‘The Leftovers’ Debut Review and Recap: The Faithful Departed

The first episode of HBO’s new supernatural series from the co-creator of ‘Lost’ is equal parts mystery and misery….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Two-percent of the world’s population.

It doesn’t sound like much when the number is reduced all the way down to two, but when you start closely examining that figure it means 140 million people. Now imagine 140 million people just being blinked out of existence as if they were never there. No bodies left behind to bury, no note explaining why they are gone. Just poof, gone, disappeared, and not a trace of where they’ve gone or if they will ever return.

This is the set up and premise for the new series ‘The Leftovers’ from author Tom Perrotta and former ‘Lost’ co-creator and show runner Damon Lindelof, which debuted on Sunday night. Now there are already a litany of reviews out there from the TV critics who get screeners ahead of the general public, but I don’t like to see shows that way and then spoil the experience for the readers of my column. Unlike a movie where you are consciously putting money down on a counter to experience a film, TV shows are readily available (granted HBO is pay cable) and I tend to prefer to allow a series to start, debut, and then put my thoughts down and allow those who watched with me a chance to see if they agree or disagree with my assessment and recap of the episode.

The debut episode simply titled ‘Pilot’ is the launching pad for the show that starts with millions upon millions of people just disappearing one day and leaving everyone they’ve ever known behind to wonder why it happened and where they went. A mother screams into the air after her baby just vanishes from the back seat of her car. A little boy yells for his daddy after they were leaving a grocery store. Cars crash and sirens sound as the screen fades to black and a barrage of 911 calls echo in the background as the frightened and fragile alike try to comprehend what just happened.

Three years later is where the story picks up and we meet the people of Mapleton, New York.

It’s a town beset by tragedy in the wake of the massive disappearance of so many people, and like any unexplained occurrence, everybody just wants answers and those not willing to accept that it just happened will start to imagine and create their own reasons for the sudden event. Is this a sign from God and a rapture to start the end of times? There were no trumpets sounding and a lot of the people gone all of a sudden certainly weren’t deserving of a spot in heaven. Was it a scientific event? All of the world’s smartest minds put to the test to figure out why this occurred can only come up with one theory three years after it happened — I don’t know.

And like any irrational group of people with free reign on coming up with a reason for something taking place, the resulting ideology varies from the mundane to the insane and everywhere in between. If there are those that believe Jesus can appear in a slice of slightly burnt toast, imagine what the tea leaves are reading for an event of this magnitude.

In town we meet police chief Kevin Garvey, who is one of hundreds of people affected by the departed just vanishing into thin air, but not the way you’d imagine. He didn’t lose a family member or a child when the event happened. As a matter of fact he was in the throws of passion when two-percent of the world’s population just up and disappeared. Unfortunately, what’s unclear is who he was having sex with at the time of the ‘rapture’ and the fallout from this day is still conflicting his every waking moment.

Kevin’s daughter Jill is a field hockey enthusiast who breaks the nose of any cunt who dares get in her way, and she carries a certain air of uncertainty and anger with every step she takes. Jill and Kevin live alone now in a big empty house where only her friend Aimee, who makes subtle stares back at the DILF with visions of ‘American Beauty’ dancing in her head, comes to visit for a meatloaf dinner during the week. Jill’s nightlife is filled with parties where a twisted new version of spin the bottle is played where some folks hug, her best friend fucks the guy she’s in love with, and in her case she auto asphyxiates a kid while he masturbates next to her all while laying together in their underwear like it’s no big deal.

Her dad isn’t very far away from the wacked out night she’s having at the party. He’s currently dealing with a mayor who is determined to throw a ‘Heroes Day’ parade to honor the people lost three years ago while unveiling a morbid statue with a mother watching her baby float away into the sky. Kevin’s morning run is interrupted by a stray dog wandering the streets, who is shot down by a random gun wielding psycho before he peels off in his truck waiting for the next pooch to pump full of lead.

The dog plays a big part in this story (as do all animals apparently) because Kevin is so moved by this dog being killed that he loads it into the trunk of his car where he remains long after he confronts the former owner only to be told that pup belonged to a man who is gone and never coming back. When his daughter borrows the car that night and reaches into the trunk while hanging out with some friends, she discovers the grisly dog still fermenting in the trunk.

The trio decides to bury the hound while discussing the urban legend of a pack of dogs that dissolved into madness because they witnessed the disappearance first hand and switched from friendly pets to pure primal mode.

“Dogs are just animals, man. They see something like that, and they just snap. All bets are off right there. No more chasing sticks. They just go primal, man. Same thing’s going to happen to us, it’s just taking longer.”

