Spool Five

Lindelof, HBO, 2014-2017

Part 2

Part 1

What’s Next

As I mentioned in the initial post, the show persistently subverts the audience’s perspective by portraying both sides of a divide - between the religious and the secular - as being both ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. At the outset, this divide is staged in a heightened, dramatic fashion. The Guilty Remnant, dressed in white, literally clash, in a public space, with the ’normal’ townspeople. Again, although the trope is familiar - an ‘outside’ force encroaching upon a small community and threatening its order - its presentation is not. The initial, visual distinctions between ‘believers’ and ’non-believers’ soon gives way to ambiguity, introduced primarily through the shows central conceit - that 2% of the world population have mysteriously disappeared. If this is the case, then why should we side with the townspeople who try to continue as if nothing has happened? Why should we buy into secular forms of rationality and explanation, when they can’t account for the event that has just occurred?

Part 1

Lindelof, HBO, 2014-2017

No Miracles in Miracle

When I was an undergraduate, I took an English Literature class. One section of the module was on Macbeth, and the lectures were given by the Donegal playwright Frank McGuinness. He opened the series of lectures by announcing that Macbeth begins by asking us a single question: Do you believe in magic?

Lindelof, HBO, 2014-2017

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The Horses of Disaster

Indroduction

The Leftovers is about a lot of things. Too many things to write about here, unfortunately. Nora is my favorite character in the show, and Season 3 was my favorite season the first time I watched it. In attempting to write these posts, though, I ended up focusing mostly on Kevin, and on Season 2. Actually, much of the content for this review derives from the end of Season 2, when Kevin’s ‘dies’ two times. So, maybe this should just be called ‘an account of that really weird moment in that one American TV show’.