Despite sounding like something you microwave at 2 a.m., HBO’s new show has a disturbing premise: on a seemingly average day, two percent of the Earth’s population vanish and no one knows why. The show follows the left behind as they struggle to adjust to this new reality.
What caused the disappearances is left unsaid. That’s probably deliberate. This is a show made by Damon Lindelof, after all. He’s a man who has never met a question he hasn’t asked then maddeningly refused to answer.
Damon Lindelof last two major creative works: Lost and Prometheus both promised the “big questions,” but let audiences down when it turned out those questions had no good answers. Lindelof might say that’s the point. He’s known for taking a “some questions are better left unanswered” approach to his storytelling. Unfortunately, that’s not always the most satisfying way of wrapping up a story. If I were an HBO executive I would demand to know that Lindelof has at least a speck of an idea for how he is going to end this show – even if it means tying himself down to a plot that he hasn’t fully developed yet. No more blank checks for a guy notoriously bad at delivering on his bloated concepts.
The Leftovers is just the latest in a string of “Apocalypse” scenarios that Hollywood is currently in the process of fetishizing. If humanity isn’t facing World War Z or rolling their eyes at whatever the latest Kirk Cameron Left Behind movie is, they are getting the singular thrill of seeing people being plucked from the Earth at random.
This show appears to be more along the lines of Children of Men rather than action thriller. In the few glimpses we get, we see a world transformed by the idea that some people have just vanished. God is never mentioned, but His presence is felt in the desperate way people behave after being “left” on Earth. In one shot, we see a woman brushing her teeth in a bathroom while staring into a mirror that has the message “We are living reminders” written on it. Later, two people plunge from the top of a rooftop. There is also an obligatory shot of a guy screaming under water which Hollywood keeps insisting is a thing even though I’m willing to bet no one has ever done it in real life. And, of course, there are the religious fanatics – given away by their telltale white, billowy clothes – who seem to have taken the disappearances to hold a higher, spiritual meaning.
The reasons for this new obsession with the End of Days are probably multifaceted, but one thing The Leftovers trailer makes obvious is that we are increasingly growing concerned with just how crowded the planet has become. Humanity hit one billion people living on Earth for the first time in 1800. It only took two hundred years for that number to skyrocket to seven billion. By 2050, it will somehow have to hold 10 billion. From this perspective, can we blame people for finding the idea that there will suddenly be a lot less people perversely appealing.