This review contains spoilers.
Life On Mars starts out rather promisingly. Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara) plays a present-day New York detective whose partner-slash-girlfriend Maya (Lisa Bonet) is abducted from a park one day. In the haze of his grief, he wanders into the road and gets struck by a car. When he wakes up, he finds himself in a version of 1973 where every dude looks like Paul Rudd's character in Anchorman. He is still Sam Tyler, he still lives in New York City, and he's still a police officer, only it's 1973 and everyone he has ever met is either really young or hasn't been born yet.
Naturally, Sam panics, resisting his fate madly for an entire episode, though he does manage to solve a case in the process. After the initial existential hysteria, Sam semi-reluctantly resigns into his new life, partially due to his meeting Annie (Gretchen Mol), a determined policewoman that begins to show an interest in him. As a heroine, she's rather bland; her only defining characteristic, besides her job, is her psychology degree from Fordham, and she uses every possible opportunity to flaunt this fact by quoting Freud or citing the Oedipal complex. Yes, she actually does this. But it's not Mol's fault; it's the way her character was written. As an actress, she is her usual self; cute and unassuming and not terrible, but not altogether memorable, either. Luckily Mol's charm manages to make up for all that the character lacks.
As Sam struggles to find his way back to his own time, he lapses in and out of this new world and catches glimmers of his original reality in various places; TVs, telephones. He hears the voices of his loved ones, of doctors and nurses, and he can't figure out whether he's alive or dead, sleeping or awake. Amongst all this, he manages to sustain his career as a detective as he keeps on solving police cases along the way, some related to his own crisis and some not.
Harvey Keitel is the stand out in the show, if only due to his already established reputation, but even he seems to be phoning in his performance here. It's as though he's only there to drink and lose his temper and be all Harvey Keitel-like. We know he's good at it, but at this point it seems like he's a little past his prime, like he doesn't really care enough anymore. And maybe if the show took a cue from its solid premise and eschewed the route of a fairly standard cop drama in favor of a more original and intriguing central plotline... Well, then maybe he would have something to actually care about.
Now, the it-was-all-a-dream finale—as it turns out, both 1973 and 2008 were false realities, dreamt up while on a mission to mars in the year 2035. Yes, you read that right. The ending has been regarded as a rather controversial one, which is understandable. It seems to come entirely out of left field; a deus ex machina, if you will, especially because the entire series takes such meticulous care to steer you into thinking that Sam is, in fact, in a coma all along. The twist is effective in the short term; it's surprising to say the least, and it changes the viewer's whole perspective of the show. But that's just it: it changes the viewer's whole perspective of the show. The very realization that the characters we have become invested in simply don't exist is enough to make a viewer feel jilted. Sure, it's jarring and shocking and exciting, but it isn't a satisfying conclusion to a series. And, there's still that pesky issue: once you've seen the ending, you can't help but find it rather difficult to care about any of the events of the rest of the show. And that says a whole lot.
DVD Bonus Features
There's a blooper reel and deleted scenes, as well as audio commentary featuring Jason O'Mara, director Michael Katleman, and executive producers Josh Applebaum and Scott Rosenberg for three different episodes, including the twist-driven finale. "Sunrise to Sunset with Jason O'Mara" is a brief documentary that follows the eponymous actor for a day on show. "To Mars and Back" is a documentary about the concept of the series and the how it eventually came to fruition. There's also a throwaway bit with Lee Majors (otherwise known as the Six Million Dollar Man) visiting the set of the show that's called "Flashback: Lee Majors Goes To Mars." A decent enough collection of features, but considering the fact that this was the first and only season of the show, they're not exactly going out with a bang.
"Life on Mars: The Complete Series" is on sale September 29, 2009 and is rated NR. Crime, Drama, Sci-Fi. Directed by Alex Zakrzewski, Darnell Martin, Michael Katleman. Written by Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec & Scott Rosenberg. Starring Gretchen Mol, Harvey Keitel, Jason OMara, Jonathan Murphy, Michael Imperioli.
