It had to happen eventually: The first couple of cracks have started to appear in the Evie/Xander partnership. While this episode was a little scattered overall, with a few too many plots fighting for supremacy, the basic concept at the core was the same for everyone. Stepping outside your comfort zone can be good, and valuable. But it also means different things for different people. And for Xavier, who happily shares way too late that he’s ethically nonmonogamous, the brave new territory seems to be sharing how he feels with the girl he likes.
There was a sense that, much like Xavier, the show is trying to have its cake and eat it, too. He responds guiltily when Evie catches him with Tuesday, but then we’re supposed to be OK with him having not told her he’s seeing other people. It’s a fair assessment that when you first start seeing someone, there isn’t a promise of complete fidelity, but Evie’s hardly unjustified in thinking they’re more serious when he’s met her parents. There’s not really a way to spin that that doesn’t make Xavier into a bit of a cad. Plus, he’s somewhat protected by the admission that he hasn’t been hooking up with anyone else since he’s gotten together with Evie. It’s like No Tomorrow, much like Evie, very much wants to be OK with nonmonogamy, but remains a little skeeved out by it.
But aside from what is shaping up to be a heck of a letter to Dan Savage from Evie, the idea of what might hurt them as a couple remains strong. Xavier is helping her step outside her own boundaries, but he’s also not happy when she does it on her own. For him, his apocalist is something to fill his days before the end. But Evie’s list is inherently more optimistic. She doesn’t really think the world is ending, so for her, each item is less a funny story she can tell, and more a step towards becoming a braver version of herself.
And the path of Timothy once again dovetails with Evie. Except in Timothy’s story, recent events to the contrary, he doesn’t really need an Xavier. Like Evie, he’s also trying out new things and becoming a bolder person, but he’s doing it just because he wants to improve his life. At first, he was certainly trying to win back Evie, but now, Timothy Lucius Finger is here to see what the world has to offer him. Whether that leads him back to Evie or not, it’ll certainly lead to him living a better, more open life, the kind where he can kiss a hot girl at an amateur wrestling night, and impress a cool dude like Xavier with his Finger Tips. Wait, that came out wrong.
The problem with Timothy doing all of this on his own is that it’s not totally clear why we’re sticking with him, other than the possible love triangle he may someday join. And he continues to be half insightful and half the kind of guy who would yell “I’m Timothy L. Finger” at a bar. The parallels to Evie’s situation can only take him so far without it being clearer why he’s relevant to the main plot.
Also, as much as it makes sense that Deirdre is trying not to sexually harass her assistant, there’s only so many times we can see her throw herself at Hank awkwardly. There have been indications of progress in their courtship, but since it’s only played for laughs, we never really see what any kind of relationship between them would ultimately look like.
No Tomorrow isn’t exactly going to start chewing through plot, but it could do with a little more sense of urgency. The world is about to end, after all.
Stray observations
- The long slow buildup to that ridiculous “No to marrow” joke was great. And then they found a way to come back to it! Plus, check out Xavier’s alienated posture in that final scene. Trouble in paradise, indeed.
- You know, biomimicry, where a movie is based on a real person, like Borat.
- No Tomorrow is a world with a heightened reality, where Amy Brenneman is conjured into being merely by discussing her, and where she has apparently been disappointed by threesomes with her fans. No Christiane Amanpour, though, because this isn’t Gilmore Girls.
- A fun real-world Amy Brenneman fact is that she is married to Brad Silberling, who is an executive producer on the show. So maybe don’t expect any other Leftovers cast members to pop up.
- Between Evie and Kareema mud wrestling and Xavier and Timothy hot tubbing, this was a surprisingly homoerotic episode of television.