Ok, so… that happened. I guess.
Leftovers is a
show that repeatedly leaves me looking at the screen with a look of utter
bemusement on my face – because everything
is just so, plain, weird. I honestly think that half – or more – of every episode
happens simply because a load of people in a room got really drunk and really
high and just decided to write down whatever came to mind. I honestly read that
the scene with Kevin checking his penis on the biometrics was added, along with
last season’s karaoke, simply because the
writers wanted to troll Justin Theroux. And I wonder, is that the secret of
this whole show? Does it actually exist just because the writers want to see
what weird shit they can make the actors do? This whole thing is one epic
trolling?
So we have this episode, which is peak Madlib since it
involves Kevin in his parallel world/near death experience/hallucination. He
has decided to drown himself – his dad and disciples all wake up to stop him
befoee accepting that yes this is kind of what they asked him to do, so he’s
back to drowning himself for revelation. Remember he needs 3 things: Grace wants to know why her kids
had no shoes, John wants to pass on a message of love to Evie, his dead
daughter and Kevin Senior wants to appropriate from Aboriginal Australian
culture even after death to stop a new biblical flood
The plus side? This involves Kevin naked again. And I
will forgive a lot for more of this man naked, yes yes I will. Sure I’m shallow
but I need to find some joy for that. After that it gets weird – a random
eastern European man (I don’t know which language) trying to kill him and
someone else rescues him to set him up as an assassin. And his job is to kill
the president of the USA. No pressure then.
Also he needs to avoid
mirrors or “they” will find him. But a random other person who goes by “god”
because why not tells him to use the mirror. Looking in the mirror lets him
flip between the heads of two Kevins: unbearded Kevin and bearded Kevin
And Bearded Kevin is the President of the Unites States,
who unbearded Kevin needs to kill – why not. President Kevin seems to be a
Guilty Remnant member, reading a speech about banning the family and how they
used to do the whole smoking thing. While giving a speech he manages to talk to
Grace’s kids and even have a moment with Evie – who isn’t exactly thrilled with
him since his regime apparently killed her whole family with a drone strike (which
is, of course how she died). That’s two missions completed as he reports to the
land of the living before drowning himself all over again for Kevin The Worst,
his dad.
Back to bearded president Kevin who gets the message that
a nuclear submarine has been stolen by Ukrainian separatists so he needs to
nuke everyone first. No it doesn’t make sense, but this is Leftovers and Kevin’s weird hallucination, so let’s face it, sense
isn’t needed. To the bunker which Kevin opens with his penis (because of course
he does) and also has to say who his defence secretary is: Patti
Of course it’s Patti
And Dead world Patti wants to see it all burn – there’s
no submarine but there’s a whole long conspiracy basically so Patti and her
Guilty Remnant leanings can just destroy the entire world by starting a nuclear
war. Part of this involves his identical twin (unbearded assassin Kevin) who
has a key embedded in his heart. The idea being that the president wouldn’t
launch a nuke unless he absolutely had to since he had to murder someone to do
it.
Clearly whoever thought of this has not been paying much
attention to the current President
Assassin Kevin joins them at the instruction of god, a
brief appearance from Vice-president Meg (who is dating earpiece God) and some
more randomness. We end up with both Kevins and Patti in the same room.
But first Assassin
Kevin manages to contact Christopher Sunday for the song – only to be told
that the Song doesn’t exist. And, anyway, it’s not like Kevin junior actually believes
in this nonsense anyway, so why is he bothering?
Which is what Patti asks the Kevins when they protest
they don’t want to end the world. Knowing he has the key in his chest, why did
Assassin Kevin come here? With the power of the presidency, why did beardy
Kevin agree to this? And why did he choose Patti to be his defence minister
(she ays she came out of retirement to help him as he helped her)?
Basically the whole question is why is Kevin doing this?
Why is he drowning himself? Why visit this alternate world/hallucination for
the sake of his dad’s ridiculous flood theory that makes no sense? Why is he
here?
Thankfully he has written a book that basically spells
out his motivation: Kevin is afraid of his relationship with Nora. Afraid of
letting her seeing him vulnerable, afraid of letting her seeing him as fragile
and broken. This world is his distraction, this is him running from that,
treating his delusions as real, refusing to confront the truth, refusing to admit
how hurt he actually is. This is him running from his relationship, from
reality, from his pain.
And Patti wants him to end the world/his delusion to
basically remove it as an option. He can’t play the passive
suicide-alternate-world-visits if that world no longer exists. So the nukes re
launched. This is Kevin confronting reality
Ultimately, this is the story of Leftovers for this entire season. Everything else is a distraction,
the core is Kevin and Nora and how deeply damaged and hurting these two people
are. Nora with her harsh criticism of and ultimate embrace of being able to
Depart. And Kevin avoiding the idea he is some kind of messiah before finally
embracing it – before then realising how ridiculous it is and stop running from
his life
This is the story of two extremely damaged, hurting and,
yes, even deeply mentally ill people and how they deal with it. From the very
beginning both of these characters have not been shy about showing how they
were hurting. We saw them try to pretend it wasn’t happening and they were
living a perfectly happy life – but denial doesn’t heal or fix and you can’t
just pretend you don’t have a problem. And they frayed, both Nora and Kevin
increasingly cracked and neither were really in a position to help the other
because both of them are just too hurt to help heal the other. In the end, Nora
seems to have completely fallen off to possible suicide (Unless the last
episode shows us more) which Kevin appears to be pulling back from the edge.
I think everything else – Matt, Laurie, etc – they’re
just distractions, side context to this main story: Kevin and Nora, people
trying to pull themselves out of the pits they’ve fallen into
