You knew that a series like this would have a flashback episode eventually. There’s been too much hinting and dangling not to, and the fact that the series is set three years after the departures practically demands to know who these characters were before the world changed.
Despite some unusual portents, namely a rogue deer that keeps getting itself trapped in buildings, life in Mapleton is moving along normally. There’s work and family, science-fair projects and prospective pets, and a huge swathe of the town making plans to celebrate the police chief (Kevin’s dad) being named Man of the Year. Few have any inkling of what’s coming.
Given the show’s Lost pedigree, I suppose it was only a matter of time before we got into a big flashback. While The Leftovers largely hasn’t followed the centric-episode flashback structure of Lost or Once Upon a Time, it was evidently saving up for an episode like this, with a full hour’s worth of surprising connections and unexpected “past life” reveals. Aside from the pilot’s opening scene, which didn’t really feature any major characters, we’ve only been seeing this world and these people as they are now, years after their lives shifted dramatically on their axes, and it’s interesting to see who they were back when life was “ordinary.”
For my money, some of the biggest changes in character include Jill (seeing how bright and happy she was is almost painful,) Nora (there are sad dramatic-irony bells going off left and right with her,) and of course any future G.R. member. Laurie probably has the most surprising plotline – not so much within the specific context of the episode, as it telegraphs things fairly hard, but in relation to the series as a whole – and I like seeing what Kevin was like before the departures.
Back in the Matt-focused episode 3, I mentioned that an ablebodied actor plays a paralyzed character, Mary, and was bracing myself for some kind of sci-fi-induced “miraculous” recovery. That still might be on the horizon, but for now, we’re “treated” to scenes of her before her accident, up and about, and I’m not really here for it. That stuff doesn’t really grab me anymore. Instead, these sorts of Easter-egg scenes just stand out as, “So that’s why you just ‘couldn’t’ hire an actor with a disability?’ moments. (Not that Mary is really given anything of substance to play on the show so far, but it’s still reflective of the larger trend of making excuses to cast inauthentically.)
As for Christopher Eccleston, Matt has a small role, mostly just taking part in the party scenes, but there are some points of interest for him too. Particularly in light of how reviled he is by some at the start of the series (though they’ve since kind of gotten away from that,) it’s intriguing to see how much of a fixture of the community he is before the depatures. Not that it’s surprising that a clergy member would be an important figure in a small town, but it presents a strong contrast to the present day. Eccleston does well with portraying this dynamic between Matt and the folks of Mapleton, an earnest, down-to-earth guy whose opinion is respected in town, even as he’s a little bit corny and knows it.
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