The Real Reason 'The Leftovers' Did That Brilliant 'Perfect Strangers' Twist
Can we start by acknowledging how deliciously weird The Leftovers is?
The title sequence of the latest episode, "Don't Be Ridiculous," borrows the theme song from '80s sit-com Perfect Strangers, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now," and one of the episode's central figures is Mark Linn-Baker-that's Cousin Larry from Perfect Strangers-playing himself. Adding to the weirdness, the title sequence ends with the episode's writing credit: Tha Lonely Donkey Kong & Specialist Contagious.
WTF is happening?
Well, as we're finding out with this, the final season of The Leftovers, a whole fuck of a lot. Episode Two was all about Nora, who is hands down the show's most tortured character and who now has the Wu-Tang clan logo tattooed on her arm.
"Don't Be Ridiculous" covered a lot of ground, literally-from Jarden, Texas to St. Louis and Kentucky, back to Jarden and then, like the end of Episode One, to Australia. Here are eight moments that defined the episode.
1. The weird nod to Perfect Strangers in the first and second seasons remerged.
In the throes of insanity-or, maybe, on his way to becoming a wild-eyed prophet-Kevin Garvey's dad, Kevin Sr., points out in the first season that the entire cast of Perfect Strangers departed on October 14, 2011. That seemed like one of the show's amusing throwaway non-sequiturs until, in Season Two, Perfect Strangers swung back into view when it was revealed that Mark Linn-Baker faked his departure. The show's co-creator, Damon Lindelof, described this as a way of showing that a third theory of the Sudden Departure exists: that sometimes people disappear, but they don't stay disappeared.
In Season Three, Nora gets a call from Linn-Baker-who says he's with The Third Party, whatever that means-telling her she can meet her kids, victims of the Sudden Departure, if she flies to St. Louis to meet him. She complies and Cousin Larry-who is tortured because his three co-stars on Perfect Strangers all departed-tells her there's a machine that will blast a person with radiation and take him or her to the place where the people who departed now live.
To borrow a phrase from Perfect Strangers' Balki Bartokomous, "Don't be ridiculous" (which is, of course, also the title of this episode). But it's not all that ridiculous to Nora.
2. Nora is having a hardware problem.
Linn-Baker tosses Nora's mobile phone in the toilet to ensure she's not recording their conversation. He tells her, "It's only hardware." But Norah is having a hardware problem. The airport kiosk is acting up; her rental car's navigation system won't activate; the machine at the parking garage doesn't accept her ticket. Linn-Baker also says he needed to "take some fucking control," and so, when Nora steps out of her rental car and pushes the gate up herself, she's doing exactly that.
3. That trampoline moment.
Was this actually the best sequence of the entire series? After meeting Linn-Baker, and then taking a devastating road trip to Kentucky to see Lily, who is now with her mother, Nora drops by Erika's house. (Two big questions from Episode One-where's Lily and where's Erika?-are answered in one fell swoop.) Erika is thriving in a beautiful home outside Jarden.
Nora explains to Erika how she broke her arm (another question from Episode One finally answered): It was intentional to cover up her tattoo, the Wu-Tang Clan symbol-whom Nora calls the Wu-Tang band-which is covering up a tattoo of her departed children. It's a deeply emotional moment, underlining the depths of Nora's sorrow, that spills into Erika's backyard, where they jump on a trampoline to the Wu-Tang Clan song, "Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)."
The Wu-Tang idea came from the episode's co-writer, Tamara Carter, who told New York magazine about the genesis of the idea. It was an assignment from Lindelof, who gives the writers homework when a scene needs extra texture. Carter-"the only gay, black female dancer turned pharmaceutical-rep turned novelist on staff," according to New York-said the tattoo "represents the most absurd ideology, but also the most progressive when it comes to personal freedom and, also, pain."
"Nora," she continued, "was just in so much pain, and she carries it like a samurai. You don't see what's underneath much. So I was like, wow, if I were her, I would probably connect with the ideology of the Wu-Tang Clan."
So that also probably explains the episode's writing credit: Tha Lonely Donkey Kong & Specialist Contagious are, presumably, the Wu-Tang Clan names for Carter and Lindelof, the episode's other writer.
4. "Let's have a baby."
When Nora gets home from her trip, she walks in on Kevin suffocating himself with a plastic bag, which we saw in full detail in the previous episode. Turns out he's doing it so he can feel something. Nora, who broke her own arm by slamming it in a car door and, in the first season, paid people to shoot her while she wore a bulletproof vest, gets it. She's entirely empathetic to Kevin, who then tells her they should have a baby. She laughs her ass off. The laughter is beautiful, even as the hurt spills from Kevin's face. A minute later, she takes a phone call telling her that the machine that will blast her with radiation and supposedly take her to see her departed kids is in Australia, waiting for her, as long as she brings $20,000. She says she'll be there in two days, so clearly Nora wants kids-her kids.
5. Chief Kevin in Australia's license plate is 666.
The episode veers to Australia at its close. A police SUV driven by a local police chief named Kevin hits a kangaroo that's hopped onto the road. The camera lingers on the bumper for a moment and the license plate reads: 666. Does that mean this is the Anti-Christ to Kevin Garvey, the Messiah? The four women who kidnap Australian Kevin and drown him-mistakenly believing him to be the actual Kevin Garvey-don't know this because the chief has borrowed his subordinate's car. It's a small detail, and maybe one of those famous Leftover's non-sequiturs, but like Perfect Strangers, it might come back around.
6. Who are the four women?
In the first season (Episode Nine, "The Garveys At Their Best"), four women in a car pull up next to Kevin, who's smoking a cigarette during one of his runs. The woman in the passenger seat asks him: "Are you ready?"
Kevin says, "Excuse me?"
She answers: "I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else."
Are these the same women, just older and, well, Australian?
Either way, in "Don't Be Ridiculous," the women are on horseback, a nod, perhaps, to the four horsemen of the Apocalypse?
7. The four women knew about the Book of Kevin.
When they confront Australian Kevin, one of the women says, "And he looked at them and raised his hand, but they did not wave in response and so he raised the stone to his chest and jumped into the water." Although it's not explicitly stated, this is obviously a passage from the Book of Kevin, the gospel preacher Matt has written about his friend. The passage describes the moment a sleepwalking Kevin waved to Evie and her friends and then jumped in the river-never mind that he was holding a cinderblock and not a stone.
But Matt assured Kevin in the previous episode that he had the only copy, so how do these women know it so well they can quote from it? This is present day-the episode didn't jump into the future because a weatherman in Australia is offering the forecast for October 15, the seventh anniversary of the Sudden Departure. (Nice detail here, as a Redditor pointed out: In America, the Sudden Departure happened on October 14, but in Australia that's actually October 15 because of the time zones.) Has Kevin's dad, who's property they drown Australia Kevin in, somehow shared it with them?
8. There's a ticking clock throughout the episode.
Maybe it's just there to add atmosphere, but in at least two scenes with Nora, when she meets with Erika and when she sees Kevin suffocating himself, a ticking clock is audible in the background. Time is running out for these characters: the seventh anniversary of the Sudden Departure is days away. If nothing else, the presence of a ticking close is a reminder of the velocity underscoring Season Three-it's barreling toward... something.
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