The Leftovers 2.04 “Orange Sticker”

The pace doesn’t let up, as we circle back to Jarden, TX, picking up right where we left off before the Laurie interlude. Nora wakes up with no Kevin at her side, and though she checks on Jill and Lily, she panics. She tries to ascertain that people aren’t Departing again, but as the Garvey’s just moved she doesn’t have a working phone or TV. Kevin stumbles in, muddy and disoriented, but that barely assuages her desperation.

Kevin instantly comes clean about waking up in the drained reservoir, covered in mud, which makes me wonder how Norah and Jill aren’t freaking out more. Norah swings into action (as she did about buying their house), going with Kevin when his truck is requested for the search for the missing girls, encouraging him to find his phone (and to act as if he just lost it if caught) while she looks with the search crews.  (Maybe) a whole other Sudden Departure is unacceptable in the town where that is a government certified impossibility.

The earthquake wrought a variety of damage, and no one is coping very well yet in the crisis. Plus, Patti’s back to needle Kevin full force, always trying to make him admit what he fervently denies. She helps him find his phone, and she wonders why he was so intent on trying to kill himself the night before (he jumped into the water with a cinderblock roped to his leg, to hear her tell it; only the water-draining quake saved his life), and why divine intervention prevented it. She’s pretty hilarious for a guilty haunt this episode, also warning him away from getting in John Murphy’s truck.

But he doesn’t heed her advice, and a journey of revenge against John’s previous arson victim ensues. A drunken and desperate arsonist is not a safe driver. Rather than heeding the psychic’s Isaac’s warning, John takes his premonition in the first episode as a threat he has now carried out. But Isaac isn’t having another unwarranted attack, and has armed himself in his tiny hotel room. The bullet wound doesn’t slow an enraged John down, but Kevin defuses this situation with practiced law enforcement skills, and drives the injured John back to town. Not to the hospital, but to his wife’s clinic.

Erika’s reaction to Evie’s disappearance is very different than John’s, much more cerebral. As she sedates (against his avowed wish) and stitches up her husband, she asserts that his acts of vengeance and vigilante enforcement are growing, and wonders what will become of Miracle Park now. She seems resigned that she’s lost her daughter forever, as does Evie’s brother, Michael.

Michael has a connection to Virgil, the other town psychic, who has now offered his help to both Kevin and Norah, and I hope one of them takes him up on it. Especially now that Kevin is actually speaking to Ghost Patti, and proving his usefulness in his new town. At the very least he may need some help in dealing with Norah, who isn’t taking this new disappearance threat lightly.

She found Kevin’s handcuffs, and she’s going to use them to keep him from wandering at night (or, more probably, to become a part of his journeys, as they seem pretty inexorable and unconsciously driven). Is Ghost Patti real? Is Kevin as crazy as his father? Will Norah ever feel safe?

Her brother Matt, the new pastor who has witnessed his own miracles in Jarden (his brain-damaged wife woke up and spoke coherently when they arrived), assures her this place is “real.” But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? Since the Sudden Departure of 140 million souls, no one seems to agree on what that reality might be any more.