Less time is given to Jill and Tommy this episode. For her part, Jill appears perfectly happy, without a care in the world. Tommy, though, is first seen in handcuffs after having been to see Michael, apparently his biological father. “I’m your father, not him,” Kevin tells Tommy. “He shouldn’t get to pretend it never happened,” Tommy replies in frustration. Kevin assures his son that “he did a terrible thing to you and your mother,” but that sometimes one has to pretend. I’m unclear on Michael’s relationship with Laurie, though an abusive past husband seems like a good guess. That would also explain why Laurie is able to identify with Patti about her violent ex.
A juicy possibility is that Michael and Laurie were married, but he cheated on her, leading to a messy divorce. That would explain why Tommy has severed ties with Kevin, who claims to be Tommy’s father but is later caught in the same sort of infidelity scandal.
Tommy and Jill seem very close in “The Garveys At Their Best,” so I can only imagine that the dissolving marriage between Kevin and Laurie found them in different corners. In this episode, they go to the science fair and take part in a human circuit, only for one of its members to disappear in the Departure. Episode director Dan Sackheim delivers a very effective shot of the light between Tommy and Jill abruptly blinking out once the circle of people holding hands is broken (his work throughout this episode is uniformly excellent, but that shot of the human circle surrounding a bright light is particularly transfixing).
Outside of the Garvey family circle is Nora, who is seen chafing under the pressures of motherhood in this episode. She wants to work for Lucy Warburton, who is about to launch a (successful) mayoral campaign, simply because she wants something for herself. On the homefront, the kids are little tear-aways, bickering and loudly demanding food without any concern for her feelings. Meanwhile, her philandering husband is noticeably distant, and though Nora doesn’t know he was cheating at this point, by no means is their marriage healthy. Sadly, she never finds out whether she got the gig with Lucy – her daughter knocks OJ on Nora’s phone, disabling it, right before the Sudden Departure. The last thing Nora’s daughter hears is her mother screaming at her – a fact which has doubtless haunted Nora throughout the series. When the Sudden Departure comes, she’s suddenly alone in her kitchen, left to discover a terrifying new world she never could have imagined.
That’s about it for “The Garveys At Their Best.” Next week’s finale should pick up in the wake of “Cairo,” and now that we’re clear on the backgrounds of all of our characters, it should be exciting to watch how the GR’s scheme affects each and every one of them. Though it’s been a rough and extremely depressing journey, The Leftovers has readily grown in my estimation. This flashback ep feels earned, and the fascinating developments in Kevin’s backstory should keep us all talking until “The Prodigal Son Returns.”
