Series 10 - Episode 6 Discussion

[Agent Acme]

Forgive me, I never really have anything particularly profound to say or claim to have any far reaching insight into what makes us love the show that is spooks, but no one is WRONG OR RIGHT to have certain opinions on how the show ended. This is a forum, and I would have thought that different views on the outcome would be welcome, otherwise what would be the point, people have expressed their feelings, emotional or otherwise, and that should be respected, not criticized or ridiculed!

Some people are, like it or not, feeling pretty down about the death of Ruth and what it means for Harry...there were so many scenario's they could have ended on, the fact Kudos chose to kill, again, has upset some people, me included, but that doesn't make us wrong. We care, because Kudos and the writers and Peter Firth and Nicola Walker, and the rest of the amazing cast made us care, surely that is the point, the fact that we do care is testament to it's brilliance. You can't possibly watch spooks for 10 series and be completely detached and unemotional by the death of any of the characters. The Fans that are happy with the ending are fine by me, but to accuse the people that aren't as not being true spooks fans is unfair.

[Kazters]

i dont think anyone is unatached to ruth or not upset at her death, i just dont understand why so many are angry about what we always new was going to happy! spooks have a proven track record of making there charactors jst when they think they have it all loose it in a second! why simply because its the last ep should they have changed there show just to suit fans, it wouldnt be true to the history of spooks.

i for one although sad and still am about ruths passing they were never going to live forever in a little house by the sea, even the main cast said this.

my intention is not to annoy anyone but simply i am not understanding why like wtih ashes the hate at the writeres Spooks is so much more than 1 pairing and grid romances never work out i.e. Ros and Adam, Jo and Zaf ETC

i think we are all entitled to our opinon but i also think some are taking it to far with the way they are speaking about the writers and Kudos.

[nothingisasitseems]

Am I going bonkers but I have rewatched the final scenes a couple of times and don't see Tariq's name on the wall of remembrance as some have claimed?

So what is the "definitive ending" as we were promised? As regards Spooks -the programme - I can't see that this ending is such a thing.

Personally, feel a bit cheated that one of Dimitri, Erin or Calum didn't have something dark in their background and after 2 Seasons of Dimitri we know almost as little about him as we did at the start.

It looks to me as if the writers have stolen a march from the ending of ER. I can see where they are coming from with it but as Tea Lady says they could have reached the same conclusion by a different route.

I didn't want Ruth to die but can accept her sacrifice, however could they not at least have let her die happy?

Apparently, I see the scene where Ruth asks Harry to leave the Service and join her in the new house differently to everyone else. Harry gave a little smile but it was non-committal and he only started to mouth platitudes as Ruth lay dying. Her final lines that those things were never meant to be for them shows that she had realised that would never happen.

It feels that Kudos kicked a lot of fans where it hurt most - at least she could have died thinking (even if mistakenly) that they could reach their happy ending.

But overall a great finale episode.

[Ceridwyn2]

(24-10-2011 06:27 AM)khandy Wrote:  Oh dear I am disappointed on so many levels. Disappointed that the series is over to start with Ten years is long time. Disappointed because I have found the whole of this last series to be really weak and tired and so it is sad that for me at least it ended this way. I have gone over why I thought that and I suppose that because of all the deaths in last three series so many new characters were introduced and I found I didn't care about them because I didn't know them.

I have to say I have never been a Harry Ruth shipper but I know thousands are. This whole last series seems to have been for the Harry and Ruth Fans. I was disappointed for them that they didn't get their happy ending. Also why did nobody attempt basic CPR the adrenaline thing was just plain stupid almost like the writers knowing that sometimes as part of ressucitation adrenaline is used so why don't we throw that it. Just plain lazy.

So I shall miss Spooks but it deserved a better exit than this soap style ending.

They couldn't have done CPR or she would have even bled out faster. Ruth's lung was knicked and deflated, making it hard to breath and she was bleeding out internally (into the chest cavity and probably into the lungs as well). Trying to do chest compressions would have only sped up the process. If they'd been closer to the heart of London and within immediate reach of ambulance attendants and a hospital, it MAY have been possible for a surgeon to get in to repair the damage fast enough but they would have had to be right there. With 14 min out for the medivac helicopter, there's no way, not even with the shot of adrenaline.

