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The Leftovers S2 |OT| We're Going To Texas - [Renewed for 3rd and final season]

I

Inferno313

Banned
I gotta say, as a video editor myself, the editing in this season is gorgeous at times. Anytime they cut in a Malick style flashback that lasts just frames long, I get giddy.
 
B

bodyofanamerican

Member
There's one thing that I keep coming back to. There's no way they do another "entire town vs. GR" confrontation to end this season again, right?

I think the most straight forward theory is Evie and her friends are suicide bombers that blow up the bridge, but I can't imagine it's going to be that simple.

Man, they've got a LOT of ground to cover in the next episode.
- Murphys finding out Evie's alive
- John vs. Kevin
- What does Tom do with his knowledge of Evie being alive
- Revelation of whatever Meg's actual plan for Jarden is
 
B

belushy

Banned
So did I miss what Meg's mom said to her, or did they not reveal that? I'm assuming it was what Matt had put on sins paper in the first season?
 
O

Ogni-XR21

Member
Great episode.

I was always wondering if there was gonna be a Meg centered episode since Liv Tyler was still so prominently featured in the opening credits and she was in one scene before. The GR story has turned out to be much more interesting than I was expecting.
 
Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
The wheels are in motion that's for sure. Meg is Patti on steroids. That conversation between her and Matt was chills. Finale is going to be something else. I hope Tommy manages to get out of Dodge though.

Also called it that the girls weren't departed. Though getting the sense of the plan, they're going to be real soon
 
L

Lumpy Onion

Member
Great episode. Meg made me incredibly nervous. Even though she hasn't been in the season much at all I think she left a big impression. I can't imagine anything pleasant will come from her scheme. For some reason I imagined the bridge would get blown up at some point the first time I heard that it was the only road into Miracle. The twist about the girls was pretty satisfying too. I'm glad someone mentioned the cricket John was searching for in the house because I had totally forgotten about that bit. I'm thinking I will be re-watching S2 to refresh me for the finale.

Great use of music as well. That version of "The Promise" gave me chills. This is probably the best show on TV IMO.
 
E

Erigu

Member
digitalrelic said:
I actually think that this show is differentiating itself from LOST in one very important way: it's actually answering the questions put forth.
Click to expand...
Lost also "answered" some questions. It's just that most of those answers were unsatisfactory (quite underwhelming or plain nonsensical).

It's not really different here. "The girls were part of the Guilty Remnants." Okay. So we can now ask the same question we could ask for any member of the Guilty Remnants, really: "why?" I mean, that group makes just as little sense now as it ever did.
(And it looks like the season finale will once again be about one of their pranks. What a winning formula.)


TheOddOne said:
- Variety: ‘The Leftovers’ Boss Damon Lindelof Explains That Shocking Twist.
Click to expand...

Damon Lindelof said:
[...] we wanted to tell a story about Miracle, and we wanted to talk about what would it be like to live in a town that it is deemed holy and it attracts all these people who are looking for salvation or relief or answers. You just live there and you see these people come in with wristbands every day searching and searching and searching. But you don’t know what it is that spared your town in the first place. And let’s say your town is just as f—ed up as everywhere else is. So it’s exceptional for the fact that nobody disappeared from it, but when you look around you’re kind of like “Why? I don’t know why this is. I don’t know what’s so special about where I live.” What kind of emotional effect would that have on you?
Click to expand...
"Exactly the kind of effect that would be convenient to us writers, as it happens: you would join the Guilty Remnants and be part of their new prank! What a coincidence!"

Damon Lindelof said:
We’re like, “Yeah, they faked it.” And obviously this is a horrible thing to do — it goes well beyond a teenage prank, to put your parents through this. Not to mention you’d need a significant degree of resources in order to pull it off. Where would you go in a media[-saturated] culture? How could you even disappear? How big of a thing would this be? When we started kind of kicking the tires [of this concept, an idea came up.] What if they staged it for a greater cause? A pseudo-religious cause? Jackie Hoyt, one of the writer/producers, suggested they joined the Guilty Remnant. As soon as she said it, we were like, “Of course they did.”
Click to expand...
"Of course! It makes so much sense. Because... Er. Something something sudden departure something something lack of answers. So, yeah, people join the Guilty Remnants. That works, right?"

Damon Lindelof said:
There was a bit of fear and trepidation on our part in terms of pulling that lever down because I think that if there’s one sort of unanimous gripe about the first season of the show, it’s the Guilty Remnant. And if there’s one sort of unanimous “Hallelujah!” about the second season, it’s “At least the GR is not in the show that much anymore!”
Click to expand...
Well... Yeah.
So, er... "What a twist"?

Damon Lindelof said:
There’s a high degree of risk in terms of pulling that off. Obviously we kind of needed to keep Meg on the bench, because if we were threading that idea all throughout the season, I think that the audience probably would have been way ahead of us.

