The Leftovers

Watching the new HBO series The Leftovers—adapted from Tom Perrotta’s 2011 novel of the same name—is a trip. Directed by Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights), the premise behind the 10-episode series is that there has been a Rapture-like event, where 2 percent of the world’s population up and vanishes one day, leaving the vast majority of humans (and the viewers) with a ton of unanswered questions: What happened? Are we damned? What do we do now? Has God deserted us? What’s the point? In addition to the existential themes, there are variety of weird characters adding to the confounding mystery—a wild-eyed guru hugging Asian chicks on a compound; a cult(?) of all-white-clad, no-talking, chain smokers called the the Guilty Remnant. There is a brief scene of the fateful day at the beginning of the season premiere, but the drama here takes place three years later, as the “leftovers” are figuring out how to move forward. At the center of it all is a family of four who are each dealing with the shift in reality in dramatically different ways. And though things seem to be heading somewhere bad for all involved, we have no idea where it will all end up.