In an instant, they're gone. Two percent of the world's population. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and sons and daughters, all of them different in age, race, gender, sexual orientation, and religious background -- not a single common denominator among them. Over 140 million people gone from the face of the Earth, without a trace and without explanation. If it was the biblical Rapture, then why weren't all of the departed Christians? Was it a random harvest? Those are important questions to be asking, but the most important question of all, according to The Leftovers, is: What of those left behind?
While this inexplicable event -- which, in the context of the show, is referred to as the Sudden Departure -- is a global phenomenon, The Leftovers takes a small scale approach to the crisis, focusing on the denizens of Mapleton, a small suburban hamlet in New York. And although the opening scene of the pilot episode is a short glimpse into the actual Sudden Departure, the show leaps ahead three years, where the citizens of Mapleton are preparing to commemorate the departed with an ill-advised "Heroes' Day" parade on the event's third anniversary. The parade is a clear attempt at providing closure, but what it does instead is expose a community's festering wounds that have yet to heal, even three years later. With more questions than answers from both religious and scientific experts, the survivors are left to ponder the unknowable fate of those who disappeared -- and consider why they themselves were not granted the same fate.
The Leftovers is based on a novel by author Tom Perrotta, who is no stranger to adaptations of his work after 1999's Election and 2006's Little Children. Perrotta co-created the television series with Damon Lindelof, who served as co-showrunner for Lost with Carlton Cuse, the executive producer of FX's upcoming horror drama The Strain. Lost was criticized for asking more questions than it answered, with Lindelof himself drawing considerable heat from disappointed fans in the wake of the series' polarizing finale, and the fact that The Leftovers appears to have no interest in providing an explanation for the show's Rapture-like event could be perceived as Lindelof asking for trouble. But the decision to render this event as an unknowable phenomenon is what makes this show fascinating for me, at least, because it allows the writers the freedom to focus on the characters, rather than the mystery. Make no mistake, there are certain elements of the premiere that would seem to hint at unexplainable (or even supernatural) forces at work, but the heart of the show lies with the people of Mapleton in the aftermath of the Sudden Departure.
Kevin Garvey, Mapleton's beleaguered chief of police, is our central protagonist. Though he lost no one to the Sudden Departure, Kevin has felt the unfortunate ripples of the event firsthand, both as a police chief trying to maintain some semblance of order among the chaos and as a father whose family has been torn apart. His teenage son Tom Garvey has dropped out of college -- and out of contact -- to become the loyal disciple of a dubious, self-proclaimed prophet called Holy Wayne, and his teenage daughter Jill Garvey has seemingly lost all ambition in life. But the most painful departure has been that of his wife Laurie Garvey, who has abandoned her family to join the ranks of the Guilty Remnant, a secretive, antagonistic cult dedicated to ensuring that the people of Mapleton are reminded of the moral implications of the Sudden Departure. As his mental state begins to deteriorate -- much like his father before him, who was forced out as chief of police after a nervous breakdown -- Kevin mounts a desperate search for meaning, which feels especially bleak in a world where entire belief systems were rendered meaningless in an instant by a single event.
In case you hadn't picked up on it, The Leftovers is not a show about sunshine, rainbows, and puppies (although a pack of feral dogs do have a prominent role in the premiere episode). It's not a show that's going to provide temporary relief from the trials and tribulations of your own life with a few belly laughs. But it's one of the most compelling new dramas on television right now, and I say that having seen all of one episode. I liked Perrotta's novel quite a bit, but I read it with advance knowledge that it was being adapted into a television series. So while the novel ultimately left me wanting more, I never felt the pangs of disappointment, because I knew I would be spending more time with these characters in another medium. I would list the show's cast here, but I doubt you'd recognize more than one or two of the names, and that is not a detriment to the show. There is nothing extraordinary about these characters, other than the fact that they're ordinary people desperate to find a true north after an extraordinary event turns their lives upside down, and the show's casting choices reflect the need for actors that can be the people next door.
What Television Critics Are Saying...
"Many will hate it. But there will be viewers in whom it strikes a chord so deeply that they will feel themselves overwhelmed by it in the best possible way: not like they're drowning in the misery, but like it's teaching them a new way to breathe." - Alan Sepinwall, HitFix
"The first few episodes don’t showcase enough artistry to justify all the slogging and weeping, the bloodied faces and broken hearts. But I’d be lying if I said The Leftovers didn’t fascinate me. The totality of the suffering feels new. The scale of it overwhelms, so much so that nitpicking the dialogue, the performances, or the filmmaking seems petty." - Matt Soller Zeitz, Vulture
"But on the whole, it’s elegiac, ingenious television, unlike anything else on the air. It has elements of mystery, like Lost, and it has elements of satire, like [author Tom] Perrotta’s novels, but it’s also its own thing, a weird art film and character piece that also features large packs of feral dogs running wild." - Todd VanDerWerff, The A.V. Club
The Leftovers airs on HBO on Sundays at 9:00pm CST. You can watch the first episode online here.
