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rusty_haloOH MY GOD. I just finished watching the final episode of Life on Mars and there is not enough squee in the world to describe how completely awesome that was! Best ending to a TV series I have ever seen! And one of the best shows that I've seen in my life, period.
Um, let's see. Raw initial thoughts before I delve into the fandom and then re-watch the entire thing (yay four day weekend!). Warning: lots of babbling incoherent squee ahead.
* It was the happiest and the saddest ending that you could possibly have had. Simultaneously!
* Happiest because for the entire series you have been watching Sam struggle to figure out his psychological issues and make peace with himself. And in the end, he does. The ending is the only time in the series where you finally see Sam genuinely happy.
* Saddest because, well obviously, he rejects the real world, gives up on real life, chooses to live in his own fantasy, and kills himself.
* But, how can you possibly be sad, when the last thing you see is the gang that you've been watching for 16 hours reunited and happy again?
* (Really makes you think about the ways we [*cough*] use fandom as an escape from real life, eh?)
* It's so dark: the lead character gives up on the world and kills himself. Except, the series keeps asking: what is reality? On some level, isn't *everything* in our heads? Our perceptions of the world, being filtered and processed and experienced in our brains? If the imaginary world *feels* more real, maybe it is, and Sam is finally making an empowered choice by creating and choosing the world he wants to live in.
* But! It's ambiguous! Because you could buy into the idea that Sam really IS in 1973 and what he's rejecting is his own insane delusions about being from the future. In that case he really does reject his own disturbing fantasies and chooses to live in the world he's in and be happy. (I don't really buy that--doesn't fit with the rest of the series, doesn't make sense how he knows what's coming in the actual future--but I think it's ambiguous enough that you can see it that way if you prefer. Maybe he's a mentally unstable guy from 1973 having occasional psychic flashes of the future, which he mixes up into his fantasy. Or maybe all of the future, including us, just exist as delusions in 1973 Sam's head.)
* Hell, you could even see it that he's an actual time traveler, although there's no canon explanation for how the hell that'd have happened. Still, if he isn't really in 1973 and is in a coma, how'd he manage to change the past to make that one guy a mental patient?
* The characters were so fleshed out that you really could believe that they were real people. But, it also would've made perfect sense that they represented different aspects of Sam's subconscious. (I'm sure there's essays all over fandom about who represents what--Gene as Sam's unrestrained id, obviously.) Did I mention how much I love the ambiguity?
* It's weird because for quite a few episodes in, I had a really hard time getting attached to any of the characters, because I figured that none of them were real and none of this really mattered. But then by the end of it I'd really come to love them and the world, and it just hit home so intensely when Sam went back to them and I was so glad and relieved! Even though he'd just jumped off a freaking building!
* And the last lines! "I am the law." "Yeah, in your dreams." OH MY GOD, WORKS ON EVERY METAPHORIC LEVEL, JUST PERFECT.
* Just, the whole series, and all the issues it manages to explore within such a weird framework. Sexism, racism, friendship, love, family, logic versus instinct (did Gene Hunt remind anyone else of a real fleshed out version of Stephen Colbert's character? and then you start to love him ANYWAY?), reality versus fantasy, the whole philosophical question of what's real and where does meaning come from... OMG MUST RE-WATCH ENTIRE SERIES IMMEDIATELY.
* Um, John Simm. There is the purely shallow OMG HOT and HOW LUCKY ARE WE THAT HE IS IN ALSO IN A SERIES WITH DAVID TENNANT and MUST READ LOM/DR WHO CROSSOVER FIC IMMEDIATELY and... I've actually been reading RPS for the first time because Tennant and Simm are so hot together... and now I know that John Simm is not just awesome as the Master but absolutely scorchingly hot as Sam Tyler... but um, beyond the shallow... (and it's really hard to tear my mind away from the shallow...)
* John Simm is such a good actor. He made me love Sam Tyler. He (and, y'know, the writing) really made me feel that this character is an unusually good man, stuck in an incredibly strange situation, trying his hardest to do the right thing, while not always knowing what's going on or what's right, and making genuine human mistakes and being convincingly mentally unstable and also doing awesome heroic things and fighting for what's right. He really made me feel the character's aching vulnerability while at the same time respecting his intelligence and integrity. And he's got this absolute sincere *sweetness* all mixed up with this instability and darkness. I just loved him so much.
