More Interesting Endings?

Many people say that all the loose ends were tied up with ending to life on Mars, but I don't agree. Much of both series referred to Sam's doing things in the past that changed the future. That idea was completely dropped at the ending. In episode one he caught the killer that had taken his girlfriend in the future, because of that she survived to later drop him. What happened with that? Was she really still alive in 2007, or did he just imagine that she broke up with him? Everyone seems to think that she really left him, so how did that happen if she was actually taken and killed? Also the 2006 police station of episode one did not seem to be near as bad as the modern police station of the last episode.

I had imagined several interesting ways that the story could end before I saw the last episode. My favorite was this: In Sam's comatose state his consciousness had actually time travelled, and he was affecting the future. When he returned, he could seek out everyone and everything he had changed. They would all be old now, would they remember him? I expected Chris would end up being his chief and running the place in the future. But all those fantastic possibilities were tossed away with the ending we saw.

Another idea was: Sam wakes up in 2007 to find that he had imagined the whole thing and filled his dream with people he had known or seen in his real time. He could find Annie, get to know her, and possibly actually be happy again in his modern world. He might not live happily-ever-after, but he could try. He might even resign from the "Pleece" and become a private detective who operated with a flare taken from his 1973 experience.

Still another option might have seen him as a kind of throwback from 1973 trying to now interact with his modern colleagues and criminals, while having all kinds of interesting conflicts. That could work in with with either of the above ideas but would probably have required another series.

Those are just a couple of the ideas I had for what would happen in the end. I certainly didn't expect him to kill himself. He had spent the whole 1973 time trying to survive and live, then to just give up and quit trying? It doesn't seem like him, he seemed fairly logical, if not often somewhat gullible, so I think he would have seen other options. I guess he could have gone into clinical depression after waking up, or been affected by the tumor in some way. I'm sure his mother enjoyed his suicide.

I'm sure they will all be derided an boring, but I had hoped for something like them.

Lastly, I think the girl at the end looking at the camera and giving a slight shrug, was the writer saying to the audience, "That's the best I could do under the circumstances. When you get your own show, you can write the ending." Or, it could have been symbolic of any number of things, like "Life is just a big waste of time, so who cares?", etc... I don't know. Maybe she was just saying, "It's over, turn off the TV and get a life."

As for me, I think I would take 1973 anytime over now. No internet or cell phones would be a god-send. I was fifteen years old and happy. If only I could go back.