I loved the first season of THE LEFTOVERS, the HBO series about life three years after 2% of the world’s population disappears in a mysterious Rapture-like event. In my view an example of where the adaptation is better than the book, it perfectly captures loss and the madness humans might experience when confronted with a universal miracle that cannot be explained.

I waited for Season 2 to come to Google Play, but it never did. I ended up scanning the Season 2 summaries online and instead watched Season 3 when it came out. I felt Season 3 was a great wrap to the series but relied too heavily on LOST-like elements. The show was supposed to reveal how people try to find meaning in the inexplicable (and ultimately meaningless), but the inexplicable stuff kept coming and suggested a larger plan or rationale that in turn is never revealed. In that, I thought the show was trying to have it both ways, which messed with my enjoyment.

Somebody said I really, really needed to watch Season 2, and I ended up getting the DVDs from Amazon. HOLY CRAP.

It was amazing.

In Season 2, Kevin Garvey and Nora Durst decide on a change of scenery by moving to Miracle, a national park in Texas, where the town of Jarden boasts it is the only town where nobody disappeared during the Sudden Departure. Kevin wants to go because he wants to escape his life. Nora wants to go because she’s afraid another Sudden Departure event might occur, and she’s looking for a place where she can feel safe. They luck out and buy a house in the town, access to which is kept carefully controlled. Tourists, pilgrims, and crazies flock to Jarden every year, and one man in town, a fireman named John, takes vigilante action to ensure no cults or craziness take root in the place where he lives. When John’s daughter and her two friends disappear, we’re left to wonder whether they “departed” and whether Kevin had something to do with it.

The result is flawless drama. I immediately found John and his family intriguing characters, and their interaction with the Garveys moves the story forward. The season revived the same big themes of season 1 while enriching them. John in particular is fascinating, alternately somebody you want to have a beer with and then somebody you’d want to move to another town to get away from–the way he smiles and stares right through you, and his willingness to do anything to prevent the world’s madness from infecting his home, though it already has. The finale is amazingly gripping, as powerful as the finale from the first season.

So yeah, I loved it. Great characters, perfect drama, powerful themes of an inexplicable event forcing humanity into a manic search for meaning, the world slowly losing its mind over it. I’ll have to rewatch Season 3 now and see if I engage with it differently. Anyway, great show, unlike anything else I’ve seen on TV. Highly recommended.

I watched season 1 of ATTACK ON TITAN on Netflix and loved it. Based on a popular manga, the anime series tells about a future in which titans–giant mindless creatures that feed on humans–have overrun the world. The last humans live in a city girded by a series of walls. When the outer wall is breached, resulting in slaughter, the inner city becomes overcrowded, terror sweeps the populace, and a new military force is created to fight the titan threat. The show hits a nerve the way BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and THE WALKING DEAD did–humanity pushed to extinction, a heroic few who against all odds fight back to survive and achieve victory of the monsters they fear.

New recruits include Eren, who is filled with rage as the injustice of the titans, who killed his mother and robbed him of his world; Mikasa, a born warrior who loves Eren, who rescued her from bandits when they were children; and Armin, their brainy friend. Together, they join the Scouts, an elite fighting arm of the military that ventures outside wall. The best of the best, they nonetheless die like flies. By the end of season 1, we discover that Eren is himself a titan, able to transform when injured, and that other humans are also titans. While Eren wants to put his power to use for humanity, the other titan-people have other ideas. They want to destroy what’s left of the human race.

The titans are fantastic–creepy, powerful, scary. The characters are genuinely terrified of them. The combat scenes are incredible and left me in a breathless sweat; the tension is incredible. Otherwise, you get what you get from anime–long-winded speeches about human nature, honor, duty; massive flashbacks; some characters self-controlled and cool to the point of appearing bored by death; and others like Eren whose emotions explode at every opportunity. Everything and everybody is exaggerated in some way, but that’s what makes anime so great.

In Season 2, which I had to get on Google Play, things change. The focus shifts from Eren, Mikasa, and Armin to other characters. We’re given baffling new mysteries, while other questions get close to being solved. The action again is terrific. In these episodes, we learn the identities of the giant and the armored titan from the first episode of season 1, that they have a plan, and that they want Eren to join their side or die. The Scouts, of course, will do anything to get him back, resulting in a breathtaking battle. Other people-titans shift allegiances, torn between duty to their people-titan tribe and the friends they made inside the wall. There is a hint that the titans may all have been created from human beings, which ended the world.

Other things remained unexplained, such as the key Eren’s father gave him and who the bigfoot titan is, and the people-titans’ plan remains unrevealed at the end. Frustratingly, season 2 is only 12 episodes, as the show is tracking to the manga, and they’re waiting for new episodes to come out so they can continue the show.

So major bummer season 2 is only half as long as season 1, but wow, what a ride while it lasted. Such a crazy, fun series.