(no subject)
So, 3x07 of A2A. Where to even start?
Um. This got really long.
HE WILL KNOCK FOUR TIMES!
*cough* Sorry, just had to get that one out. :D
*********
Hmm. Ray and Shaz, first. They are still adorably cute together, although not in the Ray/Shaz way. In the way that they're finally bonding instead of fighting over Chris, and trying to figure out what's happening to them and hanging onto each other when they're scared.
What were they hearing behind the door? Wasn't that the door to the room that looks suspiciously like Manchester's old Lost and Found? The room that did not exist prior to this season? (It just had the window at first, and bare walls, if I remember correctly. Here lately it's developed messy shelves with random junk on them. I could be wrong, though--I was wrong about the red filing cabinets. They did have them in S1.)
Was the noise the same as they hear when they have the "LoM moments", the pub noise and Nelson laughing and all?
**************
Keats. Urgh. Those videotapes that he has, labelled "Shaz", "Chris", and "Ray"--what do we think those are about? Death scenes, anyone? Ray's to do with fire/explosions/suffocation; Shaz's to do with being stabbed; Chris'...well, something to do with a police whistle? Although why anybody'd have that on video...
What else could they be? Theories, anyone?
*************
Alex. Still no mention of Molly, I see. And still swinging wildly between "You will never, ever know" and "Get your coat, you've pulled." And then hauling out after Keats because of some random photos. That whole sequence did not sit very well with me. Gene tells Alex all about what happened to Sam (and can I just say that every bit of what he said, about how much he learned from Sam, and how he trusted Sam enough to do what he asked without asking questions, I was eating that up with a SPOON, even if I do have other nagging issues with it), and somehow, just from hearing that story, Alex decides that she wants to sleep with him. Okay, I'm not arguing against sleeping with Gene--I think we all ought to have a go, in fact--but she's been so back-and-forth with him that I don't see what was so special about this story that it changed her mind. It smacks of a plot device to get them closer together just so that they can be interrupted by Keats.
And then, after making the decision and taking Gene upstairs, why would she run out after Keats in the middle of the night? Because of some photos? She doesn't even know where the photos came from--anyone could have planted them in Gene's desk. Keats has been in and out of there with his people all season. And if she made the decision to trust Gene based on what he told her about Sam, why would she abandon him that quickly over some photos? Why wouldn't she just bring them to Gene and ask him about them?
AND, where exactly is she off to in London in the middle of the night? She's not gonna walk to Manchester, which is where I assume the field and the scarecrow and the weathervane are, more or less. (Lancashire, right?)
The whole thing just seemed like a set-up to shove some "Galex" (hate that term, BTW) in just so that it could be interrupted and lead to yet more Gene/Alex tension.
And yet...on the shallow end of things, Phillip Glenister all spruced up and with his tie undone, YUM. So, there's that.
****************
Speaking of, Gene. The story about Sam. Again, loved it. Have some nagging questions, though. Why did Sam need to disappear? What did he find out that made him think Gene would be better off not knowing it? The Sam in my head, if he'd found out what was really going on here, would have done his absolute best to keep Gene from finding it out, if he thought it would hurt Gene, and if he couldn't stop it from coming out, then he'd have stuck around to be there for Gene when it all fell apart. He wouldn't have disappeared and left Gene to face it all on his own.
I do wonder if he felt his own time coming to an end--if he knew he was dying in the "real" world, and thought there was a chance he'd disappear from this world. So he made arrangements so that Annie would think he was dead and could move on with her life. (Maybe. We have no info on what actually happened to Annie. If she disappeared along with Sam, wouldn't somebody have mentioned that? And why did Jackie Queen say Annie and Sam had married, and yet Alex referred to Annie as Sam's "girlfriend" in last night's ep?) And so that Gene would think that Sam was alive somewhere and just being mysterious and weird.
If that's true, then Sam really is gone, from both worlds, and I will cry.
Of course, I still have doubts about whether Sam ever really woke up at the end of LoM, and therefore whether he ever jumped for real, or is he still in the original coma...but that way madness lies. Because if he didn't wake up, and didn't jump, then everything from the beginning of A2A is a lie, and Alex isn't who she thinks she is, and...which actually is what I've been thinking for a while, but I can't give any valid reasoning for that theory.
