Ashes to Ashes - 3x04
Very late with this one, but seriously, there was SO much stuff in this episode that it was difficult to process it all. I've tried to organize my thoughts and reactions into different categories based on the running themes I've noticed so far this season.
Gender ambiguity:
Ray to Shaz: "You're like a bloke with tits."
Red vs. grey:
Gene, Chris and Ray's clothes: all red/grey combos.
*Alex's very red fireplace next to the grey trim* dear writers: DO NOT WANT SAM TYLER TO BE IN THERE KTHNX.
Red car meets grey car! The Audi is red, Keats's car is grey. Not surprising, really.
Officer vs car:
DCI Wilson was almost run down by an Austin Allegra, DI Louise Gardiner was killed by a car, and next week Alex and the comedian look to nearly suffer the same fate. Sam Tyler's ears must be burning.
The new replacing the old:
Daniel Stafford: "I seen him for what he really is: an old man. Past it. A fossil. And he knows it every time he looks at me. *significant glance at Gene* His time is up. I'm the future."
"How would you feel if someone younger came in; someone smarter, better-looking than you?" "They'd melt in my shadow, son."
The most significant "takeover", though, was Keats's usurping Gene's usual role as Saint Michael, the weigher of souls; stepping in to be with Louise as she died. Only with Keats, the effect is creepy rather than comforting. Gene lets dying officers confess their sins and gives them some sort of absolution before they move on, but with Keats, it almost seemed like he was willing her to die: he didn't want her to talk or move; he wanted her to hush and keep still. Was he afraid of what she might have said? What she might have revealed?
(Note: if he is 'the devil', maybe he got her soul because she didn't have a chance to repent before she died?)
Alex's lines to Louise are significant too: "I'd like to help you, Louise. Maybe that's why I'm here: to help coppers like you." "Outside of this...for me, there's nothing." Is she lining herself up to be Gene's replacement as the governor of the copper's limbo?
"Gene is everyone" theory:
Keats: "A modern police force needs to learn to work as one entitiy as well as separate cells."
When Chris asks for the keys to the cells - "NOW!" - he says it almost exactly like the Guv.
DCI Wilson looks very much like Gene Hunt twenty years from now. This cannot be an accident. EDIT: OMG he's even wearing Gene's olive green shirt from LoM 1x05! And he has slatted "prison bars" venetian blinds in his office just like Gene.
Is it just my imagination, or does dead baby!Guv have a 'tash in this episode? A hint that he's Ray as well? :( DO NOT WANT.
CHRIS STOP CALLING JIM THE GUV GODDAMMIT.
Identity crisis:
Did Gene ever call Sam 'shorty' in Life on Mars? Because I find this "Shorty" the smackhead character very intriguing. First, why is he wearing a dirtied-up version of Sam Tyler's jacket? And speaking in a very broad Manc accent, sitting on a sofa the same color as the Cortina, next to a large patch water (while discussing a 'drought') inside a train tunnel very much like the one where Sam made his final decision to stay with Gene?
Nice how they hold on a shot of him for quite a while after Alex sees the "GENE ♥ SAM" graffiti, too.
There was also Ray's line about duality: "What, all that pretending to be someone else? Head cases, the lot of 'em."
Identity issues specific to this episode:
I think we're supposed to connect Louise's dilemma in this episode with Alex's, especially with lines like the following: "Louise, I know how difficult it is to come straight from one world into another." *signficiant look*
"I know it's not easy, being somebody you're not. I'm sure you just want to get back to somewhere familiar."
But I think Louise's situation has more to do with how Gene was killed in the real world: I think he was a young cop who got in over his head, and was abandoned by his team at a crucial moment which cost him his life. Louise's words could be the ones dead baby!Guv is thinking in his shallow Lancashire grave:
"It wasn't my choice to be in there alone; I thought I'd have more backup."
"It's like I'm being punished. I've done everything that was asked of me, I went in there terrified that I'd be uncovered, and when I was, I didn't back down." "I understand." "No, you don't! It's like I was pushed in there and abandoned! And now I'm out, I want to leave it all behind me."
I also think this line of hers relates to both Alex and Gene:
"The only way to survive, really, is just to...become who you're meant to be. Think like them. Like what they like. Be how they'd be until you don't know where you start and they end." "The person that you're sat here with now isn't really me." "I'm not sure I can go back to normal."
I think Alex is taking on some of Gene's characteristics, just like Sam did...but I think Gene transformed when he entered the copper's limbo too. I'm working on a theory atm, the gist of which is that Gene was like Chris when he was killed: a nervous, awkward young cop who worshipped his hardass DCI, and wanted to be like him so much that he DID become him when he found himself in a world where he could be whoever he liked.
