Was sick yesterday and we have free HBO for a week and I saw this show. I read the book (which was kind of stupid) and I saw that it had amazing ratings, so I watched a few episodes.

It was honestly pretty lame.

I take it that things change in seasons 2 and 3? Maybe I have the wrong show.

I think it would have worked better for her arc if she did indeed commit suicide.

The first season was horrible.

Another shitty Brick opinion.

They did a complete reset on the show. Why would you do that if it was already great?

The first season was horrible.

It sounds like they knew it was horrible and changed almost everything in season 2 but I still can't get myself to watch it.

townspeople: We are going to have an annual memorial day to the people we lost. Here is a memorial monument. Some of us will keep our house exactly as it was when the rapture occurred. We'll talk about it at church, on the radio and tv. There will be a general sadness even three years after.

Guilty Remnant: Why won't you people remember!

Come on, dude. You're Catholic, for God's sake. How many of your fellow parishioners attend mass on Sunday and go right back to fornicating and stealing on Monday? The Guilty Remnant was righteous.

It's nobody you could compare 'em
Associate with motherfuckers, it's racketeering
It's all part of the engineering
The Guilty Rem in hand, bodies is disappearing
You confused by the liar paradox

I don't go to church because I'm sinless.

That aside, your point is irrelevant. "Don't forget" is the GR's entire reason for existence.

Nobody had forgotten, from what I observed. GR were just pissed that life went on and demanded the mundanities of existence, as if mourners should have jumped on a funeral pire.

Then they commit multiple mass breaking and entering acts, steal and use Scientology harassment tactics but reach the conclusion that people only hate them because they make them remember. No, you robbed my house and then laughed about it.

If two percent of the population inexplicably disappeared, would you do some soul searching? Would it make you reevalute the world and your place in it and what comes next, or would you just show up at dolphin & dolphin the next day and continue arguing about zoning variances and maybe- if you weren't otherwise engaged- attend a memorial service each summer as if it were six beloved local teenagers who had died in a car accident?

Everything they thought and believed changed in that moment. The Guilty Remnant asked how things could possibly just go back to the way they were with just a little lip service to the departed after that.

I might believe this was the beginning of some end times eschatology. When nothing further happened, I think I'd treat it in the way I'd treat the death of a close person.

3.5 million people die every day with few noticing. Life has to go on even for the one's that do.

GR pretty much got exposed as an oasis for people who were damaged well before The Departure. Even the smoking had no deeper significance.

Yeah, you're explaining the premise of the show.

I think most people would do what you describe yourself doing. The Guilty Remnant is asking how they can do that. And sure, The Remnant was like most cults wherein its members were damaged and/or searching for meaning in life. In this case, there was a very explicit reason for such a search.

Three years in and it doesn't seem so difficult to understand that several billion people still have to eat each day. It seems lost on them that they live under the umbrella of others returning to living life.

GR is like the people that actually enjoyed COVID quarantine. Their life sucked prior to the event and the event is just a pretext so that, if the majority of lives also suck, they become the normal

It's actually a pretty good parable for what happened during COVID. Except in the case of COVID the cult was the majority.

or 9/11

I do think people's reactions would be much more religiously informed. I like that this show approaches the topic from a more atheistic angle. It's a more interesting story. However, if people disappeared just as described in the bible, you would have to be pretty ignorant to not think it was not a proof of existence...and how would non christian theist process the occurence.

I think she is lying, but as you say, it doesn't matter. Kevin takes it on faith. He has faith in her. And isn't that really what religion is- taking something on faith that deep down you know is bullshit?

I didn't think the book was stupid, but it was nowhere near as good as the show. That's pretty atypical. A book is almost always better than any adaptations.

To me this show is the pinnacle of prestige television. It couldn't be more perfect.

I don't understand why you characterize the episodes you watched as "lame." I understand that the show is very dark, especially in the beginning and it develops rather slowly.

The show really gets going in the third episode, "Two Boats and a Helicopter." You have to be able to accept that something has changed in the post-"Rapture" world of the show and you aren't going to know exactly how or why- just as the characters don't- and the showrunner is NOT going to spell it out for you. The use of the Iris Dement song over the opening credits in the later seasons is really on the nose.

Episode 6, "Guest" is about as perfect as an hour of television can be. And the first season finale is pretty powerful.

But the show takes off once Lindelof hands over the reins to Mimi Leder in Season 2. The second season is about as entertaining and intellectual as anything that's ever been made for television. It's just in another league. This isn't a show for little brains.

Eventually, it becomes a standard love story, but within the context of the damaged world of the show it's probably not right to call anything "standard."

I recently rewatched it and it was a lot more poignant in the post-COVID world, a world that has been destroyed in many of the same ways the world of the show was destroyed by the event of October 14.