Mar 26 2009
Life on Mars Closes in on Finale
I just had to start with a photo of Annie for this Life on Mars post. Gretchen Mol totally rocks this part, and Annie Norris is one of the great and interesting characters of TV. It’s a shame we have to say goodbye to her and the rest of uber talented Life on Mars cast after next week’s finale.
*SPOILER ALERT* This week’s episode, “Everyone Knows It’s Windy”, picks up after the huge cliffhanger of last week. Pulling over a car on what seemed a random traffic stop, Ray (Michael Imperioli) and Chris (Jonathan Murphy) were both shot at point blank range by the Irish mobster Jimmy McManus (Peter Greene). Sam (Jason O’Mara) had been working undercover in McManus’ gang, but got caught and saved by his backup just in time. Apparently McManus didn’t like his party getting busted up by the cops.
“Everyone Knows It’s Windy” picks up with the 125 looking for some vigilante justice for the fallen officers. Ray, with less serious wounds, gets patched up and joins the hunt for McManus. Chris, who took most of the bullets, is in critical condition in surgery.
McManus quickly turns up dead, shot close-up by someone McManus perceived as a cop. An FBI agent shows up to investigate McManus’ death and suddenly all the clues are pointing towards Sam. What’s more troubling is when the gun is found in Sam’s apartment, and his hippie chick neighbor Windy (Tanya Fischer) is unable to help provide his alibi–because her apartment is completely empty, and it looks as if she never existed at all.
Sam ends up behind bars and begins to question his own sanity, and his own motives. Here we have one of the best scenes in the episode, as Annie helps him see what really matters in all of this.
(If you can’t see the video, go here.)
Lt. Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel) hilariously shows up to Sam’s cell with a key hidden in a Chinese food container. With Annie and even Ray’s help, Sam manages to track the clues to the eyewitness who identified him–an actor attending a party at a toy factory. And of course, the toy factory makes the same little robot gizmos that Sam has seen crawling out of people’s eyeballs.
It turns out the FBI agent is responsible for the whole thing. He corners Sam, and almost convinces him to jump off a building to “get home”. Does he hold all the answers to Sam’s true reality? Or is it just that he read Sam’s psych files and knows all the details of Sam’s “delusions”? Sam still sees things the others don’t, and hears the agent saying things the others don’t hear. Is Sam really crazy?
In the end, it’s Annie to the rescue. To be honest, if Sam really is in a coma or time traveling or whatever the explanation, I don’t want him to go back. The relationship he has with Annie is too good to let go of, and Sam has actually found a place for himself here in 1973. Sure, he doesn’t exactly fit in, but that’s part of what makes it work. He’s shaken up the 125, and given Annie the fortitude to go forward with ambitions she might otherwise have let fall away. He has a purpose here.
Word is, we’ll have a true ending to Life on Mars. I don’t think the showrunners knew they’d be canceled until they were working on the last episode, so I worry it won’t quite be as thorough as we’d like it to be. I’m not complaining, however–any ending is better than no ending at all. When great shows like Studio 60 and Life on Mars get an ending, it’s a lot easier to accept it as just a sterling miniseries that had a beginning, middle, and end, rather than a series that got cut off just as it was hitting its stride.
Here’s hoping we get some answers to our questions, and maybe we’ll find out if Windy really IS a real hippie chick or just a figment of Sam’s imagination.
P.S. Chris pulled through, no doubt helped by visits from his friends and extra prayers from Annie. Murphy plays Chris with just the right amount of adorableness when he notices that Annie and Sam seem “different together”. Perceptive kid. He’s the most huggable police detective on TV, that’s for sure, and I’m glad he made it.
Tune in next week for the Life on Mars finale, on Wednesday at 10/9c, after Lost.
PHOTOS: Gretchen Mol as Annie Norris and Jason O’Mara as Sam Tyler, Life on Mars, “Everyone Knows It’s Windy” screencaps, c2009 Kudos Film and Television, ABC Studios.
