Holy Wayne is the real deal. If you reverse-engineer the events of tonights episode of The Leftovers Guest thats likely the point it was out to prove. Hes not just the slimy Brit who accepts off-the-books payments from Congressmen and flees from gun-toting federal troops in between dalliances with his harem of young Asian-American women. Now hes the guy who, it seems, genuinely is capable of supernaturally removing emotional pain an ability he demonstrates on a character weve gotten to know, a character whos lost more than anyone weve met, a character whose pain weve seen play out over the course of the season. Wayne may be the purpose of the episode, but Nora Durst is the focus. Played with alternately icy reserve and fluid fire by Carrie Coon, shes become the most successful embodiment of the series themes.
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In this episode alone, we see a number of Noras coping mechanisms at work. Theyre not pretty, to put it mildly: Week after week, she buys the exact same groceries she bought the week her family disappeared, throwing out unopened boxes of sugary cereals to replace them with new ones but leaving a used-up roll of paper towels intact. Since her brother, the good Reverend Matt Jamison, told her about her departed husbands affair with their kids nursery school teacher, shes begun stalking her as well. She hires the occasional prostitute to shoot her in her bulletproof-vest-clad chest at point-blank range. (Its the episodes corniest scene by a country mile, but as direct demonstrations of emotional distress go, its certainly effective.) Recognizing her easy chemistry with Chief Kevin Garvey, she propositions him for a spur-of-the-moment getaway to Miami, blurting out oh, fuck your daughter when he declines due to family commitments. None of it gets her anywhere.
We also see her reject a number of possible paths to closure when she heads to Manhattan for a conference on Departure-related industries. This begins when a bro-tastic bereavement specialist the one who works for the company that makes Loved Ones simulacra of departed family members for burials or cremations comes on to her. She enjoys his hospitality suite and his attentions, admitting hes not the soulless creep he might seems, and still chooses to make out with his real-doll doppelganger rather than the genuine douchebag article. Watching Nora writhe atop the mannequin is the series sexiest moment to date, and no wonder heres a person deriving an erotic charge from the very concept of closure, making a public show of pleasure out of something intended to be a private totem of grief.
Next, she blows up the spot of the activist/conspiracy theorist who impersonates her at the convention, and appears to blow off her warnings about the Department of Sudden Departures. Thats harder for the audience to do, of course; when she warns that the DSDs questionnaires are sent to incinerators outside of Tallahassee, Florida, we know that the governments burning much worse things than that. But shes even harder on Patrick Johansen, the conferences star attraction and author of What Comes Next, a self-help book for legacies of the Departed. Calling him a fraud whos faking his grief, she drunkenly screams at him Whats next? Whats fucking next? Nothing is next! Nothing!
Its this nihilism that attracts Holy Waynes acolyte to Nora. He knows shes right about Johansen, because the writer didnt work through his grief at all he had it magically sucked out of him. And when Wayne meets Nora, the healer recognizes that shes not rejecting happiness out of hopelessness, but because she does have hope and she wants to get rid of it. If [your pain] starts to slip away, you seek it out again, dont you? he asks her, knowing the answer is yes. Hope. Its your weakness. You want it gone because you dont deserve it. Theres a certain strain of depression that internalizes and personifies misfortune, that sees it as the natural state of things, that sees happiness as fraudulent in the face of the shortcomings the depressed person knows better than anyone. This is as accurate an encapsulation of that kind of depression as a TV show is likely to deliver.
One hug later and were back in Mapleton. The nursery-school mistress goes un-stalked. Nora buys groceries for herself, not her missing kids. Shes not answering the phone when her brother Matt calls to apologize, but shes not deleting the answering-machine messages either. She even replaces those paper towels. And when Chief Garvey comes to ask her out on a date dinner in Mapleton, not fleeing to Miami she accepts with good cheer rather than impulsiveness. You should know, though, he adds before leaving, Im a fuckin mess. Thanks for the heads up! she replies cheerily, recognizing that shared damage is something they can build upon now that shes not actively stirring up the rubble.
Does it all really take, though? Thats less clear than the new paper towels and the continued chemistry with Kevin make it seem. The episode leaves us with Nora and a victim of the Departure, the first in Noras entire career as a DSD agent to answer question #121 (In your opinion, do you believe the Departed is in a better place?) with a no. Does this woman sense that Nora can handle this harsh truth, while past interviewees felt she was too fragile? She said she never told them about her own story, but people pick up on things.
Or is there nothing to all this but a coincidencethe same kind of 1-in-128,000 odds that led to Nora losing her entire family while so many people lost no one at all? Thats the question no one not Nora, not Wayne, not The Leftovers itself is able to answer.
Previously: Stoned, Immaculate