In Which I Reveiw The Leftovers (1x2)

Aggression. If kept unchecked it has a tendency to boil over and cause havoc. When you're so angry about the events in your life that you just want to hit something...it's good to keep a plastic penguin around. In this weeks episode, "Penguin One, Us Zero" the leftover anger of loosing friends and family bubbles up in various forms of aggression--violent and non violent ones. Tiny little indicators that you are just not the picture of mental health. There were a lot of plot strings in this episode, some that had zero to do with the others but are obviously important to the overall narrative. Gun fights, robbery, tree chopping, and man vs toaster oven, all manifestations of aggression that just can't be kept under lock and key anymore. 

 Kevin is still having a rough time. In the narrative of the show, it has been a few weeks since the parade to remember the heroes who were taken. After killing many dogs and punching a member of the cult, Kevin's coworkers are a bit concerned that he's lost his marbles--a distinct possibility seeing as his father lost his own marbles. Kevin is having weird dreams, most of which revolve around violence. In the pilot, he crashes his car into a deer; this week, he is stalking through the woods, scantily dressed I might add, to watch the Mystery Man with the Gun shoot at a member of the cult (my guess is that the target was Kevin's wife). Is Kevin crazy? I'm going to go with YES. In two episodes, he's violently assaulted someone, killed a pack of dogs, had conversation with a Mystery Gun Man who no one else even sees or can find, he's dismembering a toaster oven to find a lost bagel like some crazed drug addict who simply can't rest until the problem is solved, and he seems to have a hard time distinguishing from being awake and being asleep. The worst part might be that those around Kevin keep trying to cover up his obvious psychopathy. The mayor (who apparently is/was sleeping with Kevin's equally mental father) tells Kevin to lie to the therapist about not killing any more dogs; Kevin's lieutenant is willing to cover up the evidence of Kevin's own state of mind; Kevin's own father--who is presented at first as being totally rational and then starts talking to spirits in the air--tells him to pretend to be normal. Why is it so important that we ignore his state of mind? I think the other issue is that the show is trying to present Kevin's obvious tenuous hold on reality as if there are forces greater than him that are interfering in his life--so his mental degradation isn't his fault; it's the work of some metaphysical "Other." In the opening dream, Kevin's feet are on fire (okay?) and then he wakes up to find that his neighbors have set something on fire and when he goes over to help them, he ends up burning his feet in the snow.  It has a decidedly "this was all destined to happen" feel about it, but doesn't change the fact that Kevin is having some pretty odd dreams and waking violent flashbacks.

Last week, Meg decided to up and leave her fiancee and join the Guilty Remnant Cult. Her reasons for that have yet to be explained, or even why the GR was after her in the first place. Do they just randomly choose people they think will come along? Meg is being kept in the pledge house, meaning that she's still allowed to wear color and doesn't have to smoke yet. Laurie, Kevin's estranged wife, is Meg's sponsor. In order to become a full member of the GR, a pledge must be toughened. Which apparently means giving up one worldly possession a night and chopping down trees. I'm sure the chopping down of the tree is supposed to symbolize something--as Meg points out in the show to my amusement--but I'm much more interested in the other practices of the cult, not necessarily how one becomes a cult member. Why no talking? Why smoke? What exactly do they want? Kevin says they want to remind everyone of what happened, but...why? It's only two episodes in so I'm not going to predict that the show won't answer those questions yet, but in this post-LOST age, they can't keep us waiting around forever. The Leftovers is presenting these vignettes of people poorly coping with traumatic events as if there is a deep level of symbolism behind them, but that's not what the show was based on. There are no answers, so trying to wade through the minutia of symbolic meaning feels pointless. The entire bagel sequence from start to finish was one long tortured metaphor for insanity and also the disappearance of 2% of the world's population. Kevin, the tortured hero, rescues the bagel by freeing it from the confines of the toaster reality--the toaster being hell obviously. Now, Kevin, armed with his new knowledge about the inner workings of the toaster can rescue everyone and everything and the world can live as one. Except, again, that's not what this show was supposed to be about. There is no solution, there is no greater mystery to unfold that exists outside of human understanding. People vanished and now we cope. Go with you gut, The Leftovers. Have Kevin be completely mental and killing dogs and talking to invisible friends. It makes more sense than to slowly unravel some metaphysical mystery that is supposed to teach us all a lesson.

