The Leftovers

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Written by KTP

The Leftovers:  How I learned to deal with grief like an idiot.

I'm not religious by any means, but even I can admit that a biblical apocalypse would be fucking awesome.  You have the antichrist, four horsemen tearing shit up like the shootout scene in Heat, dragons, super whores, and flying scorpions.  You remember the angel war in The Prophecy?  Shit like that would go on all the time.  The christian apocalypse is probably the most metal thing that could ever happen to us.  With the Leftovers, you get none of that cool shit.  You are stuck with a story that alludes to the Rapture happening as millions of people in the world mysterious vanish.  Three years later, what you are left with are peoples' feelings and the dumbest, most gullible fucktards that humanity could ever possess.

The story is told through the eyes of a dysfunctional family that proves idiocy can become a valid coping mechanism.  You have the father who, as police chief of a small town, is desperately trying to hold onto his family and sanity.  He spends his nights drunk and shooting dogs.  You have the teenage daughter who will remind you why teenagers are fucking annoying in any drama.  Most of her scenes have her being rebellious against common sense in an effort to remain misunderstood.  Mom wins dumbest of the cast choosing to leave her family and join a cult that wears white, replaced communication to the outside world with chain smoking, and have the intent to make everyone remember that they disappeared rather than move on.  The son is in an arguably better spot than the rest of the family choosing instead of remaining with his angst ridden family and joining a man that claims to have magic hugs and surrounds himself with underage Asian chicks.  I did not make that shit up.

"Hatin' on my magic hugs? I got more Asian bitches than an anime while you just got a stupid beanie. Bitch."

 I guess the focus of the show is characters coping with this event, but it's been THREE FUCKING YEARS.  “Fuck me, a lot of my friends are gone.  This is tough.  It's like I'm the only one in the world that has lost loved ones.  What do I do?  Greg has this racketball group I could join to get my mind off of it.  Maybe I should share my loss with a an entire world that feels exactly the way I do.  Maybe I could go for a run or learn a new skill.  But.....you know......those creepy people in the white that don't say shit and smoke all the time.  They want people to remember about the people disappearing by being creepy assholes.  No one any remembers what's happened anyway with all the ceremonies, news stories, and any other exposition that gets revealed.  Maybe they know what's up.  I also heard about this dude whose hugs make pain go away.  I can shoot dogs too.  I hear that helps with coping.”  To be fair, no one would probably watch a show with a bunch of people sitting in a circle sharing their feelings for an hour.

STOP WASTING YOUR BREATH TIME

The actors do a pretty good job of being damaged and they set up the scenes pretty well.  The problem is that it's so hard to take their plight to heart when the other end of the spectrum is so fucking dumb.  It's an even bigger problem that they took the apocalypse and turned it into a boring small town drama.  Do we get to see some cool shit in the future?  Lemme read the wiki.  Nope.  More feelings.  Fuck this shit.