Kevin and Nora travel to Australia, where she continues to track down the masterminds of an elaborate con, while he catches a glimpse of an unexpected face from the past, forcing him to confront the traumatic events of three years earlier.
Analysis[]
Recurring Themes[]
Memories: Kevin recalls shoving young Patti into the well as Nora reads Matt’s chronicle of the events of “International Assassin.” While reading Matt’s book, Kevin has flashes of seeing John yelling shortly after Evie’s “Departure” in “A Matter of Geography”; of confronting Patti in the woods, returning to Virgil’s house, and drinking the poison, all in “A Most Powerful Adversary”; and of Kevin on the karaoke stage in “I Live Here Now.”
Cultural References[]
Nora says she has Global Entry, a US Customs and Border Patrol service that allows pre-approved travelers to receive expedited clearance upon arrival in the US, as well as access to expedited screening via TSA PreCheck when leaving the country for certain international destinations.
Daniah is holding a sign reading “Surah 81” in the background of the G’Day Melbourne broadcast. This refers to the eighty-first sura (or chapter) of the Quran, which describes signs of the coming day of judgment, in keeping with the season’s apocalyptic themes.[1]
Dr. Bekker says to tell Dr. Van Eeghen that Finland won the World Cup. This is either a difference from our world, or perhaps more likely a cruel joke (Dr. Bekker does not seem to have much respect for Dr. Van Eeghen). In our world, Finland’s national football team has infamously never even qualified for a finals tournament of the World Cup.
The opening song title is "This love is over", foreshadowing a major plot point of the episode and of the rest of the season.
Nora not even thinking to give Kevin part of her money (making much easier to pass the airport gate) is symbolic for her egoism.
Nora says Kevin to tell the scientists he's here because he wanted to tell her goodbye, since they're in a tossic relationship. Nora and Kevin actually breaks up at the end of the episode.
As Kevin and Nora enters the hotel, classical music starts playing again, after the recurring Va Pensiero in International Assassin.
Starting this episode, a recurring gag makes characters saying "Jesus" and other christian-related exclamations while talking to Kevin, making look like they call "Jesus" Kevin himself, continuing his recurring affinity with Him. Here, Nora says Kevin "Jesus, how can Matt came up with this?" and later Sr. says "Jesus, I can't believe you're actually here".
Kevin remembers the events of International Assassin in front of a wardrobe, recurring symbol in that episode. Even the shot is identical.
Kevin not being able to turn the TV off is reminiscent of International Assassin too.
Nora exits the room saying Kevin "I'll be alright. I'll be back soon". She's literally going to see a scientist in order to disappear forever.
As Kevin reads Matt's book, some sentences are underlined by the shots. Notably, "he feard that he had lost / his mind" and "drinking poison was / crazy" are both show as enjambements (the focus on lost is also referring to the Lost show).
The scene where Kevin sees "Evie" on the TV seems like a parody of the dialogue between Kevin Jr. and Sr. in International Assassin. Since this is the reality, there is no real dialogue through the TV, and Evie herself is a fake one; but Kevin has lived the events in the "hotel world" as reality, so he considers a dialogue through the TV possible.
Nora immediately says she's a mother, even though she's currently not, she made fun of Kevin wanting a baby, and she will consider killing a baby the right choice in the scientist's moral question. She then proceeds to let the baby away as soon as the bus arrives.
As Nora runs in order to take the bus, Kevin runs in order to find "Evie".
We are enough sure "Evie" is not the real one and Kevin is going insane, but later, as she talks to Kevin in the library proving she "knows" many things only the real Evie could know, we become uncertain. In other words, since we're looking through Kevin's POV, Laurie has mislead us too, other than Kevin himself: since we obviously can't suffer the same psychological breakout as him, she (or, breaking the fourth wall, the writers) mislead us in a different way, manipulating the editing in order to make us see only certain things.
Through this episode, we jump repedeatly between Kevin's and Nora's POV, underlining the fact that they act indipendently from each other and that they are very distant.
In order to simulate the experiment, Nora enters a wooden crate, like she was an animal or, worse, a thingh (there's even polystyrene on the bottom).
Nora trusts an unknown scientist not running away with the money while she's locked in a crate, but she doesn't trust her boyfriend Kevin.
Nora lies in the crate like she was a corpose, and the crate is closed like a grave. She almost look in the camera lenses.
