Lost was not my favorite television show, and I watched the entire thing twice. The Leftovers, a ChatGPT recommendation after I fed it a list of my real favorites, felt like Lindelof was trying hard to make up for Lost’s ambiguity and produce narrative coherence. It also felt like he’d seen Nolan’s Inception and said, “Let’s do that—only make it make less sense.”
I didn’t hate The Leftovers. It has its moments. But I did skip through more than a few of the scenes that lingered too long. I could always tell they were coming whenever the piano theme came in. Slapping fast-forward on these saved me at least an hour, all told.
Force-feeding myself a twenty-eight-episode series also didn’t sit right, as I’ve been really enjoying the weekly drip feed of The Studio and Your Friends & Neighbors on Apple TV. This change of heart has a lot to do with my new, full-time employment at regular hours, too. Time has once again become an even more obviously precious commodity. Completing The Leftovers marks another great clearing of the schedule for other, more important things, like woodworking and coding.
Binging these old series, no matter how highly recommended they come, is work. And it’s not work I particularly enjoy... or maybe I’ve lost the degree of depression necessary to throw so many hours at a passive activity.
2025.03.06 – 2025.05.18