Don't Be Ridiculous

Don't Be Ridiculous

Season

Episode

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3

2

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Air date

April 23, 2017

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Running time

59 mins

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Written by

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Directed by

Keith Gordon

"Don't Be Ridiculous" is the second episode of Season 3, and overall the 22nd produced hour of The Leftovers. It originally aired on April 23, 2017.

Plot

The episode opens with the theme song from Perfect Strangers and delivers a wide view of downtown Miracle. The mysterious man that has been living on the tower for five years, encounters some trouble that gets the town questioning things.

Using her official capacity as fraud investigator for the Department of Sudden Departure (D.S.D.), Nora Durst (Carrie Coon) travels to St. Louis for personal reasons to investigate a possible scam that involves convincing the family members of The Departed there’s a way to see their loved ones again.

During her trip, Nora encounters a variety of emotional moments and shows signs of breaking down. When she returns to Miracle, she has emotional conversations with both Erika Murphy and Tom Garvey. Yet, when she returns to her home in she puts on a tough and happy face for her boyfriend, Kevin Garvey.

The episode completes with a strange occurrence in Australia involving a local police chief and a group of women on horseback seeking a police chief named Kevin.

Analysis

Recurring Themes

• Animals: Pillar Man has a photo of him with a killer whale. The Australian police chief hits a kangaroo with his car, then shoots it in the head. Officer Gerard's dog Ginny is not feeling well. Grace Playford, Florence, Hildy, and Naomi ride horses.
• Memories: When Jeri the airline employee tells Nora to just select that she will be traveling with an infant, Nora has a flash to the first time she held Lily, in “The Prodigal Son Returns.” As Mark Linn-Baker speaks to Nora, she flashes to her children jumping into bed with her in “The Garveys at Their Best,” and to the empty breakfast table moments after the Departure in that same episode.
• The Bible: The appearance of four women on horseback echoes the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse referenced in Revelation 6:1-8.

Cultural References

• The series’ running Perfect Strangers joke, previously featured in “Penguin One, Us Zero,” “Solace for Tired Feet,” “The Prodigal Son Returns,” and “Axis Mundi,” culminates in this episode. The episode title references Balki’s catch phrase on the sitcom. The main titles feature the theme song to Perfect Strangers, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now” by David Pomeranz. Mark Linn-Baker, who starred as Larry Appleton on the sitcom, appears as himself (after having previously done so briefly in a news broadcast in “Axis Mundi”). “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now” appears again in an instrumental version by series composer Max Richter when Nora drives to see Lily.
• George Brevity’s nickname for this year’s frenzied Departure anniversary is “the seven-year itch,” referencing the 1952 George Axelrod-penned play of that name, and the more famous 1955 film adaptation directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe.
• Nora gets the Wu-Tang Clan logo tattooed over her children’s names. The writers’ credit for this episode features Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta’s names filtered through the Wu-Tang Name Generator, an unofficial website that assigns visitors a name along the lines of those adopted by the band members. (The website most famously provided Donald Glover with his rapper name "Childish Gambino").
• Australian Network 10 weather presenter Mike Larkan appears as himself.

Literary techniques

• Nora asks the widow if her husband had vision problem, reintroducing the recurring theme of sight. The widow then answers that her husband could see up until the bridge, implying he could not see beyond the closure of Miracle.
• The doctor tells Nora she's cured. She then recives a call that brings back all of her problems.
• Nora's chief comments "She's gone" after Nora decides to go on investigating.
• The kiosk asks Nora if she has a baby: Nora wants to answer no, but it doesn't let her do it. In fact, we continue to think that Nora should have a baby, since we don't know where Lily is yet.
• Nora goes to an hotel, recalling the famous one in International Assassin.
• In Guest, Nora went to an hotel and she was considered a guest. Here, Nora goes to an hotel in order to meet a guest.
• Linn Baker informs Nora there is a tailor in the hotel, and he sewed him a tailored dress, again recalling International Assassin.
• Nora forces the parking barrier that was ostacolating her. Through the whole episode, she forces reality that wants to ostacolate her own ideal reality.
• In Lens, Erika pressed Nora and made her not lie. Here, Nora goes to Erika telling her she doesn't want to lie.
• Fake Kevin runs over an animal and he doesn't care. In The Garveys at their Best, true Kevin spent the whole episode trying not to kill an animal.
• Previous episode ended with a close-up on Nora, and this episode is focused on Nora. This episode ends with a close-up on Kevin Sr., and following episode will be focused on Kevin Sr.
• Don't be ridiculous can referr to our reaction to many things: for example, Nora saying Kevin it's not a problem if he tries to kill himself and the four women killing a sceriff only because he has the same name of Kevin.

