# Is there really no thread for The Leftovers? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 17, 2017, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637 "2017-04-17T17:01:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2017, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/81 "2017-05-25T13:40:47Z")
I think their arc was completed. Especially considering we are going into the home stretch. If the show was to continue for a few more years, I don’t think that would have necessarily happened (nor the time jump). The compressed storyline means we really only have time to focus on one cult - the one around Kevin. And yeah, the GR at times seemed like Reza Aslan doing some intellectual masturbation, but in dealing with a crazy crisis is the GR any more ridiculous than any other cults found in dystopian works (I am thinking of Handmaid’s Tale in particular)? Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2017, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/82 "2017-05-25T16:03:54Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > And yeah, the GR at times seemed like Reza Aslan doing some intellectual masturbation, but in dealing with a crazy crisis is the GR any more ridiculous than any other cults found in dystopian works (I am thinking of Handmaid’s Tale in particular)? There are definitely others that aren’t well thought out. But I’ve also seen cases where they _were_. It’s better to keep it simple, I think. Did you ever see the movie _Martha Marcy May Marlene_? Good movie with a \*great \*ending (that inspired page after page of debate on the IMDb boards, RIP). ---
**Author:** ![MoonMoon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonmoon/32/2959_2.png) [@MoonMoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MoonMoon)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2017, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/83 "2017-05-25T16:13:53Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Eh… The Guilty Remnant is something I found to be absolutely brilliant. A masterful way of demonstrating how people respond to unimaginable grief (takes “Never Forget” to a crazy level, in both senses of the word). And then Holy Wayne is a bit of a counter to that - not everyone is in despair, but they do need healing. Without the GR and the effects it has on people, I don’t think I like this show nearly as much. I agree. They were necessary and well done. And even though they’re (mostly) gone, we can see that people are still desperately searching for meaning and belonging, with the “psychic” readings, the cruise ship group, and the cult that’s forming around Kevin. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2017, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/84 "2017-05-25T18:37:49Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Did you ever see the movie _Martha Marcy May Marlene_? Good movie with a \*great \*ending (that inspired page after page of debate on the IMDb boards, RIP). I have not… but will put it on my list (though it appears not be streaming anywhere for free) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2017, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/85 "2017-05-25T20:56:44Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > I have not… but will put it on my list (though it appears not be streaming anywhere for free) Yeah, I got the Blu-ray from Netflix. If you see it, let me know how you interpret the ending! ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2017, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/86 "2017-05-26T18:12:22Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > But I find everything to do with Tommy, Holy Wayne (other than in “Guest”), and the Guilty Remnant\* indefensible. Flat out bad TV, that I would never try to subject anyone to, much less ask them to slog through it so they can get to the good stuff. (Maybe that’s the disconnect, if people think I’m anti-season one because it’s too dark and dour. Rather, for me at least, it’s because parts of it are so dumb, eye-rollingly risible.) My understanding is that the first season, including the Guilty Remnant and Holy Wayne, is adapted, more or less directly from the source novel. So if it’s indefensible, blame Tom Perrotta. And by the way, in the last episode (the one broadcast on May 21), was that the first time Kevin learned that Laurie was pregnant at the time of the Sudden Departure, and the fetus disappeared at that time? ---
**Author:** ![Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2017, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/87 "2017-05-26T18:27:43Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > My understanding is that the first season, including the Guilty Remnant and Holy Wayne, is adapted, more or less directly from the source novel. So if it’s indefensible, blame Tom Perrotta. > > And by the way, in the last episode (the one broadcast on May 21), was that the first time Kevin learned that Laurie was pregnant at the time of the Sudden Departure, and the fetus disappeared at that time? Yes to both. The first season followed the book fairly closely. ---
**Author:** ![Lucky\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de053/32.png) [@Lucky\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucky_Mike)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2017, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/88 "2017-05-27T22:33:42Z")
I have loved the series. This season is not as good as the 1st or 2nd. The 1st was the best though. Anyways, I am very worried because I see no way they can end this series properly. The entire point of the series is NOT about answers. That is why I loved he 1st season so much. There was almost no “mystical” parts, just humanity reacting to the inexplicable. The 2nd season really started throwing in the mysticism and now I am afraid they are gonna try and answer questions in the 3rd. But, regrettably, if they answer any questions, IMHO, they ruin it. ☹ They should have stuck with the first theme. Throw people into an inexplicable situation that fits NO religious doctrine and see what happens. Now that they have decided to give us a false sense they are going to “explain” the root of it all leaves me interested, but very wary. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2017, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/89 "2017-05-28T04:44:58Z")
**Lucky Mike** , I doubt they are going to fundamentally explain it. But you’re right that they’ve gotten a bit away from the mode of “this one inexplicable thing happened, but now we’ll keep everything realistic after that”. I respect your heterodox take on the show (I have felt that way about other shows, preferring seasons or characters hardly anyone else did) although I don’t share it. Just tell me at least you didn’t like the first season credit sequence better too? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2017, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/90 "2017-05-29T02:54:12Z")
I loved that Lindelof, in the voice of the “president”, basically admitted how stupid some of the aspects of the Guilty Remnant were! ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2017, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/91 "2017-05-30T03:19:12Z")
