This is gong to sound wrong, but here it goes, I have always been really interested in human experiments. I don’t mean the kind that physically/mentally tortures people for amusement, but the kind that allows us to see how people react when their everyday surroundings are no longer present. This is the reason I found “The Leftovers” so interesting. We hit on some really great points in class and a point was brought up that really resonated with me. It really amazes me how people react to the unknown. Humans are at the top of the food chain, we have invented many things and come up with spectacular theories, but all in all, there is still so much we don’t know. There are so many unanswered questions and questions no one has even thought to ask. All of this being said, I think it is pretty funny that we pretend that there are not things we don’t understand. We get so frazzled and bent out if shape when we don’t have the answers to something. We become unsettled, and as the Leftover’s illustrates, we gradually lose our ability to even function.
Most people seem to have this innate need to be in the know with whatever is going on and when they don’t have that, it can drive them crazy. But my thing is, we already know there are many things we don’t know or probably can’t comprehend, so why fall apart when these things happen? This is a rhetorical question and it is not to say that I don’t relate to people on this I completely understand the reactions of the people in the show, it’s just that looking in from the outside, I wonder why people react the way they do. Other than a percentage of the population going missing, not much else has changed. All of the violence and despair has been brought on by the people themselves, not by whatever catastrophe that took the people away. This happening did not alter the earth, or people’s minds or anything like what you might see in a horror movie, it simply took people away. Not to say that that’s not a big deal, but it is literally just one thing. You would think that this would cause people to band together and come to resolution, but instead it just causes them to drift further apart.
This pilot episode reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode I saw once. It was called “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”, and in the episode aliens came to a friendly neighborhood and began tampering with their possessions, making their cars start on their own and their lights flicker uncontrollably. The residents, who are originally civilized and nice to one another began turning on one another, believing that the alien traitor was among them. Eventually they began attacking one another and they completely lose their minds. The ending scene is the aliens sitting back and watching saying that humans are so easy to fool and turn against each other. They claimed that this is how they would conquer the world. They would not even have to attack or invade or start a war, just have us kill one another and their job would be done. I found this episode very frightening, because it is so realistic. I could certainly see this happening, because just like in the Leftovers, when something tragic or suspect happens, people turn against one another instead of turning to one another. We are often our own worst enemies.
