I also like watching the Peter Firth and Nicola Walker videos and the friendship between them is great to see. But, it isn't Harry and Ruth. We have spent years watching them suffer and now one is dead and the other devastated. Grief and despair isn't a good way to finish a great programme although I get that for the actors it gave them the scope to put in brilliant performances. It could have been a really good story line in this series but again there were plot holes and Ruth's death was so avoidable if anyone in MI5 had shown any sense.

I understand that people have different view points but this ending was right for some but utterley awful for a lot of others. It wouldn't take a genuis to write an ending that appealed to all. A lot of fans feel let down by Kudos so I can quite understand why the DVD is a no no.

Kudos said they wanted to finish Spooks on a high. They didn't.

To be honest the end of Spooks was enough sadness to cope with. There were other plots they could have done - the Olympics etc. Not seeing any more of Harry and Ruth, not seeing anymore of the HS and not seeing Calum develop. What a waste.

Well said, harrbd.

(26-10-2011 08:31 AM)DogSoSmall Wrote:  One final (? ) thought. There are clearly two groups here. The first (the grownups/cynics) who can appreciate the artistry, acting, camerawork, even the fittingness of the plot, and rejoice in it. The second (the children/imaginitive dreamers) who have lived it, even if only for an hour a week. For them, Ruth died and Harry was left staring at a bleak future. That is unbearably sad. I wonder which group is really paying the cast and crew of Spooks the highest compliment?

---

Dog So Small, I have not been throwing around comments making personal statements about how I characterise people who disagree with me on the ending. I have stated that I sympathise with the position that others hold on this while making my feelings clear about the ending which I loved.

You have painted yourself into a corner as the injured party here. Please do not throw flame at all of us who love the ending by labelling us as 'cynical'. This is grossly untrue of myself and certainly other members who feel this way.

You are no better than anyone who you might feel has slighted you by making such a statement. I await your apology.

Actually, they did finish it on a high - it was perhaps one of their strongest episodes, IMO. The performances were brilliant.

Yes, it was tragic drama, but some of the most brilliant plays are. It's how those left behind cope and move on - or don't cope and fall apart, that we are left to ponder. We are left to wonder what happens next and how each person on the Grid copes. Of course Harry will be forever changed, but He knows he must go on, and I think that's mostly why he does return to the Grid to honour Ruth's memory - he knows she would be pissed if he surrendered to depression. She died on HER terms, protecting Harry and the Service. As much as Harry had been compromised recently, she knew he needed to be on the Grid protecting the Realm.

Dimitri and Tariq have known her a couple years whereas Erin and Calum have known her very briefly, so their reactions to the loss of Ruth will obviously be different.

I remember the end of series 4 of "Waking the Dead" when Mel was killed after being thrown off an apartment/condo complex by a delusional woman. It affected them all differently. Frankie even left after that. But the show went on for 6 more years...I'm still on S5 on Netflix.

So, I'm not going to comment directly or explicitly on the Harry / Ruth factor. I don't want to agitate the wounds of others in this thread (any agitation is entirely unintentional). Also, forgive me if some of what follows seems a bit... small(?): I'm not nitpicking, these are honestly things that stood out to me.

Things I liked:
- The juxtaposition of the man-made green/blue/grey murkiness of the bunker-of-truth-making and the nature-made green/blue/grey endlessness of the shoreline-of-truthful-opportunity. And the subversion (confirmation?) of expectation, or potential, in the outcomes of those temporal and moral locations, because that sort of thing always pleases me, even where the narrative outcome might not necessarily always do the same.
- "Bad people want to kill us."
- "Why do I feel as though I'm part of an audience?"
- Simon Russell Beale, managing to make interactions with a telephone and an answering service seem like genuine interpersonal engagement.
- Ilya proving to be the most honest and self-aware person in the bunker: knowing, without knowing how, that he would always be the one to act because this has always been the character of his context. And not hesitating, thus demonstrating the cost and value of staying alive and relevant in the environment of the life (lives) he has made.

Things I didn't like so much:
- Should I be delighted that Tom's great escape has taken him only as far as contract killing?
- The episode's apparent endorsement of the morally tattered notion that the most compelling way for someone to demonstrate and fulfill their love for one person is to have another person killed.
- The episode's acceptance, in the person of William Towers, that thwarted love (romantic or otherwise) excuses all other wrongs and that it is this - not the threat to national security - which allows the execution of a foreign national.
- Elena proving to be a character no more complex than the standard wicked witch of the woman who sacrifices her child to an extra-maternal purpose. I would have liked to see Harry's final 'opponent' being someone other than a cariacature of fanatical devotion to a cause never properly given context by the character or her background.

I will also say that, given that the show was pretty much inevitably going to use the final episode to kill either Harry or Ruth (and that it was never going to be Harry, because the show cannot lose its commentary on the necessity of existence in the face of loss and the continuity of cause), at least the death of Ruth saved both the character and the narrative from giving service to the tiresome trope of the woman-in-love-with-a-ghost. Certainly Ruth deserved a better fate than that. Whether or not she got it is very much, I realise, a matter of personal interpretation.



Edited, because pronouns are important!

Okay I give up. The last couple of essays (and i do mean essays for they are exceptionally argued and eloquently put) have made me feel that the ending should have been happier. I don't care how powerful it is or tragically resonating - Ruth should not have died' and M15 should not haave taken so long to respond to a man with a shard of glass in his hand quite clearly marching to Harry and Ruth. And at the end of the day Kudos is doing it for the big bang ending: 'How can we affect the audiences to the highest degree,
Hells bells look at what its made some of us: moralising, angry grieving posters.
Surely that is not a fitting ending for any show...

