When it first came out several years ago, THE LEFTOVERS blew my mind. I just finished the third season and had mixed feelings about it. While I found it affecting in parts and powerful in its conclusion, it relies too heavily on weird plot twists and ultimately unexplained dead-end plot lines to keep itself going.

Created by Damon Lindelof (who also created ABC’s LOST) and Tom Perrotta (on whose novel the series is based), THE LEFTOVERS tells the story of those left behind after 2% of the world’s population mysteriously vanishes into thin air. Set three years after this Rapture-like event, the world is still reeling. As science and religion don’t have definitive answers, cults have sprung up. Many can’t let go of those they lost. Many others, faced with an impossible event that cannot be explained, lose their sense of purpose. They don’t know whether to feel lucky they weren’t taken or rejected because they weren’t. In short, the world has gone into a slow burn mode of haywire. They’re trying to move on but don’t know where to go. They only know they want to stop feeling bad.

The result is a definitive portrait of loss and the search for meaning.

THE LEFTOVERS centers on a family–a police chief who lives with his daughter, his teenage daughter, his wife who now lives with a cult created in response to the event, and his son who works for another cult out in the desert. These and other characters populate a world rife with anger, violence, despair and religious hysteria. Two other characters become more important as the series develops. Nora Durst, who lost her entire family the morning of the event, and her brother Matt, a preacher who rejects the idea the Sudden Departure was the Rapture and who continually butts heads with the Guilty Remnant, a cult whose membership in the area keeps growing.

Unfortunately, I missed the second season, as I don’t have HBO and for some frustrating reason, Google Play didn’t carry it. I read Wikipedia to catch up to Season 3. In Season 3, all the main characters have moved to Miracle, a town in Texas where nobody disappeared. As a result, it’s a magnet for cults and weirdos believing in various theories about the Sudden Departure, particularly as the seventh anniversary of the Sudden Departure looms. In Season 2, Kevin found out that when he dies, he goes to another (strange) world and then returns from the dead; in Season 3, he struggles with this and what it means. His dad is in Australia believing if he enacts a ritual, it will prevent an apocalyptic flood. Nora hears about a machine that sends you wherever the departed went and goes to Australia to investigate it, though we suspect she may want to go through to be with her children at last. And Matt is writing a new Testament about Kevin’s miraculous return from the dead. All of these characters end up in Australia for conclusion to the series.

Season 3 shines in many respects. Where the episodes focus on genuine issues of loss and the characters’ relationships, it’s as deeply affecting as Season 1. The last episode is perfect in just about every way, bringing the main character arcs to a satisfying close while explaining the Sudden Departure and what it meant. However, the odd LOST-like elements kept forcing me to emotionally disengage. Weird things happen for no reason, Kevin’s trips to another world during death appear to serve no purpose other than to give him personal peace, and almost everybody is wrong about the personal meaning they have found. I think that in itself would be wonderful–everybody finds meaning in a bizarre but meaningless world-changing event, but they’re all wrong–but the show gave enough credence and reality to the weird events to suggest a higher purpose, guiding entity, even a plan. But no, it’s all meaningless. As a viewer, you could almost see how hard the show’s creators were working to keep it all going, right down to the overbearing music deviating from the first season’s beautiful score by Max Richter. A quote attributed to Chekov is if there’s a gun over the mantle in Act I, somebody has to fire it by Act III. Season 3 of THE LEFTOVERS takes you into a gun store and not a single gun is fired.

So yeah, mixed feelings on Season 3. Loved it going in, loved the parts that were true to the emotional punch of Season 1, but overall it could have done without the dead-end spiritual story lines.

I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE (2017, Neflix original) tells the story of Ruth (Melanie Lynskey), who is having an existential crisis. She’s beginning to see life as meaningless in the face of death while constantly being irritated by people being, well, people. The guy who lets his dog crap on your lawn, the guy who knocks something off the shelf at the store and leaves it on the floor, the vanity truck in front of you with extra smokestacks blowing exhaust into the air. “Everyone is an asshole,” she concludes. When one of these assholes breaks into her house and steals some of her stuff, and the police officer assigned to her case doesn’t seem to care, she takes a stand, joined by neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood), a lonely man obsessed with martial arts and his own personal honor code. Together, they pursue the criminals but find these criminals aren’t just assholes, they’re ruthless and all too happy to kill to get what they want.

