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Jul. 7th, 2017 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionI've been thinking further about The Leftovers.
Of the last eight, five are those one-character episodes of the sort they did with Matt and then Nora in season 1. Those two were amazing - or anyway much better than the surrounding episodes and than anyone would have expected - and the writers of course realized it. They're pretty similar to the flashbacks on Lost, obviously, but devoting an entire episode to a story revealing one personality and its core problem was something shows didn't tend to dare back then.
When Kevin confesses to Laurie that he hated their house I think we're to take it that he means their marriage, since their shared life together were also based on her money. Remember that first time we see their crazy expensive, shiny, modern home in the Departure flashback episode back in season 1? He's his father's yes-man at work and his wife's at home (hence his one-day stand that the Departure interrupts, which the 3.6 confession dump scene is either badly or brilliantly written for excluding - probably the latter). Since this leads into her own confession about not telling him of her Departed baby I think we're supposed to realize that she didn't tell him because she knew he didn't want one ... but that she herself did, which led to her suicide attempt and subsequent cultist phase. So since she tells him she didn't want the baby either she lies even during her confession (just as he does by not confessing his own deepest secret, except obliquely).
I think that's the heart of the episode. In the pre-credits portion she finds out she not only doesn't know how to help her patient, but that this patient is exactly like her except honest and open. Being the grown-up, the person who knows what's going on and is above it, is what she's been clinging to. Her institutionalizing Kevin's father did not cure him, whereas his being free to follow his madness through to its conclusion might. And she lied to do it, by pretending that she believed what he was saying, which I guess is part of what psychiatrists are supposed to project? As though it's a form of humoring.
In his particular case it applied the rule she explained to Kevin, that one should never tell a psychotic person they're psychotic. Should you tell a religious person they are? At least someone driven by their loss-created need to accept blatantly counterfactual religious claims (whether claims made by human authorities or hallucinated by themselves)? This is the question we're being asked to entertain. She doesn't tell people, but in the past she's stopped them from harmfully acting on these claims. It's condescending, in a sense, but it may also have stopped her from actually needing to have an answer to their questions, which might have been part of what left her vulnerable to the cult.
Her answer to Nora about why the usher at the baseball game had to let the air out of the beachball was that if it had gone onto the field, which it eventually would, "it would have been chaos." Choosing "it would have been" over "there would have been" was a good writing decision. "There" describes some item or area within the set of all things happening, but "it" suggests the set itself. She says it in such an angry way that we understand THIS is her belief - when she proudly claims to be Judas when Kevin's father accuses her of being a doubting Thomas, she explains the distinction is that Judas didn't doubt Jesus but instead was convinced he was wrong.
She tells Nora this, but nonetheless accepts her decision and doesn't stop her - but does leave, just like she won't stay to watch Kevin die. Earlier when she realized she couldn't help people because she didn't have better answers (maybe correct ones, but not better) she was left with the choice of suicide or joining a cult. Joining a cult didn't work, mostly because it entailed not just being told what to do, which was the appeal, but telling others - evangelizing. She wants to be the child, not the adult. So it may be that she's feeling the appeal of her husbands' and father-in-law's cult logic and walking away from it for the same reason she walked away from smoking. But she now feels the anti-chaos thing is also cultlike, I think we're to understand; even when asked to tell them what to do by her various loved ones she doesn't. So suicide's left. (It looks to her like most of her family is about to die or go to prison, we should recall.)
But she then gets the phone call from her daughter and son, where she's asked to settle a trivial question about something that had happened. And she tells the truth. She's also reminded of her daughter's existence and that she's loved and has been forgiven and is still needed as a mother etc. But I think she's also been reminded that there's a point to being right, since this information will be useful to people who are able to think and listen again. The daughter's weird tape was about a mannequin who comes to life (Jesus Jesus Jesus) and who has an annoying repeated catchphrase (Jesus has soooo many), and her mother had clearly tolerated this phase, knowing it would pass, which it did. She recognizes that John is "close" to realizing how dumb all this is and that his daughter really is dead and that he needs to let her go and live his life again but resists the temptation to try to pull him the rest of the way, since any such action would be likely to push him further away from that realization. Her daughter reveals that people get past such things, meaning not just that Kevin, John et al. might but that she herself can get past her present need for a mapped world or death (the dreaded "chaos" is the flux that life itself is felt to be, when it's uncontrolled by ceremonies based on arbitrary beliefs). She tells Kevin they/we "are all gone," but what are we gone from? From the controlled place, the safe one. The boat. But just because you might die underwater doesn't mean you will. Religion is just a phase, but when in that phase that really is your phase, your mission. A time may come later when you can laugh about it.
