i'm happy; hope you're happy, too.
I didn't think I'd get to this post until like Wednesday, but whatever, HERE IT IS. In case you don't follow me on Tumblr and are therefore blissfully unaware, I have, um, EXPLODED WITH EXCITEMENT FOR ASHES TO ASHES. It's - reached basically epic levels. I... am... more excited for this to return than I am for Bones? (Whatever, Bones, suck it up and you'll be fine; A2A has been gone from my life FOR A GOSH DARN YEAR. THAT IS AUTOMATICALLY WAY MORE IMPORTANT.) Last night, I figured out that trying to convey ~MY THEORY~ to ohvienna via Twitter was, um, probably not the best idea.
So.
Short version: Gene Hunt is Hades. They're all Greek-ing it up, afterlife style. As with most classical conceptions of the afterlife/underworld, there's definite mobility between life and death.
Long version: It's impossible for me to consider A2A without also considering Life on Mars.
To me, this is my biggest problem with the "actually Molly is dead!" theory (aside from the fact that it also doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me). If Ashes to Ashes was its own closed set of canon, then yes, I might squint and go, "...okay?" - but it's not. It exists because John Simm said, "A third series of Life on Mars? UH NOT SO MUCH I AM BORED," and since the writers still had a STORY left to tell, they had to create another way to do it. I don't think it's a coincidence that, by and large, the two mirror each other. Season 1 of LoM had Sam Tyler obsessed with figuring out this vague repetitive childhood memory (and consequently finding out that people he'd met in 1971 were involved in it); Season 1 of Ashes has... Alex, um, doing the same thing (SAVED AS A CHILD BY GENE HUNT). Both Season 2s are all about the realization that solving the riddle of Season 1 doesn't actually send you home, because it's all part of something bigger. Both Season 2s deal with police corruption*.
* More on that in a bit.
So to say that Alex's "delusion" of the 80s is caused by the traumatic knowledge that Molly is dead... just doesn't jive with this. There are far, far too many intuitive, extra-canon leaps for me. It adds another layer to the first scenes of 1x01 that, quite frankly, I just don't think are there - and believe you me, I think that if they were supposed to be there, they would be. Everything about the opening of 1x01 is about Arthur Layton slowly manipulating events to get Alex alone, full stop. He takes a woman hostage someplace he knows Alex will be too near to pass up; he knows she'll leave Molly in the car, and that Molly won't actually stay there; he knows pointing a gun at Alex will panic Molly; he knows taking Molly hostage will give him NOT ONLY AN EXIT ROUTE, but will scare Alex enough to send Molly to school with her godfather rather than taking her herself (plus, paperwork), leaving her completely exposed and alone in her car. (Because yes. I believe that the opening of 1x01 is Objective Present Day.)
If anything, I think that THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF THE ENTIRE SERIES is the part where he shoots her. (This seems dumb to say, because d'uh.)
1. HE PHONES SOMEONE, and calls Alex "a piece of your past." (Whose past? Evan's? GENE?! Alex herself? Is he even calling someone in the Here and Now, or is it an extremely long distance call to 1983?)
2. He threatens the person on the other end of the phone call with "the truth," to which this person presumably tells Layton to fuck off, calling his bluff.
3. Layton tells Alex that she never was told the truth about how her parents died, was she? Then he shoots her in the head, which causes her to... wake up in 1981, thereby beginning the journey to do just that.
Once again, I see no room for Molly being dead. For me, the only way possible would be this scenario: Molly is dead, so Alex's traumatized brain... reinvents the day to include not only being taken hostage herself (why?), but being shot herself (again, why?), traveling back to 1981 (why?!) to witness not only the EQUALLY TRAUMATIC DEATH OF PARENTS (this is just insane at this point) but to be stuck there, indefinitely, separated from her (fake undead) child. That... in no way makes any remote sense to me, at all. It doesn't track with anything in Life on Mars, and it just, well, it just doesn't make sense to me.
So what does...?
Gene Hunt is Hades. Gene Hunt is real, insomuch that any archetype is "real" (except that, rather being an archetype to us, the audience, he is an archetype to the internal characters! meta-meta). I really don't want the show to explain it much further than that - I'm not watching bloody Star Trek, I don't actually care about the literal technobabble metaphysics and the hows and why Alex and Sam could travel back in time. I don't want five minutes on the mechanics of Alex's consciousness moving between time periods, or what happens to her physical body - NONE. OF. IT. I don't care. "Why do I always get sent the nutters?" WHY DO YOU, GENE. WHY. DO. YOU. That is the question I care about. Why do these people have traumatic things happen to them that send them back in time to their childhoods, and why are they always end up "looked after" by Gene Hunt?