And even as he got more and more accustomed to the fantasy world, he never gave in to the racism and sexism and homophobia, never stopped being genuinely compassionate towards people--not because it was a PC affectation but because he was a *genuinely good guy*. That's rare, and so many shows like to show a character's darkness by showing him slipping up in those areas, but they managed to convince me that he was complex and screwed-up without resorting to cheap nastiness. His struggles were more complex, all about loyalty and friendship and figuring out what's right.
At some point I ended up watching all the tense moments with my hands over my mouth going OMG SAM and anytime anything bad happened I'd be all "oh, poor Sam" and just... the character completely grabbed me! I just loved Sam so much and it breaks my heart that he died but at the same time I'm glad that he found some kind of happiness and peace with himself. Didn't you always wish that Dorothy had stayed in the colorful world of Oz instead of returning to the stupid boring old farm?
* And Gene Hunt! For a moment there I was worried that the series would end on the stupid half-there het ship but no, of COURSE it ended with Sam/Gene banter; that's the relationship that the show was really about, and the writers knew it.
* Although Annie is kind of interesting. Not really as a character (I didn't dislike her, just didn't find her very realistic or compelling; she definitely felt more like a coma-induced fantasy than a real person) but in terms of what she represents. She's like a big pillow, all understanding and comforting and huggable, with just enough tension to sustain the romantic angle for 16 episodes. But. She's also the one who keeps telling Sam to stay, to let go of the real world and give in to the fantasy. The show doesn't present it this way, but the whole time she is basically luring Sam to his death.
* The music. I didn't realize the seventies produced so much good music. The whole seventies atmosphere. They absolutely created a world and made me believe in it.
* So many awesome surreal details. The scary girl in the TV. All the Wizard of Oz references. The kids-show claymation Sam and Gene! Gene in a rat suit!
* I really didn't know the twist was coming; that Sam would choose 1973 over 2006. Maybe I'd have figured it out if I'd had weeks to contemplate between episodes, but watching it all in one go made it a surprise. And it was the good kind of surprise, where you weren't expecting it, but when it happens in makes perfect sense and you can't imagine it having been any other way. You realize along with Sam that he prefers 1973, that he *can't* leave that team and betray those people, that the 2006 he's been fighting to return to isn't actually where he wants to be.
* The whole thing just has this great mythic resonance, too, far more than I'd expected from what I assumed amounted to a cop show (pastiche). It kind of reminded me of Stephen King's Dark Tower, with the atmosphere and the music and the journey to a strange land, worlds colliding, the uncertainty over what's real and what's imaginary, the main character trying to figure out who he is and what he's meant to be doing. And of course, The Dark Tower itself is full of references to The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland and hell, even those Sergio Leone Westerns that Gene loves.
* Now I'm reading some reviews and it's interesting how many people really love Gene Hunt and see him as a metaphor for how the modern world has gotten overly caught up in political correctness and needs to get back in touch with "gut feelings" and all that bullshit. That kind of freaks me out because while I loved Gene as a fictional character, I never once thought the world would actually be better with people like him in charge. Even though Sam wasn't always right, I appreciated him arguing for doing things correctly and fairly, even when it was a lot harder to do so. Huh. Guess that's me and my "overly PC" view of the world... :P
Although I DO like the way it works in a metaphorical/psychological sense; Sam in 2006 is repressed and overly analytical and feeling helpless, so he creates this world that's all about immediacy and living in the moment and, y'know, letting your id run wild (literally). And the whole thing is about integrating the two, him and Gene, finding the balance where both aspects of himself can work together. Sam *needs* that id, but he's also right to be wary of it, because it's dangerous and ugly when out of control, but it's also glorious and necessary in the right context.
* I should probably not be posting this at 3am on a Friday night, when my eyes are too cross-eyed to proofread it correctly, and no one's going to be awake to read it anyway. Oh well. Drop me a comment if I've got any egregious typos? *off to sleep*
* ETA: And then I spent a bunch of time last night thinking about how Life on Mars compares to Fight Club. (Because I almost put a Fight Club icon on this entry, and couldn't figure out why I had the impulse to do that.) Both stories feature the mentally unstable repressed nice guy main character's id personified as an alter ego character that he makes up in his head. Both are about the struggle between the "civilized" main character and his "primal" alter ego, and both show the alter ego as having both good aspects and bad, and the main character needing to integrate the alter ego's traits into his own personality (although Fight Club ends with him destroying the fantasy and coming back into the real world, while Life on Mars is the opposite).