We’re in a media culture where the audience is so sophisticated and they can crowdsource and Reddit this information — if they get a twist, you know, like the Edward James Olmos [twist] on “Dexter” or what happened recently on “The Walking Dead,” the audience basically crowdsourced exactly how [that twist could have happened] within hours of it airing. By the time it airs a month later, the audience just goes “Duh!” That’s not the storytellers’ fault. It’s just the sophistication [of the audience’s ability] to figure things out. It’s like, we’re up against this incredible creative algorithm.
Click to expand...
Okay, I can't be the only one who's annoyed about how (to some writers, anyways) it always has to be about making the audience go "whoa, I didn't see that one coming! what a twist!".
It's easy to write surprising, unpredictable developments. Hell, when there's no rhyme or reason to your characters' behaviors, anything is "unpredictable". It's to have your twist actually make sense that's the hard part.
And really, I understand the appeal of a good twist, but I'm getting so fucking tired of these "single-use stories", meant to be experienced just the once, spoiler-free. To me, a genuinely good story is one that's absolutely worth revisiting (and thus can stand further scrutiny), but it seems that last part is simply not a concern anymore, in some circles... Possibly because there's such an abundance of media to "consume" nowadays, it's assumed the audience won't take the time to watch something a second, third time?

Anyway, yeah, nowadays, the audience is likely to guess twists. So fucking what? That only matters on a first watch, and if your story's genuinely good, it's not such a big deal.
Keep focusing on trying to beat the internet's Mystery Solving Machine, and you'll just come up with random developments that come out of nowhere, without any foreshadowing or logic to them. Hardly a good idea, if you care about how your story will stand the test of time (I realize that's a big "if").

Damon Lindelof said:
So if “The Leftovers” is going to have a twist, if we have any chance at surprising people at all, we really have to hide it but we have to make it fair. There are things in the premiere like the girls driving in silence. You see them goofing around and listening to music and kind of busting the balls of the guy who’s gathering water. And then they get in their car and they’re driving silently and stone-faced.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's a neat bit of foreshadowing. But as pointed out above: Guilty fucking Remnants. Why would they be part of that group?
So that's a nice coat of paint, but below that...
 
U

User 479360

Banned
Think next week's episode will be the final one? Or has something been said about a third season?

I last read that talks hadn't even been initiated by the network.
 
B

bodyofanamerican

Member
OCDChewie said:
Think next week's episode will be the final one? Or has something been said about a third season?

I last read that talks hadn't even been initiated by the network.
Click to expand...

Perrotta said they were still finishing post-production on the finale (this was a few weeks ago), and that they need some time to decompress before even contemplating the idea for a 3rd season.
 
H

hank_tree

Member
zeitgeist said:
My guess is the girls say that they departed and then returned which will make the world think that everyone else who departed may return thus, no one forgets about the departure (Even though no one has actually forgotten about it MEG!).
Click to expand...

This is the exact opposite of what GR do. They don't want to give people hope.
 
M

maxcriden

Member
So I've never seen the show and Lost really soured me on Lindelof. But I've been hearing great things about this season.

What's the explicit content like? GOT level?
 
M

Matt

Member
Erigu said:
It's not really different here. "The girls were part of the Guilty Remnants." Okay. So we can now ask the same question we could ask for any member of the Guilty Remnants, really: "why?" I mean, that group makes just as little sense now as it ever did.
Click to expand...

I mean, not that I really think the GR has ever been a great or interesting element of the show, but...people have been joining crazy cults for very little "real" reasons throughout all of history. Why did anyone ever become Christen, or Muslim, or Scientologist, or become a member of the Manson Family?
 
T

Theorry

Member
The acting from Liv Tyler this episode. Hot damn.
Also i think the girls are going to hang themself from the bridge or something. That will shake things up and explains the scene with Kevin and the guy on the bridge preparing ropes.
 
B

BearPawB

Banned
Erigu said:
Yes, that's a neat bit of foreshadowing. But as pointed out above: Guilty fucking Remnants. Why would they be part of that group?
So that's a nice coat of paint, but below that...
Click to expand...

I think it is pretty obvious why. I think they have given a lot of reasons.

The girl "knows" Miracle isn't special. She is her fathers daughter.
So she joins a militant wing of a group who is going to work their damnedest to prove that Miracle isn't special. She wants people to stop with the mystical bull shit, to stop thinking the water where they skinny dip is anything special. It is just a town that happened to get lucky.

They didn't joint the guilty remnant for "no reason", they joined it because they knew that they had the power to make a big stand, to show that Miracles don't happen in Miracle.

The following is pure speculation on my part for what may happen in the last episode.

