Life on Mars, "Life Is A Rock": Space oddity

While I gave up on the American "Life on Mars" four or five episodes in, for the sake of completism -- and my fondness for the ending of the original series -- I checked out last night's series' finale, and... hoo-boy. Spoilers for both US and UK finales coming up just as soon as I shave my mustache...

So... where to begin? I guess with a quick recap of the UK finale for those who didn't see it, just to point out how strangely and awfully the US ending went wrong.

In the last episode of "Life on Mars" UK, Sam is caught in an ambush with the rest of Gene's team when he suddenly wakes up back in the present. He's told it was all some kind of elaborate coma fantasy, and sees that several figures from that fantasy (notably the Internal Affairs cop trying to bring down Gene) were based, "Wizard of Oz"-style, on people from the hospital. But after being back in his old life for a while, Sam discovers that he doesn't fit in, that he can't really feel anything, that he has no emotional connection to the 21st century anymore. And so -- as the full version of the Bowie song plays, just like it did in the pilot -- he goes up onto the roof of a tall building, jumps off, and...

...finds himself back in 1973, saving Gene, Ray and the others from the bad guys and committed to spending the rest of his existence in this weird place, not caring if it was a fantasy, or Purgatory, or something else entirely.

That is an ending. Whatever problems I may have had with the original show (which, like the remake, sometimes trended too closely to being an actual '70s cop show instead of a pastiche of one), I will always love it for that last episode.

I knew the American producers had a different take on the "mythology" of where/when their Sam was. I wasn't expecting a rehash of the original finale (though, based on the reaction this morning of several disgruntled "Life on Mars" USA fans whom I told about the old ending, they might have been better off copying it wholesale). But I also wasn't expecting anything as dumb and/or as insulting to the viewer as the ending we got.

The short version, if you didn't watch and are just curious how it ended: After a kidnapping case that sees Gene killing Sam's dad to save adult Sam's life, Sam more or less told his mom who he was, Annie (who figured out where Sam was in time to save him) got a promotion to detective, and Sam decided that he was sent back in time to meet and fall in love with Annie, and that he didn't care about ever going back to 2008, at which point he...

...finds himself several decades into our future, waking up from two years of hibernation on a NASA spaceship heading for Mars. He's not a cop from 2008 at all. That's just a fantasy cooked up by the ship's computer to keep his mind occupied during the travel (the astronaut version of Ray, sadly mustache-free, selected an elaborate island sex dream), and the trip back to 1973 was a glitch in the system. "Gene Hunt" is not the name of a person, but the mission they're on to find out if there was ever life on Mars, and Harvey Keitel is on board as Major Tom, astronaut Sam's dad.

Words fail me.

It's one thing to say that 1973 wasn't real, or even that the present-day material wasn't real (as the UK finale briefly suggested in a head-fake to the audience), but to say that neither was real? That none of what the viewer watched for these 17 episodes mattered? That it was all a very literal joke on the series' title?

Well, if I was someone who had actually ridden this particular train from beginning to end, sad that the ratings weren't strong enough to keep the show around, I would be furious about this. As it was, I was pretty mad that I stayed up after "Lost" just to watch it.

And the really maddening thing is that, until the idiotic, obnoxious twist ending, the finale was actually very good. I have to credit some of its power to the extensive use of Elton John's "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" -- like the original finale's use of Bowie on the rooftop, it gave scenes like Sam and Annie's kiss, or even Annie's unlikely promotion, some real weight. And the scene where we see Sam in the present-day, reading "Gulliver's Travels" to an old woman whom we assume to be his mom (as he promised her in 1973), but who turns out to be Annie, was lovely, even if it wound up mattering not at all in the grand scheme of things.

I'd like to think that this was a case of the writers being so frustrated with the cancellation that they were venting their anger at ABC with this stupid ending, but based on how early and often we saw the miniature Mars Rover, I have to assume this was their plan all along, which... wow. Just wow. Even the final shot, of 1973 Gene's leg preparing to step onto the Mars surface, seems less an attempt to give this silly explanation some ambiguity than it feels like someone's idea of a memorable closing image, meaning be damned.

I'm mad. How about you? Click here to read the full post

Friday catch-up: Life on Mars, ER, Private Practice and Terminator

It's Friday, which means it's time for another ever-popular grab-bag post, with spoilers on, in order, "Life on Mars," "ER," "Private Practice" and "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," all coming right up...

