If the philosophy of The Leftovers is that every mystery will be answered except for the big one, I think it is a philosophy I can live with. In “Cairo” and eight episodes into the first season, it’s clear that the show creators and writers may have learned from the frustration viewers felt at the end of Lost or the first season of True Detective.
Now we know what happened to the Chief’s white shirts. We know the truth about Gladys. Aimee’s given a little more depth, and the Guilty Remnant, by way of a tied up Patti, finally speaks. I’d hesitate to say any of these answers were satisfying, but isn’t that the way?
The Leftovers opens with dueling preparations. The Chief is at home baking a chicken and setting a table while Patti slowly lays out clothing in neat rows along the church floor. There is implicit religious imagery in both images, though particularly in the empty outfits that clearly reflect the rapture. (But our departed, in the universe of The Leftovers didn’t leave their clothes behind, did they?) The tension that bubbles just beneath the surface of the show simmers throughout the dinner the Chief has prepared for Nora, Jill and Aimee. Jill scowls and confronts Nora about her gun. Margaret Qualley is the star of this episode as three years of confusion and baffling loss seems to come to a head for her. Somehow she has tolerated her mother moving to the cult down the street and her brother disappearing out west, but the woman who lost everything smiling at her father over chicken is too much.
It’s all getting to be too much for the Chief, too, who wakes after his dinner party in the seat of his truck with no memory of the night before. That proves frustrating for everyone’s favorite mystery dog hunter, who is knocking on the glass and then has to explain to the Chief why Patti is tied up inside an abandoned cabin. It’s just like the other night, the dog hunter explains, when we captured that wild dog and you claimed you could tame him. Only this time the Chief wanted to grab someone, and it was the Chief who took them out into the woods, to Cairo, New York. While the Chief is understandably horrified and confused, this part of the episode dragged for me. Here is the Chief finding his white shirts nailed to a tree. Here is the Chief in a panic. Finally, here is the Chief fighting the dog hunter who has put a bag over Patti’s head and saving her so that, fed up and muttering “I tried” to no one we can see, the dog hunter leaves and the Chief and Patti are alone to work out whatever it is, exactly, they can work out.
Meanwhile, confrontations are playing out in Mapleton as well. Jill accuses Aimee of sleeping her father and though Aimee seems to admit to it, it seems more of a lie and a taunt than a confession. We don’t know much about Aimee, other than she’s a bit of a lost youth, who is also hitting her breaking point as the Garvey family finally goes off the rails. Across town, Meg is rebelling against the Guilty Remnant as she attacks Matt the Preacher, who is once again outside the cult headquarters beseeching them to wake up and come home. With Patti tied up in the woods, Laurie steps into the leadership role, first by admonishing Meg silently but forcefully and then by taking over the plans for Memorial Day that we saw Patti begin at the start of the episode. The huge binder of files and the UHaul full of Loved Ones that the GR haul into the church suggest there is something grim and horrible on the horizon.
“It won’t be long now,” Patti tells the Chief back in the cabin as she goads him towards action: Let her go and she’ll report him, or kill her now. The Chief’s indecision gives Patti plenty of time to lay out the GR philosophy, which is the epitome of unsatisfying answers and doublespeak that elaborates on the quotes we’ve already seen on signs around the GR compound. They are living reminders of the Sudden Departure. “We strip away attachment fear and love and hatred and anger, until we are erased,” she preaches. “Until we are a blank slate. We are living reminders of what you try so desperately to forget: that we are ready and we are waiting.”
It is in this speech that she also confesses to killing Gladys, who died willingly for the cause in the same way that Laurie someday will. The GR gives life, and death, a purpose again. “What else is there to live for?” she asks.
And so, when the Chief finally stands to cut her loose, unwilling to sacrifice his sanity listening to her unconvincing speech, Patti plays the only card she has left, slashing her own throat with a shard of glass. “You understand,” she tells the Chief as she dies in his arms, but I think she’s got that wrong. She’s not speaking to the blacked out Kevin, after all, and I don’t think even this will sway the Chief we know.
Besides, his rock bottom is waiting for him in his empty house in Mapleton. Aimee has left for another friend’s couch and Jill has stepped through the door at the GR compound, where at least she will not have to pretend to be ok.
Margaret LaFleur lives, writes and watches TV in Minneapolis, MN. More of her writing and miscellaneous internet interests can be found on Twitter or at margaretlafleur.com.
