5) The Leftovers – “It’s Mine”
You couldn’t swing a bat within the town of Jarden, Texas without hitting an emotionally resonant subplot nestled within the matryoshka doll that is The Leftovers season 2. As a result, there are an annoying amount of brilliant moments here that could have been chosen: Kevin’s visit to the afterlife hotel, the brilliant pay-off of that knock-knock joke, the dizzying no-context first ten minutes of the season – all would suffice.
Yet, here I am, with this tiny scene from “No Room at the Inn” burned into my brain after all is said and done. Reverend Matt Jamison (Christopher Eccleston) and comatose wife Mary (Janel Moloney) lie smuggled inside of a trunk, attempting to get back into Jarden. The car stops to inspect a wreck, wherein Matt discovers the deceased form of the man who stole his and his wife’s all-important wrist bands in a moment of attempted good faith earlier in the hour.
Norah pulls a dead dog off the road, Matt begins ripping the bloodied band off of the upside-down corpse, and off in the distance the dead man’s son watches from the bushes. “It’s mine,” the reverend justifies to the toddler, who then wordlessly holds up his own stolen band to Matt. It’s classic Leftovers: simultaneously triumphant (Matt and Mary can get back into Jarden!) and a right-hook of devastation, played all the more perfectly with the poignancy of Eccleston’s fervent desperation to keep his faith in the face of a world that’s slowly turning its back on the man upstairs.