Hell of a night for homages to "The Wire." First, Dwight on "The Office" talks about juking the stats, and then "Life on Mars" features three different "Wire" alums -- Chad Coleman (Cutty), Chris Bauer (Frank Sobotka) and Clarke Peters (Cool Lester Smooth) -- in guest roles. Now, Peters was already in the show's premiere episode, and you see a lot of "Wire" actors turn up on shows shot in New York because they're East Coast-based, but I'm thinking the producers are fans to put three in one episode.

Unfortunately, the guest cast (which also featured Edi Gathegi, aka Big Love from "House," as a younger version of Peters' character, plus Whoopi Goldberg) was more interesting than the episode itself. My interest in the remake is fading even more rapidly than my interest in the original. They've already softened Gene Hunt far too much (and, yes, I say that about an episode where he was prepared to execute a murder suspect without trial or any real evidence), the cases don't interest me, and I don't think I'm going to really care about the clues about where/when Sam really is until we get to an actual finale. (Based on the ratings, that should be sometime this season.) The "Ice Ice Baby" gag was amusing in the same way that sort of joke usually works in any time travel story (see also Marty McFly inventing both the skateboard and rock music), but overall, the show's pretty flat.

(Also, I was waiting for the inevitable moment where Gathegi's character raised an eyebrow at Sam telling a story about a black NYPD detective he met when he was 17 years old, which would have been the 1950s. Was the NYPD progressive enough to have black detectives back then?)

I actually watched a screener of next week's "ER" with the resurrection of Mark Greene earlier yesterday, so it felt a little like watching "Memento" to then see this episode, which sets up stuff the characters will be talking about next week, like Gates and Sam moving in together, or Gates' homeless veteran patient.

Even had I watched them in the proper order, I suspect I would have found this one to be a pretty blah episode, even by later-period standards. I'm not sure exactly what they're doing with the new interns; isn't Shiri Appleby dating (or maybe even married to) the young surgeon, and, if so, why is she drooling all over Gates? (I mean, Stamos is handsome, but he's also got 15 years on her.) Also, casting Carl Weather as the father of a boxer is one of those ideas that probably sounded great on paper but inadvertently turned that entire story into a big meta joke. (The only way it would have been weirder was if they had mixed in some "Arrested Development" cheapskate jokes about Weathers.)

Matt at Throwing Things recently argued that "Private Practice" has been this year's most improved show so far. I can see that, in that it's gone from teeth-grindingly awful to mediocrity, which is probably a bigger leap than the good-to-wonderful one "Chuck" has taken, but the show is still, at best, something I have on while doing three other things. Glad as I am to see Addison behaving like Addison again, and to see more of a focus on the cases and the ethical problems contained therein, I still don't feel attached to any of the other characters. And even when a case involves life or death, as it did this week with the terminally ill teen who desperately wanted a baby, the setting somehow makes the stakes feel much lower. I can't explain exactly why, but put that exact same storyline into a hospital show and it would have felt a lot more powerful, I think.

Finally, it's a shame nobody's watching "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" -- and that even fewer will be watching once the show moves to Fridays -- because they're really on a roll of late. Other than the subplot with Derek and his time-traveling girlfriend, where I constantly feel like they're leaving all the exposition on the cutting room floor (how does she know Derek's fence, for instance?), every storyline was clicking this week. Stupid as it is for John to not tell his mom about Cromartie visiting the house, or about Cameron going walkabout a few episodes back, his desire to have something resembling a normal life -- with a normal girlfriend who did a much better job dealing with Cromartie than any other person to date -- is understandable and a good idea for the show to explore. (When John was whining to Sarah about her not protecting him from killing Sarkisian, she really should have told him that he needs to get ready to kill a whole lot of people and things.) And Ellison's ongoing crisis of faith in the wake of learning that SkyNet is real has been very well-done. I'm still not sure exactly how much, if anything, he suspects about Shirley Manson, and I'm taking a wait-and-see approach on this apparent SkyNet civil war plotline they've been setting up, but this season has been really engaging so far.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mid-Friday catch-up: Grey's Anatomy, ER and Life on Mars

Quick spoilers for last night's episodes of, in order, "Grey's Anatomy," "ER" and "Life on Mars" coming up just as soon as I make sure my floor is clean...

