The Leftovers is a mystery story. A metaphysical mystery, but a mystery all the same. One that deliberately defies and frustrates genre conventions. Expect no answers, kids. Colonel Mustard didn't teleport the Departed to Planet X. Or maybe he did! I guess we'll never know ...
Let the mystery be.
Hell, in case you miss this point — the series co-creators (Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta) play Iris DeMent's lovely tune (of the same name) in the intro of the series finale. Which I just watched. Yep. And have reached no firm conclusions as a result. Or soggy conclusions. Or any conclusions whatsoever.
In lieu of which, here are a few random thoughts ...
• Lindelof and Perotta are more interested in weird character moments and heartstring-plucking emotional beats than the meaning behind it all. Which is to say ...
• The story doesn't add up. It's a big damn mystery! That mystery is vastly different from the logical incoherency of, say, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. The individual scenes make sense. Granted the unexplained global Vanishing Act, the characters' motives and reactions make sense. Our lack of understanding is a case of insufficient data — not surreal irrationality. There is an answer, folks. We just don't know it. We probably can't know it.
• The Leftovers is a perfect agnostic parable.
Maybe there is a God. Maybe not. I guess we'll never know!
• In the Leftovers Universe, religions (including popular delusions and the madness of crowds) ain’t necessarily so. But they ain’t necessarily not-so. Religions make people do wacky, stupid and evil things. Despite that unpleasant fact, they still might be true! In the Leftovers world, there might actually have been a flying saucer waiting behind the Halle-Boppe comet. Do's follower's could've killed themselves ... and awakened on the Mothership! We'll never know ...
• The search for meaning messes everybody up. (This applies both to humanity's approach to life and cable television.) Stop trying to figure it out, people! You'd be a lot happier! The Leftovers occasionally elbows you in the ribs so you won't miss this important point. Let the Mystery Be feels like a poke in the eye.
• If human beings were Gitane-smoking existentialists who shruggingly accepted our place in a random, chaotic universe with no meaning whatsoever and never tried to figure things out, we'd have no problems whatsoever. Yeah. Right.
• The show's attack on Man's Search for Meaning is disingenuous. Lindelof and Perotta know full well that human beings can't help it. We need to know why! We need our stories! They know. They sympathize.
• The Leftovers feels like a science-fictiony retelling of the Book of Job. As I understand it ...
Job: God — why did you do this to me?
God: I'd tell you if I could — but your pathetic human brain couldn't possibly understand. You don't have the math.
Which is to say the first question anybody asks when friends, lovers and family members die; when a child is abduced by a serial killer; when a test pilot dies in a plane crash; when a baby wanders into a pool ...
Why?
Lindelof and Perotta substitute an inexplicable Rapture-like event for inexplicable mundane tragedies. But it amounts to the same damn thing. Their Magical Realist retelling makes us see this ancient story in a fresh new way!
• If you actually write SF, this feels like a cheat. A bait-and-switch! Yeah, sure, the show's stuffed with SF gimcrackery. But it's really an Agnostic Allegory in SF clothing. It's teaching us a f**ing lesson!
• As much as that pisses me off, the show succeeds brilliantly on its own touchy-feely terms. Let's leave it at that.
Let the mystery be.
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