miss_s_b: (Britishness: jingoism)
miss_s_b ([personal profile] miss_s_b) wrote2010-05-22 02:43
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Ashes to Ashes finale

I have to admit, I didn't guess who 6620 was. That was a really good finale; tied up a lot of loose ends, did so without deus ex machina, and felt like it reached a conclusion for each of the characters without actually closing all of them off forever.

And yet... and yet...

It felt rushed, especially the climactic scenes; I read somewhere that the original cut had been 20 minutes longer, and this doesn't surprise me. I didn't cry, although I expected to.

I think I need to watch it again.

Jim Keats being Satan really did not surprise me; he creeped me out from his first appearance. Alex, Chris, Ray and Shaz being dead did not surprise me. Gene being their guide to heaven did not surprise me. But the way in which all those things were done? Well, as a Doctor Who fan I really hope Russell T Davies was watching. All of it made sense. It wasn't just a string of cool ideas, it was a coherent and well told story.

I love, love, LOVE the ideas that Copper Heaven is a pub. I love that some questions were left partially unanswered - what happens to people (like Viv) who die on their journey through Gene's world? Are all the people there on a journey, or are some of them avatars? Are the big bads from previous seasons (Supermac etc.) previous incarnations of Jim Keats?

All in all this episode, and the series in general, gets a big hurrah from me. It deserves huge amounts of plaudits and awards, and I hope it gets them. And it beat the crap out of Life on Mars. But I really, really want to see that longer cut of the final episode.
ponygirl72: (Gene/Alex)

[personal profile] ponygirl72 2010-05-22 21:17 (UTC)(link)
Totally agreed about wanting to see the other twenty minutes of footage!

I'd been following the theorisers over at the a2ashes lj comm, and I have to report that they basically called about 95% of it, which is pretty impressive. For me, the only real shocker of the night was that Alex was dead... I did not see that one coming.

I was somewhat prepared to be irritated by heavy-handed religious references, but the finale actually ended up fitting in with my pantheistic leanings rather nicely.

In my opinion, the climactic clown transformation scene at the end of series one trumped the climactic scene at the end of series three, but it was still some of the best TV I've seen, taken as a whole.

Wonderful stuff.