The Leftovers, Season 2, Episode 10: “I Live Here Now”
Written by Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta
Directed by Mimi Leder
Airs Sundays at 9pm ET on HBO
“I don’t understand what’s happening.”
I’m not just saying this because there’s a chance it might be its actual last episode: “I Live Here Now” is the ultimate episode of The Leftovers. That does not mean it’s necessarily its best, or its most beautifully executed, but it is most certainly the one that most artfully contains everything the series to date has tried to be about. It’s all here: the shape-shifting omnipresence of emotional trauma, the urge to explain away the uncanny, the almost maddening pull of familial ties, and the sometimes-amusing reactions that unexpectedly crop up in the bizarre intersections between those forces.
It starts at the beginning. Well, not the real beginning – that would be the prologue of “Axis Mundi.” Remember that? Here’s a refresher: a very pregnant woman steps out of a primordial cave. Her water breaks. The earth quakes. The resulting rockslide buries the rest of her tribe in an instant. She realizes she is powerless to save them; moments later, she gives birth. Later, the baby is menaced by a poisonous rattlesnake. She fends it off, but is bitten for her efforts. Eventually, she dies, looking desperately upon her child’s face. In the heat, vultures circle. Then, a savior arrives: a woman. A stranger. She guides the baby to safety, leaving the child’s mother to be devoured.
Fast forward.
Many years later: Nora Durst, who easily matches those primordial women for maternal fierceness, stands among the unsaved outside of Jarden, in Miracle Park. She holds her baby – formerly someone else’s, only she vanished. A vulture – well, a woman – snatches her child away, claiming she’s “not hers.” Nora chases after her furiously, only to find the child abandoned amid a stampede. She rushes to its aid and gives it shelter, but they’re still in a precarious position. Finally, she gets a helping hand from a third presence – Tom. Though he’s there to cause trouble, he still guides them to safety in the heart of the storm. All survive.
What’s changed? Hold that thought.
The episode actually begins near the end of both “Axis Mundi” and “A Matter of Geography,” with the Garveys leaving the Murphys’ birthday barbecue, and the girls leaving for their supposed romp. We again hear Evie’s parting words to her father John, re: her present to him: “don’t open it until I’m gone.” She leaves; he doesn’t open it. She supposedly “departs”; he doesn’t open it. It’s not until his wife Erika urges him, days later, after so much has already gone wrong, that he finally opens it, and finds a dead cricket inside. It’s not the cricket he was after. It’s some other cricket. “Because you wouldn’t let it go,” Erika explains. Because he’s just that thick, and just that blinded by love.
In “I Live Here Now,” for maybe the only time in Leftovers history, triumph is sprung just as unexpectedly and suddenly as tragedy. Most prominently: Mary returns to consciousness, in tandem with one of the area’s many quakes. She confirms that she remembers her and Matt’s night of, er, marital bliss. She and Matt share a few moments of pure, unalloyed joy. Nora even gives them the space to enjoy it. Just as easily as she was taken from the world, she was returned. The world of The Leftovers takes and takes and takes – until, on occasion, it gives. Sound like a world you might recognize?
Speaking of taking and giving, a few words on Kevin Garvey, and life, and death. I am on record as not being a huge fan of “International Assassin,” the Kevin Garvey Afterlife Tour episode. And yet…his second trip, prompted by John shooting him point blank in the chest, redeems it. It’s not just that it provides the funniest 90 seconds or so in the series’ history, as the score from that episode recurs and Justin Theroux screams “Motherfucker!“ and “I’m not fucking doing this again!” with just the right levels of exhausted disdain, but because it helps to establish Kevin as a figure who has transcended the normal cycles of life and death, only to enter a similar, but similarly trying, cycle of asserting and re-asserting sanity.
In what is the ultimate episode of The Leftovers, the karaoke sequence might be the series’ defining moment. Justin Theroux is a veteran of the works of David Lynch, having appeared in two of his very best films (Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire), and witnessing first-hand Lynch’s ability to thread the absurd and transcendent must have been invaluable in making this work. A woman spins a wheel, and it lands on Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound.” Theroux’s vocal starts out sheepish, distant. This is a silly exercise, after all. Right? (Think of the evolution of the Naomi Watts audition sequence in Mulholland Dr.) As the words and music progress, the parallels become too obvious to ignore. The cigarettes and magazines. One place (Mapleton) being much like another (Jarden). Loves who lie, waiting silently – we know some folks close to Kevin who once insisted on remaining silent, yes? As the song carries on, blue light floods in, and Kevin is overcome. And then he comes back to life.
After he does, he comes to find himself amidst the nu-Guilty Remnant – but there’s no real confrontation. And why should there be? Kevin going after the Guilty Remnant would make as much sense as the ancient matriarchs throwing stones at the vultures. Megan and her acolytes are just one more force of nature here to make life difficult, and Evie and the others have joined the cause. Why? Now there’s a question. There are a lot more individual plot and character beats to be talked about in “I Live Here Now,” but as time and attention is limited, let’s take this chance to focus on what I think this episode alerts us to – the core theme of The Leftovers. Here it is:
Ignorance is not bliss.
Pain comes. Family provides comfort, unless or until it falters. Friends provide comfort, unless they betray you, or weakness hits and you betray them yourself. Religion offers answers, until it doesn’t, or until the answers seem facile. You still have your wits, though – unless, eventually, you don’t. When all of these supports fall away, is it best to simply construct a fantasy? To contrive any coping mechanism you can, no matter how absurd, in order to carry on living? To this, The Leftovers seems to answer: well, sure – but don’t expect to build a life around that contrivance. But if you have – and the vultures circle, or the stampede rages – maybe, just maybe, one of those supports will help to pull you out, and history needn’t repeat itself.
As “I Live Here Now” and this whole season has worked so hard to illustrate, life contains countless deaths and rebirths, each one carrying a new set of losses and possibilities. If the series as a whole has a moral, it’s: take heart, because the universe contains multitudes, and who knows? Some of those multitudes might actually be kind, even to you.
So: welcome home.
This concludes my watch on The Leftovers. I hope that didn’t get too emo for everyone.
I made mention of this possibly being the last episode, but I am actually feeling pretty optimistic about the series’ odds of renewal. It was running against The Walking Dead this year and still saw its numbers rise a bit over the course of the season. Not bad. That said? I’d be OK with this being the series finale.
When I reference maternal fierceness, I’m thinking specifically of Carrie Coon screaming “Shut the fuck up!” to that raving madwoman.
Speaking of which: “Fix that, Jesus!”
An amazing moment from Margaret Qualley: a stray, unwanted tear, swatted away like an insect. Killer. Hope she had fun on that Shane Black movie.
I can’t stress enough how hard I laughed at Kevin’s annoyance at reappearing in the Afterlife Hotel.
“We are the 9,261, and we are not spared.”