It's official—Life On Mars is ending this April. Hopefully the advance notice will give the people working on the show a chance to end on a satisfying note; and if I'm honest, I'd say the possibility of a solid finale has me more excited than another five seasons of the mediocre junk we've been getting. It's too bad that the cast and crew are going to be out of work, and it's also too bad that we'll never see the series live up to the potential it showed in its best moments. But I don't think there are going to be a lot of tears when this one takes its final bow. Mars stumbled too often to build up much in the way of goodwill. We may get a bit wistful when those final credits role, but it's doubtful we'll remember it come May.
But wishful thinking and all, I'm getting ahead of myself; it's still only March, so we've got a bunch more of these to push through before the finish line. Let's get to it, then—"Revenge Of Broken Jaw" takes on the hot button issue of social protest, this time in the form of the Weather Underground, a home-grown terrorist group that specializes in riots, prison breaks, and, most important for this episode, bombings. When somebody blows up a popular police bar, killing five, Gene goes on the war path; three of the dead were retired cops, friends of his, so he's got an emotional investment in tracking down the bad guys. The only clue is the phone call the 125 received before the bomb went off from someone claiming to be in the Underground, taking responsibility for the explosion. It's time to bust some heads, get cliched political statements from various protesters, and watch Sam keep on forgetting what year he's in.
Man am I getting sick of that; in lieu of actually trying to have our hero deal with his situation, or using subtle ways of showing how he doesn't quite fit into 1973, we get him making comment after comment reminding us he's from 2008. Asking Annie to go for a cappuccino, commenting on how the bomber's equipment is "Old School," referencing Al Queda—where this originally worked as a kind of "I don't get a damn" approach to time travel, now it's just grating and lame. Every reference draws attention to itself and makes Sam look like a moron, and they're hardly ever funny. (It wasn't bad having him make a bet with Ray on an upcoming boxing match, admittedly; but that one was, for this show at least, subtle enough.) "Revenge" does at least pay some lip service to Sam trying to come to terms with his predicament, opening and closing with him in a psychiatrist's office being told to open himself up to the world. I can appreciate that the series is trying to establish a place that Sam (and us) can feel justified in caring about; I just don't think they've managed it.
So how was this week's mystery? Middle-of-the-road stuff. After that first bombing, Sam finds a professor, Pat Olsen, who teaches a particularly incideniary class at a nearby college; a number of her best students are listed as Weathermen, so Ray and Sam head over to pick her up. We get a gag that wouldn't have worked even if this was the seventies, when a pretty blonde woman interrupts Ray's usual shenigans to inform us all that Pat is—gasp!—short for Patricia. I'd buy that Ray would be surprised by this, but Sam? Weak sauce, sir, weak, gender-biased sauce. But at least Pat is played by Janel Moloney; she's been doing a lot of guest TV work since West Wing ended, and it's always nice to see her getting screen time.