(There's an exchange in - I think it's 2x01, when Alex asks Luigi about going home, and Luigi replies that he would love to go home, he just can't afford it the fare. So of course you know that my mind immediately went to Charon and the River Styx, to putting coins in the eyes of the dead so they'll have the proper fare to cross the river into the Underworld.)
Because if it's impossible to consider Ashes to Ashes without Life on Mars, then you have to take into account what the two have in common - GENE [BAMF] HUNT.
(Things I have briefly considered, and if it's true I will scream with delight and joy: Gene himself is trapped in the world of the 70s/80s, living out some sort of Sisyphean task of always having to be better than his baser, cruder instincts - be it corruption, drinking, or simply lusting after Bolls.)
I don't know what this actually means re: an ending. I can't see Alex, no matter how "hopelessly in love" (THANKS FOR THAT QUOTE THERE, KEELEY) she is with Gene, choosing that world over one in which her child is alive. It's not the same thing as Sam waking up from his coma, deciding he can't feel anything in 2007 so it's not real anymore to him, so he jumps off a building (to get back to Annie). Part of me - and I know this is INSANE and CRAZYFACE - but part of me thinks the ending will somehow involve Gene in 2010, standing next to Alex in front of the Tate Modern. I DON'T KNOW, ALL RIGHT, IT'S JUST WHAT I WOULD DO. (She could be all, "okay wtf how you are here?!" and he could just shrug and say, "I'm the Gene Genie, Bolls. I am everywhere." Then they play Under Pressure, or Vienna, and I have a stroke because I'm so happy.)
Police corruption: It's interesting to me that in both Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, by the end of both Season 2s there are three distinct players:
1. Sam and Alex (the travelers)
2. Gene Hunt (the established "norm" of the time period)
3. A seemingly external power hunting down/participating in/related to "corruption"
WHAT DOES THIS EXTERNAL POWER ACTUAL MEAN? I, um, have no idea. (Yes, I do - if we go with my crazy GENE HUNT IS ALSO STUCK HERE theory, then this power is what's keeping him here) (I think I let LOST influence me far, far too much). And it's ironic that in Life on Mars, corruption is used as a tool to let Sam leave - "prove Gene Hunt is a bad cop, and we'll let you leave" - while in Ashes to Ashes, it's almost a THREAT (in which we spend the whole of S2 being constantly questioned on whether Gene is a good guy, and this is meant to be AWFUL, rather than a confirmation of Alex's preconceived ideas - unlike Sam). Where Life on Mars spends it time going, "Gene is awful and backwards, yes, but is he THIS AWFUL?" Ashes to Ashes is all about, "We like Gene. He couldn't possibly do that awful thing there, right? Right?"
There's also a larger argument to be had about what it actually means to give in (or not give in, in Alex's case) to this "corruption." In Life on Mars, Sam ostensibly "gave in" - only to wake up in a reality he didn't feel was real anymore, so he jumped off a building to get "back" and save his friends. Alex resists the corruption, only to be shot by Gene (is this her punishment, or his?), and wakes up... not in her own Objective Reality, but in an 80s coma version of her own time.
ALEX: I help people, Arthur. I help people who are trapped, I help them find an escape route.
?!?!!!!!!!!! *GESTURES EMPATHICALLY TO THE ABOVE TEXT*
WOULD YOU LIKE THE MOST CRAZYFACE THEORY OF THEM ALL?
Oh, hey, check out that iPod in the bottom row, you guys.
(Re-watching Season 2, the idea that Martin Summers is the angry [now dead] guy on the gurney in 2x08 is abundantly clear. But that he's also the same person in the first scene of 2x01? ...eh? I AM JUST SAYING. It's a Step 1, Step 2... Step 5 sort of thing, to me. Plus, if Alex's 1982 coma isn't Objective Reality, it means that the first scene of 2x01 also isn't Objective Reality. Except that I do believe it's Objective Reality, so. Yeah. Beginning of 2x01 =/= end of 2x08?!?!?!)
In conclusion:
- Alex and Gene: DEAR GOD, MAKE OUT AT LEAST ONCE.