As sad as I am about Ruth's death, and as much of a HR fan as I am, I thought it was a fitting end; i never expected them to have their happily ever after. I'm a realist and pragmatist to see that that doesn't really happen in Spooks. The only ones (of the old guard, so to speak) that are alive are: Harry (still head of Section D because right now, that's probably all he has left, aside from his daughter, Catherine), Tom (quickly decommissioned in S3 after renegade acts, and since possibly being a deniable gov't asset - no real happy 'ending' life for him), Zoe (still alive but permanently exiled; she did sort of have a 'happy' life as she married that photographer [name escapes me]), Malcolm (retired from the Service, still looking after his Mum). Beth was decommissioned. Tessa (decomissioned in S1 for running false agents and pocketing money), Sam (either she was decomissioned at end of S3 after Danny's death or she was moved elsewhere in the services).

Dead Spooks: Helen, Danny, Fiona, Colin, Zaf, Adam, Jo, Roz, Lucas, Ben, Tariq, Ruth (drawing a blank if Connie was killed - I can't remember). Needless to say, Spooks does not do happy endings for long as much as we sometimes wish they might.

[molecatcher]

I thought we had the perfect definitive end. Harry's return to the grid to continue fighting bad people who want to kill us after viewing the memorial plaque with its long list of names, together with Tom's return to take out the head of the Russian fanatics was a sublime way of taking us full circle around Spooks in two short scenes before heading back to the tortured man who has nothing left but his loyalty and commitment to his country, after all not only did he lose Ruth, he learned from Elena that for the past 30 years he had been living with unfounded guilt about leaving her on that park bench when all along she had been running him, never mind a son that wasn't his after all. His relationship with Ruth has taken up very little viewing time over 10 years and most of it seems to have been left to the imagination in an extended glance or small smile so I've been surprised at the expectations of so many to see them settling down in a seaside town in blissful retirement. That was never going to happen, not even with a tortoise in the garden because that plaque showed just how much they went through and how many colleagues they lost and I believe Ruth would have felt extreme satisfaction and pride having her name engraved alongside theirs.

I felt terribly sad about Ruth's demise, as sad as I feel about Spooks coming to an end but it had to be!

[Kazters]

Tariq was on the wall connie wasnt because she was a trator i assume same with Lucas/john

[DogSoSmall]

Well, having said I wouldn't be back, I have had to return just once, because I have been unable to work this morning through needing to get this off my chest. I appreciate that my words last night were not thought through, although perhaps genuine initial reaction is the most honest. I also appreciate that Nitrus's words were directed at me and not at the people who gave more considered reasons for being upset with this ending. However, as others have said, it is extremely unfair to be down on people simply for not having the same opinion as you, Nitrus. I think you, and probably Kudos too, underestimate just how many Spooks fans have been drawn into the programme largely because of the interaction between Peter Firth and Nicola Walker and their characterisations of Harry and Ruth. Without them, this would be a good programme that's enjoyable to watch and slightly ridiculous and escapist. With them, it's a human story. Without them I would have been a viewer. With them, I have been a fan, which is not something I have been with any other TV show, ever. It's pretty insulting to be dismissed in such a patronising manner and told that my support for the programme has no worth. I hope that programme makers take on board the importance of employing actors who can so truly raise a TV show above the dross that is out there.

I agree completely with the comments of Tess24, loladom and Tea Lady. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and one person's "classic Spooks staying true to the storylines" is another person's predictable, thoroughly over-used and, for this show at least, positively hackneyed "dramatic device" leading to an unimaginative, unoriginal conclusion. I could have been convinced by a well-written death of either of these two - something full of dramatic import and acted, as ever, to perfection. A lazy little stabbing right at the end was just pathetic. I couldn't appreciate anything that happened afterwards, however beautifully it was shot and acted. I don't understand what there is to cheer about seeing Harry return to work after we have been shown for the last two series that he is fed up to the back teeth with being a "tool of the state" and completely disenchanted with his own role. And now he has to go back to this unmitigated misery without even the support and advice of Ruth to keep him sane. That is truly the most depressing thing I have ever seen on television. I fail to see the "satisfaction" or indeed "hope" we were promised.

