Another specific TV show rec + Wholesome video
So I have been thinking about HBO’s The Leftovers a lot but haven’t been sure about what kind of tone to use when bringing it up, because obviously watching an intense drama about loved ones mysteriously vanishing from the earth is hugely not going to be most people’s thing right now.
Which is why I liked this interview that the Boston Globe did with Tom Perrotta, author of the book that it’s all based on, where he talks about the work and aspects of what makes it extra relevant today:
In The Leftovers, there was this event that had no scientific or religious explanation. It looked like the rapture, but it wasn’t the rapture; it didn’t choose Christians over anybody else. The scientists had no idea what happened. So it was like all of our systems for making sense of the universe had fallen apart.
What’s so interesting about this, and what makes it an imperfect parallel to “The Leftovers,” is that we know what’s happening: We know what a virus is, we know what a pandemic is. But it’s happening at a time when lots of people had started to question science anyway, so there’s this ongoing desire to find some explanation that isn’t scientific, and usually that’s paranoid political conspiracy these days. So I don’t know, I honestly don’t know, how this plays out. I’d love to see that it actually restores people’s faith in scientific expertise and maybe make skeptics look again at global warming and think about how we prepare. But I’m not sure — I think people rally when the crisis is happening, but I think the trauma after is often extremely irrational and destabilizing.
My personal pitch for The Leftovers is that it’s one of the few shows I wish I could forget completely so that I could re-immerse myself in it and let its parables calcify into my brain again. Again, it is deeply grim and heavy, but I’ve never seen anything do a better job using magical realism to tackle tragedy, religion, and the deeply irrational ways we grieve unimaginable loss. I think this is a show that will change the way you think about everything. (Also, Justin Theroux wears a lot of gray sweatpants in it).
Bonus (and way more uplifting) link: saw this family singing Les Mis floating around Twitter and burst into tears halfway through. Quarantine life is kind of like PMS-ing endlessly??
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