biosnake20
Member
Can't find the promo for the next episode anywhere.
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The Leftovers |OT| Left Behind With Damon Lindelof - Sundays 10/9c
- Thread starter TheOddOne
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RangersFan
Member
That episode was fantastic! I like this show a lot.
The One and Done
Member
The fuck was that?
Really? We already knew everything except for that one pregnancy, didn't we?
Hmm, some things. Pattie putting that bag of something on the steps a few eps back made no sense till now. The pregnancy too yea. I dunno it just established where everyone was before the event, physically and mentally.
We knew enough, really...
Maybe in season 2.
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
RatskyWatsky
Hunky Nostradamus
Justin Theroux should have just gone full frontal at the end there. Those grey sweat pants of his leave nothing to the imagination anyway.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Sigh, I should have expected a Flashback episode.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Well, they are not wrong.
Messofanego
Banned
A good episode I thought, the best outside of the Nora one anyway.
Happy to see Liz Sarnoff in the credits, hopefully she's bumped to showrunner next season.
I thought the end of the episode was fantastic. The first time we saw the incident, we didn't know anyone, we didn't have any chance to care at all, but seeing Garvey devolve, and what it must have felt like to see her disappear, the impact that would have is really powerful. Obviously Nora being pissed off at her family when it happened was great too.
Everything about Jill's stuff this week was exceptionally bad though, holy shit.
But, God taking a fetus? Doesn't fit the rapture thing at all.
Happy to see Liz Sarnoff in the credits, hopefully she's bumped to showrunner next season.
I thought the end of the episode was fantastic. The first time we saw the incident, we didn't know anyone, we didn't have any chance to care at all, but seeing Garvey devolve, and what it must have felt like to see her disappear, the impact that would have is really powerful. Obviously Nora being pissed off at her family when it happened was great too.
Everything about Jill's stuff this week was exceptionally bad though, holy shit.
But, God taking a fetus? Doesn't fit the rapture thing at all.
Miles Quaritch
Member
BertramCooper
Banned
They laid it on a little thick (especially with those dumb clothes they had her wearing at the science fair), but I thought Margaret Qualley did a pretty terrific job. At first I almost thought it was an entirely different actress.
Really great episode. This show has a way of drawing me in like no other, for reasons I can't really explain. Maybe the overriding despair? The realization that things will not get better? I don't know, but I find myself not reaching for the phone or laptop when watching, a rarity.
The iPhone thing was really embarrassing.
Reminds me of this horrific scene in The West Wing when Leo asks Zoe how she is and she says "Just keeping it real", and Leo and the President make some inane comments about not understanding her. There are far more elegant ways to display someone being not culturally aligned with the current youth.
Also, his dad shouldn't have a much better looking significant other than him, it's creepy.
LOL - that sure didn't read like an "A-" review.
aussiedude08
Member
well that kinda explained why Jill is fucked up, but shit i would think she would be more gone. it makes me want to know more about the 3 years we dont know about. IMO one of the best for the season. no Amiee or the twins this week. It was weird knowing what will happen and seeing them all relatively happy. At least this week wasnt the final episode for the year that would of been fucking annoying.
just how fucked up would it be to have someone disappear in front of you just before sex.
just how fucked up would it be to have someone disappear in front of you just before sex.
Miles Quaritch
Member
So the whole episode was a flashback. I'm not against the idea, but they really should have placed it earlier in the season and not when the show was finally getting interesting with the G.R taking delivery of those real bodies and Jill going to join the G.R.
Annoying to say the least and has really messed with the flow of the show. This really should have been episode 3-4, not episode 9.
As for the flashback itself, it's good to have some background on everyone before the event and on why Lori joined the GR as well as finding out more about the other members and how it might have come to be, but good grief was Jill just as annoying as she in current time.They really should have cast her friend in her role, at least she's not as bad an actress.
Annoying to say the least and has really messed with the flow of the show. This really should have been episode 3-4, not episode 9.
As for the flashback itself, it's good to have some background on everyone before the event and on why Lori joined the GR as well as finding out more about the other members and how it might have come to be, but good grief was Jill just as annoying as she in current time.They really should have cast her friend in her role, at least she's not as bad an actress.
