Things in this week’s episode of The Leftovers get really ramped up, and weird! We get to see more of crazy Kevin Garvey, the G.R. seems up to more antics, and we learn who killed Gladys. Let’s get into Josh’s The Leftovers episode recap for Cairo!
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The Leftovers, Season 1 Episode 8: Cairo Recap Overview
The Leftovers begins with Patti from the G.R. entering the empty church, while Kevin Garvey at home prepares dinner. While both prepare, the song “I Been Buked” by Alvin Alley plays, a very church choir song-like piece. Patti going through some files has laid out a bunch of clothes on the floor.
Moving to Laurie, Patti gives her some money and writes to her, “Ready?” to which Laurie nods.
Kevin has Nora over for dinner, and Jill and Aimee are at dinner as well. Things get weird when Jill accuses her of having a gun. Nora tells Jill she doesn’t need the gun anymore, and even offers Jill to search her purse when Jill presses. Kevin isn’t happy with Jill’s attitude.
Later that evening, Kevin tries to fall asleep, and has trouble. He finally does, and when he wakes up, he is disoriented. Reason being–he is in the black truck again, and in the middle of the woods at a cabin. Dean the dog killer is also there, and turns out he and Garvey have done something pretty bad–kidnapped Patti and roughed her up pretty bad.
Back with the G.R., Matt Jamison is being attacked by Meg. She is screaming at him, and upset that Matt has made flyers involving her mother. Laurie tries to quiet her down. They decide to wait for Patti to figure out how to proceed, but Patti is tied up at the moment….
At the cabin, Kevin has flashes of what happened, but can’t remember fully. Dean is puzzled, and tells Kevin this was all his idea. Dean gives him the run down–Kevin was at the bar, gave Dean a ride home, saw Patti walking on the street, and grabbed her. They took her to Cairo, New York. We also learn from Dean why he caught the dog–he bet Dean that he could tame the dog for $1. In the midst of their arguing, Patti wakes up.
Kevin talks to her, and tries to apologize for what he did, and makes excuses. He offers to let her go, but Patti doesn’t let him off so easy and threatens to report him–verbally speaking to him. She seems to act like she has the power, and even demands a cigarette.
Meg continues speaking to Laurie, and Laurie isn’t happy. She then takes Meg to apologize to Matt for attacking him. Matt graciously accepts the apology, and Matt seems to think he is getting through to her. Matt explains to Nora, who is at his house, that Meg’s grief was “hijacked’ because her mother died the day before the disappearance.
So, Jill, Aimee and the Frost brothers are getting high in the middle of a park and Aimee tells the story about Jill not finding the gun. Jill is convinced that Nora still has the gun, and Jill feels that Nora still is hurting, and must still have the gun. Jill then gets out of hand, accusing Aimee of having sex with her dad. Aimee is appalled, and storms off.
At the cabin, Patti gets her cigarette, but not for long when Kevin gets annoyed with her attitude. Kevin asks who Patti reports to, to which Patti denies having any “boss”. Patti also explains that Dean has no official records, calling him a “ghost”. Dean says that he prefers to be called a “guardian angel”.
Dean calls Kevin outside, and is unhappy with the “new” Garvey that is indecisive. Dean tells Kevin to go get the “other guy,” referring to sleepwalking Kevin.
Jill and the Frost brothers decide to break into Nora’s house, determined to find the gun Jill is bent on. Turns out Jill is sort of right–the gun is hidden in a board game box–the game is Trouble. Coincidence? Probably not. Jill is very sad to find the gun, and the three abruptly leave. As they leave, Kevin calls Nora and leaves a message on her answering machine.
Moving back to Garvey, he hangs up his call after seeing a white shirt flutter. He moves closer and finds that it is his shirt. There is another. Then another, all hanging from the trees. Remembering from earlier in the season, he had lost his white shirts at the cleaners–so he thought. Garvey has a mental break, and tears them all down.
