Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 1.8

Alex's Dad returns from America, just in time for his death.

Ashes To Ashes - Series One, Episode Eight

Alex's initial storyline in the first series of Ashes To Ashes mirror's Sam's first series - having to deal with unexpected truths surrounding childhood traumas. While Sam's father left, Alex's committed Murder-Suicide using an explosion that she was lucky to escape. The finale of the first series tackles this issue with the usual heavy-handedness that Ashes often shows, and that's a bit of a shame, especially as the series was plagued from the beginning by incredibly repetitious flashbacks to the event.
      The day of judgement has come. In her efforts to prevent her parents' deaths, Alex visited Arthur Layton, the man who shot her in 2008 and whom she arrested in 1.1. She gets no info from him, and so pretends to have been given info by an informant upon their deaths. Meanwhile, a Police Chief called Lord Scarman (Geoffrey Palmer, wonderful man) is planning to visit the station. Alex goes to visit her father, having just returned from America, in court. She tells him to leave London, but he ignores her. Alex then gets the idea to destroy the car they died in, finding the car belonging to her "Uncle Angus". Angus is part of a gay-pride parade, and so Alex drives a pink tank over it.
     As Scarman inspects the station, Alex tries to seal the deal on her parents' survival. Ray brings her new info; the Prices have had contact with Layton. She visits him again, and he shows awareness but refuses to give any answers. At the station, members of the gay pride parade are being put in the emptied cells along with Chris. At wit's end, Alex tries planting drugs on the Prices, and has them put in the cells as well - in front of Lord Scarman, who is distinctly unimpressed. In fact, he asks to be put in a cell to experience prisoners' treatment. Alex's mother speaks with her and discusses how she wants to take time off from work to spend time with the young Alex.

Scarman inspects the station.

      Alex has dinner with Gene, as her "Last Supper". After Gene gives Scarman a talking down, Alex soon discovers that her entire plan has collapsed; the Prices have been let out and Evan has released Layton from jail on Tim Price's authority. Alex travels to the scene and watches in horror as her parents are killed - she realises soon after that it was her father who orchestrated the whole thing, having discovered his wife's affair and unable to live with himself. Her father, in the end, was The Clown that had haunted her. Gene saved her life as a child, not Evan.
      Like Mars, episodes that follow the series' arc in the Bonanza tend not to be very strong plot-wise. In my opinion, the only time that it really payed off was in the next series, which was a serious game-changer. Episode 1.8 replaced that with a hefty deal of emotion, but at times it did feel like the episode was struggling to find places to go. The whole gay-pride parade was a welcome bit of comic relief, but it didn't feel right when one considers the seriousness with which Alex is going about her task.
     Unlike its predecessor, each series of Ashes has a definite villain, and of the three Tim Price/The Clown is by far the best. Leaving Tim's first clear appearance until now was a very clever move, as the character is very unnerving even when not as The Clown. While evocative of The Test Card Girl from Mars' first series, The Clown establishes the series' unique identity while continuing to tie it to the Bowie roots. Layton, who makes his final appearance, is also a really fun villain due to his semi-awareness of Alex's true identity.

Tim Price is the Clown.

       The finale to Ashes To Ashes' first series has its issues, but overall it was better than the series' average. The tie-up for Alex's origin story is wonderfully done and it is, for me, rather moving. Series One of Ashes To Ashes had a lot of problems regarding scripts and dialogue, but in its second half it developed its own style and became just as entertaining as its predecessor.

Thanks.