The Leftovers shows us how grief can tip into madness
The show: The Leftovers, Season 3, Episode 3 The moment: Grace’s story In a delicate, seven-minute scene, Grace (Lindsay Duncan), a preacher’s widow living alone in the Australian outback, explains to Kevin Garvey Sr. (Scott Glenn) why she killed a man.
Grace’s five children disappeared seven years ago, in the Great Departure (when a portion of humanity suddenly vanished). She thought they’d ascended to heaven. Then their remains were discovered, far out on the flats. “I’d never considered searching for them,” she says, shattered.
When she found Garvey in the same spot, near death from a snake bite, he was clutching a notebook page. It described how his police chief son, also named Kevin, had drowned and risen again.
Grace knew a police chief named Kevin. She kidnapped and drowned him. “I thought he was testing me,” she says. “Once I’d proved my faith, he would let me talk to my children one last time.”
“But you’re not an angel,” she tells Garvey. “And God doesn’t care about me. It’s just a stupid story.” Her voice drops. “I’ve gone a bit crazy, haven’t I?”
“No,” Garvey says. “You’ve just got the wrong Kevin.”
Between this and The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s a good week for apocalypse stories.
In both, humankind reacts in rich, specific ways to a mysterious global catastrophe. What they’re showing us, of course, is how breakable the veneer of civilization is.
The Leftovers is freer and loopier about it; this final season is often quite funny.
But its greatness lies in how it zeroes in on one aspect of that veneer: how easily grief can tip into madness. The Leftovers airs Sundays on HBO and is available on demand. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.