And they both deal with the nature of masculinity (and both are steeped in homoerotic subtext) and the idea that modern "PC" culture undercuts masculine instincts. And they both have this idea about returning to a "primitive" culture; Tyler Durden wants to destroy the modern world and go back to being cavemen; for Sam, 1973 *is* that primitive world that he prefers to live in. And then it got me thinking in general about these narratives of returning to a more primitive life, the idea that the past was simpler and that the modern world is out of touch with what it means to be human. (I remember writing an Anthropology paper in college about how humanity would've been much better off if we'd just remained a hunter-gatherer society.)
And then I started thinking about how LoM compares to The Matrix, because I always think of Fight Club and The Matrix together (I had a college class about the nature of modern Western culture that featured both prominently) and how they all address the question of what is real and how we create our own realities... kind of depressing to think that in LoM Sam chooses the blue pill....
[Cross-posted to InsaneJournal]
Um, let's see. Raw initial thoughts before I delve into the fandom and then re-watch the entire thing (yay four day weekend!). Warning: lots of babbling incoherent squee ahead.
* It was the happiest and the saddest ending that you could possibly have had. Simultaneously!
* Happiest because for the entire series you have been watching Sam struggle to figure out his psychological issues and make peace with himself. And in the end, he does. The ending is the only time in the series where you finally see Sam genuinely happy.
* Saddest because, well obviously, he rejects the real world, gives up on real life, chooses to live in his own fantasy, and kills himself.
* But, how can you possibly be sad, when the last thing you see is the gang that you've been watching for 16 hours reunited and happy again?
* (Really makes you think about the ways we [*cough*] use fandom as an escape from real life, eh?)
* It's so dark: the lead character gives up on the world and kills himself. Except, the series keeps asking: what is reality? On some level, isn't *everything* in our heads? Our perceptions of the world, being filtered and processed and experienced in our brains? If the imaginary world *feels* more real, maybe it is, and Sam is finally making an empowered choice by creating and choosing the world he wants to live in.
* But! It's ambiguous! Because you could buy into the idea that Sam really IS in 1973 and what he's rejecting is his own insane delusions about being from the future. In that case he really does reject his own disturbing fantasies and chooses to live in the world he's in and be happy. (I don't really buy that--doesn't fit with the rest of the series, doesn't make sense how he knows what's coming in the actual future--but I think it's ambiguous enough that you can see it that way if you prefer. Maybe he's a mentally unstable guy from 1973 having occasional psychic flashes of the future, which he mixes up into his fantasy. Or maybe all of the future, including us, just exist as delusions in 1973 Sam's head.)
* Hell, you could even see it that he's an actual time traveler, although there's no canon explanation for how the hell that'd have happened. Still, if he isn't really in 1973 and is in a coma, how'd he manage to change the past to make that one guy a mental patient?
* The characters were so fleshed out that you really could believe that they were real people. But, it also would've made perfect sense that they represented different aspects of Sam's subconscious. (I'm sure there's essays all over fandom about who represents what--Gene as Sam's unrestrained id, obviously.) Did I mention how much I love the ambiguity?
* It's weird because for quite a few episodes in, I had a really hard time getting attached to any of the characters, because I figured that none of them were real and none of this really mattered. But then by the end of it I'd really come to love them and the world, and it just hit home so intensely when Sam went back to them and I was so glad and relieved! Even though he'd just jumped off a freaking building!
* And the last lines! "I am the law." "Yeah, in your dreams." OH MY GOD, WORKS ON EVERY METAPHORIC LEVEL, JUST PERFECT.
* Just, the whole series, and all the issues it manages to explore within such a weird framework. Sexism, racism, friendship, love, family, logic versus instinct (did Gene Hunt remind anyone else of a real fleshed out version of Stephen Colbert's character? and then you start to love him ANYWAY?), reality versus fantasy, the whole philosophical question of what's real and where does meaning come from... OMG MUST RE-WATCH ENTIRE SERIES IMMEDIATELY.
* Um, John Simm. There is the purely shallow OMG HOT and HOW LUCKY ARE WE THAT HE IS IN ALSO IN A SERIES WITH DAVID TENNANT and MUST READ LOM/DR WHO CROSSOVER FIC IMMEDIATELY and... I've actually been reading RPS for the first time because Tennant and Simm are so hot together... and now I know that John Simm is not just awesome as the Master but absolutely scorchingly hot as Sam Tyler... but um, beyond the shallow... (and it's really hard to tear my mind away from the shallow...)
* John Simm is such a good actor. He made me love Sam Tyler. He (and, y'know, the writing) really made me feel that this character is an unusually good man, stuck in an incredibly strange situation, trying his hardest to do the right thing, while not always knowing what's going on or what's right, and making genuine human mistakes and being convincingly mentally unstable and also doing awesome heroic things and fighting for what's right. He really made me feel the character's aching vulnerability while at the same time respecting his intelligence and integrity. And he's got this absolute sincere *sweetness* all mixed up with this instability and darkness. I just loved him so much.
