In Which We Are Done With Being Left Behind

Waking Up

by DICK CHENEY

The Leftovers
creators Tom Perrotta & Damon Lindelof

Damon Lindelof could not well make another season of The Leftovers like the last one. As he sobbed and cried in the office of HBO executive Michael Lombardo, he begged for a second chance. "I need a miracle," he whined while wearing his highest end Lost t-shirt and gently stroking his pet yorkipoo Desmondpenny. "I promise it will be different. Using Justin Theroux so prominently was a mistake. It just made it more obvious he was cheating on Jennifer Aniston. Also, he's like 5'2"."

Subsequently, The Leftovers begins with a primitive woman giving birth standing up in the middle of the night. She posts her new baby on insta and then dies of a snakebite. The baby is saved by divine intervention. In discussing this tour-de-force bravado open that would entice a new generation of fans to watch their horrendous program, Lindelof explained, "I love A Serious Man because the beginning didn't make sense."

"We'll show a woman giving birth! Most people have never seen or experienced anything like it!" 

Smartly, The Leftovers discards most of the mediocre cast of season one, although it seems intent on bringing Amy Brenneman back for no reason I can discern. The new stars are an African-American family living in Texas. What a novel premise you will likely crow to yourself as you make the traditional Sunday evening pre-Ballers nachos! A show finally tackles the throny struggles people of color experience in our southern lands!

What family doesn't have test tubes on their dinner table? 

No. John Murphy (Kevin Carroll) is actually the captain of the fire department. He and his white employees set the home of a local black man telling fortunes on fire. No suggestion is made of the racial implications of such a crime. Damon Lindelof has never actually been to Texas, but he has flown over it. The graduate of Teaneck High School makes sure he mentions his black and Asian friends in nearly every interview he does, as if that entitles him to some part of their experience. 

Regina King is like, "I passed on the role of Cookie's younger sister on Empire for this? Save me Lee Daniels!"

Then again, Lost wasn't exactly a bastion of progressive thinking either. A new series from the Sundance Channel starring James Purefoy and Michael K. Williams titled Hap and Leonard will attempt to actually explain how racist some parts of America still are. It is based on Joe R. Lansdale's series of novels about the emotionally resonant friendship between a straight white man and a homosexual black man; Christina Hendricks plays the white man's ex. 

The original novels are dense with the experience of races mixing together: how racism operates out in the open, and behind the scenes. The idea that we can simply move past this without even giving it the barest acknowlegement is the province of the man who cast Harold Perrineau as a deadbeat father in Lost.

With names like "Michael" and "John" you know they are just regular guys.

On The Leftovers, we do see this African-American family going to church, having a barbecue. "We have no friends," John jokes to his new neighbor Kevin (Theroux-Aniston), who has come from Mapletown, NY to find a new home for his family in the blessed town of Miracle, where no one disappeared during the sudden departure that took 2 percent of the world's population to heaven or something.

Why this situation should be intriguing is beyond me. Perrotta and Lindelof have already made it clear that they have no intention of explaining anything that happens in the show. (The new, light opening theme song of The Leftovers is "Let The Mystery Be," for Rumsfeld's sake.) At the end of last night's premiere, John's daughter Evie (Jasmine Savoy Brown) is sucked down into a local watering hole with her friends. Minutes earlier, Lindelof shows the teenagers running through a glade in the nude, with a fearsome expression on their faces.

When even Christopher Eccleston looks like a bloated tube of toothpaste, you know you're missing some serious sex appeal on this show.  Such moments tease the expectation of horror without ever delivering outright. At times, vaguely tension provoking music is cast over the dull veneer. Watched individually, episodes of The Leftovers tend to carry you forth on their own momentum. Added up, they are never anything more than the sum of their parts. 

Including an African-American family is a nice change from the nearly all-white cast that populated season one. In most ways, it would not matter what exactly the race of the protagonists was here, but since John has an extremely sinister aspect and the religious ministrations of his son Michael (Jovan Adepo) seem to have a robust sexuality beneath them, so many real possibilities for drama are ignored. The Leftovers tells the story of black Christians, whose lives Lindelof and Perrotta know nothing about.

Throw on something a little sharper than a vest. It's like he's not even trying.

But then, The Leftovers will probably just end with Justin Theroux murdering a black man for some reason or other, so that Damon Lindelof can give a gushing interview where he whines about what a tough choice this was. Then he will think about what Matthew Fox-based t-shirt he can wear when he asks, at length, for a season three. 

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.

