Ashes to Ashes - the finale
Well, I know what's going down as my WTF season finale in the TV month meme...
So, IIUC, Gene Hunt is actually the grown up version of this young policeman who died horribly. He 'lives' in a sort of twilight world where coppers go to when they'd had some sort of traumatic death or are in a coma, vel sim. However, until this episode, he didn't remember any of this - he just thought he was Gene Hunt. Right? So even if he's doing some sort of Charon-like ferrying people over to the other side, he doesn't know that? I mean, if he was aware of the job he's doing for the dead, then what Alex found out wouldn't have been a revelation, would it? But when he does find out, presumably he feels OK with his role and settles into it. I think. He settles into it using the metaphor of a police raid, of course.
Hmm, OK.
Now, I'm prepared to buy all this for Ashes to Ashes. It's quite a nice mythology really. Though if this is just for coppers, it's making me wonder what the Gene Hunt of Academic Heaven is going to be like...
I admit, I have a problem with buying the story wholesale for the LoM and A2A universe. In large part this is because I know for a fact that when LoM was written they didn't envisage anything like this - they didn't even mean the coma/time-travel/madness trichotomy to be a mystery, until they saw the internet explode in a frenzy of speculation as the first series showed. But then maybe the way A2A wrapped up is quite true to the original bloke-in-a-coma premise, really... I suspect the way the US series of LoM reportedly wrapped up (I haven't seen it) may have had some effect on the plotting here. Maybe the worst thing is that it's going to change the way I look at LoM, in particular the season 2 finale, which I thought was terrific - and extremely difficult to watch (it makes me cry so much).
In any case, by the time the episode finished last night I was feeling a bit shellshocked. I think I prefered not knowing to knowing, really. And we didn't even get a shot of Sam to cheer me up. The last bit, where Gene got Alex to go, was quite sad, but didn't quite make me cry.
Nice to know the Railway Arms is heaven. Indeed, it's nice to see that my idea about Gene Hunt being God (which goes back to LoM watching, I think just before the LoM season 2 finale) wasn't so far from the mark! In a way, I'm quite glad that Alex was wrong about her 'imaginary constructs', because the way she used to say it was so annoying.
That reminds me, much as I thought the character of Jin Keats was horrible, he was well acted (by Daniel Mays). When he was at his demonic it was actually quite scary. Towards the end I was convinced that at some point they would actually show him with horns and/or a tail or similar - and if they had, the imagie wouldn't have felt at all out of place. I think the lift down to hell was maybe a bit too much of a metaphor, but it was nice to have a Faustian demon trying to tempt the characters.
So is Gene a sort of angel, in a way? If so, he's very tragically flawed. But in a good way.
P.S. References to Lewis Collins much appreciated.
So, IIUC, Gene Hunt is actually the grown up version of this young policeman who died horribly. He 'lives' in a sort of twilight world where coppers go to when they'd had some sort of traumatic death or are in a coma, vel sim. However, until this episode, he didn't remember any of this - he just thought he was Gene Hunt. Right? So even if he's doing some sort of Charon-like ferrying people over to the other side, he doesn't know that? I mean, if he was aware of the job he's doing for the dead, then what Alex found out wouldn't have been a revelation, would it? But when he does find out, presumably he feels OK with his role and settles into it. I think. He settles into it using the metaphor of a police raid, of course.
Hmm, OK.
Now, I'm prepared to buy all this for Ashes to Ashes. It's quite a nice mythology really. Though if this is just for coppers, it's making me wonder what the Gene Hunt of Academic Heaven is going to be like...
I admit, I have a problem with buying the story wholesale for the LoM and A2A universe. In large part this is because I know for a fact that when LoM was written they didn't envisage anything like this - they didn't even mean the coma/time-travel/madness trichotomy to be a mystery, until they saw the internet explode in a frenzy of speculation as the first series showed. But then maybe the way A2A wrapped up is quite true to the original bloke-in-a-coma premise, really... I suspect the way the US series of LoM reportedly wrapped up (I haven't seen it) may have had some effect on the plotting here. Maybe the worst thing is that it's going to change the way I look at LoM, in particular the season 2 finale, which I thought was terrific - and extremely difficult to watch (it makes me cry so much).
In any case, by the time the episode finished last night I was feeling a bit shellshocked. I think I prefered not knowing to knowing, really. And we didn't even get a shot of Sam to cheer me up. The last bit, where Gene got Alex to go, was quite sad, but didn't quite make me cry.
Nice to know the Railway Arms is heaven. Indeed, it's nice to see that my idea about Gene Hunt being God (which goes back to LoM watching, I think just before the LoM season 2 finale) wasn't so far from the mark! In a way, I'm quite glad that Alex was wrong about her 'imaginary constructs', because the way she used to say it was so annoying.
That reminds me, much as I thought the character of Jin Keats was horrible, he was well acted (by Daniel Mays). When he was at his demonic it was actually quite scary. Towards the end I was convinced that at some point they would actually show him with horns and/or a tail or similar - and if they had, the imagie wouldn't have felt at all out of place. I think the lift down to hell was maybe a bit too much of a metaphor, but it was nice to have a Faustian demon trying to tempt the characters.
So is Gene a sort of angel, in a way? If so, he's very tragically flawed. But in a good way.
P.S. References to Lewis Collins much appreciated.