In an unrelated side story, Kevin's son and his uh..friend?...Wayne are now on the run. Wayne's compound was overrun with cops who are incredibly bad at their job. In what universe do cops fire on people before they are fired upon, go running into a house to terrorize girls who have been brain washed, and threaten to kill them if they try and flee? The scene failed to give me any kind of context for why teenage Asian girls are suddenly a threat. Wayne himself manages to flee, and Tommy takes one of the girls--who is SUPER important according to Wayne--with him. Wayne is a creeper. He likes to "hug it out." This is how he cures people. He hugs them. I'm sure there is some underage sex going on as well, but it's really about the hugs. Does Wayne really believe he's some sort of Messiah, or is he just a manipulative warlord pimp who is good at being charismatic? He talks a good game, I'll give him that. He manages to make Tommy think that there is some higher level plan and the little Asian girl (Christine?) is a big part of it. Sure. What is Tommy's deal though? He's obviously haunted by what happened a few years ago (good, that's the premise of the show) but is he really so into Wayne's message that he can't see how full of holes it is? The problem with that is Tommy is clearly not into the message! He refuses the magical Wayne hug. There is probably some "I want my pain!" thing going on here, but until we learn more about Tommy, he's just rather a blank box who is trying very hard not to sleep with Christine.

Craziness must run in the family, cause I don't know what Jill's deal is unless she's just a time bomb waiting to explode like her dad. She and her friend, who is doing such a nice impression of American Beauty teenage femme-fatle, spent the whole episode stalking a woman who carries a gun. They seems to think that the gun-carrying woman, who lost her whole family the day of the disappearance, is going to hurt someone. I guess that's the world in which they live now--gun automatically equals a violent scenario. It couldn't just be for protection, because no one and nothing is safe anymore. It's a tortured realization but not one that is unexpected. Is this more of an effort to feel something? Is Jill hoping that she'll witness violence first hand? Yeah...she's her father's daughter.

Miscellaneous Notes on Penguin One, Us Zero

--"I like dogs"
"Then stop shooting them cause that's what crazy people do!"

--Is Mystery Man with a Gun real? He has some obviously not real moments in the show: refuses to give his name, leaves his truck with a dead dog in Kevin's driveway, claims he is doing the Lord's work. He's either real and very strange or dead-all-along and there is something other worldly going on with Mystery Man with a Gun, Kevin and Jill and their various states of mind fuckery.

--"I should never have told you to watch The Wire." Haha. Obvious HBO show reference is obvious.

--I guess Meg has overcome her past life or something. Poor tree.

In Which I Review The Leftovers (1x1)

I have a soft spot for anyone who was once associated with LOST. As a former LOST-a-holic, I try to keep track of where the actors and producers and writers are and check out their new creative projects. Sometimes, it's a success (Once Upon a Time) and sometimes it's a dismal failure (Josh Holloway in Intelligence). Since LOST ended four years ago, co-creator and head writer Damon Lindelof has been off the TV grid, mostly working on the Star Trek movies. His venture back into TV is in the form a book-turned-small screen adaption of life post "Rapture." Going into this episode of TV, I must admit I had little interest. Post-rapture TV has been done before. The world turns gritty and ugly; most of the time this rapture event leaves the world backwards, technology has decayed, people are fighting over wells for water, rusted out shells of cars line the streets. All of which makes little sense since I'm fairly certain the book of Revelation makes no mention a technological standstill. The post rapture, post apocalyptic world is a hellscape to remind viewers, and characters in the show, of a life that once was, a better life. And maybe that's all well and good but it's deadly dull when each new "post" world is exactly the same. You can also expect some heavy handed metaphysical musings from the characters about God, divine wrath, sin, the Devil, ect. What is refreshing about The Leftovers, at least from the first episode, is that none of this really happened. The secular and pious voices come from the TV channels, which, over the course of the hour Pilot, vacillate from scientists who have no answers to religious leaders who have no answers. The post apocalyptic landscape looks a lot like our present day, just with less people. Technology still works, kids go to school, adults go to work, cars run, iPods play. The metaphsyical nature of a rapture is left to the talking heads on screen because what the characters in the story care about is how this event personally affected them; and more to the point, how they, the Leftovers, are coping with it. Hint: most of them are coping with it badly. 

