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Life on Mars 2.08
Um. This one really has me in two minds. I can see why most people on lj squeed about the finale, but I'm afraid I'm more with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hmpf who articulated in a brilliant post why I think the show took the easy way out, and fell short of what it could have been.
In a comment tohmpf's post, someone uses that Joss Whedon quote which make people either hate or adore The Artist Known As Numfar, about giving the audience not what they want but what they need, and adds that Matthew Graham, on the other hand, gave the audience what they wanted, not what they needed. hmpf called it a fanfiction ending. And that's it. Why I'm simultanously glad and dissappointed. Of course I, along everyone else, am much more invested in the 1973 reality and its people and want Sam to bicker with Gene and drive off in the sunset with his mates etc. - but what I wanted even more from the series finale is something that feels like the end of a quest to me, instead of "2006/7 sucks, 1973 yay!". Reading a Matthew Graham interview where he says he couldn't bear leaving Sam in 2007 just clinched it. Because you should have, mate, you should have. It would have been the harder, more difficult choice; he - and we - would have felt the loss of 1973, but he could have achieved a union of his two worlds, using what he had learned then, and live in the present. What I'd like to have seen as an ending, for example: Sam goes to the Railway Arms in 2007, and there's an old, vaguely familiar man. Of course it's Gene Hunt. And he buys him a pint, and they start to get to know each other again. The end.
I remember Salman Rushdie writing, in his essay about the Wizard of Oz, that he couldn't understand why Dorothy wanted to get back to Kansas. Kansas being so dull and oppressive. Why she didn't stay in Oz. Apparantly, Matthew Graham agreed and decided to let Dorothy stay in Oz forever and ever. In my last review, I also mentioned Normal Again, which is a season 6 of BTVS episode, and sure enough, the LoM follows its pattern - leading character gets told by "doctor" that she/he has to destroy the friend(s) keeping her/him in one reality in order to wake up in another, at first he/she (almost) does, returns to alternate reality, takes his/her leave there for good and then goes back to reality with friends, saving their lives, and stays in that reality for good. But you know the two crucial differences: 1) Normal Again wasn't the series finale, and 2) Buffy actually chose the harsher world. Sunnydale, especially as presented in season 6, was hell on earth at times, it was at that point depression and broken relationships and a lot of work to do. Meanwhile, the other reality offered to her, the one in which she wasn't the Slayer, had her mother (who was dead in the other one) and father restored to her, a loving couple, no crushing responsibilities. The easy one. So Buffy and Sam, despite both going back for their friends, made in fact opposite choices emotionally, and in the way the show presented it.
I like the BTVS version better. Let me put it this way: the LoM finale is fluffy candy to Normal Again's spicy meal that occasionally burns the throat but really nourishes.
Announced spin-off: sounds suspiciously like a remake, only with Sam replaced by a female character so they can play out a romance with Gene. No interest.
On the other hand, I'm looking forward more than ever to seeing John Simm this season on Dr. Who. Never mind what I said about the script, his acting was fabulous.