I think it came at the right time in the show. You couldn't really do it until now the way it was done. Seeing Mary is only impacting because you've seen how she is in the present and how it drives Matt. Nora's frustration with her children and the strain on their marriage needed to be shown after those things had been established. Garvey Sr being a beloved member of the community and a commanding force is only interesting having seen him broken as we have. Seeing the relationship between Laurie and Patti was especially apt, revealing the original nature of their relationship, in the context of the new power balance within the GR is great timing.
It also did something very important, it actually gave us a good reason for why someone would want to join. So far the show has done an exceptionally poor job of selling the GR as anything anyone would want to be involved in. A cult needs an allure, it needs charisma, but GR has none at all. The way they handled Meg's joining was beyond absurd. But this episode did a fantastic job. If Patti was crazy or not, Laurie had first hand experience of her beliefs, the conviction in her voice, and with the event taking her unborn child, and Garvey fucking around on her, they sold me on it. I'm not sure we needed the staunch anti-smoking sentiment from her, as if just leaving everything isn't enough of a sacrifice.
It also did something very important, it actually gave us a good reason for why someone would want to join. So far the show has done an exceptionally poor job of selling the GR as anything anyone would want to be involved in. A cult needs an allure, it needs charisma, but GR has none at all. The way they handled Meg's joining was beyond absurd. But this episode did a fantastic job. If Patti was crazy or not, Laurie had first hand experience of her beliefs, the conviction in her voice, and with the event taking her unborn child, and Garvey fucking around on her, they sold me on it. I'm not sure we needed the staunch anti-smoking sentiment from her, as if just leaving everything isn't enough of a sacrifice.
You think that changed?
Cornballer
Member
bodyofanamerican
Member
Well said. Couldn't agree more.
bodyofanamerican
Member
Well I'd say the biggest thing we learned is that the Garveys were falling apart as a family even before the departure and Nora's last interaction with her family was silently telling them to fuck off and die.
For me at least, that colors their interaction thus far and really sets the stage for whatever horrible shit the GR has planned fro the finale.
But it could. And it would have been better than the actual pilot.
We're introduced to practically all of the characters, we get a glimpse at their place in the world. Then bam, everything changes.
Sure the episode had a lot of "Aha!" Moments coming as late in the season as it did, but that's because Lindeloff spent all season withholding vital information that would have benefited the other episodes.
Episode was completely worthless and came down to 3-4 10-15 second shots that could have easily been used in an episode that was actually about moving the plot forward.
It's a shame that they only had 2 episodes left for the season and decided to use one of them as padding.
It's a shame that they only had 2 episodes left for the season and decided to use one of them as padding.
~Devil Trigger~
In favor of setting Muslim women on fire
Amazing episode
animals act crazy before many natural event/disaster, thats the hint im getting
no it wouldn't
this episode works well, because of what we already know. I think its really good pacing.
And lol at "withholding vital information" as if the episodes have not been full of development. To start the season with this episode would have you following a bunch of regular ass characters with random soap opera issues for an hour, before the last 2 minutes some really confusing happened. It would've sucked as a pilot.
I dont understand this "information" issue. every episode so far, has shown us something new for every character being address. I am not bored at all, one of the best shows this season.
animals act crazy before many natural event/disaster, thats the hint im getting
no it wouldn't
this episode works well, because of what we already know. I think its really good pacing.
And lol at "withholding vital information" as if the episodes have not been full of development. To start the season with this episode would have you following a bunch of regular ass characters with random soap opera issues for an hour, before the last 2 minutes some really confusing happened. It would've sucked as a pilot.
I dont understand this "information" issue. every episode so far, has shown us something new for every character being address. I am not bored at all, one of the best shows this season.
We already knew the main character was cheating on his wife when the departure happened.
bodyofanamerican
Member
True, and I should have been more specific, but I wasn't aware of the extent to which Kevin felt trapped in his life and marriage, alongside being threatened by how successful Laurie was compared to him. Didn't see that dynamic coming, and thought it filled out the backstory a lot.
