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San Francisco, 4:41 AM
Tue Dec 1
26 posts in the last 24 hours
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05/05/09
zzzzzz.
05/05/09
feh.
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04/04/09
For those that didn't like it, Harvey Keitel in "Saturn 5" will help wash the taste out of you mouth.
04/04/09
04/04/09
04/04/09
Most people I know who watch "The Office" (both versions) don't rewatch episodes of the British one, they don't think it holds up to repeated viewings once you already know the jokes/cringe situation of the week. Whereas they'll rewatch the US one.
I know Brits who duck and mumble apologetically that they really think the US version is superior and hope their fellow subjects don't hurt them. Doesn't Ricky Gervais like the US version better?
04/03/09
So you've given people unequal choices, much like bad political pollsters who do crappy push polls. You'd need another US better option and more neutral wording on all choices.
Answer 7, in other words.
04/03/09
04/03/09
Sam went through all that stuff, and everything we watched him do was all a dream and then he woke up.
So, really, anyone "let down" by the US ending and pissed at the people who made it either a) didn't notice that the UK version also ended with "it was all just a dream" and/or b) they like that the UK dreams really meant absolutely nothing at ALL to the audience who'd invested all the hours watching Sam's dreams and/or c) they like watching characters die for no good reason other than "woops, our 8 episodes are up" (similar to the later Shamalamadingdong school of "the movie's almost over, quick, a pointless TWIST!").
I hope that the readers of io9 are smart enough and critical/discerning enough not to automatically think that all happy endings are worthless/ TEH SUX.
04/03/09
04/03/09
CBS aired a lot of stuff from Canada (and co-productions with Canada and other countries) as far back as the 1980's, but only on late nights.
04/03/09
The Canadian co-productions with Global (like Night Heat and Adderly) were made with Toronto talent, generic back-east-cold-city settings, and American money. When the CBS funding ended, so did those Canadian shows, leading to the Great Vancouver Sci-Fi Boom of the 90's and 00's... and TOPIC!
04/03/09
04/03/09
Also, they played "Life on Mars" at the beginning of the show in both 2008 and 1973, just like the original.
04/03/09
04/03/09
English LoM wanted to have it both ways: use the structure of SF with time-travel and then wuss out (YES, I SAID WUSS OUT! ya big girl's blouse nancy-boys) with an ending of "It was all a dream and Sam is too much of a wimp to deal with reality, so he killed himself". Had it actually been time-travel, it would have been a much better, more honest ending.
UK Sam used his dreams to escape his reality; US Sam used his to improve it.
Plus, in the UK version, Gene is clearly the star (as can be seen by him getting another show, though it isn't as good), whereas in the US version, it's always been Sam.
Also, those of you who are all "English ending is superior in every way YAH BOO" would also have been bitching if the US ending was identical or even similar, so your bitching is superfluous. You wouldn't have liked it anyway.
04/03/09
UK Sam had even more issues than I thought! That's really low self-esteem.
The US version was SF and proud of it; the UK version was a cop show that used SF tropes and was ashamed of it. The difference in Sams shows that.
04/03/09
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04/04/09
It was written and filmed in England. The sequel is entirely London-based. The Welsh and Scots had to pay the fee for it, but got no more out of it than the people who saw it worldwide.
04/03/09
Pretty please?
04/03/09