The Leftovers Season 1 Finale Review: Hope for the Future, But Not for the Series

The Leftovers S01E10: "The Prodigal Son Returns"


Watching The Leftovers' Season 1 finale was a little like reading a horoscope, in that you could interpret it in any way that fit your views of the series. If you enjoyed The Leftovers throughout its first season, you probably liked "The Prodigal Son Returns"; if you didn't care for The Leftovers throughout its first season, you probably didn't care for its conclusion. The episode was The Leftovers dialed up to a hundred, giving the show's supporters more ammunition to say, "SEE!?!? I told you this show was awesome," while giving its detractors more of a reason to say, "SEE!?!? I told you this show was a piece of shit."

I've spent most of The Leftovers' first 10 episodes rolling my eyes at its melodrama and seeing the bad outweigh the good. And while I wouldn't go so far as to say that "The Prodigal Son Returns" was shit (ME say something was shit? Never!), it didn't do anything to change my opinion that The Leftovers wants to be a good show more than it actually is a good show.

By now we all know that answers aren't in the equation for the series. We probably won't ever get an answer regarding why the Poofening happened. We likely won't ever figure out why an angry buck stomped through Kevin's kitchen and bloodied up his countertops. And we'll almost certainly never find out why that kid in the series premiere liked to be choked while he jerked off (although nor do we care to, so let's move on). That's because The Leftovers is purposefully vague and formless. Some people might say its purpose is to stimulate our brains and come up with our own answers, like one of those annoying monks who sits on top of a mountain that's only accessible by a rickety staircase and then says something lame, something like, "What do YOU think it all means?" Other people might say co-that Leftovers creator and showrunner Damon Lindelof is so scared of hard truths after his bittersweet experience with Lost that he thinks it's better to create a show that's soft and mushy rather than build anticipation and therefore open the door to disappointment.


But that purposeful formlessness hurts The Leftovers when viewers try to relate to it. And not because the series isn't about getting answers to the grand questions that it's daring us to puzzle over simply because they exist. The Leftovers is about the Garveys. It's a family drama. It's a family drama set in a world where some seriously messed-up people are dealing with unfathomable loss. But since that world is so intriguing, with millions of people having inexplicably disappeared, it's by default more compelling than however the characters are dealing with loss.

HBO has done the "family show set against a morbid backdrop" before, with the fantastic Six Feet Under. That series was focused on death and the operation of a funeral home, and it worked because even though most of us have never embalmed someone's aunt or helped a grieving family decide between walnut and oak for Grandpa's casket, the Fishers still existed in the real world. They still dealt with normal (albeit dramatized-for-TV) things, and that's what allowed us to relate. But The Leftovers hasn't opened itself up like that, and the Garveys' day-to-day problems are beyond our own comprehension. While we've all dealt with loss in some form or another, we've never encountered a situation like the one that the Garveys—and the rest of this world—have found themselves in.

And The Leftovers wants that everyday grief to be its focus. The idea might've worked as a two-hour movie (and it probably made for a decent book), but it's not quite enough for a 10-hour TV season. Imagine what would happen if one of your friends said, "Oh man, I was abducted by aliens about a month ago, and they took me to their planet for testing. But I'm better now, I've been seeing a therapist, and the doctors say I'm okay." And then he went on and on for hours about the therapy sessions and his daddy issues instead of telling you about the frickin' aliens. That's what The Leftovers did with its premise. We're naturally inclined to be more interested in explanations for the supernatural than we are in how people respond to a supernatural occurrence. That's not necessarily The Leftovers' fault; the idea to set a drama against a mystifying event and then never really address the event was a risky decision that could have worked. It's just that with The Leftovers, it didn't.

