“Holy s***!”
By Matt Fowler
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
GAAAHHHHHH
Wow.
Welp. Another “10.” Sorry, folks. I can only bend with the breeze here. What a phenomenal episode. And one I think may be the first truly polarizing chapter of this second season. I get the feeling – even though Season 2 has been way less divisive than Season 1 – that this episode, “International Assassin,” may be too much for some. Because this showed us a very specific, detailed version of an afterlife. Or a limbo. Not unlike some of the ideas toyed with during the final season of Lost. And, well, we know how many fans felt about the way that show ended.
So this was Lindelof basically revisiting that concept. And there was no way this could be written off as a psychotic break. There’s no real debate to be had here. Kevin went through this journey, through this celestial hotel setting, and it brought him back to life. And sent him crawling up out of his own grave at the end. A shallow dirt patch that Michael had buried him in. Meaning, Michael didn’t really have a plan, right? He just came back and cleaned up his grandfather’s mess. Virgil, however, did have a plan. Yes, he really killed himself, but it was so he could enter the hotel with Kevin and act as a guide. That is, until he drank the water and then became a permanent bird-killing fixture there (was that a box bird?).
An episode like this makes me feel like the show’s gearing up for the end. Not that it couldn’t come back for a Season 3, and not that I wouldn’t love to see that Season 3, but there’s no clear way of knowing what HBO wants to do with this under-watched, under appreciated series. Seeing something as cosmically unifying as this episode though make me think that, possibly, an endgame is coming.
Because Kevin freakin’ came back to life! Sure, there’s a background story on the show about a guy down in Australia claiming that he returned from the dead, but usually those kinds of crazy antics exist as a sort of blissful background noise on this show. “International Assassin” however worked to tether things a bit more solidly. The guy in the Miracle tower sending that letter to Australia (Virgil claims he came back to life too), the primitive woman in the premiere’s prelude (“Our cave collapsed,” Senator Patti Levin told Kevin at one point), and the idea that the Jarden spring is actually a conduit – an “axis mundi” – between the world of the living and dead. We may not have solved theDeparture here, but we do know where folks go after death. Not all of the rules, mind you, but certainly a lot of interesting ones.
Why did Kevin have to choose a profession? Is that something everyone has to do when they enter, or just suicides? Or just people on a mission to unburden themselves? I have no idea. But I’m not going to parse through this one in any particular fashion. To do so – I feel – would possibly, and purposefully, serve as me trying to convince myself that I didn’t immensely enjoy what I watched. Which I did, clearly. As usual, the details and Easter Eggs are there for the plucking, but the important part of the story is the emotion you feel while watching it. And seeing Patti as a little girl (Darby Camp), as a woman whose afterlife presence was that of a child who never overcame her abuse, was tragically moving. As was the moment when Patti and Kevin sat in the bottom of that well and she spoke about being a three-night jeopardy champion. That. Was. Incredible.
And it’s just like The Leftovers to turn Patti from an obstacle to a nuisance to a malevolent force to a scared, traumatized, sympathetic woman who you truly feel for. Even before she turned back into adult Patti, the moment when the little girl sat at the edge of the well and regurgitated all those awful self-depricating things about herself (“I talk too much, I don’t listen, I’m stupid, I’m a fat pig…”) was deeply unsettling. I’m not going to pretend that I know what the well represented (Helping Patti move on? Helping Kevin move on? Both?) or what the guy on the bridge with the noose whispered to Kevin, but it was all insanely great and riveting.
Because basically Kevin had to choose his path here. To treat Patti as an enemy or as a lost soul. Or even a friend, in fact. And along the way, killers tried to take his life (fortunately his assassin jacket also came with assassin skills), Gladys made a comeback, Miracle Wayne sat on a toilet again, Kevin Sr. broke on through the times-space barrier from Perth and appeared on Kevin’s hotel TV, and ol’ s***-chest Neil showed up (to be killed by Kevin). It was just a fascinating, rewarding story.
I mean, I get why no photos were released beforehand for this episode since they’d all contain Kevin and last week we ended with a big “Is he really dead?” type cliffhanger? But I don’t think any of us really thought he’d been killed off. The Leftovers isn’t above big shockers like that, but the show also comes with an air of supernatural mystique. An undefined quality that sort of assures one that a plan is in place and that, well, most things are possible.
This was a very moving chapter, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the sort of bouncy levity brought on by the recurring use of Verdi’s “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” throughout. Great musical accompaniment.
Also, if Mary Jamison was at the hotel, does this mean she’s effectively dead? Or does this mean that she recently died and we’ll find out something horrible in the next episode?
And how about that fun little nod to Justin Theroux’s penis? The beast that caused quite a stir back in Season 1 whenever Kevin would jog in sweatpants. Here, Kevin got a stern “Congratulations” from a security guard during a pat down.
“International Assassin” was Leftovers getting Lost. And I mean that as a compliment, from someone who loved lost and didn’t hate the way it ended. Though this type of sideways-world worked even better here, on The Leftovers, because the show itself is different and lends itself more to this type of comic postulation. I was glued to every moment of this one. And then extremely moved by the end featuring a young, broken version of Patti. “She’s not a child,” Kevin insisted. “Yes, she is,” said the mystery man, recognizing that the wounded little girl was Patti’s true self.
