The dystopian setting of the Leftovers was a lot less extreme compared to most of the other dystopian settings we’ve read about so far, maybe excluding the subtleness of Never Let Me Go. The fact that things are still going on mostly as usual is somewhat unsettling given the fact that 140 million people have gone missing. In the other dystopian settings we’ve read about it’s at least been much more evident that things are pretty bad on the outside of where the characters usually are. For example in Handmaid’s Tale, V for Vendetta, or even Black Hole it’s aware almost immediately that things are pretty rough whether it’s because of post-apocalypse like conditions or diseases running rampant among teens. But in the Leftovers, other than the initial scene where it shows us the instance where people are actually disappearing it’s not very obvious that anything is all that wrong with the world. Maybe it’s because when I think dystopian, I envision very obvious signs of degradation and destruction, either through the environment or because of the general welfare of the people and characters we encounter. In the Leftovers however, though I’m only going on an eventful first episode, it pulled us in with this crazy mysterious event that left the world completely changed from where it was moments earlier. Then for the rest of the episode it starts us back at a normal setting, where we get to see how civic life is ongoing because of ‘heroes day’ and schools are going on as usual, and we then slowly see how messed up life actually is after the ‘event’. I think as a pilot The Leftovers does a great job of hooking us in with a crazy dystopian event, returns us back to a state of normalcy, and then slowly reveals how interesting and terrible life is after the three years we don’t see.