# The Leftovers - I don't understand the praise \[Open Spoilers\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted, hbomax-wb-dc\ **Created:** [November 14, 2019, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398 "2019-11-14T03:53:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/61 "2021-05-14T02:03:08Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > > > And it’s a remarkable ending because in many ways it gives redemption to Lindelof for his failings with the Lost finale, whilst being even **less** definitive than his former show. > > Actually, to me that is not redemption at all, it is more of the same “we are gonna reward fans of the show with no clear ending” bullshit we had on Lost. > > Not to mention, Earth 2 would be a catastrophe with only 2%. The power grid would fail, food production pipeline fail, the 2% would be reduced to a dystopia ala Walking Dead. Exactly. It answers the question in the moment but there are just too many logical problems if you think it through. I loved the ending and I lived the series. One of the best series I’ve ever seen, along with Rescue Me and Breaking Bad. DrDeth, you’ve really done yourself a disservice by coming to the conclusion that it was not worth watching. It was some of the best storytelling ever. Tom Parrota and Damon Lindelof (and Mimi Leder and the other directors) have brought us a masterpiece. The fact that we are still discussing it four years after it ended should tell you something. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/62 "2021-05-14T02:07:14Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Then, now, maybe, just _maybe_ - don’t run a show with a huge fucking mystery in it? Why on earth not? It’s the mystery that makes the story interesting. Why does Villanelle kill people? Why does Mando go back to save Grogu? Why didn’t Walt quit when he made enough money making crystal meth? What stories do you prefer if you don’t like mystery? ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/63 "2021-05-14T04:35:33Z")
I think the 2% world is plausible. There would be a lot of death initially in it, people dying in surgery, car crashes, plane crashes, uncared for babies dying. And if you can have a 98% world, why not a 2% world? It flips the perspective and is emotionally resonant. The series would be the poorer for it had it not been presented. I don’t like to adopt alternative theories, unless they make the world simpler and make more sense. I will admit that I can get on board with the physicist’s device not working on Nora. I don’t think Nora got cold feet, that doesn’t make any sense to me given subsequent events. I think she was at peace with either going through, or dying in the attempt. She would accept either. And she got neither. Perhaps even on the verge of dying by drowning as well. She was again, a leftover. That experience would be devastating enough to drive her into her low-fi outback existence. Other scenarios don’t work as well in getting her where she is in the story. As far as the story she tells, everything in it is things she would want and reflect her reality. I think if she had really gone through, she wouldn’t have come back. So she tells a story where her family is happy, alive, feel lucky, still in their home, moving on (since Nora can’t go through anyway), Nora doesn’t make sense there (since she can’t be.) Everything reflects Nora’s dreams, desires, and the reality that she can’t have them. So the story is a way to get her to acceptance. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/64 "2021-05-14T06:08:48Z")
I love mysteries- as long as I get some answers and closure. If you are just gonna jerk me around like Lost- nope. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/65 "2021-05-14T06:31:12Z")
> [@Jay\_Z](#): > > > [@DrDeth](#): > > > > Not to mention, Earth 2 would be a catastrophe with only 2%. The power grid would fail, food production pipeline fail, the 2% would be reduced to a dystopia ala Walking Dead. > > They’d have to consolidate. They can’t maintain that much infrastructure, true. But they only need to maintain a portion of it, and manufacturing can take a backseat for years due to all of the excess goods. Even with 2%, you’ll still have skilled people in every trade. But they’ll be scattered, so an effort would need to be made to gather together. Yeah, and IIRC, Nora mentions that they have plenty of resources, but it took a long time to get around because of lack of pilots, etc. Unlike The Walking Dead or any other apocalyptic scenario, the remaining 2% aren’t dealing with ruined infrastructure and environment or having the other 98% trying to eat them. Although I do imagine they would be dealing with profound depression and loneliness. The 98% world was miserable losing just 2%. Imagine if almost everyone you know vanished. ---
**Author:** ![Smid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/838e76/32.png) [@Smid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smid)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/66 "2021-05-14T08:46:39Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > If you are just gonna jerk me around like Lost- nope. There is again the idea that this series it is like Lost. It is not. Lost promised answers. It gave us a LOT of red herrings, but there was supposed to be explanations for it over “those people worship a weird island god”. When something was supposed to be explained it just got more mystery added. The phrase “there’s no time to explain” was weaponised in that series. Even in the end, there was an ending, no explanation, you didn’t even see how any of the people died and any real reasons for 90% of the mysteries. Lost had no coherent journey because the destination was the goal. “It’ll all make sense in the end” was the cry of the all the producers before they went off to make Star Trek movies. It didn’t. It was a bust. The fan theories were nonsensical and a waste of time because there wasn’t going to be an explanation. The leftovers starts with a simple mystery. Shown two minutes in the first episode. It in effect states “there’s something more than us” (be it dimensions, space travel, gods) and it’s job is to show the implications of a mystery we’ll never see, It’s about the people going crazy in different ways. There are further mysteries in there, which get treated similarly. However, nobody is trying to “get off the island” or “find out who the others are”, they’re just living in that world. The producers stated early on they had no intention to solve that mystery. The titles in the second and third series are a song called Let the Mystery be. The fact that they threw us an ambiguous explanation in the end was nice, but I think they’d have ruined it if they explained it like a Wizard of Oz curtain pull. It wasn’t about that. It’s a disservice to compare The Leftovers with Lost. Lindelof redeemed himself with that, his Lost debt wiped (Abrams has not). Now I see The Watchman produced by him, and I think “excellent, I’ll watch it because of him”. Quite a turnaround, really, given how much I hated Lost and refer to the title meaning as the 120 odd hours I Lost on that piece of shit. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/67 "2021-05-14T09:02:18Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Yeah, and IIRC, Nora mentions that they have plenty of resources, but it took a long time to get around because of lack of pilots, etc. > > Unlike The Walking Dead or any other apocalyptic scenario, the remaining 2% aren’t dealing with ruined infrastructure and environment or having the other 98% trying to eat them. > > Although I do imagine they would be dealing with profound depression and loneliness. The 98% world was miserable losing just 2%. Imagine if almost everyone you know vanished. Not to mention all the jobs and services we take for granted. With only 2% of the population, who’s going to run the farms, deliver everything, manufacture the gasoline and so on? I’m not sure our world today could actually run with only 2% of the population available. And creating another inter dimensional machine seems like quite a stretch. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/68 "2021-05-14T13:52:00Z")
> [@Smid](#): > > It’s a disservice to compare The Leftovers with Lost. Lindelof redeemed himself with that, his Lost debt wiped (Abrams has not). Wiped? After Star Trek: Into Darkness and Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, I think Abrams’ Lost debt is a drop in the bucket at this point. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/69 "2021-05-14T14:19:03Z")
