August 5: The Expanse 4x05

[kinetic_elaboration]

No Bobbie in this episode but a good deal of Chrisjen, which was good. Those were my favorite parts because even though the A plot of this season is definitely all the stuff happening on Illus (I guess that’s really like A.1, A.2, etc. since it has its subparts), I… care about that the least, as I’ve said. I mean, it’s fine. But I am enjoying Bobbie’s stuff on Mars, Chrisjen and the election on Earth, and Drummer and Ashford on patrol way more.

As I’ve said, I think it’s the characters that are (not) doing it for me. This show definitely has a few I really like and a few even that have grown on me but usually when it introduces yet more new people, I don’t really care. I suspect that’s supposed to be its strength but it just doesn’t work for me. I don’t care about Lucia at all, for example. I like seeing Amos flirting and so on, but I don’t care about his love interest; she’s just sort of there. Murtry actually does have potential for me but I think he needs to turn up the camp a lot more. For example, “Maybe I just have that kind of [villainous] face” is a good line and, like, hints or approximates or waves at some sort of humor. But otherwise only Chrisjen (CARING MATRIARCH? Fuck that) brings literally any levity at all. I feel like Amos and Alex used to bring that to the Roci crew but they’re not doing much of it recently.

 

I did also like the exchange “You want me to make it [the ship] a bomb?” / “I want you to make it an option.” That’s good exposition and it’s pretty badass.

Holden is extremely annoying. His white savior complex is such a farce, for many reasons, including that he’s clearly got no idea what he’s doing. Like this man speaks with a ton of authority for someone who’s just walking around tripping over things and pulling at wires and seeing what happens. His head has really blown up into a giant balloon. I appreciate Naomi calling him out (“the Belters aren’t children”) but also it’s annoying that he needs to be called out. Especially when he was like, “I used to say stuff like that!”  I feel like that’s an admission that his character has just waltzed right off the rails. Who even IS Holden and what is the point of him? Grasping for the straws of his own relevance by both advancing plot through mishandled fuckups and coming into the middle of other people’s problems to either solve them or bring them to a new head, whichever.

I appreciate the exposition at the end re: the aliens. So, the abandoned tech is just trying to do its job but it can’t because part of its job is communicating with something that doesn’t exist. And I guess part of its sentience IS Miller who is using Holden’s hands and general physical body to try to help wake up the machines or whatever so they can try more communication and/or investigation methods. I actually do really like the sci fi concept of old alien machinery and a programmed machine just continuing to do what it was told to do and maybe even changing over time. But also like… TOS did it better and in a more concentrated way. This alien story line is buried soooooooo deep beneath like 50 political storylines, none of which is terrible but also none of which is particularly fascinating, at least to me.

There’s just so much going on. So nothing really advances very much at a time. Again, I sort of feel like—what’s happened? What’s happened all season? The RCE versus Belter thing is sort of escalating but pretty slowly. And RCE look kind of dumb to me. How did they become hostages again? By just like walking around and then getting snapped up? Other than that, we got a ton of time with Lucia, which is not a storyline but more like a meditation on morality, and then some movement with Chrisjen, but tbh I felt like that was really powered by her charisma and a little bit by her opponent’s. Like I don’t think there’s anything groundbreaking going on there. Not that a show has to be groundbreaking, I suppose. Just entertaining. I remain… mid-level entertained.