In The Leftovers recap, Matt finds out some miraculous news about his wife Mary before they are both locked out from returning to town…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Reverend Matt Jamison can’t catch a break and at this point the two episodes that have mainly focused on him — from season one and again tonight — have just been brutally unrelenting and some of the most painful hours of The Leftovers to watch.
And that’s saying a lot considering this series is usually about as uplifting as a funeral as it is.
From the tormented loss of his church last season, Matt finally decided to move his wife from Mapleton, New York to Jarden, Texas — a place affectionately known as Miracle now because 9,261 people lived there and still live there today before and after the Sudden Departure. Matt’s old friend was a pastor at a Baptist church there in town and he gave him religious sanctuary to move there and help out with his congregation.
On the first night they arrived in town, Matt says his wife Mary — who has been in a vegetative state ever since a car accident that happened during the Sudden Departure — woke up and they shared a night in bed together. Matt and Mary talked for hours and even made love before falling asleep in each other’s arms. The next morning, Mary was back in her comatose state and Matt hasn’t been able to wake her up ever since.
But it’s not for a lack of trying.
Each day, Matt wakes up and he goes through the exact same functions he did when Mary woke up upon first arriving in Miracle. He plays the same song, eats the same breakfast and dinner while feeding her the same food in the exact order he did that day. Each night, Matt crawls into bed next to his wife and records them both sleeping while watching the video the next day hoping to see some sign of life return to her hollow eyes.
But ever since that first night, Mary has never twitched, never smiled, and never woken up again and Matt is finally fed up with waiting and he’s curious to get some testing done to see if his wife really did come back to him or if it’s all been a part of some wicked trick his mind has been playing on him.
With that said, let’s recap the newest episode of The Leftovers titled ‘No Room at the Inn’…
With Child
Matt drives his wife Mary from Jarden to Austin to a hospital that can run an MRI to see if any of her cognitive brain function has changed over the last six months. When the tests are finished, Matt is asked into the office of a hospital administrator who needs him to sign a waiver for responsibility due to a lack of information he gave to the staff before his wife was tested.
Matt’s very confused, but the administrator informs him that Mary — his vegetative wife who no one else seems to think has moved since the Sudden Departure a few years ago — is with child. Matt is shocked to hear the news and while the administrator is all but accusing him of assault on his comatose wife, the preacher who nearly lost his faith is rejoiced with the news. He and Mary were never able to have children before and thanks to her miraculous night waking up three months ago when they arrived in Miracle, she’s now pregnant with their baby.
Matt’s so overjoyed that he’s smiling from ear to ear on the way back to town, but decides to stop to help a man and his son, who are stuck on the side of the road with car troubles. As soon as the man spots that Matt and his wife both have wristbands to let them into Jarden, he clocks the reverend over the head with a wrench and then breaks his wrist to remove band to take it for himself. His son steals the one from Mary as well and then takes Matt’s car battery so they can drive back into town.
When Matt finally wakes up from being assaulted, he puts Mary in her wheelchair and they begin the five mile walk back to Jarden.
After arriving at the gate, Matt finds that it’s not nearly as easy to get in as it is to get out, but after he finally explains what happened to a guard, the two of them are let into the visitor’s center so they can call for help to get replacement wristbands.
In line for the visitor’s center, Matt tries desperately to find help but Reverend Massey — the man who sponsored him is now out on a mission and no longer in town — and Kevin and Nora haven’t lived in town for six months, which is the minimum before they are allowed to sponsor someone for a guest pass. Finally a person in line behind Matt snaps at the frustrated pastor and the two of them get into a brawl before being locked up in a cell.
What Happened to You?
Kevin arrives at the visitor’s center to check on his pseudo brother-in-law along with John Murphy, who he brings along for help to get Matt free from his arrest. John helps free Matt from custody and works to help him get another wristband, but not before he answers a few questions. Remember, John doesn’t believe in the miracles that everyone thinks happen in Miracle and he’s heard rumors about Matt’s arrival and how his comatose wife supposedly woke up on their first night in town.
John needs Matt to convince him that he knows none of that happened much less that it had anything to do with the town he’s living in currently. Matt relents from his beliefs long enough to tell John what he needs to hear while getting his wrist wrapped up, but then the pastor takes things one step too far.
He asks John, outside of his daughter going missing, what happened to him before the Sudden Departure that made him so skeptical about this place? Something had to happen for him to give up all signs of faith and only believe in what his eyes could see and his ears could hear. John’s had enough of this and he decides that Matt is no longer worth sponsoring and he’s on his own.