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In Which We Imagine All The People Left Behind

I'm Going Back In The Hatch

by DICK CHENEY

The Leftovers
creators Damon Lindelof & Tom Perrotta

Imagine a world in which Justin Theroux woke up and the older woman he was romancing was simply no longer there.

Jennifer Aniston went to heaven on a jet plane. In heaven she no longer has to play a stripper or prostitute in every movie, she just portrays a mature woman in her fifties who knows what she wants from life. She has been absorbed, along with 2 percent of the world's population, into an afterlife while the rest of the proleteriats go on with their earthy travails.

We never see it, but we can assume Heaven is fantastic in HBO's The Leftovers. You would think being with only virtuous people would get annoying over time, but that is not the case, because God let some assholes into heaven as well, The Leftovers informs us at length. They serve hors d'oeuvres.

Most assumed that the guys responsible for Lost would never get jobs in the industry again, but when that pitch meeting comes around, Damon Lindelof tells a compelling anecdote about how their original idea for what was in the hatch was Demi Lovato nude and tied up, but Jamie Tarses nixed it.

Given that Carlton Cuse created the masterful Bates Motel, I have forgiven the fact that he looks and sounds like a cowardly lion and I now direct all my venom towards Damon Lindelof. The Leftovers proves he was by far the weakest link in Lost besides Desmond's lackluster gf.

David Carradine is sitting up alertly in his grave

It is hard to imagine who The Leftovers could possibly appeal to. It makes religious people look like zany cretins who smoke cigarettes constantly, it makes kids look like sex and drug crazed infidels, it makes minorities look like ineffectual pawns and victims in a whitewashed future and it has over three dream sequences just in the first episode. No one could possibly enjoy this.

At one point Theroux's daughter (Margaret Qualley) is choking some guy while he jerks off at a party. Afterwards she discovers a dead dog in the trunk of her dad's car, which she buries with her friends. At the conclusion of this disturbing set of moments, Lynne openly wondered to me, "At least stag films have the added aspect of turning you on or making you afraid."

Can you blame her for wanting a hard think after she chokes some bro while he comes for over an hour?

In the book version of The Leftovers, Theroux is very depressed that his wife (Amy Brenneman) has gone off to join the local silent cult Guilty Remnant, even though he was cheating on her with another white woman. Are you guys as tired of ww as I am? Not everyone has a white wife, I mean I do, but do I need to see my own life on television all the time? The answer is yes, but not every single time.

I identified just as well with Stringer Bell until I found out he was really British and pretending to be kewl.

Guys, our sheriff is 5'3" and he left his girlfriend of fifteen years for Jennifer Aniston. Crime may be a problem.

The Leftovers only has one clever trick up its sleeve. In order to make the rest of the cast look like a bunch of Julliard-trained professionals, Lindelof has chosen to employ the casual acting ministrations of Liv Tyler.

Tyler portrays a woman in an unhappy engagement. She is in the car with her fiance when he starts singing. At first she laughs good naturedly, but then he goes on singing and she decides to join the religious order of fanatics who devote themselves to reminding everyone else that they were not chosen by God to serve Jennifer Aniston pain au chocolat. In the cult she meets Theroux's wife, and her real romance begins. She sounds like Arwen throughout and never changes her facial expression, even when she's taking a huge shit.

God is the Marlboro Man confirmed

In order to assuage his feelings of loneliness and abandonment - even though no one in his family was actually even absorbed by the rapture - Theroux starts a relationship with his high school aged daughter's best friend. Fucking American Beauty. The devastating toll of boredom and cliche spawned by Sam Mendes' lack of directing talent continues to destroy lives even decades after its release.

Theroux actually overdelivers in this thankless role, but the fact that he is physically more suited to play a munchkin in the Michael Bay-directed resurrection of The Wizard of Oz hampers his credibility. Every single person in the show is taller than him, requiring more workarounds and odd angles than Tom Cruise looking up at Emily Blunt's chin. I really hope seeing this pilot is why Aniston postponed the wedding.

American Beauty was utter trash, and leaving Kate Winslet was even stupider

We all know that at the end of The Leftovers it is going to turn out that this was heaven all along, or some light at the back of the cave will be the answer to everything. Somewhere in there, Matthew Fox will be arrested for drunk driving. He could play the Devil, or alternately, he could be God. Come to think of it, this show could really use Matthew Fox: his best case scenario is portraying Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend in heaven. She deserves a good-looking guy.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He will not be recapping further episodes of The Leftovers, or even watching it all, until Liv Tyler retires from the acting profession.

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