Dumbest ending to a great show?

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Ending (Sam's jump) may be sad but not dumbest at all...

I liked the ending because I have my cake but I ate it too. I just wish there had been at least one more season of this wonderful show. I'm one of those people who prefer happy endings. (That in and of itself doesn't mean I'm American but by a strange coincidence I am!) I can appreciate well-done films or shows that end on a somber or sad or tragic note but let's just say I don't gorge myself on them. I'd call this a "happier" ending with a sad twist or sad meaning behind it - maybe.

Sam had more of a life in "1973" than in "2006" so I'm glad he ended up in the 70's. However, there can be many different interpretations of the ending and about what was going on with Sam all along and that is so interesting. After reading other posters' opinions on one or two threads here, I'm not altogether certain anymore what was happening but for now, here's what I tentatively think:

The mind trip in '73 when Morgan convinces Sam Tyler that he's actually Sam Williams is a manifestation of the beginning of the operation, the attempt to remove the tumor. From that time until Sam jumps he is on the operating table. He never actually wakes up. I think he suspects this when he decides to jump. Maybe cutting himself and not feeling it is the tip-off. He decides to let go (the "suicide" jump) of the present day reality in favor of the 1973 reality. I was thinking that this wasn't really suicide but perhaps it is because he knows that he will "die" in the present if stops trying to get out of his comatose state. Also, he had to realize that he would most likely have died from jumping off that building if he was actually awake. Would dying have taken him back to the exact point in his comatose dream or past reality or parallel universe he came from? And if he did survive a real jump, would his second coma (if there was one) have taken him back to the exact time and place he left Gene, Annie and the gang? I doubt it - and he couldn't be sure it would work out that way. And it just didn't seem like he was trying to commit suicide. He was trying to get back there.

At the very end Dr. Morgan is saying that Sam is fading or something like that so maybe he’s dying on the operating table. Either (1) Sam’s consciousness is about to fade from existence or (2) it will continue to live in the 1973 reality – where he’ll marry Annie and eventually die again as 98 year old decorated ex-policeman with thirty grandchildren. I’ll pick #2 and sleep well at night!

Or...was his whole 2006 life coma-induced or the result from head trauma from childhood and he really is Sam Williams from Hyde??? Ahhhhh! This mindtwisting is one of the things I really love about the original LOM.

Spoilers about the US version below...
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On a side note I actually liked the US version too and was disappointed when it got cancelled. (But honestly, why remake a show that had just been made in the same language two years before and the only things really different was the ending and the fact that the remake had a little less charm? Makes no sense.) However, I was even more disappointed with the way it ended. If they were actually a 2035 Earth crew on its first Mars mission then the ending effectively robbed the entire show of meaning. And if Sam is still in a coma or another dimension or whatever, then absolutely nothing has been resolved and the show's meaning is forever a secret. There's not much left to piece together an interpretation. Either way, that ending was bad.



~"Chris, am I weird?"
~"Yeah, but so what? Everybody's weird."