Maybe Sam found out that this is some halfway world, and that they're meant to be moving on from it. Maybe he thought that if he stayed, there'd be no reason for Gene to go--he'd be comfortable there. Maybe Sam thought that if he went first, Gene might follow eventually. But that doesn't make sense in terms of Sam thinking it would be better if Gene didn't know. Have I mentioned how much this show makes my head hurt?
Speaking of...on the trailer, someone who looks a lot like Sam is knocking on the glass wall. Someone who is dressed in one of Sam's 1973 shirts...and his jacket. Which Gene burned. You could argue that Gene burned the jacket because he knew close inspection would show that it wasn't Sam's jacket, but why would Sam still be running around in his 1973 clothes, ten years later?
This is probably another one of Alex's dream sequences. But why is she dreaming about Sam? Gene's answered the "WHAT HAPPENED TO SAM" question. Hasn't he? And how would Alex know what Sam's clothes in 1973 looked like, anyway?
And why has the "WHAT HAPPENED TO SAM" question been such a huge running thing if the real question is going to turn out to be "What happened to Gene" at the last minute instead? That's a pretty big red herring. It would have worked out better for Gene to tell Alex this story a couple of eps ago, and then her spend a while working out what Sam found out that made him disappear.
***********
Chris. Oh, Chris. The hug nearly made me cry. Not only because there never seemed to be a real reconciliation between Chris and Gene over the events of S2, and Gene's been riding him hard ever since, even though Chris has been standing up for Gene behind his back ("There's nowhere I'd rather be than in the Guv's shadow"), although there was a lot of that.
But also because I think that Chris represents Gene, in a way. (It could be a literal way--that ghost, who I really do not want to believe is Gene but am really starting to despite myself, looks a whole lot like Chris. It's Chris who "becomes the lion"; it's Chris who opens the tin box in Alex's dream. But that would get really complicated to explain, so I'm limiting myself to the metaphorical sense.) I think Gene, as a young copper, was a lot like Chris. He tells Sam that he started off trying to do what was right, and then got sidetracked. Chris has demonstrated exactly the same violent tendencies as Gene; he's screwed up and done some bad things. Gene kept him around because he wanted to keep an eye on him, prevent him from getting into even more trouble, but he's been really rough on him. I think it's partly because he doesn't want Chris to end up a bent copper--as Gene would have, if not for Sam. But also I think it's partly because he sees himself, all his mistakes and screw-ups, in Chris, and he hates it.
When Gene hugs Chris, it's not only him forgiving Chris; it's him forgiving himself.
And of course, the whole plot with Chris stepping up and doing something against Gene's wishes, strictly because he thinks it's the right thing to do--that was awesome. "The rat becoming the lion." (More about that later.) But even more that that--he's gone against Gene's wishes, but he makes it very clear that he still respects Gene, still looks up to him and wants to work with him--he just has his own opinions and beliefs. It's a plot that we've seen in every coming-of-age story ever, and it's a bit odd in the framework of A2A, but Gene has said more than once that he's a father figure to Chris. Even more odd is that it's a reconciliation scene between a parent-figure and a child-figure that ends well. That generally doesn't happen in LoM/A2A. The only thing that's shown up nearly as much as the police corruption theme has been the horribly dysfunctional parent/child relationship theme.
I was thrilled that Chris got his "LoM moment". Chris, Ray, and Shaz together seem so much better than any two of them separately. And now, whatever's freaking them out, at least they'll be together.
Random question: What happened to the guy Chris was talking to, on the park bench? We hear the "soul" sting on the soundtrack, and then he's GONE. Are we so close to the end now that non-coppers only exist long enough to play their parts for the main characters, to allow them to move closer to their own resolutions?
Now, as to Chris "becoming the lion". In 3x02, Shaz's episode, I noted the part where Shaz runs past Chris, into Gene's arms, for comfort. I wrote at the time about how Chris, even though he'd screwed up, had consistently tried to learn from both Sam and Alex. He wants to do better; he wants to be more than he is. I was speculating on why Keats had said that Gene couldn't leave here, that this place defined him. I wondered if Gene "left", would that world cease to exist? Does Gene, on some subconscious level, realize that he's somehow providing a haven for coppers killed in the line of duty to come and work out their issues? And he can't move on, because then there'd be no one to take care of them? And we know that Gene is all about taking care of his people.
