Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Leftovers, Season 3, Episode 5: It's a Matt, Matt, Matt World



It’s time for another episode of “fucking hell I’m not drunk enough for this.”

I don’t think I could ever be drunk enough for this.

I don’t think anyone is ever drunk enough for this. Except maybe the writers. They, I think, are drunk enough for pretty much anything.

We open with a naked French man on a submarine launching a nuke against an island. I think Leftovers may be resorting to throw hot naked people at us to distract us from the nonsense. I approve of this plan and naked French submariners.

Anyway this is causing problems with flights to Australia

Which is a problem for Matt. Matt wants to go to Melbourne to get Kevin to come home before the anniversary of the Departure because Matt has decide that Kevin must must must be in Miracle for that day for Reasons.

Which means exploiting a man’s faith to make him abandon his sick mother to pilot a plane to Melbourne using the lie that they’re an aid relief mission. Such a nice man is Matt

With him he’s bringing Michael and John as fellow believers in Kevin the Hot Tattooed Messiah (hey it’s a better selling point than the people who knock on my door on a Sunday morning) to convince him. Laurie, married to John, is also coming to try and help Kevin. She’s furious with Matt who she blames for feeding Kevin’s delusions and driving him to run off to Australia by taking his mental illness and turning it into a religion. It has to be said, no psychotherapist advises to help those having a psychotic break by worshipping them.

Time for things to get weirder. The plane, due to the nuke thing, is diverted to Tasmania which means Matt & co need to get a ferry to Melbourne and the only ferry available has already been chartered by a lion-sex-world-tour-orgy. At some point during the proceedings they try to forcibly extract Matt’s sperm. And they have a lion


Just run with it. It’s the Leftovers it’s not meant to make sense. Generally it’s an excuse to throw more naked people at the screen in the world’s tamest orgy. Australia, I am disappointed with your orgy mojo, up your game.

Matt and Laurie continue to argue including whether John managed to get over his seething violent rage because of Matt’s faith or because he married Laurie, a psychotherapist. Matt pulls an additional dick move he decides to tell John that Kevin saw Evie even though Laurie pretty much proved this to be a delusion. Thankfully Laurie and John seem to have a stable happy relationship and this doesn’t cause the rift between them Matt as clearly hoping for. Matt is an arsehole

He’s also even concerned Michael and John with his rigid belief they have to be back in Miracle for the anniversary, despite it being obviously impossible. The way he’s talking also suggests he’s willing to kidnap Kevin

There’s also a bloke on deck who calls himself God. Being a religious fanatic, Matt takes exception to this and the cards he’s handing out, which are kind of cool (of course he lacks all self-awareness to see him setting up is own religion based on random post-departure events but is outraged by another man’s based on his near death experience).

Then he witnesses God throw a man overboard. Matt has trouble getting anyone to believe him despite running around and shouting a lot so ends up hitting god with an axe handle so her can force him to confess. This ends up into an angry rant – but not at the man for impersonating god, but at god. Matt is furious with god because of all he has sacrificed, Mary left him, he’s suffered and he’s done it all for god; while the man, David, doing an excellent impression of god keeps asking him why. Easily he exposes that Matt has been doing everything for himself, his own idea of what he needs to do on the impression that god was watching.

Matt is also dying – a childhood disease he had, which he thinks was cured due to prayer – has come back. He begs the man/god to heal him and seems to genuinely believe. Despite the dubious finger-snap.

So Davdgod is released and Matt returns to the gang seeming to be just a bit more mellow in his raging self. Belief he has been cured? Fatalism? Finally snapped?

As they get close to dock the captain reveals they’ve found a body – proof that Davidgod did throw someone overboard. But Matt is disturbingly mellow, even saying he has no pressing business in Melbourne any more despite his previous obsessive urgency.

And the lion eats Davidgod. Because why not?