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The Expanse #6: better to go down swinging than rolling over


AncalagonTheBlack
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That is all true and none of it would have any bearing in my visceral reaction in that moment, which is what I was appreciating seeing on screen lol.

Thematically it was making the point that there are different sorts of "hard" and just because Michio isn't suited to killing doesn't mean she's weak and doesn't have a role.

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Another good episode and dominant performance by Cara Gee. Shohreh Aghdashloo was great, too.

The board is set for the final confrontation but I wonder about Filip's fate if it will be per the book or not. (Books spoilers)

Spoiler

When Rosenfeld showed Marco the footage of Filip's speech I thought that maybe Filip rides on the Pella all the way to the end. But I also had a glimmer of thought that maybe Marco will do a fatherly thing and send Filip away to be safe.

Then the Tadeo scene happens and I thought that maybe it will be like in the book. Not sure they have time to stop in the Jovian system. Filip could drop off at Medina.

Not sure where they're going with the Strange Dogs tale. With only one episode to go, it strongly feels like they simply wanted to adapt the novella and leave it at that. But I am still optimistic there will be some tie-in with the greater plot. If not, at least it will prove that out of all the showrunners out there who've adapted stories to live-action, the guys running The Expanse are the biggest fans of the source material.

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Yeah I really can't believe it's coming to an end. Feels like a real tragedy that it didn't at least get more episodes this season. Yeah it truly succeeded in bringing the the world and characters of The Expanse to life, being true to the source material and even improving on the books.

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I do love that the show is going out without compromising. This is the story, we're not going to cut it to fit the time we have left, we're going to tell it the way we think it should be told and if we run out of episodes, well, we can try for more.

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Quite enjoyed this episode, particularly the Drummer scenes ("Fuck you. Fuck you."). "Then a couple times he saved the whole human race, so I guess it balances out." Great line from Amos.

I have no real clue how the season will end (especially as I've not read the books( -- presumably with something  resolved, but just what that would be, I do not know, as certainly there will be many loose ends.

 

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Naomi really deserved those fuck yous from drummer and she knew it. I think it speaks to one of the strengths of television as a medium that we have this incredible character who - despite being a composite of multiple book characters - is at this point a creation of the show, and only exists like this due to the performance of the actress blowing the show runners away. Books only get limited options to incorporate feedback from close sources, and even movie series don't have much leeway for recognising "this actor+character are great, we should find a way to increase their prominence" but some of my favourite characters in visual media have come from this exact dynamic in television.

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44 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Naomi really deserved those fuck yous from drummer and she knew it. I think it speaks to one of the strengths of television as a medium that we have this incredible character who - despite being a composite of multiple book characters - is at this point a creation of the show, and only exists like this due to the performance of the actress blowing the show runners away. Books only get limited options to incorporate feedback from close sources, and even movie series don't have much leeway for recognising "this actor+character are great, we should find a way to increase their prominence" but some of my favourite characters in visual media have come from this exact dynamic in television.

Feel like it was the same with Ashford.  He was a pretty one-note villain in the books if I recall correctly, but he was one of the absolute best characters on the show.

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10 hours ago, Falcon2909 said:

I hate belters. Earth must come first. In a realistic scenario I would expect genocidal levels of retaliation from Earth.

Your genocidal desires aside, and also putting aside whether the leaders of Earth are all genocidal - that's not even remotely realistic even if they were all genocidal nutcases, since Marco Inaros has been holding all the cards until recentrly , they only stopped worrying about further attacks on Earth recently, and even now they can only hope to beat him by getting some Belters on their side.

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On 1/7/2022 at 2:36 AM, Corvinus85 said:

Another good episode and dominant performance by Cara Gee. Shohreh Aghdashloo was great, too.

The board is set for the final confrontation but I wonder about Filip's fate if it will be per the book or not. (Books spoilers)

  Reveal hidden contents

When Rosenfeld showed Marco the footage of Filip's speech I thought that maybe Filip rides on the Pella all the way to the end. But I also had a glimmer of thought that maybe Marco will do a fatherly thing and send Filip away to be safe.

Then the Tadeo scene happens and I thought that maybe it will be like in the book. Not sure they have time to stop in the Jovian system. Filip could drop off at Medina.

Not sure where they're going with the Strange Dogs tale. With only one episode to go, it strongly feels like they simply wanted to adapt the novella and leave it at that. But I am still optimistic there will be some tie-in with the greater plot. If not, at least it will prove that out of all the showrunners out there who've adapted stories to live-action, the guys running The Expanse are the biggest fans of the source material.

Seeing how closely involved the book series writers are with the series, that's not surprising.

I hope that the Laconia stuff won't be there just because it's a cool story to see. That storyline, the Rings stuff and the introduction of Duarte all make it seem like they are setting up storylines that will go further than season 6. I'm sure that the Inaros storyline will be wrapped up, but I can't see all that other stuff getting wrapped up. I've said it before, I think they are hoping for a continuation of some sort, be it a another season on another service/network, or a wrap-up movie/movies, or a spinoff... 

Or, I guess, maybe they just want to make people read the books. 

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A lot of making television is Hail Marys, and I think they made the decision to just do a massive Hail Mary here: this show is ending at a reasonable break-point in the story but it's not the full end to the story. They might be able to continue, and if not, people can read the books.

