Is anybody else watching The Expanse?

there is a commonality there for sure btwn draper/amos - the emotional stuntedness, the "set of tools" they bring to a situation. god how cathartic was it when she finally let rip in the last ep

Notably, no desis on /r/Expanse buy that Avarasala is from the subcontinent. Pale skin is fine for a Brahmin, but the accent is completely off.

My girlfriend was convinced the actress was South American before we looked her up.

I expected more of you people to have known Shohreh from 24!

She was in Day 4? I skipped that season for some reason.

Skipped the show when I learned the producer [aimed to reduce American public opposition to torture](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/19/whatever-it-takes).

Day 4 and 5 were probably the best of the lot.

Another solid episode last night. Can't believe it's the finale next week :(

lol at Holden calling the plant guy "plant guy"

I think I might have blinked and missed the closing shot, but apparently the protomolecule monster has stowed away on the side of the Rocinante.

http://i63.tinypic.com/o9n7us.jpg

totally missed that

Note to self, when designing my next superhuman soldier, make sure it doesn't glow...

you've got to work with the protomolecule you're got, not the protomolecule you want to have

this one was a little bit too much "penultimate episode" if that makes sense. the senator guy turning the tables on everybody, the refugee ship drama, etc.

The senator switcheroo was pretty well done, I was convinced the posion was for himself.

Yeah they did a decent job leading in to that with his visit to his son, the letter to his wife, and then heyo don't drink that scotch!!!!

I think what made this episode's melodrama a little much for me was that it was a lot of people being stentorian about their beliefs and then committing Significant Acts - by the Senator, by Naomi, by the big dude on Ganymede, by Holden - what it needed was a Drummer or a Dawes or Miller (RIP) to bring some authentic cynicism and leaven the Moments

Miller's coming back in some form next week, I'd bet.

fingers crossed

If he comes back with some protomolecule type boosts like not needing a space suit anymore or being impervious to death, he is bound to be a complete dick about it - so yes please!

if you see a giant blu protomolecule alium with a porkpie hat and/or skater haircut, that's our guy

the refugee stuff in this new episode was really good, I got all teared up at the end there

Someone explain to this moran the purpose of Errinwright killing his Martian opposite number, blowing up the MCRN black ops ship, and saying mean things to Monsieur Mao?

to keep the protomolecule hybrid research from ending up with the MCRN

and kill the only other person on Earth who could have revealed his role in it

"You made some pretty stupid choices since you've been in charge, but you always did the right thing"

this episode was like the exact opposite of last week's. makes a lot more sense now why they needed to put so much people-talking-indoors, so they could spend this week kicking and punching and shooting around in bays and shafts and on the outer hulls and whatnot.

I love the sci-fi trope of explaining solutions exactly backwards from how real people do it.

"jargon term!"
"what?!?"
"jargon term, from field of study - it's an analogy"
"why should I care?!?!?"
"because if we apply the logic of the analogy we could solve the problem"
"how?!?"
"we have nuclear warheads don't we?"
"oh I get it now"

you can replace "jargon term" with "anecdote" and "field of study" with "previous, crappy job" and you get the Amos mix

Lastly, the final line of this season is just silly, see point 5 in thread starter

the space marine suit being "power armor" is so right and also Fallout

Is the final scene this season supposed to be setting something up or tying up a loose end? Won't say what it is, just that they did that last season and I don't think it got reexplored.
Looked like the fact that they cut from what seemed to end the series to something else gave it significance otherwise why not slot it in elsewhere.

I'd say setting something up.

Enjoyed the finale but slightly​ underwhelmed by it.

mr veg pointed out that the last few episodes seem to have taken the show away from the hard scifi of the early episodes, magnet boots and slow heavy ships & began to feel more conventional by the end, well lit narrow spaces & zipping around from planet to planet

kinda missing the belters tbh

and i really miss miller ;_;

and yeah, finale felt kinda paint by numbers

Everything since Eros crashed into Venus has felt slightly anti-climactic, tbh.

Oh dear this was a bit of a damp squib in the end. Even when Draper gets to deck some baddies in the corridor it was the type of amateur fighting choreography you'd expect from some sub-standard sci-fi channel dreck. None of the attempts to build up any tension worked at all, the protomolecule beast was a total soft touch!

No spoilers but something else happens in the books that is a real "OMG!" moment and I don't understand why they didn't do it as it would have been such a great end to the season (and much better for it).

The S2 finale only made it two thirds through Caliban's War (book 2), while the OMG! moment I suspect you're referring to doesn't happen till the last lines. Book 1's ending was similarly delayed to S2E5.

I really didn't care for the finale's montage wrapping up events on the Arboghast and the Guanshiyin under Naomi's confessional voiceover, these subplots would have stood better on their own.

It condensed the major problem with S2 compared to S1, the wildly choppy pacing. The plot's either racing forward with little chance for characters to react, or dragging with digressions. I mean, Fred Johnson is given about 20 seconds to decide to sacrifice the Nauvoo, but we have time for handball matches between Drummer and Naomi. Meanwhile, poor Steven Strait (Holden) has to go from the sane to obsessed and back without the book's monologues providing justification. I think Holden, in particular, might have benefited from a captain's log (or similar) framing of each episode's events. Without that device, the straight-man leader (er...) seems a background character.

I actually liked the finale a lot more than the preceding few episodes!

Anyway, I'm constantly amused by Florence Faivre's name still appearing in the opening credits -- she's had one 5(?)-minute scene this season (which was also the first time she interacted with someone from the main cast). I mean, it probably signals that Julie is coming back, but in a very clumsy way.

Not Julie, but close. Mentioned several times this season.

You're really not very good with this spoiler thing, are you?

still not on uk netflix >:(

(it isn't actually quite three weeks since tracer PROMISED but i am IMPATIENT)

"is this your first time diving through hot clouds of sulfuric acid?"

"well there was that one time.. at college.."

for a hyperintelligent future-weapon that protomolecule beast was a bit dimm innit? a brain somewhere between a sparrow and a wookie?

"plant guy" was so good i sorta forgot about miller. but i do miss the sub-noir belt stuff.

anyway i love all those buffoons regardless.

imo the implication so far (from only having watched the tv show) is that nobody knows what the fuck they're actually doing and are using the protomolecule, a completely new thing to humanity, in very human ways

except for the geniuses who were like "let's just turn it loose on a station and see what the fuck happens"

while an exceedingly poor idea, they at least had some experimental vision

:D

i sorta got the idea that it has a mind of its own but i guess that's just eros, once it got outta control. the beast thing pn the other hand was a result of a difft more focused program?

the implication was that it can do a hell of a lot when given free reign over organic matter, seems to have created some mega-lifeform with weird powers now

but yeah, the whole "maybe we can put it in people and make supersoldiers" thing is one scientific insight beyond "what happens if we put it in bullets"

that protomolecule beast would previously kill a roomful of people in 10 secs and take out whole squadrons of elite soldiers. In the finale it seemed a good job it didn't need to think about complicated things like breathing.

the whole plot angle of deciding that the belters need to "possess the protomolecule" had me turning into yakov smirnoff and yelling "no, the protomolecule HAS YOU"

yeah I'm thinking the protomolecule soldier in the field actually had some sort of control mechanism

that protomolecule beast would previously kill a roomful of people in 10 secs and take out whole squadrons of elite soldiers. In the finale it seemed a good job it didn't need to think about complicated things like breathing.

lol totally this. finale went from Doom to, like, Ico in two seconds flat

xpost ahhh that's what it ripped out i guess.

tbf, and this is ethically horrible, they did make the soldiers out of sick children