Still, it's not real, is it? Just another programme to consign to the dust of the BBC bunkers. There are two things that make me sad though. I was really looking forward to buying the dvd and lots of the others from previous series that I don't yet have. If there had been even one remotely positive thing about the ending to this series I could have enjoyed everything up to and including it, but the final message of "life's a bitch and then you die" is not my idea of entertainment. The other thing that I can't stop feeling really upset about, as pathetic as it may sound, is that Nicola misled me about the ending when I met her. She could see how much it meant to me. It might be an actor's job to manipulate our feelings on the screen, but to do it face to face, real person to real person, well it just feels quite unkind. Before this season began, I was resigned to the predictability of the conclusion (who wouldn't be, after Lucas) and was talking myself into accepting it. But I genuinely believed Nicola when she told me it would be ok. I trotted into this final episode like a lamb to the slaughter, hopeful of something really uplifting. Well, there you go. Life's a bitch..........

[pennyfeather]

I dont think ruth dies unhappy as people have said. I think that when she was dying that was the moment she realised that with all the threads of lies and spies: this was the only way that people with such a history could end. So a release from those constraints and an accepting of that rather than a tragic realisation. I think its also important that she got to tell him she wished to live with him in that house; that admission to me and affirmation of love (even in her death) ought to sustain him as he continues in his work. His final words 'harry pearce' are just charged with that at first wavy (the pause before he picks up the phone) then resolute determination to carry on.

Final note: I think if the sasha hadn't had the opportunity to take action i.e if he'd had the time to cool down he would not have sought revenge: it was just that the heat of the moment offered a chnace for him to do so.
As such, I have to believe that harry and ruth would have been able to leave the service and live a life together outside the service, if only opportunity had allowed them. Alas....twas not to be

Sigh...its after 2 in the mourning and 4 hours since i finished watching the episode. I think i woudve felt better if id watched the ep alone. i wudve cried so much then but wit the company i couldnt quite go all out like that and its as if that feeing is all now logged in my heart and is slowly but painfully, ebbing out....please tell me it gets better...

[daphne]

.. one more thought-

after more reflection, my take is that Harry himself believed he would step down, walk off into the sunset, so to speak- that reporting back to work surprised HIM as much as it surprised his colleagues (and us).

not only did he say to Ruth, in episode 5, "I'm stepping down after this"; not only did we see the accorded 'hour to get your affairs in order' was spent burning his "secret box in the garden", and the emptied milk bottle--
but we also may have seen Harry giving leaving the Grid a real shot..

when he walks into the house in Suffolk- the words of Ruth's he remembers/hears are specific: "so leave the service.. with me". only then does he walk out, leaving the lovely house on the seashore behind him..

it is only after the HS releases Harry from all obligations- that Harry (maybe) realizes those obligations defined him- that living within their structure, no matter how exacting, can still hold him together.

if he is released by all the people who know who he is, then who will he be?
if he releases himself from the only life he ever knew, then what life will he have?
with Ruth, he may have had the courage to try to redefine himself. leaning on her potential for happiness (proved, in Greece) and on her wondrous trust in him (Harry need no longer be ashamed of his past lies/secrets re Elena-)-
but without Ruth?

hiring Tom to take care of The loose end-
the solemn visit to pay respects to the fallen MI-5ers-
are his steps back to.. his life.

when he picks up the phone, is it just me, or does his voice sound rougher, more choked? almost rusty with the few days'? weeks'? of un-use..

powerful ending.
makes me want to quote Beckett: "I can't go on, I must go on, I'll go on."

[nimax1]

(24-10-2011 01:19 PM)pennyfeather Wrote:  I dont think ruth dies unhappy as people have said. I think that when she was dying that was the moment she realised that with all the threads of lies and spies this was the only way that people with such history could end. And at least she got to tell him she wanted to live in the house with him; that admission and love alone ought to sustain him.
I think if the son. hadnt had the opportunity to take action i.e if hed had the time to cool down he would not have sought revenge: it was just that the heat of the moment offered a chnace for him.
As such, I have to believe that harry and ruth would have been able to leave the service and couldve been happy together outside of the service.

Its after 2 in the mourning and 4 hours since i finished watching the episode. I think i woudve felt better if id watched the ep alone. i wudve cried so much then but wit the company i couldnt quite go all out like that and its as if that feeing is all now logged in my heart and is slowly but painfully, ebbing out....please tell me it gets better...


All I know is I woke up this morning feeling like someone very precious to me had died. And of course someone, something had. There is supposed to be hope or redemption coming from tragedy - as my very wise teacher has said, a declaration of "yes" to life. Perhaps in time. Perhaps in the last moment and freeze after answering the phone, "Harry Pearce". But, not yet. Not today.