Wow! Incredible episode! But I have always loved the International Assassin based ones. It’s always been such an impressive and interesting way to deal with internal struggle. I really liked the jumping from back and forth between the Kevin’s and then how he has to kill himself in order to get passed his own crap and kill the pocket purgatory that he has kept escaping to (so maybe that answers the question that Kevin actually didn’t rip the duct tape away when suffocating himself, but kept dying and coming back). Great seeing Patti and Meg back again as well. And the whole Christopher Sunday asking him if he really believed that Kevin Sr. could stop a flood with a song. I am really excited for the finale! > [@SlackerInc](#): > > I loved that Lindelof, in the voice of the “president”, basically admitted how stupid some of the aspects of the Guilty Remnant were! It is interesting that you read that scene as confirming what you already thought about the GR ;). I think it was fairly evident that Kevin’s public pronouncements were a bunch of BS in order to get the public to think of the GR party as normal enough to vote for… so they could nuke the world. > [@Lucky\_Mike](#): > > They should have stuck with the first theme. Throw people into an inexplicable situation that fits NO religious doctrine and see what happens. That only can go so far. I think there is a reason Perrotta didn’t write a sequel to his book. It works for a book or a season, but if you want to go further you need more than that. The first season shows the cults that can arise, but then what. * * * On a side note, I’ve said before and I still believe that religious believers and non-believers get different things out of The Leftovers. They watch it in different ways. I thought about this, when Kevin Sr. started comparing the table at the farm to the Last Supper. I considered that the original apostles were probably just as flawed and messed up as the folks around the table, even though people tend not see them in those ways (although the Gospels point out how much they kept on not listening to what Jesus was saying). Maybe for non believers it was a bit of a funny through away line by a megalomaniac, but I got something a little bit insightful out of it. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2017, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/92 "2017-05-30T03:34:58Z")
Also… it was awesome hearing the S1 theme music again (I wonder if the finale will have the S2 theme music). ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2017, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/93 "2017-05-30T06:58:00Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > It is interesting that you read that scene as confirming what you already thought about the GR ;). I think it was fairly evident that Kevin’s public pronouncements were a bunch of BS in order to get the public to think of the GR party as normal enough to vote for… so they could nuke the world. I would say, first of all, that there’s only so much parsing you can do of the kind of dream logic we saw here. But if we’re going to try, I’d point out that Kevin was already president, and the plan to nuke the world was going down without any intervening vote. I’d also argue that eliminating marriage and family is, if anything, going to be _harder_ to sell to the public than being silent and chain smoking (not that any of it is easy, of course). ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2017, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/94 "2017-05-30T13:13:23Z")
It would also explain why Kevin is talking and isn’t smoking… Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2017, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/95 "2017-05-31T06:44:38Z")
Does anybody have a theory as to why submarine guy had to be naked? I mean, sure, it added a level of sur-reality, but I just can’t make it make sense. He needed to be barefoot, yes, but naked? Not that I minded . . . ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2017, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/96 "2017-05-31T07:45:00Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Does anybody have a theory as to why submarine guy had to be naked? I mean, sure, it added a level of sur-reality, but I just can’t make it make sense. He needed to be barefoot, yes, but naked? > > Not that I minded . . . That actually makes total sense to me. He was just barely able to do the splits that far as it was. In his Navy uniform, he would have been too restricted. It’s possible something much looser, or with more give (like a leotard) would have also worked, but he probably didn’t have anything like that on board. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/97 "2017-06-01T17:54:08Z")
Fantastic article about how The Leftovers became the best show on TV: > **[‘The Leftovers’ Turned the End of the World Into the Best Show on TV](https://www.theringer.com/2017/5/31/16040348/the-leftovers-hbo-finale-b089b887fe06)** > > Only it started after the end of the world. The HBO series has made compelling drama from ambiguity and irresolution. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/98 "2017-06-01T18:13:33Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Fantastic article about how The Leftovers became the best show on TV: > > [https://theringer.com/the-leftovers-hbo-finale-b089b887fe06](https://theringer.com/the-leftovers-hbo-finale-b089b887fe06) Good piece, but I don’t know if we can safely conclude that “true believer Matt Jamison abandoned his faith entirely in the space of a single episode”. That’s a \*possible \*interpretation of the “lion sex boat” episode, but this exact question was chewed over on a Leftovers podcast I listen to, and both hosts believe that he did not in fact lose his faith, even if he has clearly changed his mind about how to go about applying it. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/99 "2017-06-01T19:16:35Z")
> [@Lucky\_Mike](#): > > The 2nd season really started throwing in the mysticism and now I am afraid they are gonna try and answer questions in the 3rd. But, regrettably, if they answer any questions, IMHO, they ruin it. ☹ > > . After what Damon Lindelof did with Lost, I’m pretty sure he feels pressure to wrap things up nicely this time. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637/100 "2017-06-01T19:28:21Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Good piece, but I don’t know if we can safely conclude that “true believer Matt Jamison abandoned his faith entirely in the space of a single episode”. That’s a \*possible \*interpretation of the “lion sex boat” episode, but this exact question was chewed over on a Leftovers podcast I listen to, and both hosts believe that he did not in fact lose his faith, even if he has clearly changed his mind about how to go about applying it. Well, the article didn’t say his faith in God - it could be his faith in Kevin as the Messiah. After all, he didn’t go to the farm at all. I think the later is far more likely, but I agree he likely didn’t lose his faith in God. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-no-thread-for-the-leftovers/784637.md?page=6)