Eating "The Leftovers"

Watching this show is kind of like punching a wall.

Grantland's Andy Greenwald posited a very insightful question in reviewing the first season of HBO's new series The Leftovers this past week: Has there been any indication that anyone has actually forgotten anything?

In that question is one of the great flaws of this ambitious show.

The Leftovers is hardly anyone's idea of a perfect show.  Most people I have talked to struggled to stay with it.  I repeatedly had to play catch-up deciding over and over to give it another chance.  The Leftovers is a show that is just good enough to keep you wondering, it will flounder for multiple episodes before putting together enough powerful scenes to pull you back in.

In that, is one of the show's redeeming qualities.  On the few occasions it manages to string together enough well written and coherent scenes for the audience to stop thinking "what the hell?" The Leftovers can evoke some strong emotional responses.

The experience of loss is a pretty universal and relatable theme to build a show around.  Everyone knows the desperation, the frustration, the anger.  It's in these moments that The Leftovers hooks people, gets them thinking.  But, the show has of yet failed to take the next step after these initial moments.  Nothing is explored beyond the surface, things are half-resolved in simplistic fashion with ham-handed imagery and metaphor.  In the world of the Leftovers, two percent of the world's population disappeared by an "Act of God" and the show's plot is heavily populated by the all powerful deus ex machina.

Need to wrap up a scene? Put a dog in it.

This band-aid solution is expertly demonstrated in the closing moments of the season finale when the oft tortured Nora Durst (Carrie Coon) seems to completely snap as she kisses two wax dolls vaguely resembling her family good night and prepares to drive off into the extremely ambiguous unknown.  Nora's character has always been that of one barely holding it together beneath a calm veneer.  So the snapping, while frustrating, is at least somewhat logical for the character.  What's not so logical, for the character or the audience, is that she is suddenly flung back to sanity by the mere sight of a bi-racial baby.  Yeah, sorry, not buying it.

Now, these existential problems of depth in the plot and characters are both very serious issues, but a show can get by with shallow characters and thin plot if its fun (see, 24).  But a show without a consistently engaging storyline littered with characters the audience hates, that show is dead in the water.

Storylines that you can't wait for?  Every show has them.  We've all fast forwarded through Bran to get to Arya Stark. I'm not sure where to find them on The Leftovers.  In episode 3, "Two Boats and a Helicopter", the preacher character (played by Chris Eccleston) is fascinating and complex.  But everything he does and feels seems to be completely forgotten just two episodes later.  Embattled police chief and central character, Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), has the most consistent presence on the show, but even he is prone to stretches of fatigue (that absurdly stupid dream sequence in the finale, anyone?).

Characters you hate?  Oh, this show has got them.  I've never watched a show that had so many storylines I got violently angry at the sight of.  Too much goes unknown to make the audience invested and too little make sense for use to care (so, who the hell was Wayne?).  

Then, there is the Guilty Remnant.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you the most obnoxious, hypocritical, self righteous, stupid faced character in the history of television.

There is nothing interesting about watching insanity in a vacuum.  That is exactly what the audience is subjected to every time Liv Tyler's stupid face smoking a cigarette on screen.

I could believe that if an event like the one depicted in the show actually occurred a part of the population would lose it completely and go off and live in a silence vowed cult somewhere.  But that's not interesting enough for show runner Damon Lindelof, so the Guilty Remnant has to be a group with goals (yes, I know it's based on a book, I'm still not letting Lindelof off the hook on this one).  Those goals, according to them, are to make people remember.  Remember the event that absolutely no one on the show has been able to move on from, much less forget.

Here's the problem with the Guilty Remnant:  They're hypocrites and they're liars and no one seems to be aware of it.  They vow silence but then they talk.  They say they want people to remember but what they really want is for people to give up, to let their grief consume them and stop living.  In spite of these two very obvious issues, no one else on the show calls them out on it or even appears to notice.  Instead, the show's finale serves as validation for the GR.  They made the good townsfolk remember and they just couldn't handle it.

Ugh.

By the way, does anyone on this show ever, EVER lock their doors?  How is it the GR can just waltz all willy nilly into these houses over and over again?  Is this show set in New York or Pleasantville?

Show runner Damon Lindelof is not one to turn a blind eye to negative reviews.  When Lost tanked on its ending he heard the cries and he answered them.  Fairly or not, The Leftovers, have drawn a lot of comparisons to Lost, most of them disparaging.  I don't see many similarities between the two in the way of show structure but the connections between central characters and the tactic of using emotional triggers as a stand-in for actual resolution are all too familiar.

The music swells, someone cries, and everything is magically alright.

The Leftovers has already been renewed for another season, and I don't know where it will go from here.  The source material is supposedly exhausted so Lindelof will have quite a bit of latitude.  I hope he uses it well, but I probably won't stick around to find out.

Game of Thrones: In Defense of "Spoilers"

Note: This article does not contain spoilers (things in a story's plot that are unpredictable and/or significant to the characters or events), however, it does mention events yet to occur on Game of Thrones in a vague manner.  If you're Frank Costanza, stop reading now.

Game of Thrones is the most popular show on television.  The only thing these days it seems people like to do as much as watch Game of Thrones is talk about it on the internet.  A lot.  Now, while it is true that since the age of social media the buzz around Game of Thrones is unprecedented, the concept is an old one.  For the better part of a decade any show to make a splash on TV (or Netflix) has gone on to do the same on the interwebs with countless recaps, power rankings, " So and So speaks out about shocking episode", and mindless conjecturing.

