*ahem* Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior Camina Drummer
In other words I watched the Expanse finale tonight.
I really really liked it! (Well, except what turned out to be the red-herring-ness and general waste of narrative space of Laconia, given that they don't have another season to deal with it.)
But I was worried about a repeat of last season's finale, which was a too-compressed mess that was hard to follow and poorly paced, with too much time on some things and not enough on others. In spite of what a huge amount of plot they had to tie up, I didn't feel that way about this episode at all. The action scenes were incredibly tense, but they also worked hard on giving all the characters something interesting to do, and lots of neat little check-ins with a bunch of different character relationships - Amos and Clarissa, Bobbie and Amos, Clarissa and Naomi, Holden and Drummer, Avasarala and Holden. Even in the cases where something wasn't explicitly tied up, there was enough shown to guess at the gist of it, like Drummer's estranged family being in the front row at the press conference even though we never actually saw their reunion, or the Ceres lady who accused her of being a quisling last episode being the first one to start Belter-clapping after Holden handed over the political reins to her.
Gotta say I was absolutely terrified for several characters at several points - Drummer, Clarissa, and Bobbie all seemed to be on the chopping block at one point or another. I assume they don't die here in the books, but with this being the last season, they totally could, and this show has never been shy about killing characters.
But no, everyone got to be badass and everyone lived! I just really like how everything turned out. Given how little of the aftermath we actually saw, I think the last few minutes of the episode did a really nice job of getting across the general feeling of "the war's over, now we have to pick up the pieces." I had a few little quibbles, such as having wanted Drummer to have a more active role in Marco's demise, but I liked that there really wasn't a big damn hero in the final battle; the whole point was that everyone had some small role to play, some of which were bigger and some of which were more in the background, and in the end, they won.
I said in my last episode reaction post that I really hated how depressing Drummer's last couple of seasons have been, but in the end, I love her overall character arc - from Fred Johnson's lieutenant to Avasarala's opposite number in the Belt. I said last season that what I wanted for her most of all was to watch her pick up bits of leadership experience from all the more experienced leaders she worked with (Fred, Ashford, etc) and finally pull all of that together and come into her own as a leader, and that is exactly what she did. (I felt like the moment when she chooses to stay and patch up her damaged ship and let someone else deal with Marco was a watershed moment for her there, actually. She might have had a blaze-of-glory moment a little earlier, but she's not going to kamikaze herself and her crew to take him out. It's handoff time. She's a team player now.) She and Holden even got a neat little mini-arc across seasons 3-6.
But I also really appreciated that everyone wasn't holding hands and singing kumbaya in the final political scenes - all the old divisions and prejudices that created Marco are still there, and Drummer wasn't wrong to suspect that the Belters would be pushed to the back of the line once the crisis was over. The show was very honest, I felt, about how these things often end up, even with good intentions in play. Still, I appreciate that they pulled out a win for the Belt at the end anyway, because it's more narratively satisfying.
And this is honestly a really nice place to leave everyone.
I guess I'll have to read the books to find out what the hell is up with Laconia (don't tell me, plz), unless the show gets picked up for another season on some other site.
This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1426542.html with
comments.
I really really liked it! (Well, except what turned out to be the red-herring-ness and general waste of narrative space of Laconia, given that they don't have another season to deal with it.)
But I was worried about a repeat of last season's finale, which was a too-compressed mess that was hard to follow and poorly paced, with too much time on some things and not enough on others. In spite of what a huge amount of plot they had to tie up, I didn't feel that way about this episode at all. The action scenes were incredibly tense, but they also worked hard on giving all the characters something interesting to do, and lots of neat little check-ins with a bunch of different character relationships - Amos and Clarissa, Bobbie and Amos, Clarissa and Naomi, Holden and Drummer, Avasarala and Holden. Even in the cases where something wasn't explicitly tied up, there was enough shown to guess at the gist of it, like Drummer's estranged family being in the front row at the press conference even though we never actually saw their reunion, or the Ceres lady who accused her of being a quisling last episode being the first one to start Belter-clapping after Holden handed over the political reins to her.
Gotta say I was absolutely terrified for several characters at several points - Drummer, Clarissa, and Bobbie all seemed to be on the chopping block at one point or another. I assume they don't die here in the books, but with this being the last season, they totally could, and this show has never been shy about killing characters.
But no, everyone got to be badass and everyone lived! I just really like how everything turned out. Given how little of the aftermath we actually saw, I think the last few minutes of the episode did a really nice job of getting across the general feeling of "the war's over, now we have to pick up the pieces." I had a few little quibbles, such as having wanted Drummer to have a more active role in Marco's demise, but I liked that there really wasn't a big damn hero in the final battle; the whole point was that everyone had some small role to play, some of which were bigger and some of which were more in the background, and in the end, they won.
I said in my last episode reaction post that I really hated how depressing Drummer's last couple of seasons have been, but in the end, I love her overall character arc - from Fred Johnson's lieutenant to Avasarala's opposite number in the Belt. I said last season that what I wanted for her most of all was to watch her pick up bits of leadership experience from all the more experienced leaders she worked with (Fred, Ashford, etc) and finally pull all of that together and come into her own as a leader, and that is exactly what she did. (I felt like the moment when she chooses to stay and patch up her damaged ship and let someone else deal with Marco was a watershed moment for her there, actually. She might have had a blaze-of-glory moment a little earlier, but she's not going to kamikaze herself and her crew to take him out. It's handoff time. She's a team player now.) She and Holden even got a neat little mini-arc across seasons 3-6.
But I also really appreciated that everyone wasn't holding hands and singing kumbaya in the final political scenes - all the old divisions and prejudices that created Marco are still there, and Drummer wasn't wrong to suspect that the Belters would be pushed to the back of the line once the crisis was over. The show was very honest, I felt, about how these things often end up, even with good intentions in play. Still, I appreciate that they pulled out a win for the Belt at the end anyway, because it's more narratively satisfying.
And this is honestly a really nice place to leave everyone.
I guess I'll have to read the books to find out what the hell is up with Laconia (don't tell me, plz), unless the show gets picked up for another season on some other site.
This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1426542.html with
comments.