Every now and then, I pass by a sign on the way home from visiting my sister. It’s part of what I call a “shortcut,” a backway where I can avoid at least a dozen streetlights. In the drive past my old home, Veterans Memorial Stadium where I had my high school graduation, and some automobile factories where the old Boeing plant used to be during World War II, I take to the backside of the airport which has evolved into an industrious area of town. In the past decade, they’ve tried to make it a ritzy locale only occasionally interrupted by the noticeable sound of people flying away. If you drive along the backway, you hit a one-way turn and a giant cement block.
Sometime in what I’ll just assume is the past five years, it acquired a homemade piece of graffiti that read the stirring phrase, “KEEP GOING, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.” My reaction to it changes every time I see it, but I know to expect it nonetheless. I remember when I saw it the first time, there was some morbid sarcasm to it. Depending on my mood, I’ve come to find it either trivial or something profound. Then again, is this a phrase meant as a joke? Is it a clever way of suggesting that the airport on the other side has cameras spying on you? Does the person really care about you? Maybe it means nothing at all. Still, the part of my brain that insists it’s a sign believes it’s saying something deeper. Maybe it’s a note of regret from someone with a suicidal family member who possibly drove into a cement block. This MUST mean something.
This isn’t to say that I’ve ever found an answer. At this point, I just use it as pondering for the lonely drive home. Given that I live in a city that feels highly manufactured, where history fades as soon as it becomes unprofitable, it’s interesting to think of how many years I’ve seen that sign. Most graffiti at this point would be painted over, replaced with a generic color. Then again, those messages or the less significant gang tags with their own mystery of how they landed on overpasses and abandoned buildings. There is something more genuine about telling strangers on the backside of the airport to “KEEP GOING.” Again, maybe it’s a literal joke or a way to fight traffic congestion. I don’t know. I can’t even begin to assume how you get away with marking a cement block like that.
The year is 2024 and as The Leftovers is preparing to celebrate its 10th anniversary this summer, I can’t help but think that this is how it feels to watch the show. While it by no means rejects a religious read, I remember the production in 2014 being sold as a secular version of “Left Behind,” itself a tale that has felt comically melodramatic in its self-seriousness. Given that this was HBO, it was bound to be something much more harrowing. This was premiering on the heels of the (somehow) even more nihilistic True Detective and promised to find co-creator Damon Lindelof rebounding after Lost had turned half of America against him. Along with co-writing the maligned Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), Prometheus (2012), and Cowboys & Aliens (2011), he wasn’t exactly the vote of confidence for a show that promised to have mysteries and never be answered.
As I write this, I have finished season one of a planned rewatch. It’s my first time since the series ended in 2017 and brings with it certain hesitations and curiosity. I may love the show, but it’s a reaction largely to where seasons two and three went. There’s something impenetrable about season one in public discourse. It’s too bleak. Many think that its handling of the material was beyond the pale and depicted depression in a much too literal form. As someone who hung out with people at the time who proudly hosted a podcast called Nerd’s Eye View, I was privy to conversations about how Lindelof ruined Lost that existed in the back of my head when watching the first few episodes. I thought of the dogs in episode one and felt turned off by the idea that it could be a symbol. When episode two became a grander conversation about how the show would handle symbolism, I dubbed it my least favorite of the season. Without getting too much into it, I still feared that this would be “Left Behind” meets mystery box-style storytelling, and even now, it’s my least favorite part of the show…
This may be inaccurate.
As the show developed, I realized that I saw within its many arcs the greater reason for WHY the mystery existed. It was no different than me looking at the cement block and pulling theories from the back of my mind. My life isn’t any better because I *think* that I have an answer. My life will continue and there will be little that happens as a result of thinking, “YOU ARE NOT ALONE.” Even then, it gives me comfort to know it’s there as a small break from the conventionality of the familiar. It makes me think there’s something greater out there than predeterminism.
Returning to the show, it’s difficult to think of anything more ambiguous happening than “The Departure.” It’s the most violent act that can happen to a person, let alone the entire human population. There have been few TV moments as seared into my brain as much as the opening scene. It may sting more knowing that I have family younger than me that I want to see inherit a greater world. But still, as we watch a woman loading a baby into a car, she steps away for only a second. The cries may seem irritating, but what follows is way worse. It’s a silence. The seat is empty. Down the street is a driverless car crashing as others scream. Maybe it’s confusion or shock. Whatever it actually is, the world has changed so radically and there’s nothing that can be done to reverse it, let alone prepare for the final goodbye. The Departure is compromised for nobody.
