more Ashes

[selenak]

On the train to Osnabrück, which means time for more ramblings. I've been thinking about why the finale for Life on Mars upset me so much that I fell out of affection (I was never in love, but I liked the first season very much, and while the second one didn't feel as good by comparison, the affection was still there) with the entire series,

Comments

[airie_fairy]

I haven't seen Ashes to Ashes, but I will say for LoM that I thought the sparse development of everybody else struck me as a really well-conceived idea, since it was a coma, and in dreams everything just appears and appears to make perfect sense as needed. (Of course, this was back when they were a coma dream, I guess...) I also got the sense that for such slight dabs of detail, those supporting characters felt very full, which I thought was an impressive thing to pull off. Though I also have to say one of the things that have increasingly prevented me from indulging my curiosity about Ashes to Ashes is all the people saying how endearing it has made Ray. I don't really have the patience to spend three series pretending like Ray isn't and shouldn't be fundamentally disgusting to me. Murderously corrupt police are not something I will ever be in the mood to be broad-minded about. While Gene (though I don't adore him) seemed to be just trying to do what he thought was right, in a gruff way, Ray went way beyond that and I'm more than

Just saw I hadn't replied yet, sorry!

[selenak]

re: Ray, it's not like he suddenly turns into Prince Charming or the show presents his LoM behaviour as the right thing to do. We find him in the AtA pilot basically as we left him, and he works his way up from there, step by little step. Now I don't know about you, but I find watching a static boo-hiss figure getting developed into a three dimensional character capable of learning from what he did wrong and changing a far more interesting viewing experience than having the same character presented as a one dimensional stooge forever.

Re: Just saw I hadn't replied yet, sorry!

[airie_fairy]

It's undoubtedly a better course of action in character writing. It's just that there are cases where I will be unable to react to it with anything but outright rejection and possibly throwing things at the screen. People I don't like, fictional and otherwise, have dimensions beyond what they are to me, and I recognize that and am even able to sympathize with them in given situations, but there are things I'm ultimately incapable of getting beyond to getting to the point of actually liking them. It can agree that it'd be more interesting to flesh him out, but I'm not interested in seeing anything else he has to offer.