‘The Leftovers’ Season Two Didn’t Just Kick Ass, It Transcended TV

By now, I think it’s safe to conclude that The Leftovers had one hell of a second season. Co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta (who wrote the novel on which the series is based) bit the bullet and listened to audiences and critics alike, changed up the opener, uprooted to Texas, and delivered ten mesmerizing episodes that shattered the entire concept of a sophomore slump.

And while the platinum age of peak TV blazes onward and we round up our Best of 2015 listicles, perhaps we should all pause and recognize what this show just achieved. Maybe it’s the myriad of global crises we’re currently enduring, the universal lack of answers, or the conflicting ideologies about what it means to be “a good person,” but for the last three months, The Leftovers‘ band of broken, battered, characters have only tried to show us not what it means, but how it feels to be an angry, flawed, confused, determined, haunted human. Despite the supernatural series’ failure to top last year’s ratings, The Leftovers’ valiant self-reinvention has, in the last weeks of 2015, delivered something utterly transcendent. And this is coming from someone who started off deliberately hate-watching Season One.

Some of the brilliance of The Leftovers Season Two can be attributed the show’s renewed focus on the craft of television production: grittier performances, more straightforward mystery solving, and intensified direction from Mimi Leder. But to say the series simply “reinvented” itself is somewhat of an understatement. Frankly, there’s an element of vagueness to the series that gives it its true emotional punch. From the brutal prehistoric start in “Axis Mundi” to Justin Theroux’s teary finish in the season finale, “I Live Here Now,” The Leftovers’ second season never once falters. Even when it takes its time and sets something up for us to chew on — the birth, the demon Azreal, the inexplicable earthquakes, Meg’s destructive mission — the tension is always palpable. Sure, not everything was solved this second at-bat, but then again, we didn’t really need it to be. Like Evie’s (Jasmin Savoy Brown) defiant, silent declaration to her mother, Erika (Regina King): we understand. We understand why the Guilty Remnant will never stop, why no place — not even Miracle — was spared during the Sudden Departure, and now, we can clearly see that every individual has their own belief of when the world ended; and October 14 was just the beginning.

Perhaps this season hit us all like a runaway train because, like the Garveys and the “spared” population of Miracle, we’re feeling pretty vulnerable ourselves. To quote David Simon — creator of The Wire, Generation Kill, and Show Me a Hero — “I don’t want to disrespect anyone’s work… There’s nothing wrong with violence or sex or dragons, but every now and then it’d be nice if we actually argue about what ails us.” Now, to be perfectly clear, I know that comparing the work of Simon and Lindelof is about as apples and oranges as you can get. And Simon’s depicting of government corruption, urban plight, and institutional racism on The Wire far surpassed the expectations of television, even over ten years later. But while a creator like Simon has served as a behind-the-scenes prophet of the people, Lindelof’s and Perrotta’s characters serve as strange archetypes for us all: a small subset of the world’s remaining population who were saved? Spared? Left behind to rot? Damned to eternal suffering? It’s really for us to decide.

Where works like Simon’s — shows that pointedly address what ails us — seek out the root of all evils, The Leftovers points the finger back at us. Instead of answering larger questions about The Meaning of Life, the show serves as a “living reminder” that our own inner demons — not the powers that be — are the roots of all evil.

In so many words and so many weird, surreal circumstances, The Leftovers suggests that no matter what physically happens to the world, even an event like the Sudden Departure, humanity will still remain divided. Extremists will continue their missions, God-fearers will continue to pray, and salvation may never come. Or as our The Leftovers recapper, Sean T. Collins states, “Whatever you’re looking for, The Leftovers argues, you won’t find it, because you can’t find it.” Whether the series gets renewed for a third season (HBO has yet to say), or if you’re among those who believe it should go out on this impeccably strong note, Season Two should stand alone as a treasured, flawless moment in peak TV: a batch of ten episodes that perfectly provoked the fears we have as vulnerable beings that should just “let the mystery be.”

[Stream The Leftovers on HBO Now, HBO Go, or Amazon Video]

Photos: HBO