The Leftovers “Certified” Review: Therapy is the place to be

Laurie walks away from the peaceful Nora and Matt on The Leftovers

Photo Credit: HBO 

Thoughts on “Certified” are brought to you in part by the new hotline 1-800 Suicide…

Due to some Twin Peaks madness this week’s Leftovers review will go straight to the bullets…

• First of all wow. It’s hard to find a season of television that has blown me away this consistently but the Leftovers has managed to do so at almost a weekly basis at this point. “Certified” might even be the best episode this show has to offer so far this season. It’s not the strangest, wildest, or the one with the biggest moments but it is the most emotionally raw and the first to draw real tears from me. Laurie has evolved greatly as a character throughout these three seasons and this was the perfect send-off for her. Whether or not she ends up taking Nora’s perfect suicide advice at the end of the episode is still up in the air (more on that in a minute) but I feel like no matter the result that this is the end for Laurie and the show. We got two back to back dynamite sequences to pay her off, whether it was the expert job she does with counseling and comforting Nora, or the amazing conversation with Kevin that played out near the close of the episode “Certified” gave actress Amy Brenneman her proper due at what seems like the end of her tenure on the show. Both literally (it seems like she has done all she can for the rest of the characters at this point), and philosophically (“all of us are gone”) it seems as though Laurie has quietly come to the almost satisfying realisation that she has done all she can and is done with this world and maybe it’s time to move on.

• “Certified” struck me the hardest though not just as a Laurie character piece but as a beautiful contemplation of suicide. Beyond the emotional bombast of the pre-credit sequence which shows the Laurie of the past’s attempted suicide and entry into the Guilty Remnant the episode very quietly and yet very effectively puts the concept of death firmly on the table. It seemed to me midway through “Certified” that most of the main characters are on the last rung at this point and are now challenged with having to tackle it. As suspected in episode 4 it seems as though Nora is actually fully considering the “incineration machine,” Matt is dying of his illness, Kevin Sr. thinks the apocalypse is coming, Kevin Jr. is being asked to die by three groups of people, and as mentioned earlier Laurie just seems at peace with being at the end of her rope. The air of death populates the entire episode, but I doesn’t suffocate it either. At this point contemplations of death, mostly through suicide (maybe with the only exception of Matt but even then he is not taking any sort of treatment for his illness) is just a part of these character’s DNA and the show’s demonstration of how it affects all of them is both crushingly sad and quietly beautiful. It seems as though The Leftovers, like it does with most things at this point, has taken a beautifully complex and difficult look at death and suicide. Nothing is simple or black and white, and I think the best example comes from Laurie herself. Even if death is sad in general there seems to be a peaceful finality to the thought of her potential death via scuba diving. While Laurie is clearly loved (there is a great tender scene between her and John that is incredibly touching) she also seems like an outsider looking in, almost like a guardian angel who has finished her duties. Laurie can not fully be at peace in this world just due to her lingering nihilism and ultimately death may be the only way to solve. As strange as it sounds there is a sort of beauty and peace to that.

• Then there is the scene with Nora and Matt. I have watched the scene on the cliff that brought me to tears numerous times now (it seems like it’s Carrie Coon’s amazing croak of “ok” and the “I’ll see you next week” that get me each time I watch it) and I am unsure yet of whether it is a scene that seems peaceful because of a revelation that both Nora and Matt become at peace with dying or just where they are in that exact moment emotionally. Either way it hits me like a ton of bricks every time I watch it. I can’t quite explain why, maybe it’s seeing Nora and Matt two characters who have struggled with their goals and beliefs for a long time (as evidence by Nora’s great beach ball story no matter how cold she can be the human in her is still at odds with her growing cruel rationalism) finally finding some sense of peace together even amongst the sadness of it all, or maybe it’s the kind of sad and kind of cruel realization that both Nora and Matt have that nothing really matters at this point in their lives (even amongst the peace of it all that is still pretty crushing in itself), maybe it’s just the respective weight that the performances of booth Carrie Coon (who continues to be the best) and Amy Brenneman bring to the table. It’s one of those great Leftovers scenes of late that just sneaks up on you, and by the time the scene is over and the great swelling sad music is at full forte you find yourself (as I did) a complete wreck. It’s far from the biggest emotional scene of this season, far from the longest monologue, but it’s the one that found a way to break me completely.

