Time for living on 'Life on Mars'

Sam checks himself into the loony bin on Life on Mars -- but it's all in the service of foiling a hostage crisis and keeping captive mental patients alive in 1973, and his own comatose body on life support in 2008. Personally, I'm just fixating on Lisa Bonet in the enormous Afro wig.

Who's bad? This spoiler!

The precinct celebrates Ray's birthday by emptying the cells of hookers and filling all the cups with hooch. Annie and Sam are the only ones working, and even they finally give in and end up dancing on a table. Sam wows the crowd of inebriated cops and crooks with some dead-on Michael Jackson dance moves, but he accidentally moonwalks right off the table. No worries -- he's finally starting to make an impression.

The fun and games are over the next day. Sam gets a call on an unplugged phone -- it's his mom, saying that the doctors tell her he's never going to recover from his coma so it's time to pull the plug. He'll be disconnected from life support at 2 p.m. Coincidentally, some nutjob with a gun has just taken a hospital ward hostage -- and he says he'll start executing folks at 2 p.m. if his demands aren't met.

Sam takes this personally, and Annie finally calls him on making it All About Him. Quit your delusional bellyaching and get to work saving people! Gene's approach to hostage negotiation is the same as his approach to everything, which doesn't go over well with Sam. After his attempts to get more information are thwarted, Sam divests himself of his gun and offers himself up as a hostage.

Michael, the hostage-taker, is holding mental patients, orderlies and a psycho-surgeon (which sounds like a great name for a comic-book villain.) His brother Johnny had a bilateral cingulotomy to treat his schizophrenia several years ago, and he's been completely incapacitated ever since. Now new treatments for schizophrenia mean that Johnny could have his life back, so Michael wants Dr. Schwan to reverse the operation and treat him with the new methods. When Schwan refused, Michael took maters into his own hands.

Annie and Gene sneak into the hospital disguised as a nurse and a medical technician. They've hidden guns in the EKG machine, and Annie has a key to the ward in her bra. While Michael is distracted by the machinery, an orderly picks up a scalpel and tries to attack. Michael shoots him. Then he finds the guns. He is not a happy person.

Michael handcuffs Sam, Gene and Annie in the surgical room where Schwan is going to operate on Johnny. Schwan admits to the police that the operation won't work -- Johnny's brain was scrambled, and it's not coming back. That doesn't stop him from firing up the bone saw to open up Johnny's skull. Sam yells at Schwan to stop and tells Michael that the operation is pointless, but Michael doesn't want to hear it. He beats Sam to pulp. But Schwan finally admits that it's hopeless. That sends Michael into plan b -- he wires Annie with dynamite and puts her in the window where Ray can see her. Ray agrees to Michael's demands, but he prepares to have Michael shot as soon as he leaves the hospital.

Michael is smarter than he looks -- he dresses himself up like a patient, dresses Sam up as the hostage-taker (complete with shotgun taped to his hands) and covers everyone's heads with pillowcases. When the group leaves the hospital, the cops start shooting -- but Gene and Annie throw themselves on top of Sam so he's not killed. Michael and Johnny are still in the hospital, which is wired to blow -- Michael would rather kill them both than see Johnny exist as a vegetable when he's not there to take care of him. Sam confronts him just as the clock hits 2 p.m., and as he prepares to die, he closes his eyes and brings up the memory of the first time he met Maya. That memory brings a smile to his face -- both in 1973 and in 2008. His mother sees that smile and refuses to let life support be removed. Sam is safe. And, since Michael saw Johnny smile at the same time, he doesn't detonate the bomb.

Sam meets up with the rest of the squad at a bar, where Gene tells him that there's nothing special about being a crazy cop -- it happens to all of them. The whole point of the precinct is to keep each other sane. It looks like Annie is the one who will be serving that function for Sam -- and maybe she'll become something more.

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• I loved the opening scenes. Ray's a schmuck, but he knows how to throw party. He even had party favors -- Polaroids of his penis, which he passed out to all the prostitutes who had been released from the cells for the night.
• Annie is left at the front desk, where she has to deal with a complaint of excessive noise, lewdness and public indecency -- against the squad itself. Hee!
• Annie says she's not joining the fun because the only women partying are hookers. Sam declines because the only MEN partying are tools. After it becomes clear that no work will be done, Sam makes this proposal: "Just for tonight, if you be a hooker, I'll be a tool." Why, you silver-tongued devil -- what woman could resist?
• The crew gathered around the table chanting "Spaceman! Spaceman!" as Sam copied Michael Jackson circa Thriller was a joy to behold. Even better was when Sam moonwalked right off the table, the popped up after a moment shouting "Who's bad!"
• Sam sees his mother and Maya on TV -- as actors in a 70s-era medical soap. The wig Lisa Bonet is wearing is fabulous and hysterical.
• While locked up in the psych ward with the rest of the hostages, Sam sees the medical soap of Maya talking to him. He approaches the TV and answers back to what she's saying. The lunatics laugh at him. That's never a good sign.
• Even better -- the faux-soap ending graphics, with "Life on Mars" written out in very 70s script. Authentic!
• Afro'd Maya tells Sam that she can't wait for him anymore. It's time for him to live, she says, gazing directly into the camera.
• Annie finally snaps after hearing about Sam's time-travel dilemma one time too many: "Your ego -- your monster ego! Sam, there are people in danger in that building, people on the wrong side of a crazy person's gun, and somehow this is all about you?" Go, Annie! (Although the answer is yes, it IS all about him. However, the sentiment is appreciated.)
• Michael shoots Gene at the final standoff. Fortunately, the bullet ricochets off Gene's flask. "What are the chances?" marvels Ray. "Actually, pretty good," says Gene -- and he brings out two additional flasks. The man came prepared!
• Poor Chris -- Sam tells him to think outside the box, and he comes up with a great idea -- put a Candid-Camera-style rig in the EKG machine that Michael requested. Unfortunately, such a camera costs $12,000. "I went and asked Ray, but he just laughed," Chris says glumly. "Then he called the EMTs over, and THEY just laughed."
• Tom Waits shout-out! Yes, he was recording in 1973, but he didn't really hit it big until 1976. There's a reason Annie hadn't heard of him.
• Are you feeling any chemistry between Sam and Annie? I like both characters -- and both actors -- but I'm not really feeling any spark between them. What about you?

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