I also wrote, "When Shaz runs past Chris to Gene, it highlights the fact that Chris isn't ready to give that kind of comfort. Shaz can't feel as safe with Chris as she can with Gene. Yet. That whole scene says very clearly that Chris still has a lot of growing to do before he can compete with, or compare to, Gene. And why would he need to? Not for Shaz; it's not like Gene is even interested in her that way. For the entire "world" there. Chris needs to be strong enough to keep it going so that Gene can move on. And maybe, with what he's learned from Sam and Alex, he can make it a little bit better, a little bit safer."
So, here's yet another off-the-wall theory to add to the huge stack that's out there: when Gene realizes who he really is, what's happened to him (see this post for what I fear that is), and that it's time for him to move on, then this "world" will fall apart. And maybe they'll all step into the light together.
Or maybe, just maybe, Chris will step up and keep it going, so there'll always be somewhere a dying/dead copper can come while he figures out where to go next. Chris will "become the lion". And Shaz and Ray will choose to stay with him, so he won't have to be alone. Meanwhile Alex and Gene will cross into the light, where Nelson is waiting to serve them a drink, and Sam, played by John Simm and not a suspiciously badly-lit extra, is holding a table for them.
What? I can dream, can't I?
****************
All right. They've got one hour to explain
--What this world really is
--Why Alex is here
--What happened to Sam
--Who the ghost is
--Who Keats is
--Why Alex and Sam remembered where they came from, but no one else did
--Why everyone is seeing stars
--Why everyone is hearing Nelson at The Railway Arms
--What the videotapes are
--What's going to happen to them all at the end
--What's going to happen (or what has already happened) to Molly at the end
Have I missed anything? I've pretty much given up on finding out any resolution for anything from the first two seasons; I'm only focusing on this latest one.
They might could do it. Maybe. If they dump the crime-of-the-week by the wayside and focus completely on wrapping everything up.
Is it next Friday yet?
Um. This got really long.
HE WILL KNOCK FOUR TIMES!
*cough* Sorry, just had to get that one out. :D
*********
Hmm. Ray and Shaz, first. They are still adorably cute together, although not in the Ray/Shaz way. In the way that they're finally bonding instead of fighting over Chris, and trying to figure out what's happening to them and hanging onto each other when they're scared.
What were they hearing behind the door? Wasn't that the door to the room that looks suspiciously like Manchester's old Lost and Found? The room that did not exist prior to this season? (It just had the window at first, and bare walls, if I remember correctly. Here lately it's developed messy shelves with random junk on them. I could be wrong, though--I was wrong about the red filing cabinets. They did have them in S1.)
Was the noise the same as they hear when they have the "LoM moments", the pub noise and Nelson laughing and all?
**************
Keats. Urgh. Those videotapes that he has, labelled "Shaz", "Chris", and "Ray"--what do we think those are about? Death scenes, anyone? Ray's to do with fire/explosions/suffocation; Shaz's to do with being stabbed; Chris'...well, something to do with a police whistle? Although why anybody'd have that on video...
What else could they be? Theories, anyone?
*************
Alex. Still no mention of Molly, I see. And still swinging wildly between "You will never, ever know" and "Get your coat, you've pulled." And then hauling out after Keats because of some random photos. That whole sequence did not sit very well with me. Gene tells Alex all about what happened to Sam (and can I just say that every bit of what he said, about how much he learned from Sam, and how he trusted Sam enough to do what he asked without asking questions, I was eating that up with a SPOON, even if I do have other nagging issues with it), and somehow, just from hearing that story, Alex decides that she wants to sleep with him. Okay, I'm not arguing against sleeping with Gene--I think we all ought to have a go, in fact--but she's been so back-and-forth with him that I don't see what was so special about this story that it changed her mind. It smacks of a plot device to get them closer together just so that they can be interrupted by Keats.