"Grey's Anatomy" continues its recent streak of solid, back-to-basics episodes. The things that either annoy me or that I don't care about (say, the Mer/Der tension) are things I never liked in the first place, while there's been much more focus on the part of the show that I do enjoy, like the cutthroat nature of the surgical program (the cafeteria scene was a highlight) or relationship stories that don't make me want to slit my throat (like Callie turning to McSteamy for sub-equatorial advice, a decision that will no doubt backfire amusingly in an episode or two). Plus, they continue to do a stellar job of guest casting. How perfect was Carl Lumbly as the estranged dad?

Speaking of perfect guest casting of African-American actors of a certain age, it was a pleasure to see Glynn Turman show up on "ER," though he didn't have as much to do as I would have liked. (For those of you who were as knocked out as I was by Turman's Emmy-winning appearances on "In Treatment," keep an eye out for "Scrubs" when it returns: Bill Lawrence and Zach Braff were just as blown away by Turman's work there and crafted a whole episode around him.)

The rest of the episode was a mixed bag. It's always a pleasure to watch Angela Bassett beat people up (if the "X-Men" movies had been made even a few years earlier, she would have been a perfect, studio-acceptable choice to play Storm), and the necessary softening of Dr. Banfield is beginning. On the other hand, even if every commercial for hadn't screamed that the little sister was eeeeeevil!, the episode way telegraphed it, which ruined what should have been a wonderfully creepy moment when her true sociopathic colors came out at the end.

Also, two annoying things from a longtime "ER" fan standpoint. First, I'm sure the show has occasionally recycled guest stars (though never with the frequency of an "NYPD Blue" or "Law & Order"), but it bugged me to see Molly Price as the mom, since I had only recent channel-surfed past the "ER"/"Third Watch" crossover where Susan Lewis goes to New York so Yoakas and Bosco can help her find her sister. Second, late in the hour there was a plug for NBC's website where Linda Cardellini asked, while discussing a poll about best "ER" characters of all time, "Dr. Ross or Dr. Gates? It's a tough question." Um, no. Stamos has been just fine the last few years, but no. Not even in the same ballpark.

Finally, the ratings for "Life on Mars" continue to slide right along with my interest in it. I continue to enjoy some of the '70s touches -- the unexpected song choices, the "Starsky & Hutch"-esque score, Michael Imperioli's amazing mustache -- but the heart of the show is starting to feel as thin as I began to find the British show by its second season. It's just too close to an actual '70s cop show -- and a middle-of-the-road one, at that -- for me to stick around much longer, cool music and moostashes or no. This show needs some weird in a hurry.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Life on Mars, "The Real Adventures of the Unreal Sam Tyler": Sink or swim

Quick spoilers for "Life on Mars" episode two coming up just as soon as I explain to the show's writers that a metaphor is not the same as an analogy, and vice versa...

That one linguistic pet peeve aside (and it would have been funny if Imperioli had whipped out a dictionary later in the episode to win the argument with Sam), this was another solid episode from the remake. Not deep in any way, but fun.

In particular, my spirits were lifted by the use of Mott the Hooples' "All the Way From Memphis," which is both a great tune (particularly the piano intro they kept featuring) as well as one that hasn't been used to death in other early '70s period pieces. If they can keep doing the Cameron Crowe thing of finding unheralded but terrific music from the era, it's going to go a long way towards holding my affections.

I liked Sam listing all the possibilities he could think of, and that his fixation on "real" vs. "unreal" helped him crack the case. Imperioli's desire to punish Sam for stealing his promotion is already more interesting than anything the original Ray had to do, and a better use of Imperioli than in the pilot. And Harvey Keitel's obvious enjoyment of this role spills out and infuses itself into the whole show.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: 'Life on Mars' & 'Eleventh Hour' reviews

Today's column reviews the latest British remakes in a season that's been full of them: "Life on Mars" and "Eleventh Hour." The latter put me to sleep; the former is surprisingly not terrible, but that may simply be because my expectations were so low. (And I still have no idea if it's an idea that can work long-term, as opposed to 16 episodes in England.)

Feel free to use this post to comment on either show after they air tonight. Click here to read the full post