A satisfying dream

Before I leave on my little trip (and don't worry, I'll be back on Wednesday), I wanted to talk about the Life on Mars finale. There are about a million things that could be said from a fan's point of view, but I finally realized it makes more sense to me to consider it from a writer's point of view. I think the writers tried their darnedest to give the fans maximum closure, and they did it by first wrapping everything in 1973 up neatly, and only then pulling away the curtain and revealing the objective truth of the situation. A lot of "it's all a dream" writers don't bother to do that, and often it's because they tack on that ending when the plot has become so convoluted that even they can't make sense of it anymore. But think about this in real life for a moment. When you are awakened abruptly from a dream at a crucial point, it haunts you all day. Only when the dream is allowed to end naturally is closure achieved. So I love it that, while acknowledging the fictionality of the 1973 setting, they allowed Sam and Annie to get together, Sam and Gene to make peace, and Sam to decide he wanted to stay after all. It's wonderful to look back on a beautiful dream that ended well, and now Life on Mars will be that for us.