The girls make a "miraculous" return. But they are also going to have explosive vests on them. They make a speech about how their are no miracles in miracle, nothing special, nothing sacred. And they blow themselves up in front of everyone, potentially taking a couple of major characters with them.
 
E

Erigu

Member
Matt said:
I mean, not that I really think the GR has ever been a great or interesting element of the show, but...people have been joining crazy cults for very little "real" reasons throughout all of history.
Click to expand...
It's been discussed earlier in the thread, but the problem isn't "who would join a religion/cult?", but "who would join that particular group?"
What is enticing about the Guilty Remnants? What do they offer?


BearPawB said:
The girl "knows" Miracle isn't special. She is her fathers daughter.
So she joins a militant wing of a group who is going to work their damnedest to prove that Miracle isn't special.
Click to expand...
That's just what Meg (who, we just found out, apparently hates the town because of whatever the psychic told her) currently wants to do, not what the Guilty Remnants are about (generally being assholes and playing cruel pranks on people so they don't forget something they clearly remember anyway).
Yet they apparently adopted the Guilty Remnants' silly ways?
 
M

Matt

Member
Erigu said:
It's been discussed earlier in the thread, but the problem isn't "who would join a religion/cult?", but "why would join that particular group?"
What is enticing about the Guilty Remnants? What do they offer?
Click to expand...

You can make the exact same argument for any religion or cult.
 
B

BearPawB

Banned
Erigu said:
It's been discussed earlier in the thread, but the problem isn't "who would join a religion/cult?", but "why would join that particular group?"
What is enticing about the Guilty Remnants? What do they offer?
Click to expand...

Numbers. They are the biggest cult (that we know of). it is like kids going off to join ISIS.
 
M

Matt

Member
Erigu said:
No, precisely because religions/cults generally offer something.
What's the draw, here?
Click to expand...

The draw seems to be that a certain segment of people in this world are so mad and emotionally destroyed by the Departure that they view any attempts at moving past the event or continuing their lives as some sort of sick joke, and the GR are the people that best embody that viewpoint.
 
U

User 479360

Banned
maxcriden said:
So I've never seen the show and Lost really soured me on Lindelof. But I've been hearing great things about this season.

What's the explicit content like? GOT level?
Click to expand...

I haven't seen much of LOST outside of the first couple of seasons, and had been planning to watch it all. Then I watched This is 40 and the stupid movie spoiled it for me.

As for the explicit content: I don't think it's GoT level at all. There's some nudity, deep themes and profanity IIRC, but nothing too crazy.

Please, do yourself a favour and start from the beginning. Both seasons are of quality.
 
E

Erigu

Member
Matt said:
The draw seems to be that a certain segment of people in this world are so mad and emotionally destroyed by the Departure that they view any attempts at moving past the event or continuing their lives as some sort of sick joke, and the GR are the people that best embody that viewpoint.
Click to expand...
And it seems the show is trying to argue that's because the departure "changed everything": as they put it again last week, it made people suddenly realize you could just lose your loved ones without warning and for no apparent reason.
... Which, er... Is that really a new thing? Sudden, random losses? Unexplained disappearances? Doesn't that happen all the fucking time in our real world? And I'm not seeing "we've lost loved ones and personally can't get over it, so we're going to make your life a fucking hell" movements.

We were also told they were united by their belief that "the world had ended"... but I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean exactly. "Don't waste your breath"? So, er, the idea is that it's "all over", and everything is futile, now? Wouldn't that also include "joining a cult"?
 
M

Matt

Member
Erigu said:
And it seems the show is trying to argue that's because the departure "changed everything": as they put it again last week, it made people suddenly realize you could just lose your loved ones without warning and for no apparent reason.
... Which, er... Is that really a new thing? Sudden, random losses? Unexplained disappearances? Doesn't that happen all the fucking time in our real world?
Click to expand...

No, 2% of the world's population doesn't disappear all the time.

I think the idea that Priests turn crackers into the literal flesh of a 2000 year old dead person is insane. Doesn't mean others don't believe it, even people not born into that faith. Their beliefs not being logical matters very little, especially in a world where all of the laws of reality were thrown out the window in such a massive way.
 
E

Erigu

Member
Matt said:
No, 2% of the world's population doesn't disappear all the time.
Click to expand...
We were talking about grief. Those people are suffering over the loss of their loved ones, yes? That's not something new or unique to the show's premise.

Now, there would certainly be something to say about the supernatural aspect of that disappearance, how it hints at the existence of some intelligence with god-like powers that's apparently interested in human beings specifically, but the show simply doesn't go there, and the Guilty Remnants didn't build some kind of mythology over that.

Their beliefs not being logical matters very little
Click to expand...
They don't even have beliefs. Except maybe, as I said above, "the world has ended", but then why even join a cult? Why take part in those pranks? I could maybe buy it if there was something to frame those actions, but the show makes it a point that there's nothing there. Just gratuitous assholes who conveniently generate cheap drama.
 