He was talking about Lindelof’s Lost debt being wiped. ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/70 "2021-05-14T14:38:06Z")
> [@Biffster](#): > > Not to mention all the jobs and services we take for granted. With only 2% of the population, who’s going to run the farms, deliver everything, manufacture the gasoline and so on? I’m not sure our world today could actually run with only 2% of the population available. And creating another inter dimensional machine seems like quite a stretch. Everyone’s going to lose their job. Everyone’s going to lose their wealth, more or less. Now when the Black Plague happened, the price of labor went up. No one’s going to do a shit job in the 2% world. They can just scavenge, and there’s nothing to buy anyway. Over time, people would gather in small communities, starting with agriculture again. It would have to be some sort of socialistic joint venture, because again, you can’t motivate anyone to be a peon, and there’s enough resources that a currency economy won’t work. So that’s all going to inform the new social structures. Plus, nearly everyone is single, and people are going to be hooking up and creating new families if they’re young enough. For Nora to go on a boat from Australia to New York, likely it would be some sort of joint venture, not doable until you have enough people willing to go. She’d likely have to work on the boat as well. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/71 "2021-05-14T14:41:29Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > He was talking about Lindelof’s Lost debt being wiped. Yes, I know. I was implying that Abrams has taken on additional debt since Lost that he has yet to balance out. ---
**Author:** ![Smid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/838e76/32.png) [@Smid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smid)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/72 "2021-05-14T16:13:26Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Yes, I know. I was implying that Abrams has taken on additional debt since Lost that he has yet to balance out. I guess some people like his Star Wars stuff (I’m guessing, I was never a Star Wars fan). I thought his version of Star Trek was the worst, even worse than the horrible Voyager one, but I thought some people liked that too. I’d call him an utter dead loss if there wasn’t Fringe and Alias, so he has some point in the world. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/73 "2021-05-14T18:39:49Z")
> [@Biffster](#): > > Not to mention all the jobs and services we take for granted. With only 2% of the population, who’s going to run the farms, deliver everything, manufacture the gasoline and so on? I’m not sure our world today could actually run with only 2% of the population available. And creating another inter dimensional machine seems like quite a stretch. With only 2% of the population frankly we’d go extinct as soon as the food was gone. There is no way we’d be able to form communities and get any kind of farming going before that happened. We’d be down to unsustainable levels before six months were up. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/74 "2021-05-14T19:10:32Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > With only 2% of the population frankly we’d go extinct as soon as the food was gone. There is no way we’d be able to form communities and get any kind of farming going before that happened. We’d be down to unsustainable levels before six months were up. I’d have to pretty strongly disagree. Farming isn’t hard - well it’s hard work, but it isn’t impossible to figure out when you have references available. And 2% of the population is unlikely be going through the entire backlog of available canned and dried goods in 6 months anyway. Heck some things will continue to propagate at much lower levels naturally even without direct tending, like many fruits. Game populations will eventually boom, all the more so as currently scarce predator generations will lag behind them. Fish stocks will recover. etc. Humans aren’t going extinct despite some hardship. Whether they can cobble together a dimensional transport in a few years is another question entirely 😉 . ---
**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 14, 2021, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/75 "2021-05-14T20:23:42Z")
I’m definitely in the “let the mystery be” camp, but remember that in this scenario, some of that 2% would include fetuses, infants, children, elderly, sick, and infirm. There’d be significant numbers who would die, if not immediately, then soon after arrival. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/76 "2021-05-14T20:26:33Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Game populations will eventually boom Oh and on check there are currently ~94 million heads of cattle alone in the United States. A very great number in feedlots will starve without feed, but many out to pasture will not (immediately, anyway). This being the the US there will be no shortage of guns to hunt them with and lots of available protein. And that’s just cattle. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/77 "2021-05-14T21:38:24Z")
> [@Smid](#): > > The producers stated early on they had no intention to solve that mystery. But not during the actual, you know, show. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/78 "2021-05-14T21:43:29Z")
It wasn’t a mystery that needed solved, it was just something that happened and that’s it. I’m not sure how else to explain this, the answer to the mystery is not important to the show in any way shape or form. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/79 "2021-05-14T21:54:46Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > But not during the actual, you know, show And you know this because you watched _how_ many episodes? ---
**Author:** ![Enjoy\_Slurm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enjoy_slurm/32/3937_2.png) [@Enjoy\_Slurm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enjoy_Slurm)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398/80 "2021-05-14T23:28:52Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > But not during the actual, you know, show. Why do you care? You’re never going to watch it. You’ve made that abundantly clear. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-leftovers-i-dont-understand-the-praise-open-spoilers/843398.md?page=5)