April 29: The Expanse 3x09

[kinetic_elaboration]

Yet again back to this show making me feel dumb lol. I can’t remember any of these ship names or what they’re doing here. Also we’re sort of moving along with the plot, but for the most part this felt like a ‘building up more mystery’ episode. There are a lot more of those than actually resolving anything episodes…

The biggest thing was the revelation of Melba as another Mao sister and something of her motivation for her various nefarious deeds. I feel like having these flashbacks to Julie and bringing in (some version of) Miller again is validating my feeling that the show reached its peak with their storyline. Like it gives a certain sense of trying to recreate lost magic, a little. Maybe I’m just projecting. Anyway, I do miss Julie; it was interesting to see some more of her. I’m still holding my opinions on her sister. I’m wary of this storyline still. And she doesn’t fully interest me as a character yet.

I miss Chrisjen; I feel like she’s been promoted to fly the desk, in a way. What a lame underuse of her. And I miss Bobbie—it’s annoying that she came to grow on me so much just to be shunted off. I do like that the Roci crew are getting more screen time and actually appear to be the protagonists again. I enjoyed beleaguered Alex: Holden appearing to have lost his mind with his hallucinatory dead consultant Miller on the one hand; and Amos literally cracking skulls and pushing people off into space as his only two problem solving strategies on the other. That did amuse me. There really isn’t enough humor in this show. I feel like that’s one of the things that ages it more than anything else: it really was from that era of such seriousness all the time.

I think Anna’s wife should leave her and I am looking forward to that happening. She isn’t really being annoying currently—but she’s also not adding anything interesting, and I’ll never forgive her for how annoying she was before.