Saturday, July 5, 2014

LEFTOVERS

There is a new cable show called The Leftovers that promises that it will be different than LOST: it will have an ending.

Ouch.

But that still is a litmus test for shows that start with a huge mystery that is supposed to be answered through the various show characters as they move toward the end.

The premise of The Leftovers, where 2 percent of the world's population has just disappeared without any explanation. There's no scientific or religious narrative that can make sense of the event; it just seems random. It is an apocalyptic story that didn't involve a nuclear holocaust or a zombie invasion. The Leftovers takes place in a world that looks exactly like the world we live in now. It's not about how we survive when there's no food and no clean water, but how we endure when everything we believed has been, if not obliterated, then seriously challenged.

People will point out that there's some similarity to Lost in that the characters are dealing with a profoundly mysterious situation. But it's not set on a desert island; it's set in a recognizable suburban town. But the show's creator understands that  The Leftovers will probably provoke some of the same reactions from the audience—the excitement of exploring the mystery through the lives of a broad range of characters and, possibly, some frustration when the show doesn't produce a simple explanation for what happened.