That’s it for this week. I am confident now after “Certified” that if this show sticks the landing that I can call it the greatest final season of any show of all time. This is an all time legendary run, every week this show has found new ways to surprise, wow, and break me. I can’t wait to see where this show takes us in its final two episodes.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?

Twin Peaks Parts 1-4 Review: That gum you like is going to come back in style

 "Bob Cooper" is on the loose in the first four episodes of Twin Peaks

Photo Credit: Showtime

Thoughts on the first 4 parts of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s new revival of Twin Peaks just as soon as I become Mr. Jackpot…

It almost seems like a cliché when it comes to David Lynch’s work at this point but the new Twin Peaks is almost impossible to describe. The only thing I can say for certain is that the revival of the 1990 ABC murder mystery that bought a lot of avant garde elements to television for the first time is pretty much nothing like the original. Twin Peaks the revival shares a bunch of old characters, a title, the tonal shifts, and pretty much nothing else with the original drama. Lynch and Frost are not setting out to recreate a phenomenon or capitalize on nostalgia they are here to subvert people’s expectation and create something original all over again. Through four episodes the results are stunning.

The new Twin Peaks seems to have its focus squarely on the ongoing battle between the two Coopers. In the legendarily frustrating season 2 finale Cooper is possessed by the evil spirit Bob and doomed to be trapped in the black lodge while his doppelganger goes out into the world and assumedly causes chaos. 25 years later we find that Bob as Cooper has grown his hair out, wears leather, and yes has indeed been causing chaos. The real Cooper has been trapped in the black lodge for 25 years, and throughout the first four episodes we witness him attempting to re-enter the world all these years later.

The third and fourth parts which focus primarily on Cooper’s strange re-entry are a sight to behold. The third episode, maybe television’s strangest and most fascinating hour, involves Cooper’s transition between the black lodge and the real world. This transition includes a boxy submarine in space, a stop motion like sequence between cooper and a blind lady, lots and lots of toxic vomit, a man being transformed into a small golden ball, and ultimately Cooper re-entering the world through an electrical socket under the assumed identity of a different man. This Cooper having been cooped up in the dark lodge for so long has no idea how to communicate with the world which leads to an extraordinarily absurdist fourth episode that involves Cooper winning a whole bunch of jackpots on slot machines, not being able to communicate like a basic human being, not being able to perform basic human tasks, all while him generally not being ok being ignored by practically everyone. It all culminates in a great sequence that involves the perfect use of Take Five, a Cooper who wears a tie on his head, and has no idea just how hot his coffee is. It’s hilarious and shows that in back to back episodes following the same plot that Lynch and Frost can still play with tone in commanding fashion.

The other elements of the show Lynch leaves in the background slowly percolating for when they inevitably become important. This could be seen as self indulgent, and in some ways kind of is, but Lynch always manages to find something unique and interesting within his side stories. For example for the first few episodes we spend a decent amount of time on a side plot involving a young man hired to watch a giant glass box looking out a window in New York. Most of this runs super slowly and with many static shots of set up, but even then, Lynch manages to find unique and different ways to shoot these scenes. For example shots of the Manhattan skyline is the most generic shot in all of cinema and yet Lynch finds a way to shoot them in a way that makes the city feel creepier and more claustrophobic. Twin Peaks shows a visionary director at his most confident. Each scene no matter how slowly play out or odd it is feels like the work of a master, unique and beautiful. It makes for a show that looks like nothing else on television even as it meanders on side stories.

