The most recent episode of The Leftovers has some critics quitting the show. But here’s why two BuzzFeed staffers are still riveted.
Justin Theroux as Kevin Garvey on The Leftovers.
Paul Schiraldi / HBO
The most recent episode of HBO's The Leftovers began with a particularly horrific murder. It was so brutal, in fact, it lead Entertainment Weekly's Melissa Maerz to pen a piece titled "Enough, already: Why I'm quitting 'The Leftovers.'"
"I don't mean to complain that The Leftovers is too sad. My favorite shows of last year were all fairly dark. But The Leftovers doesn't earn its sadness," she wrote of the series' fifth episode, which centers on the inhabitants of a small town three years after the world experiences a rapture in which 2% of the population disappears. "Brutally killing characters who haven't earned our grief can feel borderline exploitative. It turns your attention away from the human being, and allows you to be dazzled by the sheer salaciousness of the murder." Eventually, she concluded, "For me, The Leftovers is too much of an endurance test."
The series — co-created by former Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta, the author of the book upon which the series is based — has gotten similar feedback since it screened for critics in January. "The Leftovers is all bleakness all the time," Vulture's Matt Zoller Seitz wrote. "Parts of it feel as though the show is emotionally blackmailing you into watching: What, don't you care about these poor, miserable people? Well, go ahead and change the channel then, you monster." John Lopez at Grantland called the series the "prestige television equivalent of a cilice" and Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club said it was "some of the most desolate, despairing television on air."
But the physical brutality of The Leftovers' fifth episode seems on par with the violence we've seen on similar cable fare, from Game of Thrones to Breaking Bad, and it's not even the show's speciality. Instead, The Leftovers offers emotional torture and that's perhaps what some critics and audience members have most struggled with.
Below, BuzzFeed's deputy entertainment editor, Jaimie Etkin, and film critic, Alison Willmore — who was previously IndieWire's television critic — both fans of The Leftovers, discuss why the series has been shunned for capturing the pain of loss and mourning, while other television brutality gets a pass.
The Guilty Remnants in The Leftovers.
HBO
Alison Willmore: So I'll confess — when The Leftovers premiered, I was actually taken by surprise by the apparent consensus that it's a gruelingly depressing show. I sure as hell wouldn't describe it as cheerful, though it's sometimes darkly funny, but watching the first few episodes handed out to the press, I honestly didn't think it was any grimmer than so many other series, cable or otherwise, that are currently on TV.
"Bleak" has pretty much become the default mode of the quality drama, from Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead's repeated killing off of major characters to the loneliness and quietly self-destructive tendencies of the folks on Mad Men. Then there are all those shows that use murder as their narrative engine — like True Detective, The Bridge, and The Killing. Death or thoughts about it are a constant in so much of our critically acclaimed TV, to the point where it can feel numbing, all those corpses like so much sad set dressing.
One of the things I like about The Leftovers is that it tries to do something that most of those shows, despite their body counts, don't have time for. It deals with grief and what life is like in the wake of something terrible instead of as it's happening. The Leftovers is set three years after The Sudden Departure, and everyone's dealing with it in different ways, at different paces. Jaimie, do you think this process is somehow harder for people to watch than actual violence?
Jaimie Etkin: I absolutely do. This week's episode aside (RIP Gladys), The Leftovers is largely not a violent show — save for the dogs, and I'm not discounting those scenes, because my heart is actually aching as I merely type about them.
But when we watch a graphically violent scene on one of the shows you previously mentioned, we can cringe or partially shield our eyes until it's over. And we have the assurance that it will be over soon. But with The Leftovers, we don't know when (or if) there will be relief for us as viewers and for those suffering in Mapleton.
I think it's more challenging to watch someone grapple with emotional pain rather than the physical, and with many cable dramas, the most violent scenes come at the end of the episode (oh hai, Red Wedding), and then when the series picks up the following week, we've missed most of the grieving that comes along with those scenes.
On The Leftovers, we have no choice but to sit along with the Garveys and the rest of the Mapleton folk as they struggle years later to come to terms with the loss that resulted from this supernatural-y event that wasn't exactly violent, but was certainly horrific. What's so interesting to me about the show is that the entire series is based on this rapture that we, as the audience, much like the people of Mapleton, will probably never get an explanation about. And I'm OK with that, because that's not what this show is about. It's actually the anti-Lost in that regard. We're not waiting for answers because we know we'll never get them. And that's reality.
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