The result is a charming, humorous and entertaining movie, a lighter female version of FALLING DOWN. It doesn’t deliver the cathartic punches you’d hope to see after watching the trailer, but it rolls along nicely, and I found myself rooting for Ruth but mostly for Tony, who is simply trying to find himself (and maybe earn Ruth’s love) by doing the right thing. Their duo and the criminals present two sides of the human condition confronting mortality–companionship, love, and fighting for what’s right, versus nihilism. To avoid the latter, one must take a stand. The rest of humanity is in the middle, living out their lives and occasionally being an asshole, sometimes intentionally, often without thinking.

I’m probably reading to deeply into it, but that’s what I got out of it. Mostly, I just thought it was fun. A fun story about two lonely people tired of getting pushed around by life who decided to make a stand that is both ridiculous and touching.

Just finished the Hulu series A HANDMAID’S TALE, and wow, what a harrowing portrayal of Margaret Atwood’s classic dystopian novel.

If you’re not familiar with the story, it focuses on Offred, a handmaid in the totalitarian Republic of Gilead. Gilead was constituted as a fundamentalist theocracy to replace the United States after a period of national decline that involved pollution and resulting plummeting fertility. Fertile women are trained as handmaidens in this rigidly structured society, forced to copulate with the ruling elite to produce children. Women have no rights in Gilead, sex is regulated and for procreation only, and armed men enforce a very strict sense of law and order. Abortion doctors, gays (“gender traitors”), heretics (Catholics, Jews, etc.) and others are regularly sentenced to death in kangaroo courts, executed, and mounted on a wall as a stern reminder of Gilead justice. Lesser offenses can result in a hand being cut off, eye being put out, or genital mutilation. While Gilead appears to be a Christian republic, its government and language focuses mostly on God (not Jesus) and appears to be shaped along Old Testament rather than New Testament principles.

Offred has a bleak existence. While she eats well and her main household duties are shopping and monthly ceremonial copulation, she is a slave, property. Even her name has been erased, Offred meaning, “Of Fred,” the commander’s name. The commander’s wives are similarly unhappy, the irony being they wholeheartedly supported the creation of a regime that deprived them of power and rights, even the right to read. They are true believers, however, and accept their fate, their sole motivation apparently being to have children in their lives.

The acting is terrific in the show. Joseph Fiennes brings a quiet menace to the character of Commander Waterford, and Yvonne Strahovski manages to make Mrs. Waterford both sympathetic and evil. The most stunning performance is by Elisabeth Moss, who brings an incredible level of simmering terror, resentment and rage to Offred that was missing in the weak 1990 film adaptation and frankly from the book as well.

The show is remarkably faithful to the book while respectfully adding a whole other dimension. We learn the backstories and motivations of Commander and Mrs. Waterford, who are portrayed as regular people motivated by strong beliefs and capable of cruelty but are otherwise not evil stock caricatures. We get a lot more of Offred’s backstory. From there, the show developed aspects of the story to modernize and innovate on the themes. Those familiar with the book will get an excellent adaptation plus new material that flows seamlessly from the central storyline, such as purges in the government and forced genital mutilation of handmaids caught having affairs with other women. There was one aspect of the book that was missing from the show, however, which is the prevalence of Blacks (but oddly, not a single Asian-American). In the novel, Blacks are considered “Sons of Ham” and put in labor camps. In the show, we see Black handmaids in White families and Black paramilitaries (though appropriately no Black commanders). Given racism prevalent in America’s right wing, I found that one aspect unbelievable.

Overall, A HANDMAID’S TALE was brilliant, particularly the powerful and satisfying last episode, which brings viewers to the end of the novel. It’s a satisfying conclusion and doesn’t need a second season, but the show was signed for a second season that will come out in 2018. I’m curious what will happen next as the writers leave the novel behind but carry on its themes.

The novel was always considered socially important but now the show is considered even more so given America’s shift to the Right in the last election. Various states and cities continue to enact laws such as allowing employers to fire women who have had abortions, discrimination is being supported based on religious views, and the thin wall between Church and State is under new assault. A HANDMAID’S TALE is a reminder that there’s a good reason why America is best managed as a secular society, particularly for those who fear Sharia Law, as religious law does not have to be Muslim to be threatening to a free society.