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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2606 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 25, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Except it wasn't at all. Where Lost struggled mightily to give answers to every little crazy incident, often to no benefit, the approach of The Leftovers was just to abandon the majority of mysteries every season and never mention them again.

To me, the abandoning of mysteries was the point, and a large part of what made the show so impressive and deeply meaningful. Most mysteries in life aren't resolved. Normally in fiction it's annoying when they don't get resolved, but the genius of the Leftovers was their ability to relate these mysteries and the accompanying grief and suffering so well to normal life that it stuck.

I think that this works for some aspects of the show but not all of them. The Guilty remnant, for example. didn't need an explanation - you can just assume that they were a weirdo cult capitalizing on a tragedy like plenty of other weirdo cults. But IIRC there were a number of other bizarre occurrences and red herrings thrown out that couldn't just be handwaved away and seemed like audience hooks that never got resolved.

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