Three years ago, 2% of the world's population suddenly vanished. There was neither rhyme nor reason; they just simply left the earth. This "rapture" took all sorts of people: celebrities known for excessive living, newborn babies, fathers, mothers, the old and infirm, the young and healthy, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist. We aren't given much in way of the confusion that surely followed, but rather we move forward in time three years to how everyone is dealing now. It's a small town and the mayor, following a federal mandate, is insisting that everyone is ready to move on. It's time to remember the heroes (even if their heroic quality is simply being taken) and have parades and celebrations. We have a tendency in America to celebrate and "remember" tragic events. Anniversaries of days gone by are brought up annually with picnics, parades, balloons, fireworks. It's...bizarre. At the same time that you're supposed to be moving on, you're forced to continually relive the event in question, as if we are worried that moving on means forgetting. And it's something Police Chief Kevin is against. He doesn't think three years is enough time for people to start feeling better. Kevin thinks that the town is basically trying to put a shiny spin on the tragic loss and move on, as if suddenly having millions upon millions of people vanish can ever be moved on from, especially when there are no answers to be had.

Kevin himself is an interesting guy. Father, husband, cop. He is small town America personified, except I think it's quite possible that he's loosing his mind in the wake of loosing those he loved. None of Kevin's immediate family was taken three years ago, but yet somehow he lost them. His son, Tommy, has joined up with a mysterious guru who claims he can help people unburden themselves but comes across as a dangerous warlord who enjoys flashing knives at people in the dark--and just so happens to have many Asian bikini-clad women lounging around a pool. Kevin's daughter, Jill, was once a straight-A student who is now numb and angry. She lashes out violently at times, and then moves to dissociation during acts of sexual violence (chocking a guy while he masturbates and all she can do is stare and the ceiling and let one tear fall). And Kevin's wife, Laurie, has decided to join up with a fascinatingly disturbing cult that might be the reason to keep tuning in, if only to learn what the heck his Guilty Remnant wants and why they act the way they do. More on them in a minute. Kevin, though, is obviously angry but trying his best to keep it together. He drinks quite a bit and I think is sleep walking, during which time he destroys his kitchen. He blames it on a deer though, so that's okay. There is a feral threat lurking around every corner--mobs, rabid dogs, sharpshooters, but most of all... men. Kevin's daughter might think that he'd never hurt a dog, but by episodes end, he's tearfully unloading his handgun into a pack of rabid dogs who came out of nowhere to take down a deer. The wild things that hurt the innocent--it's a motif in the show. Just as the wild dogs attacked something that was simply standing there, the angry mob attacked the cult even though they were leading a peaceful protest. And, of course, just as human kind was going through their day to day lives, someone or something decided to pluck 2% of them away.

Cults are a typical occurrence in any kind of "post" world. Upheaval always forces people to reexamine their lives and make drastic turns. Laurie, Kevin's wife, made her choice at some point after the rapture. She has taken up with the Guilty Remanent, a cult living in the suburbs. I like that they are in the suburbs; it drives home the point that these were all normal people until something happened to the world in which they live. Normally, the cult would be out on some desolate farm, cut off from the rest of the world. But these specters in white live amongst everyone else, even though they aren't welcome. Their cultic practices are unique to say the least. Dressing in all white doesn't seem too far off the path, but the chain smoking is. Boards with quoteables line the hallways, "we do not smoke for our enjoyment. We smoke as a demonstration of our faith." We learn little about the cult, mostly because no one is allowed to talk; they use paper and pen to communicate. At the remembrance memorial, they appear with signs telling people to stop wasting their breath. The cult was probably the most interesting part of the episode. Part of their duties include following unsuspecting people around, silently, smoking, and staring. It unhinges a woman name Meg who decides to join them instead of having them follow her anymore. What they believe in, or don't believe in, has yet to be made clear but it's something to look forward to.

There are a lot of other goodies in the show but for a pilot episode, it's more important to get the main cast down--the family who didn't loose each other in the rapture but are lost to one another anyway. It's possible that the show may delve into the more theological aspects of a "post" world--God, angels, demons, and Satan may appear, but I somehow doubt it. The show doesn't much care for the how of the rapture and maybe not even the why, but the what now question. The people taken will likely never come back and the characters still around will never get an answer as to why they were left over. It's how they learn to deal with and live in the new world that matters.

Or maybe it's aliens. This is Lindelof after all.

 Miscellaneous Notes on the Pilot

--I'd encourage people to check the show out. It's an interesting hour of TV.

--There are a lot of characters so far and it's hard to keep them straight, but that's very LOST. There are also some flashbacks, but unlike with LOST and ONCE, they aren't important yet.

--Christopher Eccleston plays an American preacher. He'll always be the 9th Doctor to me, so it's a bit odd but I really want to know what caused him to start spewing information about those taken.

--Lot of interesting musical elements in the show--classical piano motifs cut in at intervals of violence or upheaval.