#came home immediately fell asleep sjfiwesf

[kinetic-elaboration]

May 14: The Expanse 1x10 (!!!)

I didn’t stop watching The Expanse because of anything to do with The Expanse, more because of the struggling to be a human thing. But here I am, back, finishing off S1.

First of all, this show needs a previously on. Even when I was watching one episode a week pretty consistently, I still felt like I needed a neat little summary going in. Take a couple weeks off and I’ve given up on anything other than Cool Vibes and Look, Action!!

I do still really like Eros station and just the set design in general. The bit in the arcade-space reminded me of the fsociety headquarters in Mr. Robot, possibly because I found my old notes on it recently and I kind of want to rewatch it, I think. But I also loved the whole ‘coins falling on a dead body after a death-match’ shot—very metal. I thought the episode did a good job of having finale-worthy character moments, like Holden choosing not to save Kenzo (do I entirely remember who Kenzo is? No. I mean I remember who he is but not when he was last seen. But that’s okay because I get, like, the meta of what they’re trying to do, I read the moment in its context, sort of like knowing what part of speech a word in a foreign language is, but not what it means). Or Naomi and the little girl—portentous.

I sort of wanted there to be more explanation, both since this was the season finale and because I thought the end of the last episode set up a possible Exposition-Heavy next installment, but it did lean heavier on the action sequences/movement-based plot and less on actually giving context to anything or providing answers. So I have mixed feelings about that. Like I do think tantalizing clues, like whatever they were doing with Julie’s body, or whatever the blue human shape attacking Kenzo was at the end, are appropriate for a finale ep, but I needed some MORE. Is Julie still ‘alive’ somehow? Is the blue light indicative of this substance being more than just a weapon? That’s what I’d like, honestly. The explanation Holden and Miller outline in this episode—it’s just a really big, really bad weapon, and Bad Guys are using Eros as a testing ground for it, hoping to pit all three major players against each other over their suspicions of it—is certainly, like, a plot. A plot I’ve heard before. But understandable, digestible, solid. Classic, one might say.

But what if… something else. What if it’s not just a weapon? What if its ability to brutally kill is just the first thing it does? What if it can also reform or reconstitute? What if it’s absorbing rather than killing? What if the resultant bodies have some sort of unique use or value? That would certainly take the show’s themes of The Machine literally chewing up and spitting out the bodies of the underclass for the benefit of the upper class to a new level. I thought there were some indications of this—not this specifically but an unknown additional level—in the finale. Whatever they were doing with Julie’s body, and the line about saving us all. That Holden and Miller’s explanation, despite its plausibility, is left hanging as not quite complete or not quite accounting for all the facts. The human figure in the blue light at the end. That we have so little exposition and so much of an air of mystery around the whole episode, as if we’d really learned almost nothing here, despite all the action.

I’m not saying I’m necessarily getting my hopes up for any of this because it’s so purely speculative and I could easily see the show moving off in some totally different direction.

A few other random thoughts: the Julie-hallucination turning into Amos made me legitimately laugh. Like this episode is not funny and the show is pretty overall serious but I laughed for real. The funniest character for it to actually be. Also, love guard dog Amos making a return. I think Holden and Naomi are bros. Alex has grown on me a lot. I like when he takes out the country twang voice. Usually the Roci looks like a bullet but today it sort of looked like some kind of bug, while it was still attached to the dock.