In The Leftovers recap, the Garvey family picked up and moved to Texas but how did they get there in the first place?
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
If you combined the first two episodes of the second season of The Leftovers into one, it would essentially tell the same story from varying points of view.
The first hour introduced us to the Murphy family — residents of Jarden, Texas, smack dab in the middle of Miracle National Park where 9,261 lived before the Sudden Departure and where those same 9,261 people live today. Now in the second episode that debuted on Sunday night, we find out exactly how the Garvey family got from Mapleton, New York to Jarden, Texas two months removed from a fire that burned down the houses belonging to the Guilty Remnant that nearly claimed Kevin Garvey’s daughter Jill.
The Garvey’s didn’t pop up until the final few minutes of the debut, but this latest episode puts them back in the spotlight as well as Kevin’s psyche, that is seemingly splintering with every passing moment in his life.
And while there were a lot of good moments throughout this episode, perhaps the best was Nora engaging with the scholars from MIT, who wanted to plunk down $2.7 million for her house in Mapleton.
For all the religious and spiritual reasons why the Sudden Departure might have happened, scientists might have the most frightening explanation of all. It was based on location — thus the title of the episode ‘A Matter of Geography’ — so those that were zapped away weren’t chosen or taken into heaven. They just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But the most chilling moment was after Nora was told she wasn’t taken simply because she was standing across the room while her children and husband were at the table and the scientists explained that they want to study her location to prevent a recurrence.
Nora: “You think it’s going to happen again?!?”
Scientist: “Why wouldn’t it?”
Let that sink in as we recap the latest episode of The Leftovers titled ‘A Matter of Geography’:
The Truth Almost Sets You Free
Following the Guilty Remnant burning to the ground and Nora finding Holy Wayne’s baby on Kevin’s doorstep after she was originally pinning a note to his door saying that she was leaving town, the entire brood is now inside acting as one big happy family.
Nora, with a brand new baby in her arms, decides she wants to make this work. Kevin is more hesitant because what do they really know about each other after all?
So Nora decides they should just come clean with it all — Kevin confesses to sleep walking at night and blacking out for hours at a time, not to mention kidnapping Patti Levin before she shanked herself with a shard of glass and then along with her brother Matt, buried the cult leader in the woods — oh and he smokes. Without blinking, Nora admits to paying prostitutes to shoot her in the chest. Unfortunately, Kevin fails to tell his new lady love and his daughter that he’s still seeing visions of the woman he buried in the woods and she’s talking to him — just like the voices did his father before he went mad.
This cathartic cleansing of the souls seems to make everyone happy — even melancholy Jill — and it looks like this new family is going to take a stab at it.
The first order of business is adopting the baby they named Lily and while the man in charge of questioning the Garvey-Durst family in charge of taking care of the child seems gruff and unwavering while Kevin says all the wrong things (my father is in a psychiatric facility!) — ultimately it’s a lot of posturing because he signs off on it without any issue. He even offers Kevin and Nora another white baby, just in case they are adding to the family a little more. They politely decline but now they are raising a child together!
The new unit all moves in together as Nora puts her house on the market (as previously mentioned) while Kevin is drowning out all the sounds around him by blasting music directly into his ears whether he’s driving or at the Laundromat. But it’s not the sound of baby Lily crying that has him pouring music into his head at the loudest volume possible — it’s Patti, who is still popping up and talking to Kevin as if she’s standing right next to him.
Despite the adoption and the appearance of a happy family, Kevin still needs to prove he’s not insane so he travels back out to the woods and digs up Patti’s body before tossing it in the back of his truck. He purposefully gets pulled over before telling the officer that there’s a body in the back.
At the station, Kevin is ready to face judgment for burying Patti after she killed herself. But the officer charged with ‘interrogating’ the former police chief, who took an extended leave of absence to take care of his new child and everything that happened with the Guilty Remnant, says she doesn’t really give a shit what happened to Patti. The cops look at the Guilty Remnant as just another plague on society and all Kevin did was bury some form of the disease.
Case dismissed!
Clandestine Siblings
Jill jets away from home for lunch with a boy, who Nora assumes is coming from the cute variety you’d meet at school. Instead, Jill is actually meeting with her estranged brother Tommy, who has officially left the teachings of Holy Wayne and he’s now traveling with his mother Laurie, who still isn’t speaking much these days.
Tommy still finds the name Lily a little odd, but that’s what Kevin and Nora wanted to name her so that’s their prerogative.
Jill is bubbling over with happiness maybe since the first time since her mother left the family to join the white-clad-chain-smoking cult, but Tommy says it’s all going to be short lived. Nobody’s OK he tells his sister. Tommy is onto something, but we’ll learn more about that later in the episode.
Before leaving, Tommy hands Jill a note from her mother but instead of reading it, she rips it into pieces immediately. Tommy leaves and gets into a car with Laurie, who drives them away while making eye contact with the daughter she left behind.
It doesn’t look like Jill is any closer to reading that letter, but she didn’t throw it away either…
Moving Day
Kevin arrives home to find that his father has been let out of the psychiatric ward and he’s moving to Australia indefinitely. Kevin Sr. seems completely normal, especially compared to the schizophrenic loose cannon we met a season ago.
Kevin Jr. is clearly skeptical, but the two of them go for a walk to chat about things. It’s there that Kevin’s dad lets him in on a little secret — you know those voices he’s been hearing non-stop for the past few years that landed him in the loony bin?