Im probably gonna regret this in the morning but i'm in yet another one of my Spooks dark moods. Forgive me....

(26-10-2011 09:31 AM)JHyde Wrote:  

(26-10-2011 08:31 AM)DogSoSmall Wrote:  One final (? ) thought. There are clearly two groups here. The first (the grownups/cynics) who can appreciate the artistry, acting, camerawork, even the fittingness of the plot, and rejoice in it. The second (the children/imaginitive dreamers) who have lived it, even if only for an hour a week. For them, Ruth died and Harry was left staring at a bleak future. That is unbearably sad. I wonder which group is really paying the cast and crew of Spooks the highest compliment?

---

Dog So Small, I have not been throwing around comments making personal statements about how I characterise people who disagree with me on the ending. I have stated that I sympathise with the position that others hold on this while making my feelings clear about the ending which I loved.

You have painted yourself into a corner as the injured party here. Please do not throw flame at all of us who love the ending by labelling us as 'cynical'. This is grossly untrue of myself and certainly other members who feel this way.

You are no better than anyone who you might feel has slighted you by making such a statement. I await your apology.

I apologise unreservedly, as I did not mean this post as you have taken it. My goodness, I am having such trouble in expressing myself - it must be the grief! I don't consider myself to be an injured party at all. I am not injured by comments made on here that disagree with me, but equally if someone tells me I am one thing I have the right to respond to that, just as you have done here. When I said "grown-ups/cynics" the / was supposed to be an or. It was also supposed to be very much tongue in cheek, and a way of acknowledging that I realise my approach might seem more immature, but also of trying to say that it is not necessarily a bad thing to be able to lose yourself in a moment to such an extent that it becomes real in your imagination. It then makes it much harder to see the positive in death and despair. I have probably equally offended people who now think I have labelled them as childish. I was just trying to clarify to myself why there have been two such different reactions, and why I am unable to swap from one to the other, no matter how much I want to.

I was also trying to finish on a positive note by saying that both reactions are actually a compliment to the makers of Spooks in some way or another.

(26-10-2011 09:31 AM)JHyde Wrote:  

(26-10-2011 08:31 AM)DogSoSmall Wrote:  One final (? ) thought. There are clearly two groups here. The first (the grownups/cynics) who can appreciate the artistry, acting, camerawork, even the fittingness of the plot, and rejoice in it. The second (the children/imaginitive dreamers) who have lived it, even if only for an hour a week. For them, Ruth died and Harry was left staring at a bleak future. That is unbearably sad. I wonder which group is really paying the cast and crew of Spooks the highest compliment?

---

Dog So Small, I have not been throwing around comments making personal statements about how I characterise people who disagree with me on the ending. I have stated that I sympathise with the position that others hold on this while making my feelings clear about the ending which I loved.

You have painted yourself into a corner as the injured party here. Please do not throw flame at all of us who love the ending by labelling us as 'cynical'. This is grossly untrue of myself and certainly other members who feel this way.

You are no better than anyone who you might feel has slighted you by making such a statement. I await your apology.

Harry and Ruth deserve better than this squabbling.

I feel sorry for all you fans who have written so beautiful and thougthful posts over the years.

Why can't all comments be accepted with respect, good humour and grace like on other forums.

---

(26-10-2011 10:38 AM)pennyfeather Wrote:  Okay I give up. The last couple of essays (and i do mean essays for they are exceptionally argued and eloquently put) have made me feel that the ending should have been happier. I don't care how powerful it is or tragically resonating - Ruth should not have died' and M15 should not haave taken so long to respond to a man with a shard of glass in his hand quite clearly marching to Harry and Ruth. And at the end of the day Kudos is doing it for the big bang ending: 'How can we affect the audiences to the highest degree,
Hells bells look at what its made some of us: moralising, angry grieving posters.
Surely that is not a fitting ending for any show...

Im probably gonna regret this in the morning but i'm in yet another one of my Spooks dark moods. Forgive me....

Why should you and Dogsosmall apologize? You are entitled to your opinion. It helps that it the same as mine!

(26-10-2011 12:00 PM)beatrice4ruth Wrote:  Why can't all comments be accepted with respect, good humour and grace like on other forums.

Because it's really very boring when people agree with each other.

I think it's a testament to Spooks that we are all so passionate and some of us are passionate enough to challenge the beliefs of others. The best discussion, analysis and opinion is very often spawned out of debate over how an episode is perceived.

I didn't create Spooks Forum to be boring.

(26-10-2011 12:00 PM)beatrice4ruth Wrote:  Why should you and Dogsosmall apologize? You are entitled to your opinion. It helps that it the same as mine!

Yes they are entitled to their opinion, noone was asking them to apologise for their opinion. We were asking for an apology from DogSoSmall because they put labels on people with certain opinions, which is just wrong.

I didn't think that "cynical" was an insult. I thought DSS was talking about a quality in people that's something like William Blake's "experience". (Wise as serpents, versus innocent as doves, cf. Gospels.) My husband represents that point of view, and he can still feel things deeply while critiquing them. I'm innocence--I watch any theater the first time around with my critical faculties chained up in the backyard Second and third time around I invite them back into the house. It means I can't watch emotional stuff WITH my husband the first time around. I'm likely to punch him if he points out a plot hole, for instance. But I still love him and admire his ability to do more than one thing at a time. We just are the way we are.
Did I mention that my favorite movie is Pollyana? Ha ha