June 26: The Expanse 3x12

[kinetic_elaboration]

Honestly, I really liked this episode. I mean, I’m still not 100% sure what’s going on here, but it was an enjoyable hour of television. In particular, its use of the ‘everyone gathers from their various locations and storylines to a central location and a high stakes final climactic storyline’ very effective. It was exciting seeing all the characters together, seeing the factions who have been portrayed as such strong antagonists through the series so far all come together for a common cause. Very rousing. I think it scratched a real lizard brain place for me, honestly. What if high stakes imminent disaster and also cooperation and hope? In that way, I’m easy to please. But I do think this episode did that type of emotional story well.

Ashford is really growing on me. I truly don’t know why, but I had a real fondness for him today (enough to remember his name, even). A good mix of competence and good faith, and also decisive and outrageous in leadership style. And though I don’t know I ever cared enough about him and Drummer to see him as a villain, it was a nice sort of turnaround/arc for him. I also liked “we kicked the hornets’ nest and confirmed there are hornets in it.”

I also liked that we’re getting some more explanations. The Alien Tropes here are so clear and, I don’t want to say cliché, but certainly standard, that it’s almost wild to me that the characters don’t see them. Like everyone’s so surprised Holden can see Miller. But he’s dead?! Yeah, so? You live in a world of interplanetary space travel and you’re encountering a new Alien Thing. Why can’t the alien thing recreate a version of the people it absorbed? It… absorbed him, so. Duh.

Anyway. I sort of understood Holden’s story about the aliens, but I am also pulling from other sci fi I’m familiar with that has done similar things. I can’t even complain because he explained it and Ashford repeated it later, like I can’t actually ask for more spoon feeding, but it was a little vague in my head. I understand that the aliens are way more sophisticated than humans. As per usual. They created this… tool… and then they died, probably unrelated to having made the tool. And now it can’t communicate with them anymore but it can… try to… keep similar catastrophes from happening again by… being a sort of weapon and cleaning up, I suppose. I did like the imagery of “destroying whole solar systems like cauterizing a wound.” It’s not clear if it’s doing something correct if drastic: there really is Something Bad that it’s trying to get rid of, or it’s more of a tool that’s outlived its purpose just continuing to act as it has before, even though the threat is gone. I suspect the second, based on how Ashford described it: it only got into ‘destroy everything’ mode when it felt threatened by their nuclear explosive. (Understandable.) So, something along those lines. I sort of get it. I get the vibes of it.

I liked that we got at least a little bit of Alex and Amos, and Bobbie was great in her few scenes. Idk how she became such a scene stealer for me, but she did. She just brings a sort of competence to the proceedings, and a combination of toughness and emotion. Also I like the dichotomy of her returning to the Marines and its hierarchy etc. while still standing up for her old friends and voicing her opinions.

One good thing about the season ending is soon Anna will be gone and we won’t be spending huge chunks of time on her anymore. She’s so annoying. I really don’t feel sympathy for or interest in her at all. Her morality is very boring and rife with hypocrisy. And she’s not Russian but for some reason they like to pretend that she is.

I don’t dislike the Mao sister on that level but she seemed like a weak link to me today. I can’t really remember what her story is about. And I don’t really care.

I do think ‘we’ve disabled her by giving her a paralyzing medicine, she can walk but she can’t really move’ is supppper dystopian and no one’s talking about it.

I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with the Belter grammar, because it feels like it is separating more and more from ‘Standard English’ in this really obvious but not fully consistent way. I can’t tell if that’s the Belter population we’re seeing becoming more diverse or just, like, a mistake. It’s bordering on ridiculous to me, to be honest.

So the next ep is finally the last of S3, which I feel like I’ve been watching for a very long time. I am in fact interested to see how the cliffhanger will resolve and where the show will go from here.