Well, Kevin Sr. finally started doing what they told him and now he’s as normal as the rest of us. His son might want to follow his father’s example.
While Kevin isn’t ready to listen to the voice inside his head, much less acknowledge its there in the first place — especially when it’s attached to Patti — he is thinking that a change of scenery would do them all some good. Maybe he’s trying to escape the ghosts of Mapleton or just one ghost in particular, but the entire group opts to take that $2.7 million Nora made from her home and they rent a place for six months in Jarden, Texas for the bargain price of $50,000.
It’s a discount considering how high demand this place must be — geographically speaking — because not a single person disappeared from here during the Sudden Departure.
Welcome to Miracle
Arriving in town, the Garvey’s are met with some strange surroundings including believers who camp outside the national park, just hoping to gain some kind of entry into town. The Garvey’s are special though because they rented a house in town, so they get passage.
At the Visitor’s Center, Kevin finds out that his poor dog has to be kept in quarantine for 60 days for blood work. Remember the weird shit happening with the animals last season? Maybe these folks in Jarden are onto something. Kevin begrudgingly signs over his dog, but much to his dismay he also hears from Patti while standing at the kennel saying goodbye.
“I’ll stay with him if you want. Maybe he’ll talk to me.”
~ Patti
As Kevin goes to find his family, a strange man approaches him and offers help with his situation. It’s the same man Michael Murphy went to visit last week in the debut episode and somebody I believed to be his grandfather. Maybe there’s a lot more to this spiritual man than just living in a run down trailer on the outskirts of town!
When Kevin finally finds Nora and Jill, they have bad news. The house they rented for $50,000 over the internet — sight unseen — has burned to the ground. Remember last week when John Murphy and his fire brigade burned down Isaac’s house where he was performing palm readings for people? Could that be the same house?
Before Kevin can cause an uproar over the situation, Nora has left and found a new room in the Visitor’s Center where they are holding an auction for a house for sale right in the middle of Jarden, Texas. $3 million later and Nora purchased the house much to Kevin’s chagrin. He thought they were going here for six months to test things out but buying a $3 million home sure seems like putting down roots!
Kevin, Nora and Jill spend a night with Pastor Matt, who is currently living in a garage next to the Baptist Church in town. Nora invites her brother to stay with them, but he politely declines.
The next day, the Garvey’s descend upon their new place — which is the moment we spot the Murphy’s for the first time in this second episode — and when they open the door it appears they paid $3 million for a dilapidated house that looks like it’s being held together by 10,000 termites all holding hands.
To make matters worse, when Kevin tries to light his cigarette on the gas-burning stove, he gets his head slammed into the steel as he falls to the ground. Above him stands Patti, who finally had to take action just so he would acknowledge her presence.
“You treat me like I don’t exist. I do exist. I need you to talk to me.”
~ Patti
Kevin and the rest of the brood finally meet the Murphy’s later that night at John’s birthday party. Kevin witnesses their daughter Evie freeze up and black out and while her mother explains it as epilepsy, it’s a symptom the former chief of police is all too familiar with. He blacks out regularly and never remembers anything that happens during that time so maybe Evie is just experiencing the same kind of phenomenon.
During Evie’s blackout, she dropped her father’s cake so when Kevin runs back next door to his roach motel disguised as a $3 million home, he once again runs into Patti, who has more prophetic words for him to chew on over dinner.
“Very interesting family, those Murphys. Hard to tell if they’re part of your story or if you’re part of theirs,”
~ Patti
Following the close of John’s impromptu birthday party, Kevin returns home and finally snaps when a light bulb explodes, adding yet another thing in this house that no longer works. He screams bloody murder that moving to Jarden wasn’t the plan — this was supposed to be a test run. Not something this permanent!
Nora retreats upstairs to put Lily to bed while Jill puts her father in his place.
Jill: “Please don’t fuck this up, Dad”
Kevin: “I’m fucking it up?”
Jill: “Not yet, but you’re showing potential.”
Kevin goes upstairs to apologize to Nora before they reconnect and fall asleep in their shitty new house that looks like it’s one step up from the place Tyler Durden lives in from Fight Club. At least he apologized…
A Fish Out of Water
The next moment Kevin wakes up at the bottom of a ravine, covered in mud and water with fish flopping all around him. He’s in the same river where Evie disappeared last week — the same river she was swimming at the start of the episode. The same river she took a thermos full of water from the despite signs all around saying do not remove water from there.
Now the water is gone and there’s Kevin sitting in a pile of mud and muck with his leg tied to a cinder block. It looks like subconsciously Kevin was trying to kill himself, but why?
He unties the block from his leg and runs up the muddy hill to the car parked at the top with music blaring and the windows rolled up tight. It’s the car Evie got into before she disappeared at the same river where Kevin just found himself.
When Kevin hears a car approaching, he jumps back down into the river bed to hide where he’s joined once again by Patti. He sees John and his son Michael searching the car before yelling out for Evie, who has gone missing.
“Uh-oh” Patti says to Kevin as they both dig down into the mud as to not be seen.
Did Kevin do something to the girls or was there another Sudden Departure in this place and it claimed the girls inside that car? Will Evie ever been seen or heard from again and why was Kevin trying to kill himself? Or was someone trying to kill Kevin?
Let’s see if any of these questions are answered next week when The Leftovers returns on Sunday night at 9pm ET on HBO!