But even when it’s meandering and strange Twin Peaks seems to have a very clear through line. The show features some very strange asides (Doc and the shovels are the first to come to mind) but never feels like it loose its focus. Through four episodes I can feel the show building its world and its premise slowly but confidently. So far Lynch and Frost are staying farther away from the town of Twin Peaks itself giving us only brief glances of the characters of old. Instead the majority of the moving plot seems to focus around the strangeness of the two Coopers, and a new murder in a town in South Dakoda. Each of these new plots feel fresher than I imagine anything within the actual town of Twin Peaks could be at this point. This is no longer a show about a small town and its problems this is something much bigger and much stranger, and despite the slow pace and strange asides these four episodes have made me confident that Lynch and Frost have command over the complex story they are weaving.

Through four episodes Twin Peaks is as special as ever. By subverting expectations and moving away from any sort of structure from the original while maintaining a lot of its mythology, Lynch and Frost have created something wholly unique yet again. These four episodes were an absolute blast to watch and if it can continue at this level it has a potential to be something truly special.

Some other Musings:

• I am not going to lie when Andy and Lucy’s son was reviled to be Michael Cera as a biker named Wally Brando I died with laughter. There are few genuinely great surprises but Cera doing a glorious impression of biker Marlen Brando was most wonderful. It’s a scene that is absurd and probably won’t mean much in the grand scheme of things but for a good four and a half minutes I could not stop laughing and that is good enough for me.

• The same applies with all the Cooper getting back into the world scenes in episode 4. Does it ultimately drag the plot out a little bit? Yes. At the same time though I laughed harder than I care to admit at Cooper’s first reaction to coffee and the absurdity of no one calling for help as this man wanders around aimlessly.

• Old characters seem to pop up sporadically with the focus primarily being placed on the Twin Peaks Sheriffs department. More than anything I’m curious to see how interested Lynch himself is at re-integrating the characters into this new world besides a few cameos here and there. It seems like we are heading for a big plotline with Hawk and Sheriff Truman but besides that I have a hard time figuring out how the old characters will merge their ways back in.

• This show is also the first show in a long time that I just want to be fully available for binging. I am usually a proponent for having time between episodes and giving them space to breath but given how many episodes we have to go and how slow this show is moving so far a larger chunk of episodes per week would be appreciated.

That’s all for now. I don’t know how likely it is for me to talk about this show on a weekly basis considering how many episodes are going to air and the slow paced nature of the show so far. I am very excited by this show thorough four though so maybe we’ll check in midway through the season.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?

The Leftovers “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World”: Life in the Sex Boat

Matt Jamison sees "God" on The Leftovers

Photo Credit: HBO 

Brief thoughts on “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World” brought to you in part by Frasier, life’s sexiest lion…

“That’s the guy I was telling you about.”

-Matt

Yeah you heard him right, that guy… The one who was mauled by a lion.

Almost unsurprisingly at this point though “man who thinks he’s god gets disproven after being mauled by a lion” is one of the least strange things to occur in “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World.” This season’s Matt POV episode feels like familiar territory thematically (although it is fantastic and necessary familiar territory) but boy does it go to some strange new places. First there was a naked man who launched a nuclear missile into the sea, then there was the fact that Matt and crew desperate to get to Melbourne take a ferry which turns out to be a giant orgy, and then it turns out that orgy occurs entirely due to a lion who named Frasier who had lots and lots of sex.

Completely unsurprisingly at this point though is the fact that The Leftovers not only makes all of this strangeness work, it knocks it out of the park. We’ve seen a similar sort of Matt episode before but nothing quite this strange and devastating. “It’s a Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World” is the episode in which Matt discovers, like many of the characters on this show seem to, that his faith is misplaced. Throughout the run of the show Matt has been a man who has been righteous to a fault. He’s the guy who approaches you demanding you to join his cause to the point that you want to punch him straight in the face. He’s so dedicated to the cause, and so narcissistically certain that he can not only make a difference, but be the driving force for the faith, that it seems as though he is basically unbreakable. Until he meets God himself of course.