And then, after making the decision and taking Gene upstairs, why would she run out after Keats in the middle of the night? Because of some photos? She doesn't even know where the photos came from--anyone could have planted them in Gene's desk. Keats has been in and out of there with his people all season. And if she made the decision to trust Gene based on what he told her about Sam, why would she abandon him that quickly over some photos? Why wouldn't she just bring them to Gene and ask him about them?
AND, where exactly is she off to in London in the middle of the night? She's not gonna walk to Manchester, which is where I assume the field and the scarecrow and the weathervane are, more or less. (Lancashire, right?)
The whole thing just seemed like a set-up to shove some "Galex" (hate that term, BTW) in just so that it could be interrupted and lead to yet more Gene/Alex tension.
And yet...on the shallow end of things, Phillip Glenister all spruced up and with his tie undone, YUM. So, there's that.
****************
Speaking of, Gene. The story about Sam. Again, loved it. Have some nagging questions, though. Why did Sam need to disappear? What did he find out that made him think Gene would be better off not knowing it? The Sam in my head, if he'd found out what was really going on here, would have done his absolute best to keep Gene from finding it out, if he thought it would hurt Gene, and if he couldn't stop it from coming out, then he'd have stuck around to be there for Gene when it all fell apart. He wouldn't have disappeared and left Gene to face it all on his own.
I do wonder if he felt his own time coming to an end--if he knew he was dying in the "real" world, and thought there was a chance he'd disappear from this world. So he made arrangements so that Annie would think he was dead and could move on with her life. (Maybe. We have no info on what actually happened to Annie. If she disappeared along with Sam, wouldn't somebody have mentioned that? And why did Jackie Queen say Annie and Sam had married, and yet Alex referred to Annie as Sam's "girlfriend" in last night's ep?) And so that Gene would think that Sam was alive somewhere and just being mysterious and weird.
If that's true, then Sam really is gone, from both worlds, and I will cry.
Of course, I still have doubts about whether Sam ever really woke up at the end of LoM, and therefore whether he ever jumped for real, or is he still in the original coma...but that way madness lies. Because if he didn't wake up, and didn't jump, then everything from the beginning of A2A is a lie, and Alex isn't who she thinks she is, and...which actually is what I've been thinking for a while, but I can't give any valid reasoning for that theory.
Maybe Sam found out that this is some halfway world, and that they're meant to be moving on from it. Maybe he thought that if he stayed, there'd be no reason for Gene to go--he'd be comfortable there. Maybe Sam thought that if he went first, Gene might follow eventually. But that doesn't make sense in terms of Sam thinking it would be better if Gene didn't know. Have I mentioned how much this show makes my head hurt?
Speaking of...on the trailer, someone who looks a lot like Sam is knocking on the glass wall. Someone who is dressed in one of Sam's 1973 shirts...and his jacket. Which Gene burned. You could argue that Gene burned the jacket because he knew close inspection would show that it wasn't Sam's jacket, but why would Sam still be running around in his 1973 clothes, ten years later?
This is probably another one of Alex's dream sequences. But why is she dreaming about Sam? Gene's answered the "WHAT HAPPENED TO SAM" question. Hasn't he? And how would Alex know what Sam's clothes in 1973 looked like, anyway?
And why has the "WHAT HAPPENED TO SAM" question been such a huge running thing if the real question is going to turn out to be "What happened to Gene" at the last minute instead? That's a pretty big red herring. It would have worked out better for Gene to tell Alex this story a couple of eps ago, and then her spend a while working out what Sam found out that made him disappear.
***********
Chris. Oh, Chris. The hug nearly made me cry. Not only because there never seemed to be a real reconciliation between Chris and Gene over the events of S2, and Gene's been riding him hard ever since, even though Chris has been standing up for Gene behind his back ("There's nowhere I'd rather be than in the Guv's shadow"), although there was a lot of that.
But also because I think that Chris represents Gene, in a way. (It could be a literal way--that ghost, who I really do not want to believe is Gene but am really starting to despite myself, looks a whole lot like Chris. It's Chris who "becomes the lion"; it's Chris who opens the tin box in Alex's dream. But that would get really complicated to explain, so I'm limiting myself to the metaphorical sense.) I think Gene, as a young copper, was a lot like Chris. He tells Sam that he started off trying to do what was right, and then got sidetracked. Chris has demonstrated exactly the same violent tendencies as Gene; he's screwed up and done some bad things. Gene kept him around because he wanted to keep an eye on him, prevent him from getting into even more trouble, but he's been really rough on him. I think it's partly because he doesn't want Chris to end up a bent copper--as Gene would have, if not for Sam. But also I think it's partly because he sees himself, all his mistakes and screw-ups, in Chris, and he hates it.