So the episode is actually Lindelof & co. defending themselves from the "atheists who believe in belief" charge that season 2 seemed to have left them open to. Religion may be madness but you can't yank madness out of people - whether it helps them or not you have to let them do it. This does not mean lying, just a) letting them know that you accept that what they do is up to them and b) refusing to tell them what to do since that does their reasoning for them - the point isn't for their car to be steered but for them to steer it. She drugs everyone because she needs to know that Kevin's death will be his own choice, his own mission, which she discovers it clearly will. So she too is "close" at that point. The only thing she has left to learn is that just because her help is not needed doesn't mean it won't ever be, and that just because people keep getting lost doesn't mean they'll always be. There's still truth, there's still a reason to speak it, there's still someone to speak it to. These matters won't be clear sometimes. But sometimes they will.
Explains who the show is for, too, I think. They're not sitting at the table of religion, but they're not walking away from it. They're watching it, then explaining to people who have left it just what happened when they were there.
(Certified is a pun on being both a certified psychiatrist/diver and certifiable, but also on being made (or having made yourself) certain.)
("Today's Special" is presumably a meaningful title, at least via further wordplay? The special day they're talking about at the ranch is the supposed flood day that's about to come (so Laurie does her diving ON that day, since it's light out again). Making one day more special than the others is a religious gesture, but can be seen as dimishing every other today, the recurring today, the real world. The baseball game we're here to see, the one that really does have rules, like death, like loving your kids. Nora's brother smiles when he hits the beachball because unlike the real game it's something he can play himself - just like the realization, after his parents die, that he can think they're alive and that he can control the world with prayer because Jesus loves him etc. Even Nora doesn't question the necessity of the usher's action so much as why anyone would want to be that person. Laurie isn't wrong, but there's something wrong with Laurie to be so willing to let others know that they are. Beachballs that reach the field ruin very few games - they more commonly have no or trivial impact, one assumes, so don't tend to merit making everyone at the whole game unhappy. The usher is Dawkins or Harris, basically, or anyway one type of negative caricature of them. Nora herself preemptively defends them by challenging Laurie to say what she'd say to the French guy who set off the nuke, though. Laurie jokes that she'd say "don't miss" but that's more or less what she does say to Kevin. Clearly there really is a point where the crowd game can get out of hand. Is the episode just addressing this with a saying vs. doing distinction? All the "New Atheists" can do is say, though. Or is the trouble that the usher doesn't explain, so seems like a Thomas, a buzzkill, and not a Judas, someone who is serving the larger game (thus the spirit of fun), not just victimizing the small one?)
Of the last eight, five are those one-character episodes of the sort they did with Matt and then Nora in season 1. Those two were amazing - or anyway much better than the surrounding episodes and than anyone would have expected - and the writers of course realized it. They're pretty similar to the flashbacks on Lost, obviously, but devoting an entire episode to a story revealing one personality and its core problem was something shows didn't tend to dare back then.
When Kevin confesses to Laurie that he hated their house I think we're to take it that he means their marriage, since their shared life together were also based on her money. Remember that first time we see their crazy expensive, shiny, modern home in the Departure flashback episode back in season 1? He's his father's yes-man at work and his wife's at home (hence his one-day stand that the Departure interrupts, which the 3.6 confession dump scene is either badly or brilliantly written for excluding - probably the latter). Since this leads into her own confession about not telling him of her Departed baby I think we're supposed to realize that she didn't tell him because she knew he didn't want one ... but that she herself did, which led to her suicide attempt and subsequent cultist phase. So since she tells him she didn't want the baby either she lies even during her confession (just as he does by not confessing his own deepest secret, except obliquely).
I think that's the heart of the episode. In the pre-credits portion she finds out she not only doesn't know how to help her patient, but that this patient is exactly like her except honest and open. Being the grown-up, the person who knows what's going on and is above it, is what she's been clinging to. Her institutionalizing Kevin's father did not cure him, whereas his being free to follow his madness through to its conclusion might. And she lied to do it, by pretending that she believed what he was saying, which I guess is part of what psychiatrists are supposed to project? As though it's a form of humoring.
In his particular case it applied the rule she explained to Kevin, that one should never tell a psychotic person they're psychotic. Should you tell a religious person they are? At least someone driven by their loss-created need to accept blatantly counterfactual religious claims (whether claims made by human authorities or hallucinated by themselves)? This is the question we're being asked to entertain. She doesn't tell people, but in the past she's stopped them from harmfully acting on these claims. It's condescending, in a sense, but it may also have stopped her from actually needing to have an answer to their questions, which might have been part of what left her vulnerable to the cult.
Her answer to Nora about why the usher at the baseball game had to let the air out of the beachball was that if it had gone onto the field, which it eventually would, "it would have been chaos." Choosing "it would have been" over "there would have been" was a good writing decision. "There" describes some item or area within the set of all things happening, but "it" suggests the set itself. She says it in such an angry way that we understand THIS is her belief - when she proudly claims to be Judas when Kevin's father accuses her of being a doubting Thomas, she explains the distinction is that Judas didn't doubt Jesus but instead was convinced he was wrong.
