The Leftovers season 3 episode 2 review: The rails were never there

The first reaction that we have to The Leftovers season 3 episode 2 is effectively rather simple: This show is flat out insane. We’re not entirely sure what show executive producer Damon Lindelof does to get himself in a place think about these sort of ideas, but here we are.

Specifically, what we saw tonight was a lengthy hotel scene (this show loves hotels) in which Mark Linn-Baker from Perfect Strangers tries to sell Nora Durst on the idea that there are Swiss scientists that have uncovered a way to effectively incinerate people to a place where they can be with their loved ones following the Departure. All you have to do to make it happen is spend a ridiculously large amount of money and travel to some inconvenient location. After all of that, it’s possible that someone will do something for you.

With that, Nora was willing to spend $20,000 to head to Melbourne, Australia, where Kevin is joining her given that it makes more sense to do this than it does to sit around and try to suffocate himself on a regular basis. Down there, maybe she’ll find answers — the idea of what she wants to find is as interesting as anything given that she’s technically an investigator and she is doing just that: Investigating. Is there a part of her that secretly wants this to pan out? We have to think so. Maybe she has love for Kevin, but this is not the life she wanted or envisioned, where she is antagonizing people outside Jarden over their grief and false beliefs while screaming at people when her ticket doesn’t work.

Nora Durst has a dark, terrible life, and there is no better person than Carrie Coon to bring out some of that pain and suffering. She remains one of the best performers on all TV, and the sequence of events for her tonight were proof of that, in between the subtlety that she showed in checking up on Lily (there’s that loose end tied up for you) to trying to cope with everything to Erika. Also, she was the Wu-Tang Clan logo tattooed on her to cover up her children’s names. It’s weird, it’s out there, but such is this show. You can’t go off the rails when the rails were never quite there in the first place.

Was this episode too weird?

There are times you can argue so just because we traveled to so many different locations with Nora and then had the lengthy ending in Australia, where we had a book of apparent Kevin devotees who thought they had met the Savior, a local police officer who drowned when they tried to see if he would come back to life. This was all fascinating stuff, but we maybe wish that we stuck with Nora more. After all, it seems as though we are heading to Australia and meeting Kevin Sr. there in just seven days’ time.

Still, we give so much credit to the Lindelof and the writers for paying off everything from Perfect Strangers to Lily in a single episode, and continuing to make you question what is possible and what isn’t in this world. Maybe this new science sends people over to Kevin’s hotel, or it just kills them. either way, we’re sure that this fate is preferable to many other options. For now, we’re still as captivated as ever with this show, even if we do think that the premiere was a stronger episode as a whole. Grade: B+.

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Meanwhile, be sure to head over here to get some additional news right now when it comes to the series. (Photo: HBO.)