3) The Leftovers
“Dense” is perhaps the easiest and most appropriate adjective to describe The Leftovers, Damon Lindelof’s first post-Lost TV venture. Depicting a world where 2% of the world’s population – some 140 million people – suddenly disappear in a 9/11-esque world-altering event, Lindelof puts the quasi-mystical elements of the show on the back burner by writing characters who don’t really care about the how of The Sudden Departure, but more about the what’s next? Undoubtedly a nod to the reason why Iris DeMent’s “Let the Mystery Be” became the show’s new anthem in 2015.
There’s a lot to applaud The Leftovers for in its second year (a more upbeat tonal shift leading the pack), but perhaps my favorite part of 2015’s ten episode run is its scattered plot structure. Over the entire season, about five total episodes depicted the lead Garvey clan adjusting to a new life in Jarden, Texas, where exactly zero people departed on October 14. Other episodes intermixed focus on a brand new and typically dysfunctional family, the Murphys, along with other classic characters like Liv Tyler’s suddenly villainous Meg.
The show’s uncomfortable focus on death and the afterlife, which turned most off in season one, found a more creatively economical outlet this year thanks to that disjointed episodic presentation. It finally let viewers breathe and compress in between the intense, and occasionally cosmic, internal and external dilemmas thrown at its characters; the overarching mysteries of which were never presented with definitive answers, but managed to satisfy nonetheless. It’s probably time to say he’s earned his own adjective: The Leftovers is Lindelofian to its bones.
