Missing, presumed saved
‘The Leftovers’ provides a little bit of heaven on TV, even for heathens
ICAN’T think of a TV show in recent years that has had a more intriguing premise than HBO’s new series The Leftovers, currently on M-Net. The show is set in the small town of Mapleton, New York, three years after something happened. Something major.
One perfectly ordinary day, 2% of the world’s population disappeared without a trace. From one second to another, they were gone. A flashback in the pilot episode showed a mother’s panic at realising that her baby has suddenly vanished from her car-seat. While she is screaming for help, in the background cars are smashing into each other — their drivers are gone. A shopping trolley full of groceries rolls aimlessly through the car park. Whoever was steering it has disappeared.
There is nothing to indicate what happened to these people. Three years later, a commission of inquiry is just wrapping up, and it cannot reach any conclusions. But this is America, so there is one obvious answer: the Rapture, the theory held by some fundamentalist Christians that worthy believers will be transported to heaven on Christ’s second coming.
The magnificently disturbing premise of The Leftovers is this: what happens to those left behind? What if you considered yourself a good person — perhaps even a devout Christian — and the Rapture didn’t choose you? Of course, we don’t know if what happened was the Rapture. It could have been something totally different. Some kind of synchronised alien abduction, for instance. The lack of answers is the most agonising thing for those left behind in the fictional community of Mapleton. It is also the addictive factor for those of us watching.
In the first episode, for instance, we learnt that among those who disappeared from the planet were writer Salman Rushdie, singer Jennifer Lopez, US stateswoman Condoleeza Rice — and Pope Benedict XVI. Are these the chosen ones? If you were one of the people left behind, you’d probably be a bit cheesed off that J-Lo made it and not you.
In the absence of evidence, the government’s response has been to commemorate those who disappeared as “heroes”. In Mapleton, there is a reverend who has made it his mission to prove that the townsfolk who were taken were more sinners than saints. One man beat his wife; a young woman had a sordid drug past. The reverend passes out fliers to people on the street exposing these secrets.
That’s one way of dealing with what they call the “Sudden Departure”. Another way is to join a cult. It appears that various strange forms of spirituality have flourished since the mysterious event, as those left behind try to make meaning from their lives.
Mapleton’s cult is called “The Guilty Remnant”. Its members wear white and do not speak. In one of the show’s maddeningly intriguing touches, the cult members also smoke, continuously. The police chief’s wife has joined the cult, and they attempt to recruit others — mainly by hanging around smoking sinisterly, a bit like the cool kids in high school.
We don’t know if we will ever learn what happened in the Sudden Departure. After the flashback in the pilot, we haven’t been shown any further scenes from that occurrence. To make matters worse, the show is created by the dude who made Lost, Damon Lindelof. No doubt nervous about the fury with which many fans greeted the ambiguous conclusion of that series, Lindelof has warned that concrete answers may not be forthcoming in The Leftovers. You just gotta have faith.