‘The Leftovers’ Recap: Hard to Swallow

Whatever’s going on in Kevin Garvey’s head, it just came to a head. “A Most Powerful Adversary,” this week’s episode of The Leftovers, saw his visions of cult leader Patti Levin drive away his fiancée Nora, alienate his daughter Jill, draw in his ex-wife Laurie, and leave him dead(ish) from drinking poison provided by maybe-psychic ex-pedophile Virgil Murphy, who then blew his own brains out. So, you know, it’s engaging stuff.

There’s just one problem, though: This has very little to do with the grief and guilt that are the show’s driving forces. Sure, Laurie’s theory that Patti is how Kevin’s brain is attempting to shut off its pain sounds legit. But Kevin doesn’t see it like that, and Kevin’s point of view is really the only one we’re getting here. More specifically, in purely cinematic terms there’s nothing going on that conveys derangement. Often, when manic, schizophrenic, or psychotic protagonists go nuts in movies and TV, the filmmaking follows suit—jittery jump cuts, discordant music, the juxtaposition of the mentally ill character with calm, clear-eyed ones whose placid demeanor reveals the illness for what it is. (Think any of Carrie’s breakdowns on Homeland, for example.) Kevin’s obviously distraught, and the soundtrack and cinematography are ominous, but that’s about it. You can come to whatever conclusion you feel appropriate, intellectually speaking, but phenomenologically the show plays his encounters with Patti as if they really could be happening. As such, you might understand on some level that her appearances are Kevin’s broken brain’s attempt to process tragedy, but you can’t really feel it in your gut; for The Leftovers, the gut is usually the prime target. Spending all this time with a probably-hallucination, maybe-a-spirit-from-beyond-the-grave dilutes the impact considerably.

But what the episode lacks in the series’ trademark roundhouse kicks to the soul, it at least partially makes up for in raw nervous tension. Watching Kevin’s plight here is less devastating than being asked to contemplate the grim attraction of cults for broken people or the unfathomable pain of losing your entire family in a heartbeat. But his constant confusion, his need to simultaneously figure out what the hell is going on and act like he knew it all along, is conveyed with convincing queasiness. And it’s not just covering up his sleepwalking or explaining away his many “shut the fuck up!” outbursts we’re talking about here. His first scene with Laurie—in which he learns in rapid succession that she spoke with Nora, that she’s been traveling with their son Tommy, and that Tommy’s been in touch with his sister Jill—is a one-two-three punch combo of this guy realizing just how out of the loop he really is. Considering that his day began with him waking up handcuffed to the bed without both the girlfriend and the key required to release him, that’s saying something.

The creepiness factor is considerable as well. Patti is a powerful presence throughout; if nothing else, constantly hearing the weird accent actor Ann Dowd has employed for the character is enough to drive anyone nuts, but the idea that she may be the real deal and that to get rid of her requires the help of an ersatz sorcerer lends her appearances an added edge of eeriness.

And then there’s the sorcerer himself. “Who are you?” Kevin asks Virgil, awestruck. “I’m just someone who once had an adversary of his own,” the man replies by way of self-description. “One that made me do terrible things. And for those things I was shot in the chest, in the belly”—and here’s where it gets unpleasant—“and in that foul machinery below the waist, which transgressed the laws of man.” At this point it’s not hard to guess why John shot him, though the identity of the victim isn’t clear until Kevin brings up the shooting himself. “I hurt him,” Virgil says, referring to John. “I hurt him a long time ago. And then he hurt me back, and he freed me.” Now we have our explanation for John Murphy’s anti-magic vigilantism: If your abuser claimed he was cured of his desire to molest children by an otherworldly encounter with his supernatural adversary on the other side, you’d be pretty fed up with the miracle shit, too. Combining the old man’s mysticism with the all too real horror of pedophilia is dark fantasy at its grimmest, a conception of the genre in which magic isn’t simply a deus ex machina, but a force in human affairs with as powerful an impact and as complex a moral cost as sex and violence.

In the end, it’s the violence Kevin needs to worry about. After duping Laurie into coming home with him (he said it’s because Patti doesn’t appear when she’s around; in fact he just needed someone to parent Jill in case his meeting with Virgil went south), Kevin returns to the old man’s place on the outskirts of town to undergo the death-and-rebirth required to purge Patti from his life. He blows off an unexpected appearance from the man’s distraught grandson Michael, taunts Patti, and chugs poison to stop his heart, with the promise of an epi-pen injection from Virgil to kickstart it minutes later. The concoction leaves him looking like this…

…while Virgil empties the needle into the air, then does this…

…at which point Michael returns to do this.

My initial reaction was that Virgil is some kind of serial killer who’s forced his grandson to participate. Upon further review, it could be that the word is out about Kevin’s palm print matching the one found on Evie Murphy’s car window, and that Virgil took it upon himself to kill Kevin before killing himself, in order to make things up to John. Whatever happened, it happened because Kevin was too far gone into his psychosis to trust his family. In his state, putting his life in the hands of a crazy old pederast in the woods was the more logical choice. And as Laurie pointed out, in the world of the Great Departure, healthier minds than Kevin’s reject logic as a matter of course.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) is a freelance writer who lives with Diet Coke and his daughter, not necessarily in that order, on Long Island.