‘The Leftovers’ season 2, episode 3 reaction: Amy Brenneman on Laurie’s immediate future

So far through three episodes, “The Leftovers” season 2 has felt very much like a scattered show. The first episode revolved around the Murphy family, while the second installment officially showed us how the Garvey family made it to the “miraculous” town of Jarden, Texas. Then, for episode 3 we abandoned Miracle altogether for the story of Laurie and Tom, still nursing their wounds of last season and figuring out what life after the Guilty Remnant and without a cult looks like. It’s complicated.

As excellent as their story was (head over here to read our full review), one thing that you should be very much aware of at the moment is that this story is going to be a slow burn. As a matter of fact, Amy Brenneman makes it clear to The Hollywood Reporter that it may be a little while before you see Laurie on the show again:

“You don’t see [a reunion] in the near future, and you don’t really see me, in fact. The storytelling of this season is that we’re deeply involved with certain characters and then we leave them, so I think after this episode you don’t see me for a little while. Chris Eccleston [Matt Jamison] has a big episode coming up, and I think Carrie is in there, too. However, my family continues to be this vortex that pulls me toward them.”

This manner of storytelling is incredibly risky, and largely because of the fact that if you run into any big storytelling misses, you have to wait for a little while to move beyond them. Luckily, this show hasn’t run into any of these problems so far; moving away from the source material this time has given Damon Lindelof more freedom, and having HBO as a platform is perfect as a way to tell deeper stories.

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