As for the specifics of the finale, let's briefly discuss what happened. The only person I know who could pull off what the Guilty Remnant did with all those Real Doll impostors of the Poofed is Santa Claus. But they did it, supposedly to make people "remember." I still don't understand the Guilty Remnant AT ALL. I don't know how they survive, how they operate, or why anyone would want to join them. Especially Meg. And Jill. Was Jill taking her rebellious teenage daughter behavior to the extreme? Why does the Guilty Remnant want to constantly remind people of the Poofening, and why do they think everyone forgot about it? I'll even forgo any and all explanations for the all-white outfits, the chain-smoking, and no-talking rule (which has become such a chore to endure on television and adds nothing to the drama) if I can just get an answer to why they exist, how they came to be, and why anyone in their right mind would want to become a member.

Thankfully, the citizens of Mapleton opened their eyes and handed the GR the beatdown that's been coming to them. Maybe they're a doomsday cult, maybe they're just a bunch of silent assholes, I don't know. But I'd definitely volunteer to bring the gasoline and marshmallows if someone suggesting torching their compound.

Elsewhere, "The Prodigal Son Returns" was Kevin-heavy, with the focus on his sanity or lack thereof. Reverend Matt turned out to be a good friend, and he was very chill about helping Kevin bury Patti's body. What a nice guy! But seeking help to clandestinely conceal a corpse from the guy who writes bulletins about the sins of Mapleton's townspeople might not've been Kevin's best move. The weight of the action brought about a mostly pointless dream sequence in which Kevin thought he was being thrown into the loony bin, but it was mostly a device that The Leftovers used to put him in a room with apparitions of his dad and Patti so they could scream stuff at him and chip away at his psyche. The question of Kevin's sanity has always been the most tangible part of the series, but I haven't found it all that gripping, and that continued in the finale.

A trip to the bathroom (bathrooms turned out to be very dangerous places in the episode) led to an encounter between Kevin and Huggy Wayne, who was bleeding out on a toilet. I could explain the mating behavior of a yellow-bellied sapsucker before I could explain who the F Huggy Wayne is, and it seemed like he felt the same way as he accepted the fact that he was gonna die. To prove he was a Hugging Guru who could magically grant wishes, Wayne asked Kevin to make a wish, which Kevin did silently. "Granted," Wayne said, and then he drooled to death. What did Kevin wish for? New deer-proof countertops for his kitchen? A working toaster that doesn't steal his bagels? An E-cig?

If I were to guess, I'd wager that he wished for the exact same thing he wanted when the great Poofening occurred. He wants a second chance at family... but with Nora in the role of Laurie, and maybe Huggy Wayne's abandoned bastard child will be the glue that brings them together. If that's the case, then fine. Great. I'm happy for Kevin and Nora's potential future. But the ending of "The Prodigal Son Returns" wasn't profound in any way, despite The Leftovers wanting you to think it was. No, a baby showed up on a doorstep and two adults smiled at each other.

I know I'm simplifying the episode because I think it was largely empty and pretentious, but it did do something revolutionary for the eternally miserable The Leftovers: It gave the series hope for the first time, with the show's own version of a happy ending. Maybe all the burning and shooting and looting and bleeding and dying will give the Garveys that second chance at family life (sorry Laurie, you get Tommy). Maybe all the chaos is the result of a world that spun out of control, and Huggy Wayne's biracial baby is symbolic of a future that embraces the harmony of a united community. Or maybe all these religious and mystical connotations are just the nonsensical ramblings of someone who's trying to make something out of nothing instead of accepting that murky storytelling isn't as fun as addressing more important questions head-on. I'm honestly not sure.

What do you think?



LEFTOVER THOUGHTS


– Thank you, Older Crying Woman.

– Hey, what happened to Aimee?

– This was Justin Theroux's finest hour of acting on the show. His reading of the Bible passage while burying Patti was particularly moving.

Perfect Strangers was on in the loony bin! How on-the-nose!

– There were all sorts of crazy mood swings in this episode—especially in the transition from the Kevin-Wayne bathroom scene to the police station to the cheery music of the drive back to Mapleton to the chaos and carnage of the Mapleton streets.

– Can't this show just be about Nora? She is by far the best character in the series.

What are your thoughts on The Leftovers' first season? What do you want to see in Season 2?