Laurie tells Kevin he ran away from Jarden. Kevin responds he did that in order to be with Nora, but he then acknowledges Nora ran away from him.
Bekker thinks Nora will stop a moment before the experiment will be completed, foreshadowing one of the answers to the last question of the show.
Nora thinks the mother at the bus stop was a test, like his brother Matt thinks many problems of his life are a test too (making her angry).
Kevin tells Nora she should be gone with her children, after she passed the day trying to do exactly that.
Kevin Sr. arrives almost as a deus ex machina.
Also, Sr. arrives after a fire alarm. In International Assassin, both a fire alarm and fire itself was present while Kevin Sr. and Jr. talked through the TV.
Sr. says he saw his son on TV. Fate (or, continuing christian references, the Providence) seems to have really pushed for Jr. and Sr. reunification:
This referrs to the already recalled dialogue between Kevin and his dad in International Assassin: this time though the contact happened in the reality and Sr. remembers that.
The successful contact between Kevin and his dad is compared to the failed one between Kevin and fake Evie, both of which happened through TV.
Sr. says he called all of the hotels asking for Kevin's name. If Kevin's TV never stopped working, he would never called the reception and so never added his own name in the room, making impossible for his dad to find him in the first place. That means that, again, they communicated by means of TV.
Similarly, if Kevin never thought seeing Evie on TV, he would never ran to the television studio and he would never appeared on the program, making again impossibile for his dad to see him in the first place.
Kevin thinks to see Evie on a TV program, and he runs to the television studio. This way, Sr. really sees Kevin on the very same program.
A failed fake reunification leaded to a real successful one.
As soon as he leaves Nora, Kevin finds his dad.
Sr. finds Kevin with, and by, a woman named "Grace". He literally presents her saying "This is Grace" ("This woman name is Grace" but also "This, that we reunite after all, is grace).
Nora is left in the "rain" like the woman in the opening scene of the season.
Trivia[]
Nora's "see you on the other side" is reminiscent of the same recurring phrase in Lost. Also Sr.'s "you're not alone" can be a reference to "Live together, die alone", given that is said to Jack/Kevin.
The Crown Central Melbourne exterior and hallways were shot at the Park Hyatt Melbourne, although the exterior is actually the side exit. The hotel room interior was a set, due to the fire and water effects.[2]
Kevin having trouble turning the hotel room TV off, and him thinking Evie is communicating with him through the TV, calls back to Kevin Sr.’s appearances in “International Assassin.” Likewise, Kevin Sr. saying at the end of the episode that he saw Kevin Jr. on TV is an inversion of "International Assassin."
The G’Day Melbourne morning show is fictional. (Coincidentally, there was a morning show entitled Good Morning Melbourne which ran from 1981 to 1988 on Network Ten.)
Livinia Nixon, who plays the female morning show host Pam Jolly, is in fact a popular Australian host and weather presenter on the GTV-9 network.
Bruce, the G’Day Melbourne host, says the theme of this year’s Spring Fashion Ball was “under the sea,” continuing the season’s flood references.
The Melbourne Spring Fashion Ball does not appear to be an actual event. Melbourne is well-known for its fashion scene, and in particular for its famed Fashion Week, which typically takes place from the end of August into September, about a month before this episode takes place.
Ironically, if the viewer freeze frames Matt’s book when Kevin is reading it in the hotel room, much of it is about Kevin going to Laurie in “A Most Powerful Adversary” and Laurie trying to tell Kevin that he is suffering a delusion. Although Matt’s text is dismissive of Laurie, claiming that ”her knowledge of the mind had limited her knowledge of the spirit,” later events in this episode make it seem that Laurie might well have been correct.
Chief Inspector Kevin Yarborough’s hometown Makarra appears to be fictional, like Kurripa in the prior episode (as well as Mapleton and Jarden).
Rather oddly, fire trucks materialize behind Pam in the presumably stock G’Day Melbourne backdrop (they can be seen when she asks Georgie the pancake chef if he is ready, and they are not present in the earlier identical shot). In addition to foreshadowing the ending of the episode, it is possible that the fire trucks are not actually there and are an early hint of Kevin’s deteriorating mental state (calling back to the firemen responding to the hotel in “International Assassin”).