M

Matt

Member
Erigu said:
We were talking about grief. Those people are suffering over the loss of their loved ones, yes? That's not something new or unique to the show's premise.

Now, there would certainly be something to say about the supernatural aspect of that disappearance, how it hints at the existence of some intelligence with god-like powers that's apparently interested in human beings specifically, but the show simply doesn't go there, and the Guilty Remnants didn't build some kind of mythology over that.
Click to expand...

Of course it's unique. Not all grief is the same, and not everyone deals with it in the same way. What happened to all of these people is brand new, unexplained, and basically unbelievable. It's obvious that some people would react to this unprecedented event in unprecedented ways
 
E

Erigu

Member
Matt said:
Of course it's unique.
Click to expand...
Aside from the supernatural aspect, not really, no. Natural catastrophes?

Not all grief is the same, and not everyone deals with it in the same way.
Click to expand...
And yet: the Guilty Remnants. Lots of people dealing with their grief in that one weird way. For some reason.

What happened to all of these people is brand new, unexplained, and basically unbelievable. It's obvious that some people would react to this unprecedented event in unprecedented ways
Click to expand...
Again, yes, the supernatural / unexplained aspect should matter, but the Guilty Remnants don't have a mythology, don't offer explanations.
So no, I'm still not seeing how the Guilty Remnants are a thing, in that universe.
 
M

Matt

Member
Erigu said:
And yet: the Guilty Remnants. Lots of people dealing with their grief in that one weird way. For some reason.


Again, yes, the supernatural / unexplained aspect should matter, but the Guilty Remnants don't have a mythology, don't offer explanations.
So no, I'm still not seeing how the Guilty Remnants are a thing, in that universe.
Click to expand...

Yes they do: the world ended. That's all that needs to be said for these people.

Now I don't think that's logical at all, but basically all religions or cults are illogical. The GR gives something to the people in it, just because we think it's crazy doses't mean it wouldn't appeal to others.
 
E

Erigu

Member
Matt said:
Yes they do: the world ended.
Click to expand...
And for the third time: why even join a cult, then? Why those pranks?

basically all religions or cults are illogical.
Click to expand...
They have their own internal logic, at least.

The GR gives something to the people in it
Click to expand...
You'd think so, for such a group to exist, but I still don't see what that would be.


_Ryo_ said:
Doesn't Isaacs fortune telling prove that there actually are miracles in Miracle?
Click to expand...
Details! Megan just wants to blow things up or whatever.
 
E

Erigu

Member
Matt said:
Because these people are mad, sad, and acting illogically. Like humans often do when confronted with the unknown.
Click to expand...
"Something super weird happened, so anything goes from now on."
Really convenient for lazy writers, sure, but...
 
R

rush777

Member
Erigu said:
"Something super weird happened, so anything goes from now on."
Really convenient for lazy writers, sure, but...
Click to expand...


You really are ridiculous, you seem to have all the answers about human reactions when dealing with a supernatural phenominon.

Please explain your "correct" way to write these characters as well as your blueprint of human beings that allows you to confidently state you know how all people would react.
 
E

Erigu

Member
rush777 said:
you seem to have all the answers about human reactions when dealing with a supernatural phenominon.
Click to expand...
What, because I don't buy the writers' lazy take on the matter, really?

But if you want to see how people deal with unexplained phenomenons, you have centuries of mythologies and religions. It would certainly make sense, in the wake of the sudden departure, for new religions to emerge. But the writers came up with the super minimalist (simplist) Guilty Remnants, and no, I don't buy it, for the reasons I detailed above already.
 
Z

zeitgeist

Member
Erigu said:
At least, I'm talking about the show.
Click to expand...

Yeah but your posts are so lazily written...



On topic: That Vulture article was pretty great though. I didn't expect this season to get so much love from critics but hopefully it helps us get a third.
 
T

ThLunarian

Member
Kadayi said:
The wheels are in motion that's for sure. Meg is Patti on steroids. That conversation between her and Matt was chills. Finale is going to be something else. I hope Tommy manages to get out of Dodge though.

Also called it that the girls weren't departed. Though getting the sense of the plan, they're going to be real soon
Click to expand...


I think Patti was very different from Meg. Underneath all her blustering, Patti was a scared and insecure little girl (I choose to believe that Kevin's trip through purgatory was legit and that Ghost Patti was real).

Meg seems much more like a stone cold psychopath who wants to watch the world burn for no good reason. She's using the Guilty Remnant for that exact purpose, IMO. I bet she hardly cared that her mother died.

I hope Kevin is the hero that somehow rises from the ashes and foils Meg's plans.
 
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