Judging from the season premiere’s largely positive reception, The Leftovers was smart to roll out the welcome wagon for a family full of new characters in a Texas town far, far away (after first introducing us to cavepeople a long time ago). So it took the show a curious kind of confidence to cut away from the newly established setting and take us back to where it all began at the first chance it got.

Returning to the New York suburban setting and climactic time frame of its Season One finale before slowly catching up to the events of the episode that preceded it, the appropriately titled “A Matter of Geography” was all over the map. That’s a good thing. Compared to the first season’s sophomore ep, which was when the series’ intriguing premise hit the prestige-TV-by-numbers pavement, there’s almost nothing formulaic about this one. It continuously went bigger, brighter, stranger, and further than expected.

I reviewed The Leftovers’ (mostly) strong second episode for Decider.