What I’m Watching: The Leftovers

The Leftovers: Season 3, Episode 2 “Don’t Be Ridiculous” (B)

I wasn’t as into this episode as I was the premiere, and I’m not sure how all of this is going to play out with the expansion of the plot to Australia, where apparently Kevin is already revered as a messiah, perhaps because what we’re experiencing is the future after Nora arrives there with a copy of the book and it gets picked up by some eager disciple. The sight of Kevin’s father there, apparently living with the women who drowned the sheriff who, awful as he was, didn’t deserve the fate he got, was just as strange and puzzling as it was intriguing. This show has asked its viewers to believe a lot of things, and many of them have been worthwhile, but I just don’t understand where all this is going. Nora has lost almost all feeling, not even remotely bothered by the sight of Kevin with a bag over his head and uninterested enough in her brother’s book to chastise him about it. She’s also so callous that she would bring a picture of a dead man and throw it in the face of his wife just to prove that she was lying about him being taken. The notion of being reunited with her children is definitely intriguing, but she’s probably right that, if such a thing existed, it would instead just vaporize the person who thought they were headed somewhere better. I think that it’s more likely to erase their personality and have them become someone else, which would make sense given that we’ve already seen Sara, who looks just like Nora but doesn’t sound like her. I wasn’t initially into Miracle as a setting, but now that it’s come into its own, I think it would be best if the majority of future episodes took place within its walls.