No one knows anything on The Leftovers. It’s a state of affairs established in the series pilot, during which several characters accuse each other of “not know[ing] shit” — specifically,…
Contemporaries Essays
“The Book of Nora”: Sentimental Secularism, or Good Religion, in The Leftovers
In the final episode of HBO’s series The Leftovers Nora Durst states, “I don’t lie.” In this spirit, let me begin with a triune disclosure: I suppose this trifecta is…
You Want To Infect Me
“Now you want to infect me with whatever it is you’ve got!” This accusation is levied at Kevin Garvey Sr. by his son, Kevin Garvey Jr., following the former’s escape…
Being Here, Leftover
In its finale, The Leftovers catches us up. Earlier in the season, the series’ third, Nora Durst (Carrie Coon), a US fraud investigator, lands in Australia, having been notified of…
Care, Interrupted: Social Reproduction, Infrastructures of Care, and the Return to Fatherhood Fantasy in The Leftovers
“Young Mother” and the Crisis in Social Reproduction February 2019: I fold laundry while watching television, watching a mother sort laundry under a television, both of us unaware of what’s…
Family, Unbearable and Otherwise
Seven years after the Sudden Departure, erstwhile sitcom star Mark Linn-Baker, having faked his own departure after being left behind when his three Perfect Strangers co-stars departed, contacts Nora Durst…
Why Are None of these People in Therapy? Doing Battle with Mass Grief in The Leftovers
“Do you want to feel this way?” A mysterious man approaches Nora, a woman who lost her husband and two children in a split second three years before. Nora looks…
On the Other Side of the Screen
“I saw you on my TV. You were looking right at me.” — “G’Day Melbourne,” The Leftovers, season 2, episode 4. Halfway through the second season of The Leftovers, Kevin drinks…
After The Leftovers
There are two different kinds of leftovers, two different problems they represent. The first problem is long division, which teaches us to let the leftovers be. The leftovers of division…
“Nothing is Next”: After The Leftovers, After Extinction
In his introduction to the edited volume After Extinction, Richard Grusin questions the chronologically linear assumptions of extinctive thought: “Is extinction something that only happens belatedly, after there are already…