The Times weighs in on Life on Mars. Here's one of the studio execs: "The wardrobe, the hair, the music, the buildings � it honestly is a kind of an amazing reproduction of the era.�
Honestly, it's kind of not. I'm still enjoying the show for what it is, but I feel less and less comfortable that it's going to hang together. It just doesn't feel meticulous. Think of last week's hippie squat party, complete with Indian guru. In a show like, say, Lost, this would be a clue: it's so clearly a hack pastiche of the early 70s that it can only mean Sam is assembling this world from his imagination about the era. Here, though, you get the sense that it might just be a hack pastiche.
There's some speculation that Sam isn't in the 1970s but in a 1970s cop show. That's fun. And there are moments in each episode when the camera angles and music stings suddenly mimic Baretta et al. But most of each episode feels much more like a 2008 cop show (or a 2004 one, frankly). Layers of mystery... or just sloppy?
One little thing that stuck in my craw last week was Michael Imperioli's line to one of the hippies: "1969 called, it wants its dashiki back."
Did that "Year X called, it wants its Y back" put down really exist in 1973? I ran it by Radosh.net lexicological correspondent Jesse Sheidlower who traced it only as far back as 1992 (to a Saturday Night Live skit called Sidewalk Insults, suggesting that it was at least a novelty at the time). He adds, "In 1996 and 1997, it's still being held up as an example of a new expression, so I'm reasonably confident that if it was in use in 1973, it can't have been too common."
I wish Life on Mars felt smart enough to believe that this anachronism was meaningful. But it doesn't.
