story,interview

There's clearly something going on with Kevin and animals. In episode one of The Leftovers, Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) came face to face with a mysterious deer. The animal, like others on the series, seemed to have a special connection with Kevin, seemed to understand him in a way that no one else could. Both Kevin and the audience were unsure whether the deer was actually standing in front of Kevin, or whether it was some type of vision. Or phantom. Before Kevin could probe into the matter any further, a pack of wild dogs came charging at the deer, overtaking it and devouring it, as he, confused, looked on helplessly. Dean pulled up in his truck — the same truck that Kevin has since assumed as his own — and told Kevin that it was time to kill the animals. When Kevin protested, Dean responded, "Those aren't our dogs."

Dean's phrase, like much of his loaded dialogue, left us with many questions. Did Dean mean the dogs that he and Kevin shot at one time belonged to Mapleton, but have, after October 14, become more wild, less domestic? Or did he mean, the creatures he and Kevin are shooting aren't actually dogs? And if they're not dogs, then the question is, what are they? The other question is, why is one of them tied up in Kevin's backyard?

Then there are those dreams. Or visions. Or whatever they are. The thing where Kevin falls asleep and acts out, recollecting nothing in the morning. Last week, Kevin awoke to discover that his left hand had been bitten by a dog at some point during the night. He was also surprised to find a barking black dog tied up in his backyard. This week, he awakens to find that he's trapped another creature — but this one isn't noisy. She's silent.Episode eight of The Leftovers, titled "Cairo," begins to move us definitively in the direction of discovering what's going on with Kevin, if not sufficiently answer these questions. As it turns out, quite a lot is going on with him. His relationship with his daughter, Jill (Margaret Qualley) is steadily souring; his bond with Nora (Carrie Coon) is becoming firmer. He seems mostly over Laurie, and, for the time being, he isn't that concerned about his father, who, along with his voices, is safely locked away somewhere.

At some point after falling asleep in his home in Mapleton, Kevin wakes up in his truck in Cairo, NY. Knock knock, rap Dean's knuckles against the passenger side window, and Kevin flinches to life with a start. "Come on," says the mystery man, leading Kevin to a cabin in the middle of the woods, inside of which is Patti (Ann Dowd), tied to a chair in the middle of the room, hunched over, bleeding. The camera cuts to a close-up of her face, but the most important part of this shot isn't Patti. It's an animal. In the distance, just barely visible, and dimly lit, is a drawing of a horse.

Ready?

Episode eight — like episode three, which focused on Matt, and episode six, which focused on Nora — fixes its storytelling gaze on one character, Patti. (I got to interview Ann Dowd about this episode, which you can read by clicking the interview link above.) Unlike Matt's and Nora's episodes, however, "Cairo" finds a way of striking a perfect balance between both giving us an in-depth look at a particular character and situating that story within the overall narrative of the show. While this episode is mostly about Patti, it isn't all about her, which is actually a good writing decision. With only two episodes left in season one, the writers have to start building momentum toward some sort of satisfying season conclusion. And for a show whose central theme is loss, that means letting go of a central character. In the show's most brutal moment since Gladys' horrific stoning, Patti slashes her own throat.

The beginning of this episode gives us a hint that something significant is going to happen with Patti and Kevin. In one of the more beautiful vignettes the series has given us, the camera flashes between Kevin preparing dinner for his family and Patti preparing the sanctuary of Matt's old church, which she bought from the bank in episode three. While Kevin unfolds a blue tablecloth, Patti unfolds clothes, and lays them in various patterns on the floor. Patti performs her job with the same detached quality we've come to expect from her, only this time, there's something different. As she opens a binder marked "M.D." (Mapleton Departed?), presumably double-checking her work, her eyes seem downcast and heavy.

"Those aren't our dogs."

The very next scene shows Patti in her office with Laurie. Patti gives the younger GR member the M.D. binder and an envelope of cash. When she writes "Ready?" on her pad, Laurie nods, which calls to mind Gladys' curious nod earlier in the season, the one that preceded her abduction and murder. What is Patti asking Laurie if she's prepared to do? Go to her death? Or maybe she's asking if Laurie is ready for the next development: the GR seem to be planning something momentous for Mapleton's Memorial Day celebration. (Memorial Day is a great holiday for prophets who refuse to forget anything.)

Laurie seems to be adjusting well to her new leadership role, until her daughter, Jill, shows up to the house requesting to be taken in. This obviously forces Laurie to ask tough questions. One of the taglines of the GR is "No family" — it might be hard for the two of them to commit to the phrase if they both are living in the same house.As it turns out, Laurie and Patti have different ideas about the question. Laurie believes Patti is asking if she's ready to take on one specific task — paying the deliverymen when they show up with bodies. But what Patti is really asking is if Laurie is ready to assume her boss's leadership. Patti knew it was time, that she was going away, and that someone would need to lead the GR.

Jill's decision to join the GR isolates her father even more. Kevin, like Nora, is now alone. Both of them have lost their spouses and two children. But while Nora's family didn't choose to leave her, Kevin's vanished from his house of their own volition. Kevin's grief isolates him because it is so unlike that experienced by any other Mapletonian since October 14. Kevin doesn't want to be alone, though. At one point in episode eight, he calls Nora, leaving her a voicemail that says he "needed" her. Sadly, she never called back. And he was forced to deal with Patti by himself.