Garvey heads back into the cabin. Dean says that the “situation has taken care of itself”. Kevin rushes in, to see Patti suffocating with a bag over her head. Kevin fights Dean, and finally saves her. Dean, aggravated leaves saying, “Shut the F— up, I tried”.
Later Meg talks more, annoying Laurie further. Laurie slaps her really hard, Shhhing her. Laurie walks away, and Meg gives a little smirk. Laurie greets a driver that is towing a U-Haul. Laurie pays the driver for what’s in the U-Haul, which is a bunch of bags from what we can tell so far. The driver tells Laurie that they are sick.
The G.R. unloads the trailer, and lays them next to the clothes that Patti had laid out in the beginning of the episode. Looks like these are bodies. Potentially fake bodies from the guy Nora met in her episode.
Nora returns home, listens to her answering machine, but the call is too broken up to hear. She heads up stairs, and sees the gun still out on the bed where Jill left it. Meanwhile, Jill has headed home, and sees Aimee moving out, to live with another friend. Jill heads outside to the barking dog Kevin captured. She frees it.
At G.R. headquarters, Laurie is surprised Patti is still missing. They decide to move ahead with whatever their plan is, without her. Then the G.R. gets a new member-Jill has come to stay. The look on Laurie’s face is hard to read.
Finally back at the cabin, Patti says despite him rescuing her, Patti still will report him. Kevin seems in turmoil over what to do. But then pieces begin to fall in place for him–and he asks Patti if she killed Gladys. She admits to it, to make her a martyr for her cause. Gladys was willing according to Patti–although it didn’t look like it from what us viewers saw. Kevin then takes the power back, telling her that he will turn her in for the murder of Gladys if Patti turns him in. He cuts her free to take back to town. Patti decides that this isn’t a part of the plan though–and gashes her own neck with a shard of glass on the floor. Kevin tries to save her, but she bleeds out very quickly. Her last words to Garvey are, “You understand”.
Josh’s Thoughts: The Leftovers, Season 1 Episode 8: Cairo
This episode was intense and one of my favorite of the season so far. I feel like every episode as at least one biggest question that is sort of left unanswered. This episode’s biggest question I feel is this: Was Kevin’s part always a part of the plan? From the very beginning of this episode, when Patti is tied up, she seemed to be in charge of the conversations, even though she was the one tied to the chair. Did she plan to have Kevin pick her up? Moreover, did she cause Kevin to blackout to pick her up? It really seems as though she was expecting all of this to happen.
This question leads down to a bigger rabbit hole. Who is Dean? He says, “Shut the F— up, I tried” as he leaves, when Kevin saves her from suffocating. This phrase seems to be directed towards Patti. Does this mean Dean was in cahoots with Patti the whole time? Or did Patti just talk Dean into killing her while Kevin was outside? That one is hard to judge. Considering Patti didn’t know a whole lot about Dean, and was inquisitive about him, I am going to assume the latter is the most likely. But I would say that that Kevin’s “sleepwalking” is seeming to be more than just the “crazy” from this father being passed down. There seems to be some sort of method to the madness, and I really want to know who is behind the controls.
As for the side stories, Jill is having a complete meltdown. I really think, that while she vigorously accused Nora of having the gun, Jill really hoped that she didn’t. The Frost brothers spell it out pretty well for us: If Nora did get rid of the gun it would mean that Nora truly moved on. Finding the gun in Jill’s mind, shows that Nora is simply pretending. I am curious to know though–is Nora pretending? That would mean that Wayne is a fraud, and it would seem that the placebo effect may be the reason these hugs are making people happy.
The final thoughts I have are regarding Meg and the G.R. So I am assuming those bags put next to the laid out clothes are the life-like mannequins we saw in Nora’s episode. I assume that the G.R. is going to hold a “funeral” for the departed, which is going to cause a real mess in the town. I think we can safely assume that when the G.R. stole a bunch of family photos–it was to have the company make these “bodies”.
