Other Doctor Lives: The Leftovers: Season 3, Episode 8 – “The Book of Nora” (2017)

Series finale time. It’s an interesting way to go out – a lot of the bigger culmination stuff happens in episode 7 (which Christopher Eccleston isn’t in,) so the finale is more of a coda than a climax. I’m not sure how fans of the show took it after three years of investment in the story, but I came away mostly content with it.

Nora faces down the scientists who say they can take her to her departed children and husband. The central characters look back on the choices that led them where they are.

Super, super vague plot description, because I don’t want to get into spoilers. The opening sequence of the finale is pretty straightforward (I mean, as straightforward as it can be for a show where 2% of the world’s population vanished in an instant and the protagonist is maybe a prophet who goes on vision quests to the underworld that’s also a fancy hotel/resort,) and after that, the episode leaves straightforward behind. It’s all about trying to guess where we are and who we’re really dealing with, whether any of it is real and what it might mean. It’s not quite season-6-of-Lost trippy, but it definitely keeps you guessing.

It’s also incredibly intimate. For a show that began with a large ensemble cast, quite a few characters have been stripped away over the course of each season, and all the pivotal scenes in the finale revolve around just a few of the major characters – Nora is one, and obviously Matt is another. I won’t mention any other names here.

The mystery and trippiness of what we’re given here isn’t especially up my alley, at least not in this situation, but I still enjoy it for the feelings it evokes and the gentle insights it gives us into the central characters. It’s a soft, contemplative finale that doesn’t really provide any grand answers, but you find that not doing so is sort of the point.

Matt is in the straightforward-ish opening sequence. I’ve always found his and Nora’s relationship interesting. They read together in a way that adult siblings rarely come across on TV – it can be really easy to forget they’re related, both in the way that they’re off in mostly-separate plots so often and just in how they interact with each other. But every now and then, one will give the other a particular talking-to or they’ll recall a specific memory, and the relationship suddenly makes perfect sense. Their scenes in this episode are like that, and it’s pretty lovely to watch.

On this show, Christopher Eccleston has always been good at doing a lot with a little, and he pitches Matt’s scenes with Nora so subtly here. The material he has in this episode is good but sparing, and he makes the most of every moment.

So that’s a wrap for The Leftovers! Final thoughts.

Accent Watch

Generic middle American. I mean – it’s fine.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. To be honest, this series never fully pulled me in, but I can tell that it’s well-made and the cast does a great job throughout. So even if it’s not really for me, I recognize that there’s plenty here that other people would like.

Christopher Eccleston – I think so. If you’re watching the whole series for Christopher Eccleston, you might be disappointed, since there are a number of episodes where his role is really minimal, but wherever he has have a chance, he takes it and runs with it. While this can be a frustrating character at times, in Eccleston’s hands, he’s always an interesting one.

Warnings

Violence, sexual content, language, drinking/smoking/drug use, disturbing images, strong thematic elements, and characters with disabilities played by ablebodied actors.

Other Doctor Lives: The Leftovers: Season 3, Episode 6 – “Certified” (2017)

*Light episode-premise spoilers.*

Rounding the corner toward the end of the series here – just a few episodes left. This one, while not quite as narrowly-focused as some of the other centric episodes have been, follows a character who was a major presence in season 1 but has since been less prominent. It’s interesting to see her position amid everything that’s been going on.

In a somewhat timey-wimey episode, we track Laurie through her attempts to keep everyone around her from going off the deep end. All the major action has found its way to Australia, and Laurie variously juggles Kevin Sr.’s plans for averting what he believes to be the end of the world (with said plan posing a serious risk to his son’s life) and Nora’s crusade to expose people who claim (fraudulently, Nora insists,) that they can reunite people with their departed loved ones.

It took me a little while to realize that the two main plots of this episode take place within two different time frames. The scenes with Nora are flashbacks, happening before the scenes with Kevin Sr., and I’m not entirely convinced that it was necessary to do so. To me, the benefits of the time-skipping don’t really outweigh my confusion in the early scenes as I was trying to figure out, not exactly what’s happening when, but more why it’s structured the way it is.

