Did anybody watch the season premiere of "The Leftovers" last night on HBO? The new series is an adaptation of the Tom Perotta novel about the aftermath of an incident in which two percent of the world's population vanishes with no explanation. The people left behind struggle with the idea that their loved ones disappeared and don't know where to look for answers. In one scene at a bar the news channel is turned on and we see mention of celebrities that were taken. Jennifer Lopez was among those stars that were raptured during this event. What would this world be with J.Lo's upbeat music and personality? What happened to little Emme and Max? Are they being taken care of? Did Marc Anthony take them in? How did Casper Smart cope with really having no chance to winning Jenny's heart back? Wow! "The Leftovers" really just raised even more questions. We can see why the characters on the show are having such a difficult time.
Other celebrities that were Pope Benedict XVI, Bonnie Raitte, Condoleeza Rice, Salman Rushdie, Shaquille O'Neal, Anthony Bourdain and Gary Busey. The latter has become such an animated character in pop culture that his loss would be devastating for the world, but why where these people selected? Damon Lindelof, show-runner on the HBO drama, talked to Vulture and said: "Well, Shaquille O'Neal, Jennifer Lopez, Anthony Bourdain, and the Pope were all in the book, and my contributions were Salman Rushdie and Gary Busey. And I love Salman Rushdie’s writing, but I thought like, He’ll either get a huge kick out of it, or it’ll piss him off." Watch the video clip from the premiere episode down below and sound off with your thoughts!
Comparisons of the premise of the show to the hit ABC program "Lost" have been made. In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, the author of the book and producer of the show talked about the differences and similarities. "In the broadest sense, yes. We’re following people who are trying to make sense of something that is profoundly mysterious to them," Perotta said. "The big difference, for me, is that this is set in a very recognizable, real world, so if you just turned it on, you’d think you were watching 'Friday Night Lights'—which is what we’re using as the other pole of the story. The thing that excited me about Lost is that J.J. [Abrams] and Damon created a space where anything could happen, and 'The Leftovers' isn’t that, so it makes for a different kind of storytelling. We have an ongoing negotiation about how much can happen in this weird. Is this a realistic story with a supernatural event in the past, or is it the real world breaking down under supernatural pressure? It’s kind of both, and we’re trying to figure out how much storytelling space that permits."
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