Now of course in true Leftovers fashion Matt does not meet God himself, just yet another fraud, but Matt is so wrapped up in his cause that he falls into believing that its real. Matt’s own narcissism has made him essentially unbreakable in a way, but his fatal illness returning (in this case Leukemia) has brought him to the point where he just vulnerable enough to have his faith broken. Matt obsesses with the crusade of stopping former decathlon bronze medalist turned supposed god David Burton, who ended up pushing a man overboard for whatever reason, before everything finally breaks down. Matt does the thing that he’s been fighting since the first season, he believes a false profit. In yet another magical Leftovers extended monologue, Matt finally allows himself to let go of his faith and find the true pain he is in. Matt has sacrificed everything for his belief, his family, his wife, his health, and has gained nothing viable in return. Burton was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Matt’s faith has been tested a lot in the past, he’s been punched, spat at, you name it, but the combination of all the pain he’s been through, and the proof in the illness that God may not be watching over him was finally enough. Turns out the final straw was only the snap of a false prophets’ fingers.

Of course this is a Matt episode and so this all plays out as a giant elaborate sick joke against him. He winds up on a boat with a giant orgy in order to get to Melbourne quicker. He finds his God only to have his faith shaken. Then the man who fundamentally shakes his faith ultimately gets mauled by a lion. Through the wackiness though we see a Matt who seems at peace with himself, his probable imminent death, and the fact that what he has been believing in the whole time has been worth nothing. It’s hard to tell whether we can call this version of Matt enlightened, but at the very least he does not seem to be in a big hurry to fulfill a prophecy like he was at the very beginning of the episode. At the very least Matt Jamison has finally become able to laugh at the sick joke that his life has become.

This week’s other musings are going to jump through the last three weeks of the Leftovers due to my mini hiatus. Here goes nothing…

Some other Musings:

• On the list of plot contrivances naked French man using his hands and feet at to turn two keys at the same time and launch a nuclear missile into the Pacific may be among the greatest. It not only gets us one of the strangest and most interesting moments in a series full of them but it manages to get all our characters together in wild fashion for the last few episodes.

• On the note of great Leftovers monologues, the last two weeks in Australia have been full of them. Whether it was Kevin Sr. telling his entire drugged up Australia story to Christopher Sunday, Grace telling Kevin Sr. of her dead children, or the big fight between Nora and Kevin Jr. in the hotel room (more on that in a minute) the show has been showing its full range of dramatic monologue storytelling over the last few weeks. “Crazy Whitefella Thinking” especially was an episode that made the absolute most out of close up monologue filmmaking even amongst the beautiful backdrop of the Australian outback. Week to week the show continues to find incredible emotional power through its broken characters, no matter how strange and wacky the show gets.

• How about that hotel fight at the end of “G’Day Melbourne”? It was due time for the Nora and Kevin’s ticking time bomb of a relationship to finally explode, but boy did it take a dramatic and tragic turn. The explosion at the end of the episode was very difficult to watch just because how nasty the fight was. Because neither Kevin nor Nora had been able to talk about anything important over the course of the series, their fight turned completely nasty instead of a healthy fight between an otherwise loving couple. The tragic blow up coupled with a couple of amazing shots near the end of the episode (in particular the close up of Nora drenched by the hotel sprinkler comes to mind) made for another incredibly powerful moment in a season that has been full of them.

• On the note of the hotel scene The Leftovers continued its run of incredible music cues with three separate uses of different versions of Take on Me to highlight the big moments of “G’Day Melbourne.” It’s an amazing example of the show not only using a song but the context and history behind the song (the Take on Me music video, one of the more famous music videos of the era, involves a leading man jump out of a fantasy into reality in order to be with a woman, much like Kevin has, until then, jumped through differing layers of insanity just to get back to Nora) to enrich the theme of the episode. It’s not uncommon for song to be used to enforce meaning but no show seems to use song in a way that digs this deep.

• Speaking of deep digging Frasier the Sensuous Lion is a real movie! Yes a real movie!

That’s it for this week. Hopefully things end up back to Sundays for the last two weeks but because of a busy schedule no promises can be made.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think.