And even as he got more and more accustomed to the fantasy world, he never gave in to the racism and sexism and homophobia, never stopped being genuinely compassionate towards people--not because it was a PC affectation but because he was a *genuinely good guy*. That's rare, and so many shows like to show a character's darkness by showing him slipping up in those areas, but they managed to convince me that he was complex and screwed-up without resorting to cheap nastiness. His struggles were more complex, all about loyalty and friendship and figuring out what's right.
At some point I ended up watching all the tense moments with my hands over my mouth going OMG SAM and anytime anything bad happened I'd be all "oh, poor Sam" and just... the character completely grabbed me! I just loved Sam so much and it breaks my heart that he died but at the same time I'm glad that he found some kind of happiness and peace with himself. Didn't you always wish that Dorothy had stayed in the colorful world of Oz instead of returning to the stupid boring old farm?
* And Gene Hunt! For a moment there I was worried that the series would end on the stupid half-there het ship but no, of COURSE it ended with Sam/Gene banter; that's the relationship that the show was really about, and the writers knew it.
* Although Annie is kind of interesting. Not really as a character (I didn't dislike her, just didn't find her very realistic or compelling; she definitely felt more like a coma-induced fantasy than a real person) but in terms of what she represents. She's like a big pillow, all understanding and comforting and huggable, with just enough tension to sustain the romantic angle for 16 episodes. But. She's also the one who keeps telling Sam to stay, to let go of the real world and give in to the fantasy. The show doesn't present it this way, but the whole time she is basically luring Sam to his death.
* The music. I didn't realize the seventies produced so much good music. The whole seventies atmosphere. They absolutely created a world and made me believe in it.
* So many awesome surreal details. The scary girl in the TV. All the Wizard of Oz references. The kids-show claymation Sam and Gene! Gene in a rat suit!
* I really didn't know the twist was coming; that Sam would choose 1973 over 2006. Maybe I'd have figured it out if I'd had weeks to contemplate between episodes, but watching it all in one go made it a surprise. And it was the good kind of surprise, where you weren't expecting it, but when it happens in makes perfect sense and you can't imagine it having been any other way. You realize along with Sam that he prefers 1973, that he *can't* leave that team and betray those people, that the 2006 he's been fighting to return to isn't actually where he wants to be.
* The whole thing just has this great mythic resonance, too, far more than I'd expected from what I assumed amounted to a cop show (pastiche). It kind of reminded me of Stephen King's Dark Tower, with the atmosphere and the music and the journey to a strange land, worlds colliding, the uncertainty over what's real and what's imaginary, the main character trying to figure out who he is and what he's meant to be doing. And of course, The Dark Tower itself is full of references to The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland and hell, even those Sergio Leone Westerns that Gene loves.
* Now I'm reading some reviews and it's interesting how many people really love Gene Hunt and see him as a metaphor for how the modern world has gotten overly caught up in political correctness and needs to get back in touch with "gut feelings" and all that bullshit. That kind of freaks me out because while I loved Gene as a fictional character, I never once thought the world would actually be better with people like him in charge. Even though Sam wasn't always right, I appreciated him arguing for doing things correctly and fairly, even when it was a lot harder to do so. Huh. Guess that's me and my "overly PC" view of the world... :P
Although I DO like the way it works in a metaphorical/psychological sense; Sam in 2006 is repressed and overly analytical and feeling helpless, so he creates this world that's all about immediacy and living in the moment and, y'know, letting your id run wild (literally). And the whole thing is about integrating the two, him and Gene, finding the balance where both aspects of himself can work together. Sam *needs* that id, but he's also right to be wary of it, because it's dangerous and ugly when out of control, but it's also glorious and necessary in the right context.
* I should probably not be posting this at 3am on a Friday night, when my eyes are too cross-eyed to proofread it correctly, and no one's going to be awake to read it anyway. Oh well. Drop me a comment if I've got any egregious typos? *off to sleep*
* ETA: And then I spent a bunch of time last night thinking about how Life on Mars compares to Fight Club. (Because I almost put a Fight Club icon on this entry, and couldn't figure out why I had the impulse to do that.) Both stories feature the mentally unstable repressed nice guy main character's id personified as an alter ego character that he makes up in his head. Both are about the struggle between the "civilized" main character and his "primal" alter ego, and both show the alter ego as having both good aspects and bad, and the main character needing to integrate the alter ego's traits into his own personality (although Fight Club ends with him destroying the fantasy and coming back into the real world, while Life on Mars is the opposite).
