HBO series The Leftovers

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by KC_Connection

Except the point of the show was not the mysteries themselves

That's what Lindelof wants you to think

[KC_Connection]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

That's what Lindelof wants you to think

Perhaps, but that was also pretty clear throughout the entirety of the show's run. The show was very literally about its characters grappling with the unanswerable questions that define our existence.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

That's what Lindelof wants you to think

Dude, I understand your tantrum over LOST. I was one of the most vocal critics, and I have and will defend my criticism to anyone who asks.

But The Leftovers was and is something different. It didn't dangle intriguing mysteries for years with the promise of answers, only to switch gears at the end to argue that none of the shit you were watching for mattered.

At it's base, it's an intimately observed meditation on how contemporary society would realistically respond if the things we take as articles of faith began to manifest. That premise alone justifies the 3 seasons we got.

Plenty of us have personal, and interpersonal, battles over faith in seemingly supernatural events, be they historical or prophecies of the future. But mostly we think when we do or don't see it with our own eyes, things will fall into place and faith will become rational.

With 'the departure' that is the center of the narrative. As close to a fulfilling of prophecy we are ever likely to see comes to pass, but it offers no clarity, only more pain and more avenues for reinforcement or abandonment of faith. A sizeable sum of the world population simply disappears, but Jesus doesn't descend in a golden chariot to say 'see? Now does it make sense? Told ya!!'

Life goes on. Coincidences continue to accrue hidden meaning. Events continue to bewilder the rational mind. But still, no one's hand gets held and no universal truth is revealed.

We still have to find our own meaning, and forge our own connections, and decide whether to live and why to live and what to do with our lives.

Love or hate LOST, Lindelhof found the perfect vehicle to exorcise the demons unleashed with the LOST switcheroo, because the mere act of trying to read too much into a visual or a narrative inconsistency is falling to the same traps that derail many in the show. What happens and what meaning we attach to what happens are two fundamentally different things, and it's interesting to explore how we convince ourselves we are doing one or the other.