Guardian angel

Well, not entirely by himself. Dean was there, after all. But, as Patti says, Dean might not really exist. Part of Patti's job requires her to conduct research into the details of the lives of Mapletonians. She tried to find out about Dean, but couldn't even find a driver's license for him. "You might be able to shed some light on your friend here," Patti tells Kevin, "but as far as I'm concerned, he's a ghost." Significantly, Dean doesn't tell her she's wrong. "I prefer to think about myself as a guardian angel." But what is Dean guarding? Is he an angel assigned to Kevin? If so, what's his task?

Kevin's grief isolates him because it is so unlike that experienced by any other Mapletonian since October 14.

The entire conversation confuses Kevin, who seems to have no idea how the three of them got to where they were. According to Dean, while he and Kevin made their way home from a bar, they passed Patti on the side of the road, which is when Kevin grabbed her, beat her up, and kidnapped her. He told Dean they would go to Cairo, NY. "You said you used come to Camp Something when you were little," Dean reminds him, noting that Kevin told him he used to sneak away from camp to the cabin to smoke cigarettes. That certainly seems like a significant location to trap the leader of the GR.

Patti doesn't seem like a victim. She doesn't pander to her captors' wills, or try to sympathize with them. Actually, she tries to get Kevin to sympathize with her. She is determined and resolute, her mind fixed on one thing: getting Kevin to kill her. Either you kill me now, she tells him, or I'll report you to the authorities and tell them what you did to me. When Kevin tries to tell her the entire thing was a misunderstanding, and that she should just forget what he did, she spits in his face and tells him that she never forgets.

The tension continues to build between Dean and Kevin, and Dean suggests Kevin go take a little nap. It seems like something really does happen to Kevin when he sleeps. As he walks around the woods, he notices his white uniform shirts hanging on trees - the same shirts that went missing earlier this season. "You're OK," he tells himself, trying to regain his composure.

When he walks back to the cabin, he finds that Dean put a plastic bag over Patti's face in an attempt to kill her. In an earlier episode, Kevin had a vision of his ex-wife Laurie, dead, in the back of Dean's truck with a bag over her head. Overpowering Dean, Kevin manages to rescue Patti. "I fucking wanted to help you," Dean says. "You are on your own, chief." And with that, Kevin's guardian angel departs, leaving only Patti and her oblivious captor behind.

I want you to understand

This is where the series takes a turn, both in terms of answers and drama. The final scene of episode eight features some of the best written and acted moments of the entire series. Ann Dowd is an absolute genius, and is able to call forth a world of emotions with simply an almost-undetectable squint of her eyelids. And good thing, too: she's spent most of the season acting without words, delivering her dialogue on pads of paper, propelling her character's story further with nothing more than intense facial expressions and gestures. Dowd is truly remarkable, and The Leftovers will really have to up its game to make up for such a devastating loss. (At the same time, I'm fairly confident that Lindelof, in true LOST fashion, will resurrect Patti to give us a postmortem story of her relationship with Neil.)

As Patti tries to push Kevin closer and closer to the edge, he asks her what she wants. "I want you to understand," she says. "Understand what?" asks Kevin.

"What's happening to me," says Patti. "What's happening to you."

And then she delivers the best line of the entire series: a poem titled He Bids His Beloved Be At Peace, by W.B. Yeats.

O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire, The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay: Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest, And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.

The speaker of the poem is bidding his beloved farewell — she, like Patti, is dying. The horses of the poem are heralds of this death. In his own notes on the poem, Yeats referenced the mythological horses of Mannannan, which are known in Irish folklore as "mischievous spirits" associated with death, that take the form of horses.

In Irish myth, Mannannan is a god of the sea, and is associated with the Celtic concept of the Otherworld. He's also, interestingly enough, considered to be a psychopomp, or soul guide. That is, like a guardian angel the psychopomp is responsible for guiding a soul to its final resting place. Psychopomps can also guide a person between his resting and waking states — which is something that Kevin needs help navigating between. This is all speculation, of course, but between the Yeats poem, Dean's remark about being a guardian angel, and the horses drawn on a wall of the cabin, a, I think it's safe to say that Kevin just might be living in some sort of mist between this world and the next.

At the conclusion of her poem recitation, Patti says, "Kevin Garvey, you don't have to hide from me," which reinforces the theme of his hidden identity. But just when we think he's going to play into her manipulation and murder her, he cuts her free. "No, Patti, I don't understand you."

"Kevin Garvey, you don't have to hide from me."

"Kevin," she calls after him, picking up a shard of glass. "You do understand me." With that, she plunges the glass into her throat, and Kevin runs to catch her. As the two of them fall onto the ground, she repeats her haunting words, with a minor variation. "You … understand … " she says, unable to get out the "me." The "me" is gone. Patti finally accomplishes what she set out to do: she completely erases herself. It's a fantastic callback to the moment in episode three when she took down the letters "Y-O-U" from Matt's church sign.

As the camera pulls back, Kevin searches Patti's face for an answer. His guardian angel is gone. Nora doesn't return his call. He is all alone, with nothing except the dead body of the woman who took his wife from him. How is he going to explain Patti's dead body? What will he tell his precinct he was doing in Cairo? Is there any way that Kevin can fix this situation? Nora told him that things would get better, but when he asked her how they would get better, she admitted she had no idea. "But they will," she said.

Maybe the horses on the wall above Kevin and Patti have some idea how to clean things up.