For the second week in a row, Life On Mars gets adventurous with departures from previous narrative formulas and two-fisted character development.  And after a relative dry spell in Life On mars mythology, the mystery of Sam Tyler’s dislocation in time and unanswered questions from his childhood take center stage in “All The Young Dudes.”

The episode kicks off with disorientation.  A bearded Sam Tyler, calling himself Bono (those anachronistic pop culture references are catnip, aren’t they?), is dragged into the 125 precinct.  Bono spews ungentlemanly trash talk at the demure Annie, and fisticuffs ensue when Gene demands an apology from Bono.  For a few moments, the audience isn’t sure what is happening-is Bono sign of weirdness, as in a lookalike or doppelganger of Sam?  Sam is just undercover, as it happens, and he’s posing as a rough Irish immigrant longshoreman to penetrate the crew run by the murderous Jimmy McManus, played by pock-faced bad guy character actor Peter Greene.  Jimmy’s crew of Irish hooligans had just hijacked a truckload of VCRs (exotic gear back in ’73), and left a trail of corpses in its wake.

The undercover gig gives actor Jason O’Mara a chance to act a scoundrel part in his native Irish accent, just as the undercover stewardess assignment in episode 14, “Coffee, Tea, or Annie” allowed Gretchen Mol a chance to play to her more customary sexpot type.  Perhaps these are the indulgences of a series that has already been declared dead, but these two undercover forays have not had a “jump the shark” or “Cousin Oliver/the show needs a baby” effect on this (mostly) smartly written show.
Sam-as-Bono easily falls into line with Jimmy’s crew, and then promptly seduces Jimmy’s sister Colleen, the no-nonsense proprietor of the crew’s hangout bar.  For the second time in Life On Mars’ only season, Sam has spontaneous, rumbustious, and ill-advised sex with a newly introduced character.

Enter (or rather, re-enter) Life On Mars mythology.  Colleen is the next door neighbor of Sam’s mother and the 1973 child Sam, reintroducing the plot thread that disappeared with the “The Man Who Sold The World” episode in which Sam had confronted his ne’er-do-well father.  Sam’s mother very nearly blows his cover when she happens upon Sam at Colleen’s apartment, and calls out to him as “Detective Skywalker,” the name he gave her earlier in the season.  She implores Sam to speak with young 1973 Sam, who is acting out in response to the abrupt disappearance of Sam’s father in “The Man Who Sold The World.”  At first Sam the elder refuses, but then does have a conversation with young Sam in which young Sam morphs (via visual effects that would have been totally awesome in the early 90s) from child to adolescent to adult and back again.

Meanwhile, back at the small-time Irish crook ranch, there are crosses and double crosses.  Sam prevails, but only momentarily.  The Irish crook Jimmy blindsides Ray and Skelton with a vicious attack at a traffic stop.  The episode ends, cliffhanger-style with the hapless detectives bleeding to death in the street.

The music in this episode also returns to the glam rock fold, sort of, with the inclusion of the Mott The Hoople track, “All The Young Dudes,” which played as a backdrop to the adult Sam/boy Sam conversation scene.  But the inclusion of the Jim Croce song, “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” made me cringe.  On a seventies trivia side-note, old church ladies that I knew back in the 7os told little kids like me that Croce died in a horrible plane crash because he used foul language (“damned,” to be exact) in this very song.  Be careful, TVZ fans!

This episode’s venture into the neo-Noir territory of ethnic Irish gang activity had the potential for descent into cliché.   However, the episode worked well by setting up Sam Tyler and the 125 detectives for a mythic showdown with evil, but believable, iconic bad guy characters.  The teaser at the end confirmed for me what I was thinking at the end of this episode-this is a set-up for the series finale.  I will miss Life On Mars-but I can hardly wait to see what turns up in the dying hours of this quirkily delivered cop show.

This was an exemplary Life On Mars episode, which earns it solid 4.75 Harvey Keitel Fists of Fury.