life on mars, season's end, take i

[cimorene]

as life on mars went along its little eight-episode mini-course, i've had a series of mild issues--none of them particularly serious, cause it's a great show, but just things i was thinking about. 

1. early on i was bothered by the wishy-washiness of that sort of germ of a romance with annie. i didn't have a problem with it, per se, and despite her being a bit token and a bit overly stereotypical and mothering, i actually like annie a great deal.  in fact, i found myself able to root for her quite a few times in defiance of the slash. of course in the first episode or so he could certainly not be like "yay.  annie!" when his girlfriend's been kidnapped by a murderer, even if he and said girlfriend's problems were so severe that they were on a verge of a breakup.  but after that, why all the back-and-forth?  why is he keeping annie dangling like this?  why does he, in fact, keep making insinuating little remarks and talking about how much he cares about her, without doing one thing with her that could be construed as a date?  of course one of their big themes is his lack of commitment to the 1973 life and his liking for it.  annie is sort of the representative of the attraction the 1973!world holds for him.  but that doesn't satisfactorily explain it to me.  it feels like he could show a bit less interest in her or a bit more and either way make a lot more sense.  (of course, that gap could probably be successfully spackled with slash, but i'm thinking within the context of canon for the moment.)  by the end of the series, though, i came to not mind this so much, possibly because towards the end a picture seems to have emerged which shows him a lot less sane than he appeared before, and that can make up some of the gap.

2. i was bothered by how much of an asshole gene is at the beginning. overall i find the character both charming and hilarious, but i can't completely get past thinking that if he were a real person he'd be kind of loathesome, and i've quite passionately wanted sam to beat him up (you know, like, if he could) (and not like that sad buddyish homoerotic business in the hospital room, either, that wasn't enough to satisfy me) several times. i suppose i've just accepted that and moved on.  anyway, for purposes of completely canonical and platonic gen friendship just as well as for slash, what's really important is that sam likes him, which he evidently does.

3. the supernatural element.  now, this is really cool, and i'm very happy with him being simultaneously in a coma and a dream and back in time and, hey, maybe insane.  i hope they don't completely resolve it.  but i wasn't satisfied by the treatment of it in the final episode--i was expecting to really get something new on the coma front, there, and that didn't happen.  we don't know anything new about his condition.  we don't even know anything new about his situation there in the past, because we'd already established that his family and baby!sam are there. we don't know how he's to wake up or whether "solving" something in the past would actually do it or not.  we have no better idea about why he's there, if he is there for a reason. all we learned was that his daddy issues are REALLY big and his dad was a crime boss, so maybe they should be, and that he can change the timeline and prevent things from happening the way he remembers (not anything he wants, but he prevented his dad from beating annie).  wax says that if you already know you're picked up for a second season you have no compelling reason to end with anything really big, but i was kind of expecting them to at least wrap up something that had been going the whole season, and not just the leprechaun shoe flashback.  the placement of that flashback throughout the season in situations unrelated to his dad suggests, if anything, that that was why he was there, so the fact that he failed to wake up only makes less sense, unless we're to take him as some kind of time-fixer and the flashbacks as his mission briefs, and expect a new repeating nonsensical image for the next season.

Comments

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been sort of bothered by some of those same things (although not 2, oddly--guess I really do like the assholes). I especially felt like they needed to give us something at the end, there, commit a little more fully to possibility A or B or even X. And yet, I'm still eagerly awaiting series 2, so...

I'm also eagerly anticipating fic, although I've been sort of wary, as I always am with new fandoms. You are the Queen of Recs...you wouldn't have happened to stumble onto anything good, have you?

[versaphile.livejournal.com]

I've collected some LOM recs (http://versaphile.livejournal.com/tag/life+on+mars+recs). Mix of all types.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Ahh, thank goodness! I'm not good at going at it on my own--I always desperately need a Virgil.

Which is a totally pretentious way of saying: thank you for the fic recs. *g*

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i was just going to check yours myself. :)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i haven't looked, but i'm planning to start with versaphile's and poke around if i like any of it.