And they both deal with the nature of masculinity (and both are steeped in homoerotic subtext) and the idea that modern "PC" culture undercuts masculine instincts. And they both have this idea about returning to a "primitive" culture; Tyler Durden wants to destroy the modern world and go back to being cavemen; for Sam, 1973 *is* that primitive world that he prefers to live in. And then it got me thinking in general about these narratives of returning to a more primitive life, the idea that the past was simpler and that the modern world is out of touch with what it means to be human. (I remember writing an Anthropology paper in college about how humanity would've been much better off if we'd just remained a hunter-gatherer society.)
And then I started thinking about how LoM compares to The Matrix, because I always think of Fight Club and The Matrix together (I had a college class about the nature of modern Western culture that featured both prominently) and how they all address the question of what is real and how we create our own realities... kind of depressing to think that in LoM Sam chooses the blue pill....
[Cross-posted to InsaneJournal]
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 10:50 am (UTC)I thought the ep with Sam's mentor dragged a little and it's a shame they couldn't get the original test card girl back for season two (she had a wise-beyond-her-years-ness that made her just that bit more disconcerting that the other one) and the romance with Annie just didn't quite convince, but these all such minor flaws that none of them detract from the show at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-02 03:27 am (UTC)One of the issues for me was that the "mysteries of the week" were so predictable. I mean, part of that is that they were following 70s cop show formulas, so of course they were predictable. But sometimes they actually seemed to expect you to be surprised, so I did get annoyed at being able to predict the outcome of every episode within the first ten minutes....
Although, probably the biggest flaw for me was Annie, because she was just so "here to be a het love interest/here because we need a female character." There didn't really seem to be any compelling story reason for her to be there, and they didn't ever do anything interesting with her. It was so obvious that the real story was Sam/Gene, whether you see it as slashy or as you see it as Sam confronting his id or whether you see it as a face-off between the head versus heart way of approaching life.... all the real meat of the story was there, and then they'd just randomly throw Annie in and it was jarring because I don't think she fit at all. I didn't feel any depth in her story or her relation to Sam; it was just a very by-the-book het romance shoved in by default....
But, whatever. Very minor in the grand scheme of things. I loved the show.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 02:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-02 03:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 03:48 pm (UTC)I am looking forward to the sequel series, Ashes to Ashes, which is supposed to premiere in February. Eighties fashion, New Wave music, and Keeley Hawes should make interesting additions to the 'verse. Though I'll always miss Sam Tyler.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-02 03:18 am (UTC)Hee! Yes, exactly! I'm glad I saw him as the Master first, because the Master is more overtly striking (and so utterly slashy with David Tennant). And then I started reading Doctor/Master fic... so I started Life on Mars with the idea that John Simm is hot already in my head. And then the character hits all my kinks, what with being so screwed up and angsty but sincere and trying to do good.
And Simm... yeah, not someone you'd first think of as hot, but now... man, those eyes and those lips... *brain wanders off to happy place*
I'm not sure if I'll watch Ashes to Ashes. I'm pretty much a One True Character kind of fan. But we'll see... I do love the eighties!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 04:31 pm (UTC)And yes, the music of the 70s is fantastic.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-02 03:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 10:32 pm (UTC)"and now I know that John Simm is not just awesome as the Master but absolutely scorchingly hot as Sam Tyler..."
You need to see State of Play. An utterly different character, but once again, Simm is brilliant.
"That kind of freaks me out because while I loved Gene as a fictional character, I never once thought the world would actually be better with people like him in charge."
Which is why he NEEDS Sam. Yin, yang, etc.
Love the comparison to The Dark Tower
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-30 12:16 am (UTC)I wish we'd been able to squee more together about this. I need to watch it all again, a lot of the details have become fuzzy to me now.
And yes, John Simm really is one of those guys who shouldn't be hot and yet he makes his boiled pudding of a face into something quite compelling through sheer talent.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-30 01:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-02 03:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-02 11:34 am (UTC)And an apt comparison.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-02 03:14 am (UTC)I keep coming up with all these comparisons between LoM and other stories. It's got such primal mythological elements: traveling to a new world, longing for a more primitive past, being disillusioned with your father, facing down your own id, questioning what's real.... it's like The Wizard of Oz meets The Empire Strikes Back meets Fight Club meets The Matrix... all within this 70s cop show veneer!