The more potentially interesting/strange signs on display in the background of the pancake cook-off include: “Is the grass greener on the other side?”; “Save me” with a drawing of a whale; “Free hugs”; “Kiss me Bruca” (presumably referring to G’Day Melbourne co-host Bruce Quartermain); “Give us the truth” (with a number 7); a sign depicting the “all-seeing-eye” pyramid (a symbol often associated with Freemasonry and various conspiracy theories) beaming people up into space, with captions that appear to read “We are not alone” and “They were taken”; and a simple sheet of paper with “Always on me” handwritten on it. A woman Kevin shoves past wears a T-shirt with several handwritten slogans on it, including: what appears to be the word “Lckin,” “U Melbourne,” “Dog Beer Ute Misses,” “A bad day huntin’ beats a good day workin’,” and “Bucks & Boars” (the latter is the mascot for the University of Melbourne).
The man at the bus stop suggests that the mother could run off, leaving Nora with the baby. In “International Assassin,” Patti claims this happened to her on the campaign trail in Iowa.
The G'Day Melbourne studio location was shot in Melbourne's Federation Square.[2]
The graffiti-covered alley where Kevin chases “Evie“ is Melbourne’s Hosier Lane. Since American law requires that any graffiti shown onscreen be cleared with the artist, the episode was shot from angles that rendered most of the work indistinguishable, with the show’s art department covering some pieces with their own papered-on graffiti. The graffiti artists work so quickly that some of the show’s stand-in graffiti got tagged by real graffiti artists.[2]
The "creepy" location where Nora meets Dr. Eden and Dr. Bekker is the Younghusband Wool Stores warehouse outside Melbourne.[2]
Dr. Eden speaks in Dutch when not conversing in English, whereas Dr. Bekker speaks in Russian (presumably they understand each other, but are more comfortable speaking in their respective native tongues). See here for a rough translation.
Kevin requesting a book with the rather alarming (when coupled with his erratic behavior) title Assassins is an obvious callback to his chosen profession in “International Assassin,” an experience which seems to be particularly on his mind throughout this episode.
Daniah (at Laurie’s instruction) says, “There is no family,” a G.R. tenet previously stated by Patti in “B.J. and the A.C.” and by Tom in “I Live Here Now.”
Dr. Van Eeghen, the inventor of the LADR machine, is named after series editor Henk Van Eeghen.[3]
Nora gets asked the same question the man who self-immolated in “Crazy Whitefella Thinking” was asked. Interestingly, Nora and the man give opposite answers, yet both are rejected. Damon Lindelof has suggested that the scientists are not looking for a specific verbal answer, but rather are measuring attachment: "Both of them gave answers that suggested to the questioners that they were still attached."[4]
It is ironic that Kevin and Nora’s final argument is in part about having a baby. The first thing Nora ever said to Kevin in “B.J. and the A.C.” was, “What’s up with the baby?” when Kevin was carrying the Jesus baby doll.
The beeping fire alarm, evacuation, and responding firefighters at the hotel call back to “International Assassin.”
Music[]
"This Love Is Over" by Ray LaMontagne & the Pariah Dogs (main title)
"Celestial Blues" by Andy Bey (Nora and Kevin reunite in the Austin airport after passing through security)
Rigoletto, Act I Scene 2: Gualtier Malde - Caro nome che il mio cor (Gilda), composed by Giuseppe Verdi, performed by Alida Ferrarina & the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Kevin and Nora's first scene at the hotel)
Sanctus, D. 872, composed by Franz Schubert, performed by the Choir of Trinity College & Cambridge (Kevin reads Matt's book in the hotel room and has flashbacks) (this piece has been used as a recurring theme relating to faith since early season 2, particularly in relation to Matt: see "Orange Sticker," "No Room at the Inn," "I Live Here Now," "The Book of Kevin," and "Crazy Whitefella Thinking")
"It Serves You Right to Suffer" (The Avener Rework) by John Lee Hooker & The Avener (Nora gives the woman's baby back, Kevin arrives at G'Day Melbourne)
"Take on Me" by a-ha (played on piano by Dr. Eden; the original plays over the closing scene and end credits)
"Take on Me" by Genghis Barbie (Nora gets into the crate, Kevin arrives at the library)
"A Blessing" by Max Richter (Laurie shows Kevin that he is experiencing a delusion)
La traviata, Act. II: Dite alla giovine - Non amarlo ditegli, composed by Giuseppe Verdi, performed by Joan Sutherland, Matteo Manuguerra & the National Philharmonic Orchestra (Nora and Kevin's fight in the hotel room)
