locker_monster | Fire up the Quattro for one last time...

Um, did anyone else watch the series finale of Ashes to Ashes? I really wasn't expecting that.

It was always my pet theory that the other characters in Sam's world were time travellers, too. That they were all like Sam: they were from another time, had an accident, and woke up in the past. But unlike Sam, they forgot. They got settled in their world and just kept living in the past. I really wish I had written that theory down. Oh well.

So it turns out everyone in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes really are time travellers, so to speak. But they're all dead, too. The past, the 1970s and the 1980s, are really a limbo for cops who die with unfinished business and Gene's, like, the guy who runs it all. Or something. I'm so confused. The only time period I could figure out for sure was Shaz's. An Oasis song was playing when she died, so that puts her home time period in the mid 1990s.

I don't know. The reveal that this world is Purgatory is just plain weird. I liked it better when it was just a world inside of Sam's head, but then Ashes to Ashes came along and how do you explain why Gene and Co. are suddenly in Alex's head? I suppose it explains everything in a way. People land in their particular time periods so they can work out their baggage before moving on. For Sam, it was his father issues. For Alex, it was coming to grips with her parents' deaths. Though, that means Annie, Chris, and Ray all landed in the 1970s for a reason, too. And what about the other people? Are they all in limbo, too, but not cops? Gah, this is making my head spin.

So Gene got really attached to some of the people passing through and kept them from moving on? Or is the guy we knew as Gene Hunt really not Gene Hunt. The guy in charge of limbo just uses his name and face. Keats was clearly meant to be Satan (that's why his office was always hot. It's hell!), so that does make Gene, I dunno, Saint Peter or someone akin to that? I think I'm reading too much into this finale. I doubt the creators had this ending in mind when they started Life on Mars. By the seat of your pants writing. It's always good fun. :-)

The thing I don't get is Sam and his fate. He landed in 1973 but then found a way back to the future. Then he jumped off a building in 2006 and ended up back in the 1970s. Then he managed to stay there until 1980, I believe. Alex reveals at the beginning of Ashes to Ashes that Sam died. Okay, so Sam died and in limbo he was happily living a life with Annie. So why did Sam ask Gene to fake his death? He figured out where he was and wanted to move on with Annie? Or he faked his death so he wouldn't have to move on and then he and Annie could life out the rest of their limbo lives to the end?

I did enjoy the last scene, of the new guy bursting into CID and demanding to know where his office and his iPhone is. :-) Oh boy, here we go again. And they murdered the Quattro! Looked like Gene was going to get a new Mercedes-Benz. Gene Hunt is moving up in the world! And it only seemed natural that Nelson was in charge of "heaven" so to speak. I'm glad they brought him back for that.

ETA: Oh man, I forgot to mention this. Episode 5, when Ray sees the stars for the first time. He mutters something about it was like they were astronauts out in space. Was that totally a stab at the US Life on Mars and their reveal that US Sam was really in stasis aboard a spaceship to Mars? I like to think it was.

Gah, the finale of Lost is going to be like this, isn't it? We're going to get some answers, but more questions are going to be raised, too.