Life On Mars — Page 2

I thought the first episode was pretty good, but the second and third were just heavy handed and kind of annoying with all the "let's beat you over the head that it's the 70s by making stilted references to George Carlin's 7 Dirty Words and Grease has been playing for a year" stuff every ten seconds.

These writers just don't have the wit to keep up with the writing they're copying. The whole analogy/metaphor thing was painful to listen to, Sam's self-righteous speeches about prejudice this week are even worse, and Keitel is getting bogged down with crap dialogue that thinks it's poetic, too.

Sam has been turned from the set-upon depressive I loved in the UK into an all-American hero who hugs children and makes feeble quips at his enemies. Urgh. Where's the misery? This show has been Americanized in the worst sense possible- its 1973 Manhattan is shinier and cleaner than the actual Manhattan of 2008, which is nuts since they actually film in the city. All the hippies are beautiful and sunny, Sam's apartment is impossibly spacious, and nobody seems to smoke.

This show is only holding my interest in a purely mechanical, plot-based way. I want to see how this diverges from the original, and what's up with this version of Sam. The moments when he acts completely nuts are the only ones where he holds my interest anymore - he's the dead opposite of John Simm, who held the entire UK LoM together so subtly most people didn't even realize it until Ashes to Ashes just wasn't the same without him.

I wanted this to be awesome, and no, I don't think UK TV is inherently superior. No one could watch Torchwood and think that. U.S. TV, even on the main networks, is capable of brilliance - witness House, Veronica Mars, The West Wing, Scrubs, etc. - but it's just not happening here. This Life on Mars isn't atrocious, really; it's just horribly mediocre.

Updated On: 10/25/08 at 12:18 PM

Anyone watch the series finale last night?

I have not watched the bbc series, and only got hooked on this one in the past few months and really liked how it all came together.

---

no.. it was an amzaing series ruined by the fact that it was canceled when it never should have been! i commend the writers for coming up with a great series finale for a show that should have had at least another year or finished off a complete season... if more episodes were there i think more ideas presented in the finale would have been fleshed out in more detail.. especially the parallel between sam's REAL father show at the end (harvey keitel) and his dream state father (dean winters)... and i'm thinking the annie thing was that he accidentally flashed to the 70s he wasn't supposed to meet annie (or any of his shipmates for that matter) and when he did he ended up falling in love.. and when he got out of his sleep state he met her in real life (cuz i think she wasn't part of the crew, right? just someone else on the ship?)... but yeah... i think if there were more episodes it could've been fleshed out moe

Ugh. I fell asleep. Can someone please tell me how it ended? I didn't realize it was the finale. I lost interest in this show after the third episode.

here is the ending...

basically it was a dream. the show actually takes place in 2035. sam (and the rest of the cast) were put in some type of sleeping state travelling from earth to mars on a mission. as part of the sleeping state they were able to come up with any fantasy that they wanted. sam wanted to be a cop in 2008 as his fantasy but during the trip there was some type of collision with an asteroid field and it caused a glitch in sam's machine so it knocked him back to the 70s but with his 2008 memories, and also the glitch caused the rest of the crew to be in his dream. it turned out that gene hunt was actually his father and i think annie was some woman in charge of the crew and they had never met, so when sam woke up he basically recognized her and he wanted to meet her or something along those lines. the last shot was of the entire cast in their astronaut gear stepping onto mars. the end.

i liked it...

Huh, interesting. I'm rather glad we abandoned it after a few episodes then. I remember how great the UK ending was, and I suppose it was too much for the American show to have such a (uh, trying to figure out how to put this without creating a spoiler) *ambiguous* ending.

LOL WUT.

No, really. That's a belated April Fool, right? It didn't really end like that, right?

No, REALLY, PLEASE tell me it didn't end like that. I honestly could s*** a better ending. O_O

---

I still hated it. And believe me...look at my avatar...I LOVE this show. The last ten minutes were like a knife in the heart. So senseless. I *understand* that it was all about time travel, and while it fit, I guess, it just negated all the human emotions felt throughout the series. The relationship between Sam and Vic was my favorite part of the series...and it all meant nothing.

The most amazing part of the episode to me was adult Sam telling Vic "I'm your son" and Vic saying "I know"..and still try to kill him. Explore that! Or Rose talking about how Detective Skywalker is what she hopes Sammy will grow up to be..and Annie's reaction to that...all this cool stuff ignored and the ridiculous "Dallas" ending played out. So, so disappointing.

The only thing I liked about the ending was Gene's white loafer touching down on Mars.

I had my own problems with the UK ending, but at least it arose from Sam's character in a plausible and thoughtful way. The US ending? Mostly seemed like a mechanical attempt to be clever by playing with Bowie lyrics. Urgh.

(Apropos of nothing, I've started watching Band of Brothers and spotted Jason O'Mara playing a lieutenant in one of the episodes. That show had a lot of UK actors, now that I look at it.)