Charles Manson might be a counter-example to your thesis on cult leaders.

There are a lot of gray answers between 'They departed' and 'They ran off to join the Guilty Remnant'. He had no reason to expect the GR to be there anyway, so if she told him 'the girls are alive and safe', how would that in any way have led to the GR?

God would never allow Meg to kill Matt . . . he isn't done tormenting Matt yet.

This might actually move Patti from the 'mystical messages from beyond' category to the 'just another one of Kevin's psychotic hallucinations' category.

That happened 2 seasons ago. You just didn't notice.

Interesting reply. I would only beg to differ with you on the bird theory. The bird goes into the box alive; Erika talks about how much oxygen there is for the bird, how long it would live under normal conditions, and how the one that came out alive after 3 days was a miracle. It just turned out that her wish wasn't…

Don't be patronizing, I don't expect this show to follow real world rules, but it does have to have rules within its own world, and this show doesn't tell us what they are. The bird example, for instance, doesn't really hold here because the birds are still alive when they get buried in a box; Kevin appeared to be…

And again this is my fundamental problem with this show. We just had an hour of fairly engaging television that took us not one step further in understanding just what ACTUALLY is happening here. As in Lost, the whole show could be a long dream sequence and we have no reason to have been surprised by it. This thing…

But you wouldn't make it through the hour.

I hoped that someone in the real Ballet world would comment on this, because when saw this show was coming on, I figured I'd see every possible dysfunction that we've heard of dancers experiencing. I did enjoy the show, but I take it for what it is. I think just about anyone who watches a show that's based in…

No, I think Matt, like so many of us, is on to something in questioning why John seems so bitter about living in this town. Of course, this being the Leftovers, there's no guarantee we'll ever find out.

Let me introduce you to my friend Ramsay . . .

I agree. The 'whys' have to add up to something or the story has no meaning at all. Which is what I've been arguing about this show since it's inception.

Not till rigor sets in at least.

Agreed. Only way this ends worse is that Matt delivers his wife to Nora, walks over the bridge and falls over dead from a cerebral hematoma caused by one of his numerous recent untreated head injuries.

Ok, so a little personal thing here. My wife passed last year after a long illness, and I've got to say this episode hit a little too close to home for me. Watching this man, who every day took care of his wife, suddenly becoming completely homeless and carless with his helpless and comatose wife in tow, was torture…

I'm rereading this long after the fact, and some thoughts about Stannis and the Walk of Shame occurred to be that I thought were worth sharing.

I'm not going to argue on the rating, but it could be that Nora's meeting with the MIT team investigating the departures might have shaken that certainty she developed as an investigator. That event might be the whole reason why we've seen what we've seen this season.

That's like saying a cool cloth to the forehead definitely makes getting your toes crushed in a vice more tolerable.

If we believe the ghost Patti, then it was a departure. She said so specifically.