Gladys’s death was The Leftovers at its most (violently) harrowing. Nora’s conference was The Leftovers at its most (creepy) normal. Episode nine was The Leftovers at its (maybe not actual) best.
In a call back to the first episode, this week opened with The Chief running through the neighborhood. Or perhaps I should call him Kevin during this recap, since we learn as we watch him smoke an illicit cigarette and catch sight of a deer in the woods that this is not exactly the Chief we know. This is Kevin Garvey, running home to a larger, modern home and saying hello to his wife Laurie who is chatting (yes! Speaking!) on the phone as he comes in. His father, Mapleton’s Man of the Year, is still in charge, fully aware of his the so-called surprise party his son is planning and cutting him no breaks as Kevin slumps like an angry teenager in uniform.
Here, then, is what Mapleton lost on October 14th. Here, too, is the episode it seems we’ve all been waiting for. Not just because we can see exactly what has changed, but the show’s writers and creators have produced an episode of tight, overlapping characters and hints to come. It is October 13th and there are no coincidences. It was a satisfying, if deeply melancholy, hour of television.
Kevin is unhappy in the pre-departure world, and though it looks like he is on the verge of giving in, there are glimmers of the Chief to come. He watches a silly online video when a younger, sweeter and brace-wearing Jill snaps that he doesn’t get it. When Tommy pays a drunken visit to his birth father, Kevin picks him up, swings by the dad’s house to punch him in the gut for hurting his kid and doesn’t tell Laurie the real reason Tommy is home earlier than expected. He tries, for a moment, to be the loving husband Laurie needs, assuring her that he will help with the puppy she wants to bring home. We’ve seen this all before. Even the crack in a wall and the deer that’s running through schools and homes in town is a bit of pre-déjà vu. He is stepping out over the edge, fighting with Laurie and following a strange woman into her hotel room when it happens.
And he’s not the only one living on the flip side of October 14th. Laurie is a therapist and breadwinner who pulls her children into huge hugs and accepts their kisses with a grin spread across her face. She competently and expertly guides Patti, her worn and struggling patient, through her feelings of impending doom. They share a humorous moment that prophesizes the bag full of shit left on Neil’s doorstep, but when Patti tells Laurie that Laurie too, can feel the change that is coming inside of her, Laurie falters for a moment. There is something inside Laurie, and of course she’s going to lose it.
Meanwhile, Nora is both bathing in and resisting her own domestic bliss. Her children pile into her bed in an achingly sweet scene of motherhood. But she’s not only a mother, which is what she tells the Mayor (to be) in the interview. The entire interview is poised to put daggers in the heart of Nora fans, who no doubt are both rooting for her to get the job she desperately wants and also know what’s waiting for her. When asked how her duties will contend with the rest of her life Nora replies, “For the next four weeks, I don’t have a family.” And if that line wasn’t haunting enough to justify the Nora we know (who wants to be shot but not killed and who turned to the magic arms of Holy Wayne), The Leftovers sprinkles a little salt into the open wound. Her distracted and unhelpful husband can’t look up from his phone to calm his energetic children, can’t get them their breakfast or orange juice or stop them from spilling it across the table the Nora’s phone, which is finally ringing with news from the mayor. Nora yells. She turns her back and closes her eyes.
She probably wishes for the thing that just at that moment, across town, Laurie has embraced as she looks at the ultrasound of the baby she hasn’t yet told her husband she is carrying.
I don’t want this.
I want this.
And then, just like that, wishes and decisions don’t matter. There is no going back to the Pre-Departure world.
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.