Given that Laurie began her time on the show as a cultist, it’s impressive that we’ve now gotten her to a point where she’s poised to be the voice of reason for other zealous people who are ready to follow their beliefs to extremes. Although they’re coming from two very different viewpoints – Kevin Sr’s adherence to belief in his and Kevin’s supposed gifts of prophecy, Nora’s determined skepticism that’s desperate to prove these people are lying – both are prepared to do almost anything to achieve their goals. That’s where Laurie comes in, attempting to provide a tempering influence. Part of this, I imagine, is just her backstory of having been a therapist, but I wonder if it’s also because she’s already had her post-departures existential crisis through her time in the G.R. She’s on the other side of it now, ready to help other people navigate theirs.

The best part of this story is the opening it gives for Amy Brenneman and Carrie Coon to share meaty scenes together. They’re both interesting characters, both linked to Kevin, and they both present a frequent aura of unflappability to others, but when they go off, they go off. This makes for a neat dynamic between them, and it’s kind of a shame that the two actresses haven’t had more chances to interact throughout the series.

Christopher Eccleston is involved on the flashback side of the plot, joining in on Nora’s mission. The back-and-forth between Laurie and Nora very much takes center stage in these scenes and Matt’s role is more functionary, but we do get a few glimpses that are more specific to his character. The final scene between these three is probably one of the strongest of the episode.

Other Doctor Lives: The Leftovers: Season 3, Episode 5 – “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World” (2017)

In case you couldn’t guess, this is the Matt-centric episode of season 3. Maybe it’s just because I pay more attention to him than the other characters, but it’s interesting that each season includes one episode that focuses pretty solely on him, especially given that he doesn’t always have a big presence on the show apart from that – he’s missing altogether from a small number of season 2 and 3 episodes, and there are episodes throughout the series where he only appears in one scene. Maybe the writers shore up all their Matt-energy/efforts to release once a season in a big Matt-a-palooza?

Like most characters on the show, Matt is hyper-focused on the coming seventh anniversary of the departures. Again, like others, he’s convinced that it’s vital, that something is going to happen even if he’s not entirely sure what. He’s also developed some other… shall we say unconventional beliefs that mean he thinks that Kevin is crucial to whatever is going to happen. This means he needs Kevin to be in Miracle on the anniversary date. The only problem? The plot has taken both Kevin and Nora to Australia, and flights are grounded due to an unexpected naval crisis in the Pacific.

Each Matt episode involves him moving heaven and earth to and make something happen, something he very desperately needs in that moment. Each one also tests him to his limits, asking him to prove just what he’s willing to do to get it. Whether he achieves his given goal or not, the lengths he goes to illuminate him as a character.

And in this episode, he’s willing to go far. As in “guilt one of my parishioners into flying me halfway around the world so I can gain entry to another continent on a technicality, talk my way onto a ferry chartered by a lion-stud sex cult” far. He’s bound and determined to get Kevin back to Miracle under a serious time crunch, and he will do almost anything to make that happen. Matt is straight-up losing his shit.

One thing that’s nice about this episode is that, for once, he’s not going through his frenzied mission basically alone. He’s acquired two quasi-disciples to help him out and has one irritated cynic he can’t shake. This means Christopher Eccleston isn’t playing purely off of one-shot characters for the majority of the episode. He’s not just the desperate guy whose needs are too dire to care what strangers think of him. This time around, he has friends and acquaintances to accompany him, who go, “Hang on, let’s stop and think about this for a minute,” when road blocks to Matt’s goal are thrown up. As Matt goes to greater and greater lengths to get to Australia in time to bring Kevin back, we get to see other characters going, “Wait, Matt, are you serious right now?”

Christopher Eccleston has always played Matt’s feverish intensity with the right air of, “Okay, I’m self-conscious about freaking out like this, but what I need is too important to stop now,” and the addition of other cast regulars adds an interesting dynamic to that. He’s still ultimately not going to stop, but it’s harder for him to justify his extremes to people he knows and it forces him to use different tools to rally his troops/keep them from giving up on him.

