Millennium, the TV series (with spoiler tags)

[gatochy]

I absolutely loved this series. It started out as this pretty normal, straight face series about a profiler who is kinda psychic, but mostly just a very serious, honest guy who does his job to the best of his abilities. And then became increasingly more surreal.

One of the best episodes was one where you saw four elderly men meeting in a café - and then you realized they were devils in human disguise, meeting to have a chat and share a little about what they had been doing lately to get human souls in Hell. They actually become visibly devils (to us, the viewers, although you know that to onlookers they look just like regular guys. The make up is the best I have ever seen, so creative.)

The different ways they have of corrupting souls, and the light each sheds on human condition is an astounding piece of writing in its own right.
I urge anyone who has never seen it to really give it a try, it's terrific.

For instance, one of the devils says he doesn't even have to do anything these days to get a person to commit suicide, their lives are so meaningless. He gives as an example this guy who does everything that is expected of him and expects nothing of himself: he works at a mind numbingly boring job; exercises to no effect; goes to a strip joint but even that has no longer any effect on him or his libido anymore. He's basically dead inside. So what does he do? He jumps out the window. And in those last few seconds he's happy, he's free. And that's when the devil snickers: "And it never strikes them (humans), except in that last moment, that they are as free to change their lives as they are to do away with themselves - but by then it's too late."

After I saw this episode I often thought about how true this is: that if the way you choose to live your life (because that's the way you think you're supposed to go about it) makes you so desperately unhappy that you would actually kill yourself just to get the pain over with - then that should give you permission enough to change it into something as unconventional and as dangerous and as wacky as you like it anyway. What have you got to loose if you don't? Sometimes, the answer can be 'your life.'

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000244E2O/qid%3D1090401801/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-1074920-6184062

[Twatybollocks]

I loved Millenium and I remember the episode you are on about. I really like the idea that they would take risks and experiment with the show. My favourite episode was where they introduced a really clever killer (I can't remember exactly what he was called, something like The Avatar killer or something??) who seemed like the perfect Moriarty for Frank. It was the one where he was killing people live on the internet if Frank didn't manage to work out where they were from the clues he had left.

What spoiled the show for me was the long-term storyline about the apocalypse and the groups trying to bring it about. Just like the long-term alien conspiracy mess in the X-Files, this really never went anywhere but they tried to drag it out for as long as possible. I don't think I even watched the last season because I was getting so fed up of it. The last I saw was Frank in a log cabin with his daughter, while everyone in the world is dying from a variation of that flesh eating virus and he has enough vaccine for just one person.

[gatochy]

I think that was, in fact, the last episode. Hard to believe they would go out on that note, isn't it? I didn't think it was that bad, just kinda depressing. One does wonder "Well, what now? There's gotta be more than this, right?" But no, that was indeed the end, unless I am very much mistaken.

[Twatybollocks]

That was actually the last episode of the 2nd season and the show ran for 3 seasons, but I never watched the last one.

After the show was cencelled, Frank appeared in an episode of the X-Files. It was supposed to finish the Millenium story, but I found it rather dull and didn't provide any closure for me. I will always, always remember the theme music though, it was so sad yet beautiful.