September 9: The Expanse 4x10

[kinetic_elaboration]

Finale! Well, I have to say I wasn’t paying the most attention. My mind has been fragmenting across like 4 different topics and The Expanse was the least interesting of them I suppose. It was fine. I think the most explosive finale stuff really happened in the last episode, and this was more about setting up for next season. Which is kind of unfortunate in that most of what’s being set up for S5 doesn’t look as interesting even as what was set up for S4. I mean I don’t really care about terrorist hunting, personally.

Illus: This was definitely epilogue stuff, right down to Holden’s summary to Chrisjen 10 minutes in to the episode. The bad guy is being taken away to prison and everyone else is remaking their community, etc. etc. I think it was a pretty neat wrap up and I’m not mad about any of it. Maybe kind of mad Alex and Lucia didn’t have an affair, as that might have brought some sort of soapy verve to the whole thing, but fine, she gets her happy ending with her family, that’s better. I guess. It looks like the Protomolecule is also completely done (?) and I’m fine with that. It’s started to veer into McGuffin territory for me, a little. And/or I’ve just lost the plot of it. And I still haven’t changed my opinion that basically what happened in this season is that two factions that were probably going to be somewhat at odds regardless got into a way worse situation because Our Heroes came and started poking the McGuffin, I mean mysterious alien force, and made everything 10,000x worse. So the happy ending really feels like something the characters stumbled into more than anything else. But I hope Elvi gets to explore a lot of things and hook up with that cute other scientist.

Bobbie: My beloved. I got this story line in its general sense, its outline. I was not fully paying attention to the particulars and that’s probably not fair. I got the outline already, though. I don’t feel like there was a whole ton of new information in this episode, other than confirmation of what was already explained/exposited/obvious from last ep. Plus explosions. I probably should have been paying more attention to the details and for that reason I won’t blame the show for them being opaque to me. At any rate, I predicted, first off, that the larger scheme involved Mars supplying Marco Inaros with weaponry, and second, that this detail would bring together the Drummer/Ashford/Inaros stuff, the Mars stuff, and Chrisjen, when Bobbie reached out to her. As she did. And of course also Naomi. So I mean it is a satisfactory pulling together of strings, setting up for next season. I don’t care about Inaros, but the structure is still satisfying.

Chrisjen: Probably my favorite storyline and the only one I really paid attention to. She’s just so charismatic, I always want to be focused when she’s on screen. And it was sort of quiet, thoughtful. Again, a coming together of the story, in a sort of quiet way, not quite an epilogue but an anticlimax. I did like that the happy ending of the main story on Illus basically assured an unhappy ending (or is it?) for Chrisjen and the election. We don’t need a tense election night scene because it’s obvious from Holden’s report that the stage is set for Gao to win. Done deal. Everything else is the aftermath—which is more important anyway, both for Chrisjen’s personal story, and her relationship with her husband, and for setting up S5. It’s funny that she thinks Bobbie’s timing is bad. I thought it was meticulously on point. But, from a meta point of view. Anyway, the important thing is I’ve been waiting all season for Chrisjen and Bobbie to reunite. One of the best friendships on the show!! Rise!!!! RISE.

Ashford and Inaros: As with Bobbie, I could follow the general type of story this was and I didn’t bother too much about the particulars, and that’s on me. The only thing I have to say about this is that I’m bummed Ashford died. I was really starting to like him and I thought his dynamic with Drummer was one of the better parts of the season. Oh well.

Anyway, I am becoming very tired, very fast. Next season, the penultimate, another short-ish one at 10 episodes. Curious to see where it goes.