Compared to a cement block, the mystery at the center of The Leftovers is a thing of horror. We have to wonder why the people who are still with us are with us. As religious texts would lead: are we the sinners and the righteous have been saved? Maybe the answer is much more mundane than that. But even then… why did it happen at all? Lindelof has admitted that he had no goal of answering the question, but not without dedicating a large portion of season one to deconstructing the concept of why we cope through mysteries.
Maybe it’s because The Departure has no clear answer, we’re more able to use our own abstract answers. No two characters have the same conclusive answer for the events that happened on October 14, 2011. Society has moved on, but without properly addressing the trauma, it has resulted in a more subdued form of chaos. In a clever piece of irony, the show centers around Kevin Garvey: a police officer in Mapleton who is designed to keep order while idealistically falling more and more into disarray. By the end of season one, he experiences prolonged episodes of hallucination and a questionable stance with his family. As the one family known for not losing a member in The Departure, it’s baffling to discover they’re the most dysfunctional. His wife has joined The Guilty Remnant – an antagonistic group protesting any perceived healing – and his nonbiological son has joined a cult that puts him on the run with a woman his “new savior” has impregnated. Meanwhile, his daughter opens the series at nihilistic parties mixing debauchery with illusory death acts. Before you’ve even gotten to anybody else, The Leftovers already sounds like it starts below the bar of what you’d expect from a “downer.”
It's one of the reasons that I’ve pushed off rewatching this show, even though it’s one that’s been on my mind ever since 2014. For reasons that don’t totally make sense to me, it’s the one show that feels indicative of the time. Maybe it’s that it premiered the day after my sister’s wedding or that this was mere months after I quit my job due to experiencing severe burnout. Something spoke to me about The Leftovers.
In my mind, it existed in this prism that felt contradictory to the times. As we were rounding the final years of President Obama’s second administration, my mind wanted to have me believe that the culture was antithetical to where Lindelof was. We were naïve, happy, and experiencing this blissful party mentality that in hindsight was stupid. It was the golden age of Millennials getting to experience their primes, and I think my lack of attachment to global politics allowed it to feel more innocent. After all, the first Republican Presidential Candidate debate was a year away where certain unforeseen forces changed the world forever. Our days of feeling like Twitter wouldn’t house the origins of a national disaster from late-night ramblings of an elderly man were coming to an end.
In my fractured memory of 2014, I believed my rejection of The Leftovers had less to do with quality than because it was “depressing.” Comparatively, one of the biggest radio hits of the year was by Meghan Trainor (“All About That Bass”). People were still making fun of Lana Del Rey for being the “sad girl” and no year did that feel more apropos than in 2014 when she released the Citizen Kane (1941) of sad girl pop “Ultraviolence.” I wanted to believe that it was the counterculture. And yet, I looked at my End of Year lists and, quite jarringly, this was the year of TV shows like BoJack Horseman and You’re the Worst. The latter in particular felt groundbreaking to me because of how it integrated mental illness into a comedy series, including a later season centered around a main character’s struggle with clinical depression. Admittedly, that wasn’t 2014 but it still made me think… what was I missing in The Leftovers?
The allure of later seasons existed in my mind this time around. I knew that there would be more comic moments. There was a destination that this path would be heading. However, I had to get through these 10 episodes of the most gut-wrenching despair imaginable.
I think the one thing that helped this time around was the surreal notion that The Leftovers feels centered between two big tragedies – specifically as it relates to American citizens. As one can assume, the idea of people “magically disappearing” feels like a thought that Tom Perrotta likely borrowed from the fallout of 9/11. With so much of our regular lives permanently changed and the innocence of the 90s forever erased, we now had to deal with the feeling that America wasn’t safe. Citizens would turn on each other over the level of “patriotism” you felt listening to Toby Keith yell, “We’ll put a boot in your ass.” The genteel diplomacy of yesteryear wasn’t going to cut it this time around, obviously.
As far as I know, I didn’t lose anyone on 9/11. If anything happened, it was more ironic than tragic. Because I had started a new school after a year of being bullied, I wasn’t close enough to anyone to have that deeper grieving. To play the foghorn a little longer, back to school night was cancelled because it was to be held on September 11, 2001. It was never rescheduled.
I don’t know that America as a nation ever fully healed from 9/11. While there was initial unity, it eventually slid into a new divided nation. Beyond any ephemera that I’ve witnessed in the years since 9/11 also created a permanent fascination with “the falling man.” While not the same one that inspired Don Delillo’s similarly named novel, I remember one afternoon watching a shot of the towers in disrepair, itself a disheartening image. Then, somewhere in the wreckage, a body falls out of frame. Ever since that day, I think there’s something about being in a free fall that haunts my thoughts. As sadistic as it sounds, there’s something almost romanticized about it (see: Mad Men) that makes it feel like the sexiest form of suicide.
