Also seemingly in need of some serious help at this point is Jill, who starts the episode off in typically downcast style, trying to break a record for staying inside an old refrigerator – the inside of which is both incredibly hot and filled with only a small amount of oxygen. It’s a bet only a suicidal person would accept, but Jill has been nothing if not consistent in her knack for self-destruction. Unfortunately for Jill, she actually almost dies when the door handle breaks off. Jill only survives the ordeal because Kevin Sr., freshly escaped from the loony bin, runs straight into the woods and pries it open. He tells her later that the voices in his head drove him to run out there and find her, which is honestly the only explanation that makes even sort-of sense. Why, though, would the beings Kevin Sr. answers to want to save Jill? Only time will tell – or maybe not.
Both Jill and Aimee have suffered from not having all that much to do on The Leftovers, but this episode is unusually interesting for both of them. Jill reconnects with her grandfather, attempting to make sense of his delusions (though she doesn’t get too far before Kevin slaps cuffs on him and hauls him back to the hospital). Meanwhile, Aimee continues to make passes at Kevin. Apparently, in the midst of his delusions on the night when he found the dog, she put Neosporin on the wound and wrapped it up for him. Aimee strongly implies that something else happened between them (“What did you say to me when I bandaged up your hand?”), but he has no memory of what went down, so Kevin sidesteps her… for now. It would be a real shocker if the pair hooked up, but then again, The Leftovers has never shied away from the ugly side of human nature. In fact, it seems to almost exclusively wallow in it.
Outside of those characters, “Solace for Tired Feet” marks a huge step forward for Tom’s story, to the point where it almost feels excessive. Wayne gives Tom a call and tells him to deposit a large sum of money under a mailbox. He does so but sticks around, only to discover that another Mary/Joseph pair is out there – of note, the other woman carrying another one of Wayne’s children is also Asian, a member of his concubine who, similarly to Christine, seems to think that her child is “the bridge,” whatever that means. Things quickly turn sour when the other woman doesn’t take news that Wayne has been sleeping with other young girls well. She picks up a gun and nearly kills Tom, though her anguish causes her to miss and shoot him in the hand instead.
As you can imagine, Tom doesn’t stick around after that. His faith in Wayne, though, is forever broken now that he knows the truth: that he’s simply been sweeping one of Wayne’s many illegal dalliances under the rug. Tom returns to Christine, only to find that she’s given birth – to a baby girl. Whether the “Antichrist” part of “B.J. and the A.C.” will still hold now that Christine’s baby has come into the world remains to be seen, but now Tom has physical proof that Wayne raped underage girls (Christine, after all, was barely 16, or younger, when the so-called Holy Prophet took a shine to her), and he’s none too happy with Wayne. Tom seems to finally be done playing the guy’s games, as indicated by him violently smashing a phone (a moment that made me smile, based on the fact that his dad had a similar reaction to a call he didn’t like just minutes earlier). It will be interesting to see whether he decides to take Christine and her baby to the authorities, screwing over Wayne in the process.
All in all, “Solace for Tired Feet” is a rock-solid episode of The Leftovers. There’s less overbearing sadness this time around, with focus instead given to the show’s mysteries, and that constitutes a nice shift forward from the brutality of “Gladys” and the stifling desolation found in earlier installments. My head is filled with wild theories about the nature of Kevin’s dreams, who’s pulling Kevin Sr.’s strings, what Christine’s baby means for the post-Departure world and where The Leftovers is heading. And though I could have done without the melancholy piano music during Kevin and Nora’s rather revealing sex scene, “Solace for Tired Feet” finds The Leftovers much improved from its premiere. With only three episodes left, showrunner Damon Lindelof will hopefully be setting up the season’s end game next week – and I’m genuinely excited to see what he’s got up his sleeve.