Trivia

• Although Chris Zylka is credited as a series regular for the remainder of the season, this is Tom’s final onscreen appearance. His voice is featured in “Certified.”
• This episode marks the final appearances of Erika and Christine.
• Damon Lindelof has said that if the third season had had ten episodes instead of eight, the second episode would have been devoted to telling Pillar Man’s backstory, with his death ending the episode. This plan presumably would have shifted "Don't Be Ridiculous" to the episode three slot, and there would have been a Murphy-centric episode as episode 4. 
• Although Lowell Bartholomee is credited as reprising his character Reggie from “No Room at the Inn” (the man Sandy paid Matt to hit with a paddle while saying “Brian”), his role appears to have been cut from the episode.
• Matt’s house number is 602.
• A sign behind George Brevity at DSD says, “If you don’t see someone, say something,” referencing the Department of Homeland Security’s real-world antiterrorism slogan, “If you see something, say something.”
• Crown Central appears to be a fictional hotel chain invented for the show.
• Ocko (the DSD employee who sits across from George Brevity) may be named for Peter Ocko, a prolific TV writer/producer who served as a consulting producer on two episodes of The Leftovers in season 2.
• When Nora is first seen at the check-in machine in the airport, there is a sign reading “Departures” behind her.
• Carrie Coon starred in the third season of Noah Hawley’s FX series Fargo, which was airing at the same time as this season of The Leftovers and coincidentally also featured Coon playing a character who often had difficulty getting technology to work.
• Low Amplitude Denziger Radiation references Dr. Denziger of the Denziger Report, seen in the Pilot and last referenced in “Lens.” The acronym "LADR" was deliberately chosen to echo repeated references to ladders this season, beginning with the opening Millerite sequence in the prior episode.
• In reality, Mark Linn-Baker was born in St. Louis, where Nora is told to meet him.
• Mark Linn-Baker’s two degrees from Yale are an undergraduate degree and an MFA in Drama. 
• In reality, Linn-Baker was married to theatrical set designer and producer Adrianne Lobel from 1995 to 2009, and has been married to actress Christa Justus from 12/29/2012 to present. Presumably, this second marriage never happened in The Leftovers universe (as he had already faked his Departure before then), and he is referring to the first marriage to Lobel when he says he is not married anymore.
• Nora, realizing that Mark Linn-Baker had the same odds of being left behind by three people as she had, repeats the statistic she previously cited in “Guest.”
• It is over a four-hour drive from St. Louis, MO to Eminence, KY.
• Nora stalking someone at a playground calls back to her watching Kylie at work in “Guest.”
• After suggesting that Matt should have gone to Kinko’s to copy his book, Nora later goes to a Kinko’s-type store to print the photo of Pillar Man’s corpse. She has previously visited a Kinko’s-type location in “Guest” to forge her convention badge.
• Grace Playford is likely named after Thomas Playford, an Adelaide resident who was largely responsible for the spread of Millerism in Australia. The Millerite movement in Australia was prominently featured in the opening sequence of this season.
• Adding another layer of metafictionalism, the actor playing the Australian “Chief Kevin” is named Damien Garvey.

Book to Show

• Christine lives in Eminence, Kentucky, per Nora’s GPS. In the book, she was originally from Ohio.
• In the book, Nora's departed husband Doug texted Kylie (the preschool teacher he had an affair with) about Kylie's tattoos, and claimed, "I asked my wife to get one but she said no :(." Tattoos as a method of coping with Departure grief also pop up elsewhere in the novel: Tom's friend Trevor "Hubbs" Hubbard says he drunkenly attempted to get the name of departed frat-mate Chip Gleason (whom Hubbs hated but cannot stop thinking about) tattooed on his forehead, and was only spared because the tattoo artist refused.

Music

• "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now" by David Pomeranz (main title)
• "Appleseed John" by the New Christy Minstrels (Nora interviews witnesses of Pillar Man's Departure, then goes to see Matt)
• "Song of the Pious Itinerant (Hallelujah, I'm a Bum)" by the New Christy Minstrels (Nora clashes with Sandy and others at the base of the pillar)
• "Meet Me in St. Louis" by Judy Garland (Nora at the airport)
• "Miserere" composed by Gregorio Allegri, performed by Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge & George Guest (Nora watches the "testimonials"; this recording previously featured in "Solace for Tired Feet" and "Orange Sticker")
• "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now" by Max Richter (Nora drives to see Lily)
• "Departure (Reflection)" by Max Richter (Nora talks to Erika)
• "Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)" by Wu-Tang Clan (Nora and Erika on the trampoline)
• "The Departure" by Max Richter (Nora gets the photo of Pillar Man's corpse and displays it)
• Lucia di Lammermoor Act I, Scene 2 ("Regnava nel silenzio") composed by Gaetano Donizetti, performed by Elizabeth Hainen (closing sequence of Grace Playford kidnapping "Chief Kevin")
• "I Never Heard a Man" by the Original Blind Boys of Mississippi (featuring Archie Brownlee) (end credits)

Goofs

• Based on the way events unfold in the episode, it seems that Nora visits Erika the day after getting her cast off. However, Nora tells Erika she got the cast off the day before yesterday.
• Given that Pillar Man was seen to land on his back, and did not seem to suffer any other injuries during his fall, it is unclear how he suffered the facial injuries seen in Nora’s photo.