There's also the fact they can look at the long tail, that is how well the show does over many years of streaming after hundreds of internet thinkpieces on how "The Expanse is the best SF show of all time," (which it isn't, but it's probably Top Ten) or "The Expanse was the best SF show of the last decade," (a much firmer claim). There's lots of shows that did middling during release but picked up a huge long tail years after the fact. It's why HBO is bending over backwards to give David Simon projects even if they are not hits, because they know how that investment paid off with The Wire, which was never a big hit during its time on air. That's why Nickelodeon paid huge money to get the creators of Avatar back to make more animated shows although neither Airbender nor Korra were massive hits during their lifetime, and why everyone is queuing up to work with Ronald D Moore although BSG never had big ratings. Their real success emerged slowly over a much longer period than the show's lifetime.

With The Expanse, if Amazon or someone else turns around in five or ten even twenty years time and says, "Wow, look at the media streams and exposure over time, let's make more," the creators can say, "Sure, we've got three books to go, let's rock."

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I'm enjoying this season a lot. The MVP is without a doubt Drummer. She's a wonderful and interesting character, and Cara Gee's performance has been next level this season. Marco's actor could really stand to tone it down, and he's become a pretty boring villain, all in all. But I'm liking the rest of the characters and performances. The cut down to six episodes has some downsides - not every character and plotline can get their due, unfortunately - but it's also made the show much tighter, with a pace closer to season 3, imo the best season. Season 5's pace really dragged it down at the end, especially once we had multiple episodes that were nothing but Naomi trying to survive on a ship and everyone trying to rescue her.

So, overall, it's a very strong season. In the long term, though, I think the showrunners either must know something we all don't or are hubristic for not planning to wrap this whole story up in six seasons. I am really skeptical that some other studio is going to pick up this show and let them finish it. Few drama shows make it to six seasons to begin with. At that point, actors are itching to get out or receive hefty raises that increase the expense of the show. So it's weird to me that they weren't planning to get through all nine books in six to seven seasons to begin with.

But especially since it seems that this wasn't a sudden cancellation, and that they knew Amazon would only probably be giving them three more seasons, I really don't understand why they didn't plan for that. Or why they're spending a big part of this season's run time on Laconia and the Strange Dogs storyline, when there will almost certainly be no payoff. If we're going to use the David Simon analogy: he was planning six seasons for the Wire. But when it was restricted to five (and the fifth only had ten episodes instead of the usual thirteen), he wrapped things up as best he could. Some of it was rushed, sure. But he didn't punt it down the line, hoping that in five years HBO might pick up the Wire again and that all its actors might miraculously be available.

Since I've read the later books, I know the story and the ending. But if I were a TV only fan, I would not be happy (my girlfriend, who hasn't read any of the books and doesn't plan to, is at this stage). And even as someone who's read the books - I've always enjoyed the show far more, and would have really appreciated seeing it tackle the long term Romans vs. Goths stuff.

Oh well. It's still quality sci-fi TV, which is unfortunately rare these days, given how many sci-fi shows are out! I'm excited for the finale. Fingers crossed Drummer gets to punch Marco in the face.

 

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20 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I'm enjoying this season a lot. The MVP is without a doubt Drummer. She's a wonderful and interesting character, and Cara Gee's performance has been next level this season. Marco's actor could really stand to tone it down, and he's become a pretty boring villain, all in all. But I'm liking the rest of the characters and performances. The cut down to six episodes has some downsides - not every character and plotline can get their due, unfortunately - but it's also made the show much tighter, with a pace closer to season 3, imo the best season. Season 5's pace really dragged it down at the end, especially once we had multiple episodes that were nothing but Naomi trying to survive on a ship and everyone trying to rescue her.

So, overall, it's a very strong season. In the long term, though, I think the showrunners either must know something we all don't or are hubristic for not planning to wrap this whole story up in six seasons. I am really skeptical that some other studio is going to pick up this show and let them finish it. Few drama shows make it to six seasons to begin with. At that point, actors are itching to get out or receive hefty raises that increase the expense of the show. So it's weird to me that they weren't planning to get through all nine books in six to seven seasons to begin with.

But especially since it seems that this wasn't a sudden cancellation, and that they knew Amazon would only probably be giving them three more seasons, I really don't understand why they didn't plan for that. Or why they're spending a big part of this season's run time on Laconia and the Strange Dogs storyline, when there will almost certainly be no payoff. If we're going to use the David Simon analogy: he was planning six seasons for the Wire. But when it was restricted to five (and the fifth only had ten episodes instead of the usual thirteen), he wrapped things up as best he could. Some of it was rushed, sure. But he didn't punt it down the line, hoping that in five years HBO might pick up the Wire again and that all its actors might miraculously be available

Simon never really planned six seasons for The Wire. After Season 3 HBO asked him what he wanted to do before wrapping it up and he said two more seasons, one about schools and one about the media, and they agreed a set number of episodes to do that in, plus a political spinoff. When the spinoff was cancelled, they had to transfer one episode from Season 5 to Season 4 to pay off Carcetti's election storyline.

Season 5 was the first season to air after the show's critical reception had really started to rise, so apparently there were very loose conversations about a potential sixth season, and they raised the idea of the growing Latino population in Baltimore and how they were interacting with the established players, but Simon realised he didn't know enough about the subject to really delve into it, plus so many of the actors had moved on and Season 5 had wrapped up so many arcs starting in Season 1 so well, that it seemed pointless. Also, he'd mentally moved on and started planning Treme by that point.

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