‘Leftftovers’ starts over beautifully in second season
HBO show, shot around Austin, returns with more-focused episodes.
HBO’s “The Leftovers” began with the Sudden Departure, the random, instant disappearance, one Oct. 14, of 2 percent of the earth’s population. The fifirst season of the series, based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, probed the effects of the never-explained catastrophe on those left behind — mourning, denied closure, turning to nihilism or to cults — especially on Police Chief Kevin Garvey ( Justin Theroux) and his family in suburban Mapleton, N.Y.
The second season, which was shot in Central Texas and had its premiere Sunday, begins with another sort of departure: We’re not in Mapleton anymore, but in Jarden, Texas, a small town nicknamed Miracle bec ause it supposedly lost not a single resident to the mass disappearance. Throngs of pilgrims and would-be migrants camp at the city limits, seeking catharsis or protection, as if Miracle were a combination 9/11 memorial and Lourdes. And most of the episode passes before we encounter a single character from the fifirst season.
“THE LEFTOVERS”
8 p.m. Sunday, HBO
Welcome to “The Leftovers”; please check your expectations at the border. The series began as a gorgeous tease, a haunting exploration of loss that set up a mystery it openly had no intention of answering. Damon Lindelof, the co-creator with Perrotta, was pilloried by some fans of his saga “Lost” for leaving questions hanging, and “The Leftovers” seemed to be probing that wound as much as its characters’ pain.
In Season 2, “The Leftovers” still couldn’t care less about the rules and obligations of commercial TV, or even most noncommercial TV. But it’s also more focused and stronger, having learned from what worked best about Season 1. (It’s also more free to define itself, having now passed the ending of Perrotta’s novel.)
The first season’s best episodes concentrated the show’s emotion and diffuse plot by focusing on single stories: those of Nora Durst (the remarkable Carrie Coon), who lost her husband and both children; Matt Jamison (Christopher Eccleston), an Episcopal minister suffering a crisis of faith; and the Guilty Remnant, a cult dedicated to reminding everyone else of the Departure as painfully as possible.
The first new episode takes the same approach, with the story of a family we’ve never met, the Murphys of Miracle: a doctor, Erika (Regina King), a firefighter, John (Kevin Carroll), and their teenage twins, the free-spirited Evie ( Jasmin Savoy Brown) and the straitlaced Michael ( Jovan Adepo). (The Murphys and many of their neighbors are African-American, a fact that’s not dwelled on in the new episodes but which subtly contrasts with the very white makeup of Mapleton.)
The Murphys are like an alternative-history version of the Garveys, having been spared the Departure and its emotional fallout. But it soon becomes clear that the Murphys are suffering their own post-traumatic strains and that there’s a protesting-too-much quality to the seeming security of this postcard town.
The second episode is even more audacious, because in a way it’s the first episode again. It repeats many of the same events but from the perspective of the Murphys’ new neighbors: the Garveys, now an ersatz family consisting of Kevin; Nora; Kevin’s daughter, Jill (Margaret Qualley); and a foundling baby left on their doorstep by his prodigal son, Tom (Chris Zylka). Also tagging along, in a way, is the Guilty Remnant leader Patti (Ann Dowd), who died last season after Kevin hounded her in a police investigation and whose ghost or memory — or something — haunts his conscience.
“The Leftovers” appears no more interested than before in answering big questions about the Departure. But it goes nowhere beautifully. The season opens with a wordless prologue, a mood-setting vignette of tragedy and compassion, like something from “2001” or “The Tree of Life.” The first two episodes, directed by Mimi Leder, are deft at parceling out visual information to create mood and mystery.
The third episode then shifts focus to Kevin’s ex-wife, Laurie (Amy Brenneman), a former Remnant member who’s writing a “Going Clear”style exposé of the group and trying to liberate its members, with Tom’s help. But they find few converts, because des- perate, grieving people prefer any answer — even a bogus, manipulative one — to no answer at all. “They’re giving them something,” Tom says of Remnant. “We have nothing to put back in its place.”
Yet there’s something holy in the show’s meditation on that nothing. “The Leftovers” is about absence, about the human response to suffering and knowing that no explanation is forthcoming. The second season features an apt new theme song, “Let the Mystery Be,” an eschatological shruggie by the country singer Iris DeMent.
There is religion all over “The Leftovers,” from cults to mainstream Christian denominations, though the series itself has no consistent religious position.