The Leftovers: Solace for Tired Feet

August 11, 2014 9:09 PM - Season 1, Episode 7

After learning his father has escaped the psychiatric hospital, Kevin orders an APB to track him down. Jill attempts to break an endurance record. Holed up in Indiana, a disillusioned Tom makes an unsettling discovery.
posted by pwally (6 comments total)

The ending of this show is basically going to be Jacob's Ladder, isn't it? I could totally be happy with a scenario in which the rapture never happened, and all this stuff is going on in a fever dream he's having. Maybe he got shot in the line of duty by Snuff Guy?

I dunno. That's probably not it, but I think that's what I would do if I had to finish it at this point.
posted by jbickers at 1:45 PM on August 12, 2014

This week is more of a mixed bag than last. The fridge scene was great, I liked the back & forth between the GR & Rev. Matt's crew. And the conversation at the end: "She's fucking your ex." "So?" Plus some nice scenery touches; the boarded up house, the insurance ad offering help with Departed claims & a graffiti shadow on a wall near the other couple's room. The synchronicity between the mailboxes was a bit on the nose for me; if we ever see anything conclusive about a greater pattern having an objective reality, no matter how shrouded in mystery, I'm done & not looking back.
posted by scalefree at 10:17 PM on August 12, 2014

HBO renewed The Leftovers for another season the other day, coincidentally on Tom Perrotta's birthday (full disclosure: he's a friend).
posted by carmicha at 6:24 AM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Now I want to know how many pregnant ladies are waiting to give birth to the messiah.
posted by amapolaroja at 12:02 PM on August 18, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm a little late but I'm still firmly on The Leftovers Train. Glad to hear it got renewed, because maybe that means they'll just keep the plates spinning rather than trying to come to some ill-advised conclusion. I really like Nora Durst, and it's nice to see her happy and sexy after her crazy conference week. I also like where they've taken Tom and Christine's story, the lurking sex cult horror we all were waiting for. I'm a little more nervous about the National Geographic / crazy grandpa line, because it leads to them trying to have some tidy explanation which I think will ruin the magic of the show. But so far it hasn't veered too far into The Stupid.

Before I go digging through my NatGeo archives, has someone taken apart what that issue is and what its significance might be? I'm playing right into exactly what I hate about shows like this — the magazine will end up being The Stupid — but I can't help myself.
posted by Nelson at 9:55 PM on August 19, 2014

This Vox article goes into great detail about the National Geographic issue, if you want. Reading it too closely reveals the frustration of these mystery TV shows... Is it relevant because of the Minoans? Or the underwater spiders? Or Cairo? Maybe it's the funny bear on the cover! Truthfully it could be all or none of these things, it's the writer's whim. Perhaps they don't know either. The next episode (which has already aired) is titled Cairo, so that seems like a fairly strong connection.
posted by Nelson at 8:23 AM on August 20, 2014 [4 favorites]