(no subject)
Were the earlier seasons of The Leftovers using bible stories as templates? The last one uses a lot.
Obviously the dad episode (and the season generally) is based on Noah before the flood, the Matt episode is based on Daniel in the Lion's Den, and the Laurie one on the Last Supper and Judas' suicide, but the finale is the Prodigal Son story but with goats and birds standing in for pigs (the doves get the show closure for the ark story as well - and the rainbow formed by all the different colored necklaces Nora takes off the goat is surely intentional). This season's flatline episode is implicitly the Passion: the episode starts with Nora, whose scapegoat he'll be in the next episode, teasing Kevin about putting a beard on his stuffed corpse after he dies - explaining why he's grown a beard after his two brief deaths last season. Can't remember if the other three episodes (the first one, Nora meeting the Perfect Strangers guy, Nora and Kevin in Australia) did the same thing, but I'm now suspecting they must have, since why stop at five?
Given its placement, the finale should be the Resurrection episode. It obviously is for Nora, but it sort of is for Kevin, too, since even though he came back to life (twice? thrice?) in the previous one it hadn't yet been made clear that he's a changed man - Laurie calls his pretense to have only met Nora once "un-Kevinlike" when she's told of it. Possibly he hadn't yet changed, even if he at least realized he wanted to. Nora's disappearance lets him understand what her family's Departure had been like for her, hence forgive what it led her to do. His problem has been anger at others' grief, an anger he's made worse by trying to suppress it. So his angry speech when he comes back at the end is actually healthy, since he almost immediately says what he thinks rather than going the martyr route. His offering to pretend to erase their past is about being willing to truly let things go - bizarre behavior, lashings-out, neglect - the way he hadn't with Laurie, or with Nora at the hotel. Going from pretending to let things go to actually doing it is his change, then - denial/repression of wrongs to forgiveness of them. Or maybe a more conscious sort of denial, one where it's clear to all parties what the truth was? Is this distinct from Nora's own final shift, though? Because hers is about lies.
At the start of the finale Nora claims to never lie. The nun whose lie about the motorcycle guy she exposes (outing the false promises of spiritual flimflammers had been her job, recall) catches Nora in one, though - her saying that she didn't know Kevin. Sounds vaguely Gospely itself, that. But anyway, the nun makes a distinction between a lie that's "selling" something and one that's "a nicer story." That's a direct grab from Life of Pi, but also a bit distinct, since the niceness is aimed at other people, not at oneself. As in Pi, the sort of religion, or anyway magical thinking, being approved of here is one where everyone involved knows it isn't strictly true, but here it's not used to talk *yourself* into anything, but to make someone else feel better. Also like in Pi, the lie is such that the contours of the truth can be made out through it. Saying the birds will spread messages of love all over the world is a non-trapping exaggeration: everyone knows the birds stay local and will be reused. But their messages of love really do get read and appreciated - by Nora! And they help put her in the frame of mind where she lets Kevin in when he comes back.
The climax is obviously Nora's lie to Kevin (yes, what she relates is strictly possible within the show's world given the impossibility of the Departure itself, which is important, but it's "a nicer story" for her to have learned from him how to lie for others). A lie no one is supposed to believe is not just A story but story proper, is fiction. The episode's called "The Book of Nora," but Kevin has also written a romance novel in his death-hallucination, which invades the narrative of his father's prophecy, which in turn took off from Matt's book ... which was based on Kevin's previous dream quest etc. (Did Laurie have anything booklike in her own episode? I guess she hijacked a narrative already in progress?) What does it mean to believe someone else's fiction? To accept that it really is that person's version of the world, and that its departures from strictly accurate depiction of that world are necessary for it to have been composed at all?
So religion - and delusion - permit those people who would otherwise feel unable to to tell their stories? But if they try to escape into those worlds they've created by taking their own stories literally for more than a little while, or in ways that take them away from their loved ones, then what? Laurie's arc this season seems to be from concocting healthier fictions for others (the closure-granting seances) to letting people work through their unrealistic hopes/notions on their own, so long as they're not being pressured to by someone else. She holds off from actually telling the father that there will be no flood, telling John that his daughter is gone forever, telling Kevin that he's not really visiting the afterlife. They all assume she thinks all that, though, don't they? They seem to want her to say so, to try to talk them out of it. Not directly challenging them means that you're neither taking away their agency nor letting them drown out their unease at the cracks in their belief system with a yelling match with a nonbeliever. If you don't make them loudly claim that what they believe is true maybe it'll stay sufficiently fiction-like for reality to shape their story, is that the idea?
