Slouching towards Lancashire

[redscharlach]

Are you excited about the upcoming finale of Ashes To Ashes? I certainly am, and I was intending to assemble a semi-coherent collection of thoughtful theories, intellectual insights and perceptive plot predictions to psych us all up for the end of the series. But then I thought no, that's far too difficult, so why don't I ask you to do the work instead?

Poll The Ashes To Ashes Spot-The-Plot Finale Prediction Poll!

However, I can never resist sticking my own oar in, so here are a few thoughts about episode 3x07, and a couple of bits of speculation that will no doubt look totally ridiculous and out-of-date by Friday night:

• I can't quite decide which way I think it'll turn out. It seems to come down to Molly: if she's still alive in the present day, Alex will surely return, but if she isn't, Alex can/will stay in 1983. But which is it? I rewatched episode 3x01 the other day and when Alex was in the present day at the beginning (if that wasn't All A Dream itself!), she'd sent Molly back to her dad and was having loads of trouble adjusting to her culture shock; she wasn't exactly in a happy place. So I'm guessing that Alex will return to the present only if it becomes impossible to stay in Geneworld because it's all fallen to bits, both metaphorically and literally. Or will she? Argh, I don't know. It's too hard!
  
  
• As a lover of literature of all stripes both high and low, I was enchanted with the idea that Pam Ayres could have written Yeats's The Second Coming. Only I imagine her version would have been entitled "I Wish I'd Looked After Me Beast".
  
  
• My own pet theories, wobbly and half-baked as they are, did take a couple of blows last episode. Firstly, when it transpired that Gene himself doesn't know why Sam wanted to fake his own death and leave. (Of course, he MIGHT be lying about that, but I was lulled into believing him by the relatively quiet and reflective way that he delivered the lines, rather than using a blustering "I'm going to claim something loudly that isn't true!" mode.) And secondly, because that shot down my "Sam lost the plot because Annie died" idea: Annie did get a mention (yay!) but if something tragic had happened to her, Gene would have known and therefore not been so surprised by Sam exhibiting strange behaviour. UNLESS of course, Gene is a lying liar who lies. Which he MIGHT be. But about what?
  
  
• Several weeks later than the rest of the internet, I independently managed to work out that the 6620 on Half-Face Copper's uniform could be a Biblical reference to Book 6, chapter 6, line 20, which describes the walls of Jericho falling down. So, stuff falling apart, it's a pattern! - albeit not a very enlightening one, boo. Nonetheless, I was rather chuffed that I came up with it on my ownness.
  
  
• I confess that the hopeless teenager in me did swoon a bit at the dancing part, even despite my perennial dislike of Spandau Ballet's "True" (What can I say? I was a Duran Duran girl.) Mind you, I'm not sure Gene's choice of Herb Alpert would have necessarily been an improvement. Maybe if it were this song, but who'd want to have sex to the tune of this?
  
  
• I haven't even mentioned Ray, Chris and Shaz yet, shame on me. Basically I just want to give them all a big hug and stop nasty things from happening to them, existential sparkly fearfulness of the universe or no existential sparkly fearfulness of the universe. Still, at least the scary sounds they can hear have been accurately identified as the Railway Arms, i.e. a pub. And if the afterlife's got a pub in it, it can't be totally bad... can it?

And on that note, I will push aside the brainbending theories and wait as patiently as I can for Friday night to arrive. Whatever happens, it's a fairly solid bet that I'll be popping in to tell you what I thought...

* As seen in the Ashes To Ashes video, even though that shows Dave as the one in danger of being squished.