And yet it returned here in the first episode of The Leftovers. Most would find “artistic” ways to hide the violence bestowed upon the act. Lindelof and Perrotta don’t just show it once, but watch as two men fall onto parked cars. It’s a brief and very blunt scene meant to reflect the emotional devastation some felt that day, but because of how clear it is, I am reminded of 9/11 and “the falling man.” I saw another one in a recent Spike Lee documentary. It’s an inescapable image and one that feels reflective of relinquishing control to the unknown. Of things that the show refused to explain, it included that one. Much like the cement block, I don’t think I’ll ever know who did it.
The other detail that connects me closer to the show is one that everyone reading this will more easily predict. Much like how the events of The Leftovers take place three years after The Departure, I am watching this almost five years after the start of COVID-19. Even more than 9/11, it felt like an event that separated Americans into unruly camps over things that have only made me feel more conflicted about the world that came to fruition since 2015. As of this writing, the global death count for Coronavirus is quickly approaching seven million with 1.19 million being American. There are also over 703 million cases reported globally. Those aren’t numbers to scoff at. I can still remember 2020 and watching medical staff on the news having breakdowns while they ran out of equipment and saw a majority of patients dying. Ambulances were turning away injured parties because hospitals were at a 0% capacity. Counter that with a president who, jokingly or not, suggested injecting bleach and you have a world that feels like a parodic take on The Leftovers. Add in an end credit note of the CDC shutting down many COVID-19 protocols and you have a leader not serious enough to handle absolute disaster.
For me personally, 2020-2021 was a notoriously depressing time. Somewhere in the months of darkness I also came to wonder if The Leftovers would do a better job “speaking” to me. On Twitter, I’ve had a conversation with someone who listed this among their all-time favorite shows and she suggested that people were watching it DURING the time we call “the pandemic” (which translates to the quarantine year). It felt premature to me to watch it then and I think it’s because of this I understand why the show jumped three years after The Departure to start events. Besides the immediate aftermath being “too depressing,” I think there is a need to give yourself time to heal. There is a need to believe that society can rebuild itself, even if it’s far from the world you exited at the start of this tragedy.
I suppose it’s fitting then that I watch it now almost in a mirrored way to how the show is designed. I am three years from my own deep depression. Even if I got better, it would take years of slowly readjusting to society. There’s still a hesitance to give so easily into naivety. I think I have more skepticism towards the idea of “American citizen” than I used to. For as much feels like it’s normal, I feel a certain surrealism at the thought of everyone returning to some kind of normalcy, not thinking of the seven million dead. What about those long haulers who have lost some part of their health to this virus? How are we not more prepared for the next event? More importantly, why aren’t we more compassionate now that we’re aware of the fragility of life?
There is so much that I can throw into this analogy of why The Leftovers immediately grabbed me this time around. In some ways, it felt predictive of where society currently is. In my mind, season one IS where we are now. I feel like many spent quarantine only giving into worse and worse antisocial tendencies to the point that it’s become an accepted and dangerous subgroup. They may or may not be as organized as The Guilty Remnant, but it’s hard to not turn on the news and see some tragedy marked by misdirection. People have been murdered in the name of American conservatism in 2024. The easiest culprit is to accept that, like The Departure, the pandemic caused such a traumatic experience that some just didn’t know how to respond to it.
Another reason that The Departure as a concept resonates with me at 34 as opposed to 24 is because of something less rooted in trauma and more something classifiable as “that’s life.” In 2014, I didn’t have a lot that I lost. Most of the people I loved were still alive and I felt like I had time to make sense of everything. Compare that to 2024 and so much of reality has kicked in. I’ve lost family members and friends. I’ve spent way too much time thinking about death and mortality because of it. Not only that, but I experienced a different kind of departure that we all usually face. As I’ve gotten older, many friends have grown up and we’ve grown apart. The way my brain works forces me to wonder what I did wrong, but it’s likely more innocent than that. Maybe I was just a friend. Nothing more. Nothing less. Still, you realize that even if they’re presumably alive, you’ll never see them again. You pray that they’ll come across your Facebook messenger, but there’s something taboo about initiating that first note. There is a noticeable absence that on the right day you can’t stop thinking about, looking back on bygone memories and realizing that there’s no way to build on them. At most, you’re doomed to the ravages of time as your memory collapses underneath itself, making you forget or rework a memory. As someone who has dealt with depression, I’d argue it’s hardest to access when you’re saddest and need it most, so archive it properly.