And that last one is where all the trouble starts for Game of Thrones.  Fans of TV have always relished in trying to be one step ahead of the show and it's story.  "What will happen next?"  It's a infectious spirit that has been with us since the days of "Who shot J.R.?" but was made most popular for today's boob tube generation by ABC's Rube Goldberg machine to nowhere: Lost.

Losties loved to play the guessing game of where it was all going ever since they found Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Locke trapped on that mysterious island.  Wild theories abound, as an errant cough could be seen as the missing piece that tied everything together.  It turned out in the end, guessing was actually more fun than seeing.  But even with its failure to live up to expectations, Lost had supplied the model for every successful tv drama to come in it's wake.

Game of Thrones has taken this model to all new heights, there is only one problem: you can't theorize about what will happen when it's already happened in a book someplace.

Still, book-free fans of the show do their best.  But anytime you find an article or thread wondering "what will happen next" some book reader can't help themselves and needs to spoil it for everyone.

Now let me pause for a moment to make one thing clear:  I hate those people.  I can't stand it when some loser has to go around dropping bombs on fans of the show in some sort of childish attempt to feel smart.  It happens a lot more than it should.  You couldn't even look at a picture of Robb Stark on the internet without some jerkoff saying "He's gonna die" for years.

God Dammit, People!

This spoiler culture around GoT has not only made it very difficult to navigate social media, but it has made things unpleasantly hostile on both sides.  Book readers are excited to talk about the show, but annoyed by having to constantly censor themselves.  Show watchers - for the most part - appreciate having people around who can help them understand what the hell is going on, but are frustrated when they find out more than they want to.

As one who is firmly in the "book reader" camp I have to say the whole thing is quite tiresome.  I understand the plight of the "show watchers" and I think a lot of "book readers" are pretty obnoxious but just because you don't know something, does not mean it is a "spoiler".

When you talk about the ending of a movie that only came out a week before, THAT is a spoiler.  When you talk about the ending of an episode of a television show the next day, that IS NOT a spoiler.  Would you expect everyone to stay off social media about the final score of a major sporting event just in case you DVR'd it?  The responsibility to avoid social media until you've seen a LIVE viewing event is yours and no one elses.

If I were to tell you that in Empire Strikes Back you discover Vader is Luke's father, THAT is a spoiler.  If I were to tell you that Han and Leia go to a cloud city, that IS NOT a spoiler.  Most of the time, telling people something that was probably in the trailer isnt' a big deal, but because of the spoiler culture around Game of Thrones any leak of information, no matter how benign, is considered a grave sin.

This is even more ridiculous on a show like Game of Thrones where most of the pure show-watchers can hardly understand what is going on in the first place.  The world of Game of Thrones (which is actually the world of Ice and Fire) is so rich there is no way they could show everything even if they wanted to.  So, don't complain to me when I tell you the Three-Eyed-Raven is Brynden Rivers a bastard of the Targaryen family, former Hand of the King and Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, because the show is almost certainly never going to bother to tell you.  In fact, telling show-watchers things like this is beneficial to them, because Brynden Rivers only had one eye (unlike his counterpart on the show) which makes the line "A thousand eyes and one." Much more logical.

Did anyone else notice this?

The spoiler culture around GoT is a treacherous one and I admire those who weather it with dignity.  One writer/podcaster I particularly enjoy reading and listening to for GoT is Andy Greenwald at Grantland, largely because he does not recognize the books and it is interesting for me to see the differing perspective of someone who truly does not know what is going to happen next.  Sure, plenty of other writers "pretend" they don't know what is coming, but there is something patronizing about the tone that makes the pieces feel false and dull.

With Greenwald, you get to see someone explore solely the world of the show and theorize what will happen next free of any trolling book-reader influence.  It is impressive how often he gets it right.  But even people like Greenwald - who beams with pride whenever he announces that he has not, nor has he any intention of reading the books on which GoT is based - fall victim to the very smug characteristics they complain of in book readers.  Perhaps from enduring what I'm sure in an endless bombardment of obnoxious spoiler rich tweets and emails from fans and trolls, Greenwald has what would be generously be described as a thinly veiled contempt for fans that have read the books.  He will question the quality George R.R. Martin's (the author of the books) story based on incomplete information, then proceed to become indignant if a book reader dare correct him.

If you haven't read the books, you might think Drogon is a laughably bad name for a Dragon. But if you have, you'd know he was named after Khal Drogo. 

Blaming, Martin for storytelling choices made by the show (which is not run by Martin) is commonplace.  Even highly thoughtful and perseptive viewers like Greenwald can't help but compare the show to its source material and blame it for the show's shortcomings, even when they hardly even know what they're talking about.  They are careful not blame the show for a misstep keeping in mind that it is an adaptation, but are quick to blame the source material forgetting that it is an adaptation.

It's a hard, hard world that Game of Thrones fans live in.  The balancing act between fun for you and fun for all is one carried out on an unreliable scale.  In order to get along we have to respect the other side.  With GoT book readers need to know when to keep it to themselves and show watchers need to learn not to get indignant about every little detail they hear from a fan instead of the show.