Life on Mars: Life is a Rock series finale
I don’t quite yet know how I feel about how they wrapped up this series. I guess its good they knew they were cancelled so we weren’t left hanging like with so many other ‘cancelled too soon’ shows over the past few years… But was this the best route to go? (Spoilery stuff ahead…)
Thinking about it a little more, I suppose it most definitely wouldn’t have worked to just have Sam wake up in 2008/09 and have it all be a dream. It was already cured a bit I think by being set up to have a very ‘Wizard of Oz’ feel (…and you were there, and you…). But jumping everything to 2035?
Like the linked TV Squad article, I agree it was almost ‘too literal’. They are astronauts off to find ‘Life On Mars’… But as that became the last 5 minutes of the series, I felt like they forced all kinds of weirdness into the references to force a wrap up. Going on a Gene hunt (searching for genetic DNA) as the mission matching up with Keitel’s character name (Gene Hunt), the forced references to 80’s women by Imperioli’s character, and the whole Wendy as a computer voice thing… It just felt way too forced….
Plus, don’t you think it would take more than 5 seconds for people to awake from a simulated reality (especially Sam’s) before they could be fully coherent, as they all jumped right into their ’space duties’ (yea, I said it…). The Sam and Annie thing 5 minutes earlier was set up beautifully, then suddenly we feel like they have no real connection at all…
I guess overall it was a daunting task to wrap the direction the show had taken, and I guess theres some kudos to give to the writers for at least trying. But overall it left me feeling kinda disappointed…