More to say, but it's late.
Obviously the dad episode (and the season generally) is based on Noah before the flood, the Matt episode is based on Daniel in the Lion's Den, and the Laurie one on the Last Supper and Judas' suicide, but the finale is the Prodigal Son story but with goats and birds standing in for pigs (the doves get the show closure for the ark story as well - and the rainbow formed by all the different colored necklaces Nora takes off the goat is surely intentional). This season's flatline episode is implicitly the Passion: the episode starts with Nora, whose scapegoat he'll be in the next episode, teasing Kevin about putting a beard on his stuffed corpse after he dies - explaining why he's grown a beard after his two brief deaths last season. Can't remember if the other three episodes (the first one, Nora meeting the Perfect Strangers guy, Nora and Kevin in Australia) did the same thing, but I'm now suspecting they must have, since why stop at five?
Given its placement, the finale should be the Resurrection episode. It obviously is for Nora, but it sort of is for Kevin, too, since even though he came back to life (twice? thrice?) in the previous one it hadn't yet been made clear that he's a changed man - Laurie calls his pretense to have only met Nora once "un-Kevinlike" when she's told of it. Possibly he hadn't yet changed, even if he at least realized he wanted to. Nora's disappearance lets him understand what her family's Departure had been like for her, hence forgive what it led her to do. His problem has been anger at others' grief, an anger he's made worse by trying to suppress it. So his angry speech when he comes back at the end is actually healthy, since he almost immediately says what he thinks rather than going the martyr route. His offering to pretend to erase their past is about being willing to truly let things go - bizarre behavior, lashings-out, neglect - the way he hadn't with Laurie, or with Nora at the hotel. Going from pretending to let things go to actually doing it is his change, then - denial/repression of wrongs to forgiveness of them. Or maybe a more conscious sort of denial, one where it's clear to all parties what the truth was? Is this distinct from Nora's own final shift, though? Because hers is about lies.
At the start of the finale Nora claims to never lie. The nun whose lie about the motorcycle guy she exposes (outing the false promises of spiritual flimflammers had been her job, recall) catches Nora in one, though - her saying that she didn't know Kevin. Sounds vaguely Gospely itself, that. But anyway, the nun makes a distinction between a lie that's "selling" something and one that's "a nicer story." That's a direct grab from Life of Pi, but also a bit distinct, since the niceness is aimed at other people, not at oneself. As in Pi, the sort of religion, or anyway magical thinking, being approved of here is one where everyone involved knows it isn't strictly true, but here it's not used to talk *yourself* into anything, but to make someone else feel better. Also like in Pi, the lie is such that the contours of the truth can be made out through it. Saying the birds will spread messages of love all over the world is a non-trapping exaggeration: everyone knows the birds stay local and will be reused. But their messages of love really do get read and appreciated - by Nora! And they help put her in the frame of mind where she lets Kevin in when he comes back.
The climax is obviously Nora's lie to Kevin (yes, what she relates is strictly possible within the show's world given the impossibility of the Departure itself, which is important, but it's "a nicer story" for her to have learned from him how to lie for others). A lie no one is supposed to believe is not just A story but story proper, is fiction. The episode's called "The Book of Nora," but Kevin has also written a romance novel in his death-hallucination, which invades the narrative of his father's prophecy, which in turn took off from Matt's book ... which was based on Kevin's previous dream quest etc. (Did Laurie have anything booklike in her own episode? I guess she hijacked a narrative already in progress?) What does it mean to believe someone else's fiction? To accept that it really is that person's version of the world, and that its departures from strictly accurate depiction of that world are necessary for it to have been composed at all?
So religion - and delusion - permit those people who would otherwise feel unable to to tell their stories? But if they try to escape into those worlds they've created by taking their own stories literally for more than a little while, or in ways that take them away from their loved ones, then what? Laurie's arc this season seems to be from concocting healthier fictions for others (the closure-granting seances) to letting people work through their unrealistic hopes/notions on their own, so long as they're not being pressured to by someone else. She holds off from actually telling the father that there will be no flood, telling John that his daughter is gone forever, telling Kevin that he's not really visiting the afterlife. They all assume she thinks all that, though, don't they? They seem to want her to say so, to try to talk them out of it. Not directly challenging them means that you're neither taking away their agency nor letting them drown out their unease at the cracks in their belief system with a yelling match with a nonbeliever. If you don't make them loudly claim that what they believe is true maybe it'll stay sufficiently fiction-like for reality to shape their story, is that the idea?
More to say, but it's late.