The series is committed to exploring the spaces between what we want to be true and what’s actually true.
We chatted with the director about why she decided to sign on to The Leftovers and what it was like to help find the show’s voice.
The season premiere functions familiarly as a laying of the groundwork for what’s to come, moving the plot pieces around to create sites for potential conflict.
The season finale features a series of reckonings, not all of them as satisfying as one might have hoped.
The episode is, principally, a reconsideration of characters we believe we’ve come to know.
“Cairo” sees the residents of Mapleton tested in the same way God tested Abraham, and more than a few are found wanting.
It pauses to establish the constellation of conflicts driving the first season of The Leftovers to its conclusion.
With “Guest,” The Leftovers whittles away Nora’s placid exterior until all that’s left is the abraded soul inside.
An enthralling portrait of what happens when the urge to move on collides with the persistence of grief.
I’m excited by its proficiency with an unorthodox brand of suburban drama, part Left Behind and part Leave It to Beaver.
It’s hard to know where to situate “Two Boats and a Helicopter,” the stellar third episode of The Leftovers, within the HBO drama’s still-elusive arc.
Compared to “Pilot,” “Penguins One, Us Zero” is more focused, but the ambivalence it provokes remains the same.
In the beginning, at least, The Leftovers sounds familiar.
It’s another stultifying example of pop culture’s determination to elevate potentially serviceable pulp to the realm of capital-A art.