Kevin’s son is also lost to him, but not because he was snatched up in the cosmic event that took place. No, Tom dropped out of college and soon became attached to a mystic named Wayne, who can apparently offer salvation and peace to anyone grieving over the loss of their loved ones with a steep price attached to it. Tom drives a Congressman to see Wayne, and upon his exit, this once sad sap of a man is now rejoicing and happy, no longer a melancholy mess of depression. Wayne is such a driving force in this secured compound that when Tom is told he has to stay there for the night because the master of the house wants to see him, a wave of fright plows over his skin and shivers go up his spine. When Wayne finally does come to see Tom he tells him he has a job to do, but it’s not to touch the girl at the camp that he clearly has a thing for, but he does need to protect her. From who or what, nobody knows just yet.

Kevin also has dreams and visions where he sees a deer first standing still in a yard and later being plowed over by his car before he wakes up to realize it was all just a giant nightmare. The world he wakes up into isn’t much better than the one he just left because while he didn’t lose anyone forever to the mass disappearance, he did watch his wife Laurie leave their home and their family to join a cult known as the Guilty Remnant. The GR as he calls them are a religious sect dressed all in white living in a vow of silence who believe that this sudden departure was a sign from God, and they smoke their lives away because this world is coming to an end soon enough anyhow so why not enjoy it while it lasts? They conduct meetings while passing around notes, and look at file folders for the people they will stalk all over town by just showing up and sitting there peacefully gazing back at the person whose picture ended up on their desk.

At Heroes Day following a sad speech where a local woman recounts losing her entire family on the day of the disappearance, the Guilty Remnant show up with signs held high saying ‘Stop wasting your breath!’, which immediately enrages a town full of people already teetering on the edge. Amongst them is a preacher, who is handing out fliers while doing his best to shoot down the theory that this was an act of God because there were plenty of undeserving folks just zapped out of existence and that wouldn’t be the creator’s plan at work.

The townspeople confront the members of the Guilty Remnant and moments later a riot breaks out, blood goes flying and those nice white uniforms are soiled in a hurry. With the stink of loss and about a fifth of Jack Daniels on his breath, Kevin shows up at the cult’s compound later that night seeking an audience with his wife. When she appears, her tongue doesn’t move and her lips don’t flutter as Kevin sobs at her feet just wanting one more conversation with the wife that is all but gone now.

Whatever the Guilty Remnant’s hold over people happens to be, it’s working because a local woman named Meg (played by Liv Tyler) goes from angry to accepting after she’s one of the people stalked by the group throughout the entire show. It’s clear Meg has lost someone close to her and despite a fiance at home feverishly planning their wedding to give her a shred of happiness, she abandons her life in a moment’s notice and hands herself over to the Guilty Remnant with hopes of finding an answer somewhere inside their cul-de-sac cult.

Kevin’s journey ends this episode when the deer he saw in his dream appears before him on the road as he’s traveling home. The deer stands and stares at him until a pack of wild dogs (not such an urban legend after all) appears out of nowhere and darts down the street, attacking the animal and ripping it limb from limb. Just then, the truck driving gun nut from earlier who put a dog down with his rifle appears and asks Kevin why he’s just standing there if he has a gun. These dogs aren’t our dogs anymore he says as the pair starts firing off in tandem, and with tears streaming down his cheek, Kevin finds a purpose even if he’s not sure what that might be.

Overall, the first episode of ‘The Leftovers’ was classic Damon Lindelof.

The opening half-hour was a tangled web of confusing twists and turns with little coherent connection between the characters outside of Kevin’s interactions throughout the town. As minutes ticked away and the stories started to interweave with one another, the fog started to lift giving clarity to the bigger picture but not enough to truly know what we’re looking at just yet. The word I most heard to describe this series before it aired was ‘bleak’ and it’s certainly that but this was more than just a downward spiral into despair. It was a town lost inside itself, searching for answers and finding only questions. For each revelation there were two more puzzles laid at our feet.

And it wouldn’t be a Damon Lindelof show without that grand mystery at the heart of it all, tugging at our internal need for an explanation and closure, while also taunting us with equal parts of grief, rage and an underlying haze of misery —  but no smoke monster (yet anyways). Above all else while ‘The Leftovers’ shares some similarities to ‘Lost’, this is ultimately its own series with one common thread amongst both shows….

There’s no way I won’t be watching next week to see how it all unfolds.

Come back next week for another recap of ‘The Leftovers’ and let us know in the comments if this is a show you’ll be watching all season long?