It wasn’t exactly a rip-roaring laugh fest on this week’s episode of The Leftovers, “Guest,” but there were a few lighter and more hopeful moments, as the episode — like the season’s third — turned its focus on one character. In the third episode, it was Reverend Matt Jamison, and in “Guest,” it was his sister, Nora Durst (Carrie Coon), the second-most likable character on the show after Reverend Matt.
“Guest” essentially took us through Nora’s epiphany, from a life in which she refused to let go of her departed family members to her eventual meeting with Holy Wayne in New York City, who — it turned out — really did have the ability to take away the pain. But it wasn’t a mystical ability or anything. The man just knows how to give really, really great hugs, and he takes Paypal.
Nora had been going through the motions of her old life for the past three years. She continued to buy groceries for her departed kids, and continued to act as though she were eating meals with them. The news that Matt gave her about her husband — who had been sleeping with the kids’ preschool teacher — seemed to come almost as a relief to Nora. It allowed her, in a way, to at least let go of her husband, and in her divorce, she appeared to feel a sense of liberation. That led her to spontaneously ask Kevin to run off to Miami with her for the weekend, only to be gently rebuffed. “F**k your daughter!” Awkward.
Instead, Nora went to her conference in New York, and we found out a little more about her job. Insurance companies refuse to pay benefits for the departed, and her company at least offers them some money, if they answer a bunch of painfully personal questions, which her company is using in an attempt to find a pattern between all those departed (no luck in that department yet, so it seems, though I think we can rule out Frosted Flakes). Of course, others think there’s more to it, and that Nora’s company is paying out money to silence people so that they don’t reveal the reality of the situation, which they think has something to do with a weapon that has the ability to target human matter and leave almost no residue. (I don’t know that there’s anything to that, but — as we saw last week, with the government basically incinerating the bodies of cult members — there’s definitely a government conspiracy/cover-up going on.)
As a “Guest,” Nora also had the opportunity to live for a day as someone who was not weighed down by the departures of three family members, but as someone without that burden. As someone who could listen in on the conversations of others, and how they treated those who had lost loved ones to the departure. She drank. She took pills (always take pills that are given to you by strangers. ALWAYS). She made out with a $40,000 replica of a corpse (and it was much hotter than it had any right to be). And she felt alive, not as someone suffering from “ambiguous loss,” but as someone who maybe didn’t want to feel the grief anymore.
Holy Wayne — holed up in an apartment in NYC, apparently weeks before his own death, or so he thinks — finally gave Nora that sense of relief in a very matter of fact way. Nora just needed to be told that it was OK to let go. That she didn’t have to seek out the pain anymore. That it was OK to feel hope. That it didn’t make her a bad person, or a bad Mom. That hanging on to her grief wasn’t necessary anymore.
And Nora let go of it. You could say that Wayne took it from her, but really, Wayne was just a conduit for her own catharsis. He gave her permission to feel hope. He listened to her as a person, and asked her questions that others would be too afraid to ask of someone with so much loss. Wayne is not a spiritual guru. He is a man with no filter, and that is exactly what those who are grieving need right now.
“Guest,” directed by Carl Franklin (Devil in a Blue Dress) was such an amazing stand-alone episode that it almost feels as though it might have worked without the context of the rest of the series. The episode reminded me a lot of Jim Sheridan’s In America, about a father (Paddy Considine) who couldn’t let go of his son’s death until his daughter basically gave him permission to do so. Sometimes, that’s all you need: For someone to tell you that it’s OK to move on, that it’s OK not to feel so miserable, and that it’s OK to feel hope.
And for the first time in this series, a major character is letting go, moving on, and headed (hopefully) toward a happier, more hopeful future.
Random Observations
— A quick shout-out to this piece, from The Village Voice: Why You Should Stick with The Leftovers
Three things HBO’s The Leftovers does better than any show on TV.
— It was another intense cold open, though not nearly as brutal as last week’s. It seemed strange that Nora would want to have herself shot, but knowing later that she sought out the pain in order to feel connected with her departed family retroactively made that scene make more sense.
— Oh, in answer to that guy’s question? He sells replica corpses for $40,000? Yeah, he has no f**king soul, and he’s a douchebag to boot.
— I know I’ve seen this guy before, but all I could think was Caputo.
— Most of you probably recognized Tom Noonan from something, too.
Maybe you recognize him from Hell on Wheels, or from a pivotal episode of The Blacklist (“The Stewmaker”). I definitely remember him from Damages, or maybe some of you actually remember him from way back, in Robocop 2.
— One of the conference topics was “Prenatal Departure.” That certainly seems to support the pro-choice side of the debate. I mean, if they’re considered “alive” for the purposes of The Rapture, then they’re considered alive for the purposes of abortion. Or, maybe only fetuses who were 25 weeks or older were raptures. INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.
— The song choices last night were incredible. Slayer AND Crowded House. I feel like the people who love The Leftovers and the people who know that Crowded House weren’t actually a one-hit wonder in the 80s are probably all the same people (I could write for hours about the career of CH, Neil Finn, Split Enz, and the solo albums that came afterwards (as well as a Finn song that figured heavily into an episode of Sports Night.))
The VENN diagram where these two fan groups intersect probably contains four people on the planet.
— Listen Holy Wayne. I appreciate what you do and all. But you give hugs for a living. TAKE A SHOWER AND PUT ON A CLEAN SHIRT, MAN.
— Right here is where Carrie Coon got herself an Emmy nomination.