And that’s how The Departure feels real to me. Beyond death, there is the sense of feeling like the world you know has changed. There is no way to cope with the new structures in place. It is why looking out the window as you drive by and remember where buildings used to be is such a romanticized idea. There is a need for that comfort. As you wonder what happened to so and so who used to work at Ralphs - now a vacant lot - you feel that sadness that you can’t walk into the grocery store and see those friendly faces anymore. All that’s left is a lot filled with fallen palm tree branches from who knows how long ago.
Even as I try to write about The Leftovers, I find that every new detail reminds me of how I’m approaching the series now. There is substantial baggage this time around, and I think it speaks to the show’s strengths that every tangent reminds me of something different. Not everything is related to depression or the pandemic. Some things are more trivial than that.
For example, I want to credit Lindelof and Perrotta for getting me to think the most about my religious upbringing than I had in years. I don’t wish to suggest that it ever fully left me, but there was always some divide between me and faith as a communal concept. I still am unable to interpret the bible as truth. To me, everything works best as an allegory, not unlike mythology with even more hyperbolic gods. I’ve spent nights wondering why Catholicism focuses so much on suffering and a martyr complex. I think of how it’s impacted my worldview and how ultimately I still learned to be compassionate within those lessons. I don’t wish to discredit documentaries like Pray Away (2021) that deal with very serious issues, but my personal experience was not filled with overt accusations and judgment. I am aware it’s there, such as the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, but I think of religion as a concept not as evil. If anything, it’s the people who use religion less as allegory and more as law that begins to pervert things. I maintain that there are ways to be faithful on a local level that are positive while nationally is more dicey.
Ultimately, it gets to the heart of why The Leftovers spoke to me. Beyond every storyline that happened, I found one reality emerging. People turn to religion in part because it’s comforting. When I was a child, having the routine of attending church and afterward having donuts while talking to friends was great. Anything could happen on the other days of the week, but you had this one moment to feel connected to others. It’s true that it comes with the caveat of sharing beliefs, but beyond anything, you had people to talk to. Hopefully, they weren’t bigoted and cared about your well-being. At least in my young mind, I believed those people did.
To return to The Leftovers, it’s maybe why the most interesting parallels at the end of the season are Kevin Garvey and Matt Jamison. Whereas Kevin has been established as a man losing his way, Matt is living The Book of Job. He loses his church/sanctuary to The Guilty Remnant. His wife is horribly injured in a crash. In the greatest piece of irony, he acquires the money to buy back the church only to wind up in a coma that causes him to be three days late.
The question becomes: how does Matt stay sane when the world is so cruel to him? He may become a background character of sorts for half of the season, but he represents a kind of hope that the rest of them are giving up on. Whereas his sister Nora Durst is hiring sex workers to shoot her in a bulletproof vest, he’s trying to find ways forward. To him, there is an allure in the mystery. There has to be a greater reason why he’s still alive. Even if the show isn’t necessarily designed as religious, his references to bible passages and finding spiritual answers show what the show does best. Like religion itself, there is something to allowing a mystery to be. Accepting the uncertainty allows for some relief to settle in and life to continue.
This is especially prevalent in Matt compared to false prophets, including a cult leader impregnating women and a “healer” who hugs people. Neither is proven to hold actual in-world answers, but given the world of fiction, you want to believe Lindelof is designing them with some answers. Instead, they’re like placebos. They are more plot devices that could be perceived as frustrating and lacking greater narrative purpose. However, it’s arguable that the use of faith in these moments is just as powerful as any actual answer. Maybe the hug won’t heal Nora. Even then, there is that moment of unified belief that makes the world feel whole again. It won’t last, but embracing the mystery of a potential miracle cure is all that people victim to an unexplainable calamity can really accept at a point.
I do not want to suggest that The Leftovers is encouraging audiences to embrace a world of tragedy, but I think it manages to suggest ways to survive within it. Even as every character exists with a different viewpoint, they all manage to find comfort in some middle ground. Some have moved on better than others. Some, like Nora, are so rattled by the day that they refuse to forget. Instead, they ask others questions about the departed. No matter how trivial, there’s some hope that a greater pattern emerges from all of them. Can it be found in languages spoken? It sounds absurd, but when nothing makes sense, everything should be questioned.
As I write this, I think back to 9/11 and the pandemic and their lingering impact on me. The latter feels more prevalent just because of recency bias. Also, I think I’m at a point where I spend a lot of time thinking about where life has taken me, wondering what the road ahead entails. Sometimes I wince, realizing that so much of what I want is gone. People have died. Others have veered off to live their own lives. Even how I responded to the pandemic has left me a bit exhausted and unable to approach a lot of things with similar enthusiasm.
