‘The Leftovers’ season 2, episode 6 review: Nora Durst, Erika Murphy, and a different sort of departure
“The Leftovers” continued a trend on Sunday night of kicking butt and taking names, and doing so in probably the most heartbreaking fashion. If this installment does not get Carrie Coon and Regina King some consideration in awards shows, we don’t know what will. Heck, the same goes for Justin Theroux for his brief scene at the end. This show continues to be magic.
The focus of this episode was primarily on Erika Murphy, as we started to understand more of where her own mind has been … including on abandonment. The notion of her wanting to leave her family behind is something that we never quite expected for her character, but in retrospect it makes sense. This is a woman who has an aggressive and at-times violent husband, the pressure of being a mother in a “picture-perfect” town, and she her hearing is almost nonexistent without the help of her aids. Her life is far from rosy, and her escape plan began right before Evie escaped.
Nora attempted to coach her in this episode on how to handle the Department’s questions, but in turn, this only allowed all of her secrets to be exposed. Now, the bricks are starting to fly between the Garvey and Murphy families. Perhaps each one of them understands the other more than they would like.
As powerful as the Erika revelations were, we don’t want to diminish two other very important moments in the episode: The sight of Matt starting to build a following in the tourist camp outside of Jarden, and then also Kevin starting to come to terms with the fact that Patti is not leaving. In admitting the ghost’s existence to Patti, he recognized that there was little that he could do, and he no longer wanted to fight the fight alone.
Unfortunately for these two, there are many more fights, many more troubles, and many more reveals likely ahead this season. Let’s just hope the quality along the way remains this exceptional. Grade: A-.
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