When Gene hugs Chris, it's not only him forgiving Chris; it's him forgiving himself.
And of course, the whole plot with Chris stepping up and doing something against Gene's wishes, strictly because he thinks it's the right thing to do--that was awesome. "The rat becoming the lion." (More about that later.) But even more that that--he's gone against Gene's wishes, but he makes it very clear that he still respects Gene, still looks up to him and wants to work with him--he just has his own opinions and beliefs. It's a plot that we've seen in every coming-of-age story ever, and it's a bit odd in the framework of A2A, but Gene has said more than once that he's a father figure to Chris. Even more odd is that it's a reconciliation scene between a parent-figure and a child-figure that ends well. That generally doesn't happen in LoM/A2A. The only thing that's shown up nearly as much as the police corruption theme has been the horribly dysfunctional parent/child relationship theme.
I was thrilled that Chris got his "LoM moment". Chris, Ray, and Shaz together seem so much better than any two of them separately. And now, whatever's freaking them out, at least they'll be together.
Random question: What happened to the guy Chris was talking to, on the park bench? We hear the "soul" sting on the soundtrack, and then he's GONE. Are we so close to the end now that non-coppers only exist long enough to play their parts for the main characters, to allow them to move closer to their own resolutions?
Now, as to Chris "becoming the lion". In 3x02, Shaz's episode, I noted the part where Shaz runs past Chris, into Gene's arms, for comfort. I wrote at the time about how Chris, even though he'd screwed up, had consistently tried to learn from both Sam and Alex. He wants to do better; he wants to be more than he is. I was speculating on why Keats had said that Gene couldn't leave here, that this place defined him. I wondered if Gene "left", would that world cease to exist? Does Gene, on some subconscious level, realize that he's somehow providing a haven for coppers killed in the line of duty to come and work out their issues? And he can't move on, because then there'd be no one to take care of them? And we know that Gene is all about taking care of his people.
I also wrote, "When Shaz runs past Chris to Gene, it highlights the fact that Chris isn't ready to give that kind of comfort. Shaz can't feel as safe with Chris as she can with Gene. Yet. That whole scene says very clearly that Chris still has a lot of growing to do before he can compete with, or compare to, Gene. And why would he need to? Not for Shaz; it's not like Gene is even interested in her that way. For the entire "world" there. Chris needs to be strong enough to keep it going so that Gene can move on. And maybe, with what he's learned from Sam and Alex, he can make it a little bit better, a little bit safer."
So, here's yet another off-the-wall theory to add to the huge stack that's out there: when Gene realizes who he really is, what's happened to him (see this post for what I fear that is), and that it's time for him to move on, then this "world" will fall apart. And maybe they'll all step into the light together.
Or maybe, just maybe, Chris will step up and keep it going, so there'll always be somewhere a dying/dead copper can come while he figures out where to go next. Chris will "become the lion". And Shaz and Ray will choose to stay with him, so he won't have to be alone. Meanwhile Alex and Gene will cross into the light, where Nelson is waiting to serve them a drink, and Sam, played by John Simm and not a suspiciously badly-lit extra, is holding a table for them.
What? I can dream, can't I?
****************
All right. They've got one hour to explain
--What this world really is
--Why Alex is here
--What happened to Sam
--Who the ghost is
--Who Keats is
--Why Alex and Sam remembered where they came from, but no one else did
--Why everyone is seeing stars
--Why everyone is hearing Nelson at The Railway Arms
--What the videotapes are
--What's going to happen to them all at the end
--What's going to happen (or what has already happened) to Molly at the end
Have I missed anything? I've pretty much given up on finding out any resolution for anything from the first two seasons; I'm only focusing on this latest one.
They might could do it. Maybe. If they dump the crime-of-the-week by the wayside and focus completely on wrapping everything up.
Is it next Friday yet?