Spoilers. For me, the American Life On Mars ended when Sam (Jason O'Mara) kissed Annie (Gretchen Mol) in the street (above), having decided to stay in 1973 and grow old with the woman he loves (while hanging-up any ringing phones with husky men on the line.) Trust me, when that moment happens, turn off your television. I'm still trying to scrub all memory of the last ten minutes from my mind, but I fear its ridiculous images are indelible.Knowing they'd been cancelled, the producers had enough warning to devise an appropriate finale for their remake of the far-superior British series. Forgiving an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink mentality to the storyline of "Life Is A Rock", the finale was on shaky but palatable ground for most of its duration. Sam's criminal father Vic (Dean Winters) returned to kidnap his young son and abscond from justice, meaning Sam's mother Rose (Jennifer Ferrin) needed the 125's help getting Young Sammy back.
It was a thin storyline that served to touch base with everything the season had thrown into the melting pot; we had Sam kidnapped by Vic and taken to the oft-mentioned Hyde (the town he was actually conceived in, we learn), the bleeping Mars Rover appeared in the street, the ethereal hobo and little girl made a cameo in the street to assure Sam his journey was nearing an end, etc. Meanwhile, Annie convinced Gene (Harvey Keitel) that Vic would have taken both Sam's to Hyde, so they all hotfooted it upstate to shoot the villainous Vic through the chest just as he was about to stab Sam through the heart after a grapple on a pier. Job done!
Admittedly, that was hardly a gripping storyline for the Big Finish, but it was competent enough. It even managed to shoehorn in a few emotive moments: Rose telling Annie that "Detective Luke Skywalker" reminds her of her own little Sammy, Sam revealing to Rose that his real name is "Sam Tyler" (and she clearly understood what that meant), Annie finally earning her detective's badge from Gene, Ray's speech about life being a barely tolerable existence on a celestial rock, and the aforementioned kiss when hippie neighbour Windy (who all but admits to Sam she's his cosmic guide) encourages him to make 1973 his home and Annie his girl. If it had ended there, it would have been a lackluster finale, but mildly defendable...
The original BBC finale was ambiguous and illogical when you scrutinized it, but it was emotionally sharp and memorable -- Sam woke up from his coma, decided he didn't like 2006 very much, so opted to commit suicide by jumping off a building, where he was whisked back to 1973 to be reunited with Gene, Annie, et al (hinting that "1973" was a personalized afterlife he'd tasted while comatose and "between worlds".) I had a few issues with it, but it was mostly acceptable and grows more so in retrospect.
This US ending was never going to copy the British resolution, as the producers made it clear from the start they had a different mythology in mind, and even gained permission from LOM's British creators about changing the overarching mystery.
But, their ending here was absolutely absurd. Sam wakes up aboard a NASA spaceship in 2035 A.D, discovers he's an astronaut bound for Mars as part of a mission codenamed "Gene Hunt" (to find "life on Mars", groan), with a crew comprised of commander Annie, Ray (sans 'tache), Chris... and, in capsule "2B", Gene as Sam's real father Major Tom Tyler (geddit?) The ship's talking computer is named Windy, their mission controller is Frank Morgan (a.k.a, the husky voice on the phone), and Sam's entire experience was a dream fed into his mind during a deep sleep on their trip through space. Indeed, Sam was supposed to dream he was a cop living in 2008 (oh, how soothing), but a "glitch" in the system sent him back to an imaginary-'73 instead.
Sure, it makes tenuous sense, but it was tonally at odds with the show and felt outrageous and tacked on. The kind of ending a 16-year-old fan of Philip K. Dick might think up, with far too much literalism. They didn't even make Sam feel shocked at being unplugged from his lucid dreamstate, as he immediately realized what the situation was, and treated it as a rather amusing gaffe.
Most crucially, it was unforgivable of the writers to decide that 1973 and 2008 were both fictional constructs. Thus, Sam never had a girlfriend called Maya, and the past 17 episodes spent trying to pair up with Annie in the '70s were a piffling fantasy. Absolutely nothing about the show's relationships, stories of characters actually mattered or had any consequence in the end, and you can't rewatch any of the previous episodes without knowledge of this obnoxious NASA reveal hanging over proceedings like a bad smell. And as for the jokey shot of Gene stepping onto the surface of the Red Planet in his white shoes as the final image? I cringed so much that my body folded inside-out.
Overall, I never felt this remake translated the heart or realism of the original, but it was mildly entertaining and occasionally good fun if you were in forgiving mood. O'Mara certainly gave it his best shot (I hope he goes on to better things), and Imperioli and Mol eclipsed their UK counterparts. It certainly wasn't an abject failure on every level, but the lazy finale was unbridled idiocy.
I'm just happy we suffered it after a mere 17 episodes. Can you imagine if this had aired after, say, five years on-air? Considering how early the Mars Rover and nanobots featured on the show, this was clearly their overall plan made flesh prematurely. This is how it would have gone down in the summer of 2013, can you believe that? I'm actually glad LOM:US got cancelled now; it spared me four years.
To end on something resembling a positive: I hope this was an April Fool's Day joke from ABC, and we'll get the proper ending on the box-set release. I mean, come on, I have noted many people defending it as a fun and appropriately oddball ending, but that's ignoring how discourteous it is as an addendum to what preceded it, and how it pisses over all the characters.
1 April 2009
ABC, 10/9c
Writer: Scott Rosenberg
Director: Michael Katleman
Cast: Jason O'Mara (Sam), Gretchen Mol (Annie), Harvey Keitel (Gene), Michael Imperioli (Ray), Tanya Fischer (Windy), Jennifer Ferrin (Rose), Karen B. Song (Nurse), Emerald Young (Keisha Davies), Steven Marcus (Homeless Man), Peter Gerety (Agent Frank Morgan), Caleb Wallace (Young Sammy), Nick Damici (Bumper), Dean Winters (Vic), Waltrudis Buck (Old Annie) & Michael Merly (Officer Tom Brown)
