I’m now catching up with the show, with episode 8 ready to go. But first I wanted to write down some notes about the mess that was episode 7. In fact I wrote down some obscure notes so I wouldn’t forget them while being carried by the rest of the story:
Once you master a level you awake, all you’ve learned is lost. New level, new problems. Surf the trajectory. Every new level resets the importance, relevance is contextual.
With only the finale left, I’m peering at the possibilities. For me, right now, the show could go either way. Polar opposites. It could be the best or worst thing ever. I hope it does something clever and consistent, but I have zero faith on this. It could as well be a total clusterfuck that retrospectively ruins everything up to this point. And this episode 7 fits this mold.
It’s not a bad episode, it’s not good either. This whole third season has been pretty much useless, but at the same time it can still be great if they pull off something. It can potentially be great even if these seven episodes didn’t have substance.
So I see the episode and of course the reaction was WTF. Purely that. Nothing makes sense here, nothing is understood. So I go to read those recap that journalists write.
http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/otherworldly-leftovers-kevin-fulfills-his-purpose–256008
It’s a show with an elaborate, layered mythology for those interested in delving into it
WHAT?! Are you fucking kidding me? That’s why I have to write this down, because it seems I’m the only one who’s interested in delving into it. BUT THERE’S NOTHING TO DELVE INTO.
Where is this elaborate, layered mythology? Because of course none of those articles that mention it actually delve into it or even know what it is. They only mention it. It’s no one business.
But first, I’ll point out to the total lack of coherence.
The Leftovers is still, at its core, what it’s always been: a story about wrenching, deeply personal grief.
To then continue with:
in all of the craziness, we’ve missed something important: The real tragedy is Kevin and Nora’s breakup.
(an aside, I noticed on reddit a comment that correctly said: they didn’t break up, they just were on different pages.)
So, nope, it’s not about any convoluted mythology or fantasy elements. It’s about the characters. Only to then say that “in all of the craziness” we actually lost those same characters. Duh.
And that’s actually correct. The Leftovers has become a mess of a show that in the end does nothing “properly”. It thrives on contradiction. There’s too much mystery and absurdity that get in the way of actual character development, yet that mystery is too all over the place to even begin making sense, or being consistent and generous enough that it makes delving into it a rewarding activity. So BOTH are poorly done.
But as I said at the beginning, it’s extremely wobbly, yet it works. It manages to achieve some form of clumsy balance. Do its own worthwhile thing because it’s at least different from most TV shows. It plays with stuff, might get burnt badly, but it’s still kind of fun and interesting to watch. But it is ALSO a clusterfuck.
Even in the Flood of Nonsense that was this episode, I was able to bring some clarity to myself. It makes sense to me, and that’s why I went to read various recap, to see if other people parsed things in the same way. And they didn’t. They call for that elaborate mythology that everyone points at, but generically and without saying what it is about. Like a looming yet evanescent presence.
So here I am, once again, to explain how it works. Or the way I personally parsed it.
The cardinal point this time is that THERE’S NO MYTHOLOGY. Yes, this is important not as a simple statement, but because it brings actual clarity. And it’s funny that it’s the opposite of what everyone else notices.
What I observe, comparing this episode to season 2’s 8th (International Assassin), is that there are no actual, objective rules. There’s no overarching mythology that has been established, in fact. Where for mythology we imply “systems”. There’s no actual consistency between these two episodes. What instead there’s plenty of is: arbitrary symbolism. It’s very obviously a dreamworld. One example for all, only in this episode we have the seemingly important mechanic of the character transition through reflective surfaces. Yet there were mirrors in the other episode too, they just didn’t have this use.
It’s one element only, but an important one. It says to me that in this world there’s no consistency. It’s not a mythological afterlife with strong rules established and consistent throughout. It’s instead a dreamworld that follows dream logic. Transitions happen by just blinking eyes. Like in dreams.
So where are we? The answer is that we get nothing of an “afterlife”. We are in an afterlife, because Kervin does keep dying and resurrecting, but the nature of this afterlife, its actual mythology, is occluded. We just don’t get to see what it is. Instead we get a simulacrum. The place where Kevin ends up is his mind, obviously. BUT. I also just said he keeps dying, so he is inside an afterlife. The mythology of the show DOES command an afterlife. But it doesn’t reveal it to us.
So where are we, again? We are in an afterlife seen but occluded through Kevin’s mind. We aren’t in that place directly. We are in that place as symbolized by a mind. A place fashioned by a human brain, and so a representation of a place through a mind. A dreamworld again.
That’s why there’s no mythology. A mythology is the sense of structure, of rules. But because this afterlife is entirely occluded, even if it does exists, we can only infer meaning. We can only observe it indirectly the way Kevin’s mind fashions it. And so, because it’s a dreamworld, it follows dream logic.
All this leading to my interpretation of the whole episode, its meaning. The important line for me is:
“You just do what they tell you to do…. What do you want?”
That’s Evie to Kevin. Evie keeps herself in character all the way through. She doesn’t “awake” inside the dream. She doesn’t “wink” at Kevin the same way Patti does. Kevin tries to shake her out of her reverie, in order to deliver the message. But she stays in character. The delivery of the message is a failure because the message cannot breach her character. The message doesn’t reach her.
Yet, what she says works anyway, the same as the speech with god worked in the episode on the boat. Layers. Evie describes Kevin the way he is. He’s doing stuff he doesn’t understand just because he has faith on the fact it works. It still makes no sense. It’s still absurd that he accepts of going through this insane ordeal. But he does, blindly.
That’s why it all does make sense to me. What we’ve seen in this episode is a total failure. Kevin wasn’t able to deliver the message to Evie, because Evie wasn’t awake. And he also wasn’t able to figure out the mystery of the kids without shoes, he got no answer. And he also didn’t get the song from the guy. All three of these missions he had were a complete failure.
Yet it makes perfect sense. It’s a dreamworld. It’s personal even if it’s connected to an afterlife. The only one who can benefits from facing those “demons” is Kevin himself. The owner of the dreamworld. You don’t get to fix someone else problem by telling them what you dreamed the last night. Dreams are personal affairs. What’s deeply meaningful to you is useless to someone else, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen here: Kevin learning something about himself, but powerless to fulfill others’ “tasks”. It’s his dreamworld, it has power on himself. For everyone else it’s useless. The afterlife is completely occluded and you cannot take away anything that wasn’t already buried on this side of the threshold. This afterlife/outside exists within the show’s mythology, but it cannot “speak” or reveal itself, if not through what is already manifest: Kevin’s own demons.
That’s how it makes sense to me: Kevin comes back empty handed. The message is clear: you have to fix your own shit without any divine intervention. No magic tricks. You tried going through, but you just hit your head against an hard wall. Rejected.
The show’s central mystery stays unsolved, because that threshold did open once. We now know, simply, that the afterlife delivers no answers or solutions. It’s just an echo chamber.