I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite episode overall for Matt, or for Eccleston’s performance on the show (I’m still really partial to the season 1 finale,) but I do think this is my favorite of the Matt-centric episodes. It goes to some genuinely bonkers places and puts Matt seriously through the wringer while mostly avoiding plots that turn me off, and Eccleston really gets to let loose.

Other Doctor Lives: The Leftovers: Season 3, Episode 3 – “Crazy Whitefella Thinking” (2017)

A detour episode, following a character who’s always been positioned on the show as an important figure, albeit with limited screentime. The story leans hard into the religious angles that have been growing this season (not that the show hasn’t always had a religious/spiritual bent, but they’ve really been cranking it up here.)

While the folks back in Miracle are gearing up for the seventh anniversary of the departures, we check in with what Kevin Garvey, Sr. has been up to. “Our” Kevin’s dad, erstwhile police chief and self-declared prophet, has appointed himself on a mission. He believes that a flood will devastate the Earth when the anniversary arrives, and the only way to stop it is for him to sing a song he’s compiled piece by piece from spiritual leaders across the world. The final piece of his song is held by one Christopher Sunday, and he travels across Australia in search of the indigenous holy man.

I’ve liked other intense character-centric episodes, as well as tangent episodes from the main plot, but this one isn’t a favorite. I’ve never been a huge fan of Kevin, Sr. anyway (I’m on record as being kind of over “is it mental illness or prophetic visions?” storylines, so getting a full episode of him isn’t really what I’m looking for at this stage. It doesn’t help that, in this story, he’s apparently gained such a reputation for intruding on indigenous rituals/ceremonies that word is spreading around the Outback not to be his tour guide. That’s not a scenario in which I’m exactly planning to root for the guy – in other words, the episode title aligns pretty well with my impression of the main plot.

One piece of note is the appearance of Lindsay Duncan as a woman Kevin, Sr. meets on his travels. I’ve seen Duncan in a bunch of stuff, including Christopher and His Kind and the O’Connor/Miller version of Mansfield Park, but I’ll always remember her best as the steely Capt. Adelaide Brooke from Doctor Who’s “The Waters of Mars.” Fun to see her pop up here sporting an Australian accent!

Just a couple scenes for Christopher Eccleston/Matt today. Matt is one of the few people back in the States who knows where Kevin, Sr. is, one of the only people he keeps in touch with. Matt has been offering him some financial support, which pretty much tracks – 1) Matt is a generous person who’s usually prepared to help, and 2) he’s been exploring some pretty out-there religious ideas himself, so who is he to deny Kevin, Sr. his prophet quest?

The episode appears to span a decent stretch of time, so we get a glimpse of Matt at two different points, in two very different states of mind. In an episode that’s extremely focused on Kevin, Sr., I appreciate getting just a brief hint about something deeper going on in Matt’s life.

Other Doctor Lives: The Leftovers: Season 3, Episode 2: “Don’t Be Ridiculous” (2017)

The seemingly-annual Nora episode. It’s a good one, and, as with previous Nora episodes, it’s a compelling look at a damaged character and also gives us further insight into the world post-departures (episode premise spoilers.)

Nora has been busy with an uptick in claims of secondary departures in the run-up to the seventh anniversary, with people claiming signs and miracles around every corner. Then, she gets a mysterious call from someone whose claims of the impossible cut her to the core.

Nora carries herself with the air of a characters who’s been through all kinds of hell. The loss of her husband and children during the departures is of course the biggest one, and its effects cling to her the hardest, but it’s not all she’s suffered – this episode goes into another major loss she was hit with between seasons. As a result of everything she’s been through, she’s pretty much lost her faith in humanity and has an incredibly well-honed bullshit-meter ready for everything.

