hannibal has a ton of humor.

P:
Yup. It's kind of amazing.

There is ZERO humour here.)
posted by pseudonymph at 5:45 AM on July 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

I was SO EXCITED that Patterson Joseph appeared in a US-set show, because it meant there was a chance we'd see a return of the bizarro American accent yt he used in Jekyll. Alas, no...though he did give us a little shout-out, for which I was very grateful.

Paterson Joseph's American accent was so bad in Jekyll, it was practically an act of war.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:43 AM on September 9, 2014

Anybody know why Wayne lifts up his shirt at about 42:40?
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:43 PM on April 17, 2017