A Televisual Feast

Finally. After two lackluster episodes, “Ashes to Ashes” finally gets going with a straight case, a lack of Alex acting unbelievably like a lunatic, and some character softening for Ray. It’s also got a bunch of great scenes as the characters all finally mesh (and Alex only refers to the rest of the characters as figments of her subconscious once) and a great soundtrack.

The benefit of a real case with real victims, ones Alex can get involved with and not constantly dismiss as constructs, changes the series. It’s also a brilliantly written episode, with every scene working to its fullest extent. The beginning comes back at the end in a neat trick and, although it’s set to be (depressingly) real, the boys come through. Chris does get a bit of the short end here, which is only fair because he’s always been the sympathetic one (watching this episode, I kept trying to remember how long it took Ray not to be a complete jackass on “Life on Mars”) and the Ray developments are worth any shorting.

Also, Alex’s character actually develops this episode–and well–since the emphasis isn’t on something related to her “real life.” In fact, there are only two references to it the whole episode and neither play into the story much. At one moment, she asks Gene (as their relationship finally becomes as interesting as the previous episodes pretended it already was) how a person should spend his or her last moments. It doesn’t sound like much, but if they’re going with that silly idea (she’s in some kind of shock, watching a bullet whizzing towards her face), it’s something she should have at least thought of during the second episode.

When the opening credits ran, I saw this episode was a) not written by one of the co-creators and b) written by a woman. I wondered how a female writer would handle the series. Better, it appears, than the male co-creators, both in the female and male characterizations. I only hope this episode isn’t a fluke, but if it is… it’s still good enough to validate the whole series.

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