We Just Finished Our Favorite Show
A sad day.
When a TV show is great, it leaves you thinking about the characters and the storyline (and, for us, even the set design at times ) long after it ends. It has the power to shape how you see the world, to open your mind to possibilities you never before considered, and to keep you entertained enough to keep coming back for more. That was certainly the case for us with HBO’s The Leftovers.
Have you seen it? It premiered in 2014 and ended in 2017 after three seasons (get season 1 here, season 2 here, or the complete series here). If you’ve seen HBO’s Watchmen, it’s from the same creators, and you get a similar vibe with both shows. It was never a huge ratings hit, but it has consistently been considered one of the best television series of all time. It’s a drama through and through, but it deals with supernatural elements in such a real way that you almost start to believe these things could happen in real life. It’s a high concept show, one that you have to watch every episode very carefully to make sure you don’t miss anything, because things change so quickly, almost by each episode. It felt like a completely different show by the end of the third season than when it began (which doesn’t sound like it would work, but it does in this show, which is a true testament to the brilliant writers).
The show is about Kevin Garvey, played by a dreamy Justin Theroux, and his family/friends as they deal with an apocalyptic event that occurred a few years back while they try to figure out why it happened, and as they try to rebuild their lives. We don’t want to give anything away (because it’s that good), but the writing, acting, dramatic sequences, and pacing make you want to drop everything that’s going on in your life and binge the entire series in 3 days. We did our best to take our time with it and spread it out over a few weeks, and even that was hard.
It’s hard to believe a show critics loved as much as this one to go so (relatively) unnoticed for its entire run. Why weren’t more people telling us to watch this when it was on TV? To be honest, we kind of like that we had the ability to watch as many episodes as we wanted, when we wanted, instead of waiting every week to see what happens next- also a testament to a great TV show.
Anyway, the moral of the story is you should go to your nearest HBO streaming service and start watching The Leftovers immediately and get back to us AS SOON as you’re finished. We’ll be right here. Hope you enjoy!