Life On Mars final episode [NO SPOILERS]
Starbuck [18:31]
Comments: 5
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Ha ha! It all makes sense now! Unless you're one of those people for whom it didn't make sense, and for whom the final episode of this hugely entertaining drama will have been a whole lot less satisfying...
Anyway, no spoilers here, not until the Comments box anyway, just a log of some thoughts that drifted through my mind as I watched the episode around midnight last night...
"Hmmm. Tired. Ah, good, the music always wakes me up. Good titles... [ring ring... get to the point Starbuck... you're time there is too short for this mental rambling...]
... ahh, I know what's happening.... He must be in a coma in 2006... they've left a television on in his room and its bleeding into his dreams....
... look, the main villain is Leslie Johns... there must be some news story on the box about John Leslie's latest sordid exploits...
... wait, that bloke being tortured... its Marty from Shameless... they must've changed channels...
... now this is getting silly... Paddy McGuire from Shameless is running around with a shotgun..."
And now for the spoiler, as I thought I'd just written somewhere else but can't find it (am I in a coma? Is it a dream? Etc):
There's all sorts of contrasting chatter going on about what the outcome of the show was all about.
Well, what I took from the episode was exactly what Frank Morgan told Tyler – that he was a delusional amnesiac living in 1973, albeit one with a brilliant mind, which was working so hard to convince him that this wasn’t his reality (possibly to cover the pain of his true pre-amnesia reality), that it managed to make predict what us, the viewer, perceive to be his future.
For example, it took a small stroke of genius for someone to invent the stinger. Why not Tyler?
I used to LOVE Garibaldi's. Mmm. Though my fave Gene Hunt line was that "She's as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot".
Incidentally, Mrs Powersurge hasn't yet seen the final episode, and she'd only seen show very occasionally during the two series.
Still, I asked her what she thought would be the final outcome. She said that "I think that Sam's living in the 1970s and that he's just been dreaming all of the 1990s stuff". Smart bird.
I was expecting earth-shattering twists. Boy was I wrong. It wasn't a great show with promise, it was a show with great promise and it didn't deliver. If John Simm underacted any lower I would have nodded off - still it got him the BAFTA nod. The best thing about the show: Gene Hunt (the character) and Philip Glenister (the actor what played him). Good news - it's coming back, bad news - it's set in the 80s, good news - it's set in London, good news - Gene Hunt is coming back. But I loved the 70s...!
Favourite quote: If anything 'appens to this motor - I'm gonna come to your homes and stamp on all your toys. Got it? Good kids.
If they had played the reruns of The Sweeney instead it would have been more satisfying. Oh! Innit great ITV 4 are repeating The Professionals and ITV Play has died a horrid death? No? Oh, suit yourself.
You've still got Making ITV A Mint (or whatever its called) on from midnight... ooh, that show makes me mad.
Something else that made me mad, at least for a while, was that, during Comic Relief (which was otherwise brilliant this year), all of the bits where they "begged" you for your donations were done just like on those horrible gambling shows - presenter's eye view slightly above the camera looking down pleadingly on the viewer. It made me kind of uncomfortable. Which means they probably did the right thing.