And so, she’s forever on the lookout for scams and lies, even the lies people tell themselves. She doesn’t believe in miracles (but then why was she so desperate to move to Miracle last season?), and she’s not prepared to let anyone else believe in a comforting fiction that can’t be real. She doesn’t want to read any grand meaning into what she’s endured. She just wants it to be random and awful and over, a part of her story that she continually tries to tell herself doesn’t have to affect who she is now, but of course it does.

Which is why the too-good-to-be-true claim she hears in this episode is such a body blow. It’s audacious and almost surely impossible, belying belief for people far less skeptical than her. When she sets out to expose it as an opportunistic fraud preying on the grief-stricken, it’s personal. It’s a crusade to burn this lie out of the world where it can never again hurt those who are desperate to believe in it. But at the same time, there’s this small part of her that’s longing for it, the part that’s daring it to be fake because she’s really dying for it to be real. This is likely to be her main storyline this season, and I’m really interested to see where it goes.

Matt’s scenes, no surprise, are pretty much all interacting with Nora. He gets a bit more to do than he has in previous Nora episodes, though it’s still not a ton. Nora spends much of the episode with various people in her crosshairs, and Matt is one of them. For multiple reasons – he’s been nurturing a particular belief that positions him not so far off some of the deluded folks Nora has been working to disabuse, but she also has reason to believe he might have assisted in a fraud, if only by not intervening in it. Matt is looking to be pretty messy this season, and I’m curious to see just how far they take it; Christopher Eccleston is good at just skirting the line of “unhinged.”

Other Doctor Lives: The Leftovers: Season 3, Episode 1 – “The Book of Kevin” (2017)

*Episode premise spoilers*

Kicking off the final season of The Leftovers with a time jump, shaking up the dynamics in major ways. It goes to some wild places that I wasn’t expecting and sets up what looks like it’ll be quite  an out-there season.

Three years after the events of the season 2 finale, the Garveys, Nora, and Matt are firmly entrenched in the town of Miracle. Things are uneasy in town as the seventh anniversary of the departures approaches, with a number of people believing that it portends some great event.

In a way, this has a lot in common with the season 2 premiere. It opens with a non-sequitur far-flung flashback featuring characters from the distant past with no apparent connection to any of the characters we know, and then it pivots into a soft reset. While “Axis Mundi” introduced a brand-new setting and mainly featured all-new characters, “The Book of Kevin” uses the three-year time jump to reshuffle a lot of existing character relationships and the general state of life in Miracle. Neither premiere is all that interested in addressing the fallout of its explosive preceding finale – in the case of this episode, it offers up a quick scene that follows on the heels of “I Live Here Now,” then skips ahead to the impending seventh anniversary three years later.

There is interesting stuff here, seeing what new character connections have been made, getting hints of major things that have happened in the interim, and getting a feel for the new state of affairs. But it also feels like somewhat of a waste, squandering good plot potential from last season in favor of new surprises and a new countdown to doomsday/judgement day/the day of salvation/whatever the seventh anniversary may prove to be. In particular, there’s one character who emerged to be very intriguing towards the end of last season, and their story is wrapped up very summarily/dismissively in this episode. I was hoping for more.

So what is Matt up to these days? A lot. He is up to a lot. He’s fully embraced all it means to be a pastor in Miracle as the seventh anniversary of the departures nears, complete with devoted pilgrims listening to his sermons from a loudspeaker outside the church because the sanctuary is overflowing. For someone who rejected any early notion of the departures being “divine” (what with his season 1 “they weren’t all angels” campaign,) Miracle has really turned him into someone who’s ready for loud-and-clear signs from Heaven at all times.

Matt has always been an unusual mix of radical and level-headed, and the season 3 premiere finds him latching onto some genuinely wild beliefs. And yet, Christopher Eccleston finds a way to portray this new zealotry with just enough groundedness that you can almost see why Matt believes these things, even if you’re not ready to make that leap with him. It’s a delicate balance between “bold step out on faith” and “full-on tinfoil-hat-wearing mania,” but Eccleston manages to keep straddling the line.