miss_s_b: Ashes to Ashes finale

miss_s_b (

miss_s_b) wrote,
@ 2010-05-22 02:43 am UTC

Current mood:	contemplative
Entry tags:	ashes to ashes, fandom

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.

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tommybblog.blogspot.com
2010-05-23 11:42 am UTC (link)

I didn't guess who 6620 was either, though as Alex was digging I had an inkling that she might find Gene's younger body. I'd guessed Gene's larger role in things (in that he was somehow there as something of a guide for Sam/Alex with respect to laying past demons to rest), but didn't for a moment suspect that he'd got there in the same way. Neither did I expect the rest of them to have arrived by way of an untimely and unfair death.

What I loved most about the episode (and the rest of the serieseses) was that it assumed that we are intelligent viewers. We got the gist that Keats was some kind of devil figure without having it shoved down our throats. Nothing was explicit; it was all hinted at but ultimately left to our own imaginations and thoughts, and from what I've read everyone has feelings about the roles of Gene, Keats and Nelson that agree on the main points but differ wildly and go all fuzzy around the edges. That's the way it should be! I've been tweeting the odd question to see where opinions differ from my own, and there's a pleasing spread.

In my opinion, this was an excellent ending for Ashes to Ashes and for the Life on Mars franchise as a whole. It tied everything important up whilst leaving plenty for fans to go on talking about for some time. It did it in a clever, imaginative, original and intelligent way and avoided a preachiness which could so easily have sneaked in.

If the extra 20-minutes thing is true, I'd love to see that version. Maybe it'll appear on the DVD? I agree that it should have been longer- a feature-length finale would have been a fitting way to end the series.

I disagree that it beat the crap out of LoM: I prefer the two LoM series, but only just. I don't think Ashes would have achieved the cult following that it did on the strength of the first series alone (without LoM to back it up), but it has become progressively better with each series, and this final one has been nothing short of brilliant.

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