hmpf who articulated in a brilliant post why I think the show took the easy way out, and fell short of what it could have been. In a comment to
hmpf's post, someone uses that Joss Whedon quote which make people either hate or adore The Artist Known As Numfar, about giving the audience not what they want but what they need, and adds that Matthew Graham, on the other hand, gave the audience what they wanted, not what they needed. hmpf called it a fanfiction ending. And that's it. Why I'm simultanously glad and dissappointed. Of course I, along everyone else, am much more invested in the 1973 reality and its people and want Sam to bicker with Gene and drive off in the sunset with his mates etc. - but what I wanted even more from the series finale is something that feels like the end of a quest to me, instead of "2006/7 sucks, 1973 yay!". Reading a Matthew Graham interview where he says he couldn't bear leaving Sam in 2007 just clinched it. Because you should have, mate, you should have. It would have been the harder, more difficult choice; he - and we - would have felt the loss of 1973, but he could have achieved a union of his two worlds, using what he had learned then, and live in the present. What I'd like to have seen as an ending, for example: Sam goes to the Railway Arms in 2007, and there's an old, vaguely familiar man. Of course it's Gene Hunt. And he buys him a pint, and they start to get to know each other again. The end. I remember Salman Rushdie writing, in his essay about the Wizard of Oz, that he couldn't understand why Dorothy wanted to get back to Kansas. Kansas being so dull and oppressive. Why she didn't stay in Oz. Apparantly, Matthew Graham agreed and decided to let Dorothy stay in Oz forever and ever. In my last review, I also mentioned Normal Again, which is a season 6 of BTVS episode, and sure enough, the LoM follows its pattern - leading character gets told by "doctor" that she/he has to destroy the friend(s) keeping her/him in one reality in order to wake up in another, at first he/she (almost) does, returns to alternate reality, takes his/her leave there for good and then goes back to reality with friends, saving their lives, and stays in that reality for good. But you know the two crucial differences: 1) Normal Again wasn't the series finale, and 2) Buffy actually chose the harsher world. Sunnydale, especially as presented in season 6, was hell on earth at times, it was at that point depression and broken relationships and a lot of work to do. Meanwhile, the other reality offered to her, the one in which she wasn't the Slayer, had her mother (who was dead in the other one) and father restored to her, a loving couple, no crushing responsibilities. The easy one. So Buffy and Sam, despite both going back for their friends, made in fact opposite choices emotionally, and in the way the show presented it.
I like the BTVS version better. Let me put it this way: the LoM finale is fluffy candy to Normal Again's spicy meal that occasionally burns the throat but really nourishes.
Announced spin-off: sounds suspiciously like a remake, only with Sam replaced by a female character so they can play out a romance with Gene. No interest.
On the other hand, I'm looking forward more than ever to seeing John Simm this season on Dr. Who. Never mind what I said about the script, his acting was fabulous.
no subject
But see, the problem is that they never gave us suspense. Or even a difficulty for Sam to make that choice. Because 2007 was presented as unrelentingly disconnected and not worth living in. Which is one of many reasons why I admire Normal Again - the alternative was presented with genuine advantages, not as something we could easily see our protagonist decline.
Also? As I said to Kathy above: If Life on Mars had given us a scene with Sam's mother being told her son committed suicide, and breaking down in horrible grief, perhaps with her sister, and asking "Why, Sam, why", I think it would have felt like balance - bittersweet instead of feel-good-ask-no-questions-this-is-liberation-dammit.
But they didn't want to go there. They didn't want us to think about Sam's mother, or any other people who care about him in 2007. They wanted us to feel nothing but happy. The easy way out.
I do not want (for instance) a convincingly tragic ending, in which a devoted family man suffers the anguish of being separated from his wife and children for ever, rewritten because the actor is afraid some viewers may think it's a negative message about absent Afro-American fathers.
*g* Ah, the DS9 ending... yes, that one is problematic as well, though I tend to rant more about the stupid fisticuffs...
no subject
I think if the suspense was lost it happened in episode six, which was clearly written to resolve his relationship with Maya and to clear the way for his relationship with Annie. That's the one I'd have rewritten: I'd have preferred him to be on the point of committing to Annie when he starts hearing Maya, which renews his hope of returning home and pulls him back from Annie, making her bewildered and angry.
I haven't seen Normal Again (somehow I never could get into Buffy), and I'm sure it was an excellent episode, but I don't see how there could have been genuine suspense if it occurred mid-season; if Buffy had accepted a normal life, wouldn't the show have come to a stop? It's only in a finale, particularly in the last season finale, that you've got carte blanche.
Re Ruth Tyler: I thought there were many missing scenes, but that one would have broken the rule of the entire story being seen from Sam's PoV. They could have broken the rule, in order to prove that 2006 was reality, but I'm glad they didn't; whatever Matthew Graham says, I think the final episode left the possibilities open. And... I didn't think we needed Ruth's reaction spelled out to us. She's been present in Sam's mind throughout the story, we've just seen her with him, of course she's going to be heartbroken. The scene that's missing isn't her reaction, it's Sam's regret that he has to leave her.
In my DS9 ending, there are no stupid fisticuffs. The loss of his family is integral to saving the galaxy.