Despite Kevin’s pleas, Matt and Mary are cast back out of Jarden and left amongst the tent and RV dwellers that live just outside of town all desperate to get inside.
The Flood
Matt and Mary find out real quick that living outside the boundaries of Miracle is a scary place to be. He runs into all sorts of people from a Swede promising him a way back into town for the right amount of money to nudists letting it all hang out to a man stripped of all his clothes trapped in stocks with the word ‘repent’ scribbled above and below his head while people throw food and all kinds of other nastiness at him as torture. Matt would love to free him, but the girl running the torture chamber says the only way for him to get out is to take his place.
Matt spends the next few hours doing anything in his power to find the Swedish man who offered him a way back into town. He eventually finds him — his name is Elmer — and for $1,000 he can provide him a way to sneak back into Jarden. The only problem is Matt is about $500 short.
Matt decides to beg or borrow to find the money and he eventually finds a Christian woman with a giant cross in front of her home, who he pleads with to borrow the money just long enough so he can get back into town and then he’ll pay her back every dime. See, Matt is convinced that the only way his wife’s baby will survive is if she’s living in Jarden, the site of her original miracle.
After the lady tests his religious knowledge, she’s willing to give Matt his money if he’ll complete one task for her — she brings a young, bearded man out of her trailer and tells the pastor to hit him with an oar as hard as he can while calling him Brian. Matt doesn’t exactly want to do this but after she taunts him about it a few more times, he finally cracks the oar over the kid’s back and calls him Brian. There has to be some religious connection to why this happened but Brian isn’t a name that appears in the Bible so as of now I can honestly say I have no clue why.
That said, Matt gets his money to Elmer and he shows them the way back in town.
It’s through a drain shaft and he gives Matt the way into Jarden along with a pair of bolt cutters just in case the other end has been locked again. Matt begins pushing Mary through the pipe but with rain pouring down that night, they are washed back out the other end again and his long, arduous journey to return to Miracle has once again been thwarted.
No More Hiding
With her wheelchair lost, Matt has to carry Mary back to tent town to ride out the rainstorm. At that moment like a sign from above, Matt sees his sister Nora looking for him amidst all the true believers because she’s got a way for him to return to Jarden safely.
She called in an anonymous tip about the missing girls, which sent every law enforcement agent to the other side of town and Nora packs Matt and Mary into the trunk where they skip through security and start into Miracle.
But along the way they happen upon a car accident — there are a truck load of goats on the road and a car that hit them before flipping and turning upside down. When Matt walks up to the car he recognizes that it’s the man and the boy who attacked him and stole the passes from around his and Mary’s wrists.
He takes the wristband from the man’s arm as he lays dying in the car, but off in the distance he spots the little boy, who is standing there frightened for his life, shaking from fear with his little hand outreached with the wristband to give back to Matt.
Matt decides that this isn’t the way he wants to return home so he packs Mary into Nora’s car and asks his sister to take care of her until he can return. He puts the wristband on his wife and kisses her goodbye before leaving with the little boy as Kevin and his sister drive back into town.
Finally, Matt runs into John and his fire patrol just on the outskirts of town limits. When John gets out to confront Matt, the good reverend tells him that his wife Mary woke up the first night they arrived in town, they spoke for hours, they made love and coming here wasn’t a mistake and it wasn’t something he made up to prove miracles happened in Miracles and he’ll never say otherwise again. He hands the wristband back to John and says he no longer wants it, but one day his wife Mary is going to wake up again and on that day he will return to Miracle and they will have a talk.
Matt then tells John that the little boy needs help because his father is dead.
Matt then wanders back out into the night, returning to tent town before coming to the stockade where the girl and her loony ass bunch of friends have the man locked up to ‘repent’. Matt says he wants to take his place so he strips off all his clothes, climbs to the top of the RV and as the other man is released, he takes his place. Matt gets locked in the stockades for the entire town to see.
Matt seems to have paid for enough sins for three lifetimes, but he still feels the need to repent and so that’s where he’ll stay until someone believes he’s suffered enough and is willing to take his place.
SOUNDTRACK
“Let Your Love Flow”
By The Bellamy Brothers
“Laughing With”
By Regina Spektor
The Leftovers returns for a brand new episode next Sunday night at 9pm ET on HBO.