Keats's speech to Louise about wanting to leave and run away, but asking her to stay and see it through because if she doesn't it will all have been for nothing? Gee, you reckon that was significant in any way?
And Louise is run down and killed, just like Sam was.
"You can't just put somebody in undercover and expect them to make sense of things by themselves." "Tough titty." That's the second reference to Alex's breasts in this episode, and the third overall (Shaz being "a bloke with tits")...has the entire copper's limbo got something on its mind?
Maybe Louise's story is a parallel for Alex, Gene, AND Sam?
Other miscellaneous thoughts and observations:
Lots of shots of Gene behind the slats of the venetian blinds, almost like he's in a prison cell. The copper's limbo = his prison?
"Chris dragged these out of the basement for me. I haven't even started on this floor yet." *eyebrow rub* Does Keats rub his eyebrow when he's lying? I think he does. *watches him*
Gene: "Bollocks. Warren Johnston was a dealer, not a dipper. He wouldn't even try his own supply, let alone somebody else's."
Chris: "Might've been tempted, Guv."
Now this is a very, very interesting line coming from Chris. I'm still suspicious of Chris and his involvement in police corruption after last season. Daniel's line when he was being taken to his cell also made me wonder: "Nobody does that to me; nobody sells me out!" Was Daniel yelling at Louise there, or Chris? Danny seems to know Chris when he comes into his cell later on - he gives him a cheeky smile and a wink. Hrm.
Ack! And Chris is imitating Keats's little eyebrow-rub!
Chris: "She was told before that she'd be alright undercover, and they let her down. WE let her down. The police. And that's not right. It's just...it's not right." Maybe Chris is still feeling the sting of his / baby!Guv's betrayal by the force?
Keats's office has a crescent moon on the wall, behind his desk.
"What are you going to do, Gene, when your team abandon you? Because they will. One by one. When they realize what you really are." Y HALO THAR HIGH NOON.
"Typical. Yeah. When the pressure's on you revert to teenage behaviour." Reference to Gene being the young cop? "I've been working these streets since I was nineteen", etc. "A spoilt kid in his dirty sandpit." Interesting...is that what they call them in Britain? Usually you'd hear "sandbox."
"Sometimes you have to shake hands with the devil for the greater good." *thinks of Gene and Keats shaking hands in 3x02*
"S'alright, Bolls. Don't wanna shoot you again. Him, on the other hand..."
That male mannequin look a bit like dead baby!Guv copper.
Daniel Stafford is awfully lively for someone who was 'beaten within an inch of his life' only the day before.
"The bottom line is, we trust each other." "It's not that easy though, is it? How could you tell if somebody was hiding a deep, dark secret?"
Chris didn't get a Bowieflash this episode, like some of us were expecting, but I think one did happen. As io_aenaria brilliantly pointed out, Bowie's song "Life on Mars?" is basically a rewrite of the same French song that became Frank Sinatra's "My Way"...which was not only playing in the background at Luigi's, but was also being sung by some of the officers.
The difference here is that we heard "Life on Mars?" when Shaz and Ray made a decision to stay with the Guv. Maybe, since "My Way" is the flipside of "Life on Mars?" - the other side of the same coin, as it were - then it indicates an opposite decision? Maybe this is the moment that Alex decides to pull away from the Guv, after he treats Keats so shabbily (she's the one with the black background in this scene)?
SQUEE:
LOL @ Chris - "Tipoff was right, Guv - it's heroin!" *SNIFF*!!!
Ray to Shaz: "I just means I don't fancy you because I clearly fancy Chris instead!"
"Hoped to challenge you so you rise to the occasion." "I knew it, out of the closet; he's all over me!" :)
LOL @ Daniel's license plate: NOB 999M
LOL! "Alright, Dickhead?" Actor smirk: yup, that's me. :)
Alex: "Attacking a suspect. In a cell. Beating him to within an inch of his life? There's a word for that."
Gene: "Justice."
Ray to mannequin: "Sorry, love." XD
"You play golf? Course you do. Like all the other useless bastards. Like Keats! I bet he plays an' all." Hee...I love how evil the writers are, making Philip Glenister say bad things about golfers. At least they took advantage of his lovely swing, though. Fore!
GENE/SAM - Y HALO THAR FAN SERVICE! XD *loves Alex for being a Sam/Gene shipper*
Btw, many million kudos to Daniel Mays for the most killer snarl I have seen in many a moon. If Gene wasn't glaring back, the wall behind him probably would have caught on fire.
Next week: *GIVES UP FRANK HARDWICK SO FAST IT LEAVES SKID MARKS ON REALITY*
Q