The question of how you keep going is difficult. More than any visible mysteries, the show’s greatest attribute is realizing that the biggest ones exist within us. Not all of them can have answers, easy or otherwise. Sometimes it’s a matter of compromise or disappointment altogether. Whatever answers come by the end of the season aren’t convenient and sometimes require certain self-sacrifices for the betterment of society. For as dour as the finale can sometimes appear, there is this hope shining through that, instinctively, people who truly want to bring good into the world are still capable of doing it. They may lose hope, but if you care you’ll do something besides complain that the world has been, will be, and continue in total collapse.
As a result, I see The Leftovers in 2024 as something less “depressing” and more about the complicated emotions of surviving trauma. It can be paralyzing. There will be days when everything is frustrating. It can lead to delusions, believing that the world is against you when it’s just that the toaster is broken. Whereas Lindelof could be criticized for prior issues around delivering satisfying answers to TV mysteries, I think having that ambiguity in this text allows for something more powerful to take shape. The frustrations are still there, but you can either fixate on what you can’t change or just give in to the unknown.
As a result, I argue that The Leftovers is a very surprising show beyond its general premise. I was sold the idea that there was a fortress of woe surrounding this first season. While it’s not inaccurate, I think that it’s hard to fully agree with. Fans of later seasons will be quick to recognize how funny it can be. Season three episodes are sometimes downright farcical and I look forward to seeing how they play within the larger context.
But at this time, I want to suggest that the show has always been “like that.” Going back to the first episode, there’s a level of humor that exists under the despair. Even on Departure Day when everyone is recalling the awfulness, Kevin watches TV and wonders why Gary Busey was selected for The Departure. It’s morbid, sure, but also comical in that some unanswerable questions are about people who don’t theoretically matter. Much like how we fixated on the time Tom Hanks was diagnosed with COVID-19 in early 2020, there’s a sense of celebrities belonging to a different class that makes you wonder who is selected for earlier deaths than others.
Even the structure of the series becomes wildly scattershot as things progress. Even if there’s a larger forwarding drive, the reality is that every episode is done from a slightly different perspective. Some can be seen in the focal points, others shifting tonally. There’s even an episode that feels like a parable involving a manger Baby Jesus that plays like the most melancholic Christmas special since Fanny & Alexander (1982). Even if they seem incongruent, they playfully connect to each other and reveal that as silly as it looks, this puzzle actually is a complete picture.
If there’s any moment that suggests that this show deserves more credit than it’ll ever get, it’s the penultimate episode. Following one of the show’s darkest moments, Lindelof and Perrotta dedicate it to the day before The Departure and show how everyone’s lives were changed. Even as there’s happiness and joy, there’s some foreboding queasiness in every line. This is the last time that everyone will be together. You know that something bad will happen, but you fear when it will be. Something is going to alter everyone’s lives for the worse and yet you can’t fully assume when. Instead, it comes as abruptly as the opening scene of the series and you’re left to wonder who is still there. Who will protect you?
It's hard to fully argue that it’s a moment of levity in a series that is dipping into some dramatic territory, but it’s enough to show that Lindelof is not being a sadist. He knows how to populate these scenes with a certain level of humor and personality which reflects that, yes, these are human and they will experience good and bad days in equal measure. Some episodes are unbearably grim, but don’t let that stop you from appreciating what the show does right. I sincerely thought that it was something the show developed, but it was always there.
I’m not fully sure what to expect in season two at this point. However, I do believe that the greatest episodes are ahead of me. For now, I can cross out one mystery that has been solved. Is The Leftovers season one absolutely depressing? No. It’s sad, but I see the optimism and hope for the future wading through the background. Keven may still be doomed to enter some truly unstable territory and Nora will suffer even sadder days, but I have to believe that there will be some laughter within it. There will be moments where you remember the joys of being alive. Even years after a tragedy and the world doesn’t feel fair, you’ll remember that whatever unanswerable questions linger in your mind, they’re not as important as trying to make the most of your time here.
Again, what does that cement block saying “KEEP GOING, YOU ARE NOT ALONE” mean? If taken literally, I see it as a message of hope from a concerned party. If taken sarcastically, it’s a mean-spirited joke. Whatever it’s actually saying, I think hundreds of cars have driven by it in the past few years and come away with their own answers. It’s something that will fade away as they drive to their final destinations. Life will return to a sense of normalcy. For most, it’s something that will be forgotten. Meanwhile, I will find myself at that turn in the not-too-distant future and be comforted. At this point, it’s a mystery without a clear answer. I hope that it never goes away.
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