- Chris and Shaz: YOU DAMN WELL BETTER GET MARRIED AND LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
- 80s music is great.
The.
End.
(p.s., okay, fine, I secretly want my wee baby comment fic to come true. THERE, I SAID IT.)
Oh boy, so far down the rabbit hole on this one.
IS. IT. FRIDAY. YET.
So.
Short version: Gene Hunt is Hades. They're all Greek-ing it up, afterlife style. As with most classical conceptions of the afterlife/underworld, there's definite mobility between life and death.
Long version: It's impossible for me to consider A2A without also considering Life on Mars.
To me, this is my biggest problem with the "actually Molly is dead!" theory (aside from the fact that it also doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me). If Ashes to Ashes was its own closed set of canon, then yes, I might squint and go, "...okay?" - but it's not. It exists because John Simm said, "A third series of Life on Mars? UH NOT SO MUCH I AM BORED," and since the writers still had a STORY left to tell, they had to create another way to do it. I don't think it's a coincidence that, by and large, the two mirror each other. Season 1 of LoM had Sam Tyler obsessed with figuring out this vague repetitive childhood memory (and consequently finding out that people he'd met in 1971 were involved in it); Season 1 of Ashes has... Alex, um, doing the same thing (SAVED AS A CHILD BY GENE HUNT). Both Season 2s are all about the realization that solving the riddle of Season 1 doesn't actually send you home, because it's all part of something bigger. Both Season 2s deal with police corruption*.
* More on that in a bit.
So to say that Alex's "delusion" of the 80s is caused by the traumatic knowledge that Molly is dead... just doesn't jive with this. There are far, far too many intuitive, extra-canon leaps for me. It adds another layer to the first scenes of 1x01 that, quite frankly, I just don't think are there - and believe you me, I think that if they were supposed to be there, they would be. Everything about the opening of 1x01 is about Arthur Layton slowly manipulating events to get Alex alone, full stop. He takes a woman hostage someplace he knows Alex will be too near to pass up; he knows she'll leave Molly in the car, and that Molly won't actually stay there; he knows pointing a gun at Alex will panic Molly; he knows taking Molly hostage will give him NOT ONLY AN EXIT ROUTE, but will scare Alex enough to send Molly to school with her godfather rather than taking her herself (plus, paperwork), leaving her completely exposed and alone in her car. (Because yes. I believe that the opening of 1x01 is Objective Present Day.)
If anything, I think that THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF THE ENTIRE SERIES is the part where he shoots her. (This seems dumb to say, because d'uh.)
1. HE PHONES SOMEONE, and calls Alex "a piece of your past." (Whose past? Evan's? GENE?! Alex herself? Is he even calling someone in the Here and Now, or is it an extremely long distance call to 1983?)
2. He threatens the person on the other end of the phone call with "the truth," to which this person presumably tells Layton to fuck off, calling his bluff.
3. Layton tells Alex that she never was told the truth about how her parents died, was she? Then he shoots her in the head, which causes her to... wake up in 1981, thereby beginning the journey to do just that.
Once again, I see no room for Molly being dead. For me, the only way possible would be this scenario: Molly is dead, so Alex's traumatized brain... reinvents the day to include not only being taken hostage herself (why?), but being shot herself (again, why?), traveling back to 1981 (why?!) to witness not only the EQUALLY TRAUMATIC DEATH OF PARENTS (this is just insane at this point) but to be stuck there, indefinitely, separated from her (fake undead) child. That... in no way makes any remote sense to me, at all. It doesn't track with anything in Life on Mars, and it just, well, it just doesn't make sense to me.
So what does...?
Gene Hunt is Hades. Gene Hunt is real, insomuch that any archetype is "real" (except that, rather being an archetype to us, the audience, he is an archetype to the internal characters! meta-meta). I really don't want the show to explain it much further than that - I'm not watching bloody Star Trek, I don't actually care about the literal technobabble metaphysics and the hows and why Alex and Sam could travel back in time. I don't want five minutes on the mechanics of Alex's consciousness moving between time periods, or what happens to her physical body - NONE. OF. IT. I don't care. "Why do I always get sent the nutters?" WHY DO YOU, GENE. WHY. DO. YOU. That is the question I care about. Why do these people have traumatic things happen to them that send them back in time to their childhoods, and why are they always end up "looked after" by Gene Hunt?
