‘The Leftovers’ recap: There’s something about Mary

As it did in Season One’s “Two Boats and a Helicopter,” “The Leftovers” brought its very best stuff in its latest Matt Jamison-centric episode detailing how the good reverend has spent his days since the night he claims Mary “woke up” until now. It then follows him through a very trying day, which begins with him taking his non-responsive wife to a doctor’s appointment and ends with him nude in the stocks.

During Mary’s MRI appointment Matt is told that Mary is pregnant. He is thrilled at the news, though the man delivering it to him is disgusted. To look at Mary is to understand her inability to give consent for anything, much less sexual intercourse. At best, Matt is looking at attempting to convince everyone that his wife really did wake up for one night only, during which they miraculously conceived a child. At worst, he raped his wife and burdened her already weakened body with a high-risk pregnancy.

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Matt sees the pregnancy as a miracle, the sign that he’d been praying for that everything is going to be OK, but for Mary, this is just another thing that has happened to her that is beyond her control.

But this revelation is only the beginning of Matt and Mary’s journey and on their way back to Miracle, things get well and truly biblical. On the road home, Matt sees a car on the side of the road in need of repair and, being a good Samaritan, pulls over to try to assist. But the breakdown is only a ruse and the driver of the car assaults Matt, stripping him and Mary of their Miracle wristbands and leaving them on the side of the road for dead. No friendly Samaritans arrive to save them from their fate.

Matt attempts to get them back into town, reaching out to Nora and Kevin, leaning on John Murphy’s pull to allow them back into town, but Matt foils this attempt by refusing to admit that Mary never woke up, instead asking John why he’s so angry at the town. Matt will not give up his faith, so he and his wife are cast out of the promised land into something far less savory.

He begs and barters on the outskirts of Miracle, repeatedly hearing Mary speak to him, telling him that “he,” their child, won’t live if she doesn’t get back to town. He sees a naked man in an elevated stocks, being mocked and he is told that if he wishes to free the man, he must take his place. Matt rejects the offer.

The area outside of Miracle has transformed into a strange, hellish carnival, a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah that has sprung up in the wake of individuals being banned from the holy land. Matt finds a woman (impeccably played by Brett Butler, from the ‘90s sitcom “Grace Under Fire”) who he begs for money on the basis that she is ostensibly a Christian woman. She questions Matt’s credentials, his Bible knowledge, asks him his denomination and what the name of Job’s wife is, and once she’s satisfied that Matt is up to snuff, she tells him she’ll give him the money if she hits a (willing) man with an oar as hard as he can, while yelling the name Brian. When he inquires why he’s being asked to do this, he is rebuffed. He obliges. The oar is broken. He gets his money.

But his back alley plan to get into Miracle also fails, thanks to a sudden rainstorm. It is only when Nora comes to search for him that Matt and Mary are saved from their fate, curling together as Nora and Kevin sneak them back into town in the trunk of their car, only stopping when they come across an accident in the road. It’s the man who stole their wristbands and he’s dead. Matt takes it back off his lifeless hand, only to see the man’s young son standing in the tall grass, offering Matt the other wristband back. Matt refuses, sends Mary back into town under Nora’s care, takes the newly orphaned boy to John Murphy, and heads back to the outskirts of town to live with the heathens and take his place in the stocks.

It’s a compelling story, in a compelling episode. But while Matt’s journey is an involving one, I can’t help but feel like “No Room at the Inn” is really all about his wife Mary.

In a way, Mary Jamison is the perfect biblical woman.

She doesn’t talk back, doesn’t cause trouble. She’s faithful and goes to church every Sunday. And she is sidelined in each and every story, even those that should be her own.

That is, I think, one of the greater points that “The Leftovers” is trying to make with “No Room at the Inn,” which, in its own way, compares Mary to both the mother of God and the wife of Job.

Mary’s pregnancy is miraculous, not only because she’s a nonresponsive women with little to no brain activity, but because she and Matt spent their marriage trying to get pregnant and failing. But Mary had no say in this decision, even if Matt is to believed and she really did come back for a night.

Consent is a difficult and nebulous thing sometimes, whether you’re talking about sexual relationships between spouses, one of whom may or may not be in a coma, or a young woman who was just informed, not asked, by an angel that she was going to give birth to the Messiah, whether she wanted to or not.

And as tempting as it may be to compare Mary to her biblical counterpart, given as she is suddenly and unexpectedly with child, as well as her struggles in the camp to find some purchase to rest, it’s really Job’s wife that she resembles more than anything.

So let’s talk about Job’s wife.

A woman not deemed important enough to name, Job’s wife watched her family’s fortune be stripped away, forced overnight to become a beggar. She buried all 10 of her children, then busied herself with caring for her husband as he was ravaged with disease, all because he fell afoul of a bet between his God and the devil.

Then, in a moment of weakness, Job’s wife asks him if it wouldn’t be better if he just let himself die. We know how the Bible, how her husband, take her words, dismissing her as speaking out of turn and being a foolish woman. But what if the words of Job’s wife came not from a place of scorn and malice, but from a place of empathy? What if she was just tired of watching her husband suffer for what seems to be no reason?

Or, to be less generous, what if she was the one who was tired of suffering for no reason?

Job’s wife suffered just as much as Job, collateral damage in a wager that had nothing to do with her. To think of Job’s wife is to think of Mary, dragged along with Matt as he makes poor decision after poor decision, refusing to give up his faith that she woke up, instead getting them thrown out into the wilds again. By the episode’s end, Mary is tattered and tired. She is sunburned and windblown and half-drowned. The things that happen to Matt, happen to Mary, too. But what’s worse is that Matt brings this punishment on himself, while Mary is merely caught in the crossfire.

Our story ends with Mary in Nora’s care and Matt in the stocks and it’s only right. Mary spent the day being punished for Matt’s sins. Now it’s his turn.

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