The Leftovers Series blog: Episode 4

It’s deliciously twisted to see how well a Christmas episode suits The Leftovers. Transposing a show as downright grim as this one into the season of celebration and cheer provides the writers with easy pickings in their continued interrogation of the family unit. Whilst not quite a match for the intensity of last week’s episode, BJ and the AC nonetheless presents The Leftovers as a show increasingly comfortable in its own approach to storytelling.

That isn’t to say that all is harmonious however. The conflict between Chief Garvey and his daughter in particular continues to be fairly one-note, drawing on the all too recognisable tropes of on-screen teenage angst. Jill’s grief feels legitimate, but the impetuous retreat to her room and shut-out-the-world headphone despondency serve to undermine this very fact. Her absent brother Tommy fairs a little better in his continued quest to protect Christine (Annie Q.), as his narrative through line appears to have been designated as a driving force behind some of the larger mystery development on the show. It’s to The Leftovers’ credit that it doesn’t entirely discount Christine’s supposed ‘specialness’ and the lengths that Tommy goes to protect her as cult brainwashing or charlatanism. Just like Eccleston’s reverend last week, Lindelof and Co. are willing to let these mysteries permeate the narrative without allowing them to consume it entirely.

Mention should be made of the disconcerting, creepy opening with the baby doll toys. They bring to mind the ‘Loved Ones’ bereavement dolls first mentioned last week, which in fact turn up later in the episode after falling out of a wayward container and straight into the path of Tommy and Christine’s bus. It’s all very insidious, a sort of consumerism sold as closure that finds an effective deconstruction in the wider Christmas story. By following the baby doll from factory to nativity scene recreation, the audience is shown the essentially hollow process by which worth and meaning is created.

The concept of Christmas itself is a decidedly human one; only people could invest such purpose in something as inherently absurd as Christmas with all its weird little idiosyncrasies and traditions. The Leftovers is readily aware of this, utilising it in a manner that elevates Garvey’s quest to find the original stolen doll into something more. In the post-departure world, a world that many perceive to be uncaring or even actively pernicious, constructed meaning becomes all the more vital.

This lack of inherent substance lies at the heart of Laurie’s own existential wake-up call. Her move to the Guilty Remnant appears to have grown out of an awareness of instability: the instability of both her own identity and the structure of the family itself, caused in part by the ‘Sudden Disappearance’ and her husband’s past infidelities. Lindelof refutes this somewhat by imbuing certain objects with great significance, a well that he returned to frequently in Lost. These objects may not carry an underlying reality in of themselves, but they still refer to experiences and memories in a manner that argues for the continued existence of structures such as the family in the wake of its dissolution here.

Thankfully, the episode also has some much needed levity, an area in which The Leftovers more often than not lacks.

The twins are particular standouts with their easy, bumbling synchronicity, but Justin Theroux’s portrayal of Chief Garvey as a man exasperated with mostly everything also proves a point of surprising endearment and speaks to his solid performance throughout as the show’s leading man.

Solid is a good word for the episode overall. It’s less flashy and affected than its predecessors, with much less use of the self-conscious editing and dream sequences straight out of a Freudian textbook. The storytelling is more economic, and shines brightest when intersecting the stories of its diasporic cast in small, but important ways. The brief glimpses of both Matt and his sister are great examples of this, helping to establish character and plot developments that will play out in later episodes.