(There's an exchange in - I think it's 2x01, when Alex asks Luigi about going home, and Luigi replies that he would love to go home, he just can't afford it the fare. So of course you know that my mind immediately went to Charon and the River Styx, to putting coins in the eyes of the dead so they'll have the proper fare to cross the river into the Underworld.)
Because if it's impossible to consider Ashes to Ashes without Life on Mars, then you have to take into account what the two have in common - GENE [BAMF] HUNT.
(Things I have briefly considered, and if it's true I will scream with delight and joy: Gene himself is trapped in the world of the 70s/80s, living out some sort of Sisyphean task of always having to be better than his baser, cruder instincts - be it corruption, drinking, or simply lusting after Bolls.)
I don't know what this actually means re: an ending. I can't see Alex, no matter how "hopelessly in love" (THANKS FOR THAT QUOTE THERE, KEELEY) she is with Gene, choosing that world over one in which her child is alive. It's not the same thing as Sam waking up from his coma, deciding he can't feel anything in 2007 so it's not real anymore to him, so he jumps off a building (to get back to Annie). Part of me - and I know this is INSANE and CRAZYFACE - but part of me thinks the ending will somehow involve Gene in 2010, standing next to Alex in front of the Tate Modern. I DON'T KNOW, ALL RIGHT, IT'S JUST WHAT I WOULD DO. (She could be all, "okay wtf how you are here?!" and he could just shrug and say, "I'm the Gene Genie, Bolls. I am everywhere." Then they play Under Pressure, or Vienna, and I have a stroke because I'm so happy.)
Police corruption: It's interesting to me that in both Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, by the end of both Season 2s there are three distinct players:
1. Sam and Alex (the travelers)
2. Gene Hunt (the established "norm" of the time period)
3. A seemingly external power hunting down/participating in/related to "corruption"
WHAT DOES THIS EXTERNAL POWER ACTUAL MEAN? I, um, have no idea. (Yes, I do - if we go with my crazy GENE HUNT IS ALSO STUCK HERE theory, then this power is what's keeping him here) (I think I let LOST influence me far, far too much). And it's ironic that in Life on Mars, corruption is used as a tool to let Sam leave - "prove Gene Hunt is a bad cop, and we'll let you leave" - while in Ashes to Ashes, it's almost a THREAT (in which we spend the whole of S2 being constantly questioned on whether Gene is a good guy, and this is meant to be AWFUL, rather than a confirmation of Alex's preconceived ideas - unlike Sam). Where Life on Mars spends it time going, "Gene is awful and backwards, yes, but is he THIS AWFUL?" Ashes to Ashes is all about, "We like Gene. He couldn't possibly do that awful thing there, right? Right?"
There's also a larger argument to be had about what it actually means to give in (or not give in, in Alex's case) to this "corruption." In Life on Mars, Sam ostensibly "gave in" - only to wake up in a reality he didn't feel was real anymore, so he jumped off a building to get "back" and save his friends. Alex resists the corruption, only to be shot by Gene (is this her punishment, or his?), and wakes up... not in her own Objective Reality, but in an 80s coma version of her own time.
ALEX: I help people, Arthur. I help people who are trapped, I help them find an escape route.
?!?!!!!!!!!! *GESTURES EMPATHICALLY TO THE ABOVE TEXT*
WOULD YOU LIKE THE MOST CRAZYFACE THEORY OF THEM ALL?
Oh, hey, check out that iPod in the bottom row, you guys.
(Re-watching Season 2, the idea that Martin Summers is the angry [now dead] guy on the gurney in 2x08 is abundantly clear. But that he's also the same person in the first scene of 2x01? ...eh? I AM JUST SAYING. It's a Step 1, Step 2... Step 5 sort of thing, to me. Plus, if Alex's 1982 coma isn't Objective Reality, it means that the first scene of 2x01 also isn't Objective Reality. Except that I do believe it's Objective Reality, so. Yeah. Beginning of 2x01 =/= end of 2x08?!?!?!)
In conclusion:
- Alex and Gene: DEAR GOD, MAKE OUT AT LEAST ONCE.
- Chris and Shaz: YOU DAMN WELL BETTER GET MARRIED AND LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
- 80s music is great.
The.
End.
(p.s., okay, fine, I secretly want my wee baby comment fic to come true. THERE, I SAID IT.)
Oh boy, so far down the rabbit hole on this one.
IS. IT. FRIDAY. YET.