BertramCooper
Banned
Generally I don't like it when shows withhold information from the viewers that's common knowledge among the show's characters. It feels like a cheap way to add mystery to the show.
It's one thing for Mad Men to withhold information about Don Draper's family history and then gradually reveal it through the course of several seasons because it's something he has concealed from almost everyone in his life. It makes sense that he'd shield it from the viewer's eyes.
But when The Leftovers withholds stuff from us when most of the characters on the show already know about it, it feels artificial and needlessly cryptic. Going back to a previous episode, when it was revealed that Matt and Nora are siblings, the show acted like we were supposed to have some sort of reaction to it. It was strange. Why wouldn't you tell us this very basic fact up front?
I think Veronica Mars is another good counterexample. We know from the outset that Veronica was an extremely popular, vivacious girl prior to the murder of her best friend. Withholding that vital character backstory from us until the end of the first season would have been completely inelegant and nonsensical. It's hard to gauge the development of a character when the show is constantly hiding information from you for no logical reason. We wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate how Lily Kane's murder fundamentally changed Veronica had the show waited until the first season's penultimate episode to reveal her previous nature and social status.
I think as a standalone episode, last night's ep was solid, but I think if you chop it up and put pieces of it in other episodes, it would make those episodes much better, and the show better as a whole.
And what is it that you already know? That people vanished. And you would have already known that anyway.
We didn't need this episode to learn that the Garvey's were already unhappy or that the Dursts were too. That is shit we learn in the first two episodes. But seeing it like this earlier would have served to give a lot of the earlier episodes a lot more weight.
Instead, we got a bunch of episodes that felt pointless, flat and convoluted, episodes that would have worked better if the characters had been fleshed out more (this has been one of the most consistent criticisms of the show all season), all so that we could have this one "Aha!" Moment 9 episodes in.
It's cheap storytelling.
But it wasn't revealed as if it were a twist at all, at least to me. I knew before hand because they'd already talked about it in the HBO making-of video, but even still I think it's more like they just hadn't got around to addressing it, rather than it was meant to surprise anyone. It wasn't like Jack and Claire or anything.
Funnily though, I did hate that in Prometheus when they reveal Theron is Weland's daughter. It seemed like an obvious thing, but not mentioned because they didn't need to, but then it was seemingly intended to be a mini-mystery.
I don't know how I would have preferred it be handled, but I think the show having flashbacks regularly would be a bad idea. In Lost it worked because the location was different, there's no possible ambiguity, if you see Charlie in a raining town, it's before the crash, if you see him on a pretty island, it's after. I think it'd just be messy if this show did it, I also don't think there's enough material to justify it. I doubt this is going to be a common thing, we got this one, we might never get another at this point.
While there are things I could hypothetically see as having worked better, like you could cut this episode with Matt's and have it improve notably, but if there's not much of it, it'd be too Lostesque, and it'd be confusing.
In a way, I feel Lindelof is always in a tough position, take the end of Lost, half the audience thought it was way too heavy handed, the other half thought the whole show was in purgatory. In straight drama, even if someone doesn't appreciate rich character construction and arc development, they don't get a worse experience than they would for a show that isn't as well written. With a mystery, all the audience, the people who hunt every detail, and the people who sometimes watch it, while eating and messing with their phones, they all need to get it. When you have seemingly intelligent people like GRRM, who can't grasp the very basics of something like Lost, I can't imagine how daunting putting these mysteries together must be.
I liked the episode, but for the penultimate episode I would have expected more. It feels like the show came to a screeching halt just when it had gained all this momentum. I still liked what we learned about the characters and what was fully explained (yes, most of the stuff wasn't exactly new to the observant viewer) but as the penultimate episode it just didn't do it for me.
I was so psyched for this weeks episode and that was not what I was expecting or hoping for.
I was so psyched for this weeks episode and that was not what I was expecting or hoping for.
Fantastic episode and another layer to the already fascinating character palate. Loved the final minutes, knowing that they were coming, but relive them again is devastating, especially since we know the characters more in contrast to showing this scene at the beginning of the pilot for example.
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