Episode 2 of The Leftovers is still light on the Christopher Eccleston, but it’s dropping more tidbits about the world the characters inhabit and more potential creepiness besides. Oh, and by the way, I caught Damon Lindelof’s name in the credits this time around, so those Lost parallels I mentioned last week are definitely more than just a general type.
Time to start filling in some of these characters – there are a lot of them, and we’ll be with this show for a while. The story so far has centered mainly around the Garvey family. Dad Kevin, the local police chief, is on thin ice after an incident in the previous week that has those around him starting to question his sanity. Mom Laurie, who joined the Guilty Remnants cult after the disappearances, feels out a new recruit. Son Tom has been working for a different cult leader, and he goes on the run after one of the cult’s acolytes during a raid. Meanwhile, daughter Jill follows a suspicious character around town.
The disappearances remain the biggest mystery in this world, and we see how the town continues to wrestle with them three years later. Here, we’re introduced to “departed benefits,” financial compensation given to family members of the vanished, and the application process for those benefits involve a lengthy, wide-ranging questionnaire that seems to search for any connection between the people who disappeared. This world is desperate for meaning to a tragedy that, on the surface, doesn’t appear to have any.
But there are a number of other smaller, possibly interconnected mysteries at play as well. Is Kevin seeing things, and if so, why? What’s the ethos behind Guilty Remnants? Is Nora, a woman who lost her husband and both her children in the disappearances, a shady person? Can Wayne, the leader of the other main cult, really do what he claims? So far, it feels to me like this is all going to be relevant, but the Damon Lindelof factor admittedly makes me a bit cautious (side note: I accidentally typed “Damn Lindelof” – Freudian!) I remember the early days of Lost, throwing out “mystery feelers” at every turn, some of which took six years to wrap up, some of which was answered unsatisfyingly, some of which were never addressed at all. So we’ll see.
I still have yet to make any real major connections with the characters. I’m probably most interested so far in Carrie Coon’s Nora. Her backstory is a reminder that a “random,” seemingly equal-opportunity tragedy doesn’t affect all families equally (rings of pandemic familiarity again,) and she has this demeanor that’s somehow warm and chilly at the same time, so I’d like to learn more about her deal. After her, I’m most interested in Amy Brenneman’s Laurie, but that’s more for potential than anything else; GR members don’t speak, so there’s a lot we don’t know. While we’re talking about actors and characters, this episode also features an appearance from Scott Glenn. I couldn’t figure out where I recognized him from, but IMDb finally illuminated me – he played Stick on Daredevil.
Last week, I mentioned how white the show is. A couple of notes here on the few people of color we do have around. I already brought up Paterson Joseph, who plays cult leader Wayne, and it’s not a great look when the majority of the representation on the show is supplied by the Black male cult leader and his cadre of “kept” acolytes of attractive young Asian American women. These characters are all in a separate locale/different state from the main action, and the most prominent character of color in the central small town is Lucy, the mayor who regularly clashes with Kevin. That’s less outright problematic than the cult stuff, but it strikes me as a colorblind-casting fail that the mostly-white residents of this small town would elect a Black woman as their mayor. Not that it’s impossible, but it would definitely be an issue, and so far, there’s no recognition of Lucy’s race or gender in relation to her position.
Like I said, light on Christopher Eccleston again. We only see Matt in one sequence, doing the same “they weren’t all angels” routine from the pilot, along with a suggestion that he may or may not have dealings with a potentially-shadowy character. Still, the opening credits list Eccleston third, after Justin Theroux and Amy Brenneman, so there must be some meatier stuff ahead for him.
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