She tells Nora this, but nonetheless accepts her decision and doesn't stop her - but does leave, just like she won't stay to watch Kevin die. Earlier when she realized she couldn't help people because she didn't have better answers (maybe correct ones, but not better) she was left with the choice of suicide or joining a cult. Joining a cult didn't work, mostly because it entailed not just being told what to do, which was the appeal, but telling others - evangelizing. She wants to be the child, not the adult. So it may be that she's feeling the appeal of her husbands' and father-in-law's cult logic and walking away from it for the same reason she walked away from smoking. But she now feels the anti-chaos thing is also cultlike, I think we're to understand; even when asked to tell them what to do by her various loved ones she doesn't. So suicide's left. (It looks to her like most of her family is about to die or go to prison, we should recall.)
But she then gets the phone call from her daughter and son, where she's asked to settle a trivial question about something that had happened. And she tells the truth. She's also reminded of her daughter's existence and that she's loved and has been forgiven and is still needed as a mother etc. But I think she's also been reminded that there's a point to being right, since this information will be useful to people who are able to think and listen again. The daughter's weird tape was about a mannequin who comes to life (Jesus Jesus Jesus) and who has an annoying repeated catchphrase (Jesus has soooo many), and her mother had clearly tolerated this phase, knowing it would pass, which it did. She recognizes that John is "close" to realizing how dumb all this is and that his daughter really is dead and that he needs to let her go and live his life again but resists the temptation to try to pull him the rest of the way, since any such action would be likely to push him further away from that realization. Her daughter reveals that people get past such things, meaning not just that Kevin, John et al. might but that she herself can get past her present need for a mapped world or death (the dreaded "chaos" is the flux that life itself is felt to be, when it's uncontrolled by ceremonies based on arbitrary beliefs). She tells Kevin they/we "are all gone," but what are we gone from? From the controlled place, the safe one. The boat. But just because you might die underwater doesn't mean you will. Religion is just a phase, but when in that phase that really is your phase, your mission. A time may come later when you can laugh about it.
So the episode is actually Lindelof & co. defending themselves from the "atheists who believe in belief" charge that season 2 seemed to have left them open to. Religion may be madness but you can't yank madness out of people - whether it helps them or not you have to let them do it. This does not mean lying, just a) letting them know that you accept that what they do is up to them and b) refusing to tell them what to do since that does their reasoning for them - the point isn't for their car to be steered but for them to steer it. She drugs everyone because she needs to know that Kevin's death will be his own choice, his own mission, which she discovers it clearly will. So she too is "close" at that point. The only thing she has left to learn is that just because her help is not needed doesn't mean it won't ever be, and that just because people keep getting lost doesn't mean they'll always be. There's still truth, there's still a reason to speak it, there's still someone to speak it to. These matters won't be clear sometimes. But sometimes they will.
Explains who the show is for, too, I think. They're not sitting at the table of religion, but they're not walking away from it. They're watching it, then explaining to people who have left it just what happened when they were there.
(Certified is a pun on being both a certified psychiatrist/diver and certifiable, but also on being made (or having made yourself) certain.)
("Today's Special" is presumably a meaningful title, at least via further wordplay? The special day they're talking about at the ranch is the supposed flood day that's about to come (so Laurie does her diving ON that day, since it's light out again). Making one day more special than the others is a religious gesture, but can be seen as dimishing every other today, the recurring today, the real world. The baseball game we're here to see, the one that really does have rules, like death, like loving your kids. Nora's brother smiles when he hits the beachball because unlike the real game it's something he can play himself - just like the realization, after his parents die, that he can think they're alive and that he can control the world with prayer because Jesus loves him etc. Even Nora doesn't question the necessity of the usher's action so much as why anyone would want to be that person. Laurie isn't wrong, but there's something wrong with Laurie to be so willing to let others know that they are. Beachballs that reach the field ruin very few games - they more commonly have no or trivial impact, one assumes, so don't tend to merit making everyone at the whole game unhappy. The usher is Dawkins or Harris, basically, or anyway one type of negative caricature of them. Nora herself preemptively defends them by challenging Laurie to say what she'd say to the French guy who set off the nuke, though. Laurie jokes that she'd say "don't miss" but that's more or less what she does say to Kevin. Clearly there really is a point where the crowd game can get out of hand. Is the episode just addressing this with a saying vs. doing distinction? All the "New Atheists" can do is say, though. Or is the trouble that the usher doesn't explain, so seems like a Thomas, a buzzkill, and not a Judas, someone who is serving the larger game (thus the spirit of fun), not just victimizing the small one?)
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Date: 2020-10-18 01:35 pm (UTC)Is there even an idiomatic phrase about this? Today’s special is yesterday’s trash or something? Or perhaps even a pun on the show title? Warmed-over leftovers.
What’s that phrase come from, anyway? Chef’s especial choice? Not sure that’s relevant, unless the point’s that this is the last stand of her tendency to put herself above others, rather thanspeak to them as an equal.