Then finally Meg–there has to be something more going on with her. It is sad that her mother died right before the “event”. I really want to know whatever her motives for joining the G.R. are though. When Meg thinks that she is getting to Laurie, she makes a little smirk of triumph. Why would she be happy about that? Is she there to break Laurie down?
This episode of The Leftovers was really great. I really hope the viewers has gone up, so the show can continue. I had a sort of epiphany about the show today, which I assume is no accident. This show seems to be the opposite of Lost. In Lost, we see people dealing with being the people “disappeared”. In this show, we see the people dealing with the people who still remain, trying to pick up the pieces. I am sure this isn’t an original thought, but it was sort of fun to think about!
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 1 Episode 8 of The Leftovers: Cairo
This episode got really tense really quickly, and it feels like we’re headed toward something big. First of all, we have the whole Kevin situation with Dean and Patti. Kevin’s blackouts seem to be getting worse and worse, as well as the things that he was been doing during those blackouts. Did Jill ordering the National Geographic inadvertently make Kevin “accept” the magazine, like his dad wanted him to, but that he wanted no part of? I think that maybe if Kevin does not actually accept his dad’s offer, that the “crazy” will take over Kevin, whereas if he did accept the offer, then he would be more like his dad, coherent but talking to the voices. How soon until the “crazy” completely takes over Kevin? Or does that only happen at night?
Anyway, so Kevin and Dean kidnap Patti, but the sane part of Kevin is appalled by what he’s done. Dean tries to do the dirty work and kill Patti, but the sane Kevin’s not having that, of course. After Kevin saves Patti, as Dean is walking out the door, he says “Shut the f— up, I tried.” Who was he talking to? My first thought was that he was talking to the voices, just like Kevin’s dad does. We haven’t seen him do it before, but it’s not like we’ve spent a lot of time with him. Even Kevin’s dad goes through periods of time where he doesn’t talk to any voices. Who are these voices? What do they want? Who is this Dean guy? Patti says there’s no records on him, that he’s a ghost, while Dean says he’s more of a guardian angel. What if he’s telling the truth? Maybe he is some sort of fallen angel that came down on the day of the disappearance? Maybe Wayne is another fallen angel. Okay, I guess these theories are kind of out there, since the show has been mainly grounded in reality so far. But I’m just waiting for these hints of supernatural to burst through and make it to the forefront!
I also didn’t really follow Patti and Kevin’s conversation at the end, when her last words to him are “You understand.” Okay, maybe he understands, but I don’t! What are we supposed to understand? From what I gather, it sounds like all members of the G.R. have signed up to be martyrs, and will all be killed in one way or another at some point. Do all members of the G.R. know that that’s what will happen to them though, or only the higher ups? Judging by Laurie’s pained expression when Jill shows up at the G.R., she knows her own fate and that of all members of the G.R. While she might be fighting her inward emotions of being happy to see her daughter, she also doesn’t want to see her daughter’s life cut short.
So it sounds like the G.R.’s big plan will take place on Memorial Day, judging by Meg’s comment of wanting to see Nora’s face on that day. Presumably, that’s when they’re going to dress all the mannequin bodies up in the laid out clothing, and Nora will be forced to look up the faces of her husband and children once more. How and where they plan to display the bodies is the question, as well as how the town will react. How widespread is the G.R. anyway? When Kevin was talking to Patti, it sounded like there were lots of other branches of it. Is this something all of the G.R. branches are doing, or just this one?
Only two episodes left, and it feels like everything is coming to a head. Hopefully we get a good payoff, though I’m thinking there will be a big cliffhanger at the end of the season finale.
Scenes from The Leftovers, Season 1 Episode 9, The Garveys at Their Best
Here are scenes from the next episode of The Leftovers, titled The Garveys at Their Best:
I knew they killed their own lol
Yeah, you called it back in Episode 5! I didn’t want to say anything and spoil it for you though. I assume you are all caught up now? ~Violet