In a rare instance of mutual forethought and cooperation between producers and a network, ABC's Life on Mars will wrap up its abbreviated freshman run this Wednesday at 10 pm/ET with a proper series finale, bringing to a close Detective Sam Tyler's time-tripping odyssey. Here, executive producers Scott Rosenberg and Josh Appelbaum reflect on their Mars journey, reveal the one song that done them wrong, preview the "straight-out scary" follow-up they have planned, and promise closure for fans of their previous project, October Road.
TVGuide.com: The episode airing this Wednesday, is it more or less what you had envisioned the series finale as being? Or is it slightly different, if only because you had less time to build up to it?
Josh Appelbaum: We always knew that the season finale was going to be this episode, and we always knew what our series finale would be. Basically we went to [ABC] and said, "Our ratings are grim. We want to ...read more
When October Road reached its end last spring, fans weren't the only ones who had a hard time letting go. Co-creator Scott Rosenberg was determined to conclude the series the right way. "We had a small audience, but they genuinely fell in love with these characters, and I feel we owe it not only to them, but also to the cast [to tie up loose ends]," Rosenberg tells TV Guide. So he and co-creators Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec wrote a 15-minute finale called "Don't Look Back: An Epilogue for an Epic Love." The story will start at the wedding of Hannah (Laura Prepon) and Big Cat (Warren Christie), and then flash forward seven years, where fans will receive answers to most of their remaining questions. The plan is to include the epilogue on the second-season DVD and possibly online. After two seasons on the Road, even the cast wants closure. "I don't know who Sam's father is, so I am just as excited to find out as the fans are," says Bryan Greenberg (Nick). And although the shoot...read more
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