I have heard from more than a few people liking season 2 over 3, and I can see 3 being a bit bumpier (I really like the resolution to Boiling Rock two-parter, but didn't feel too much for the whole thing overall). Still, Zuko's arc alone helps propel the series to higher complexity, and 3 is just ambitious and constantly inventive throughout that I can't help but feel it's a step above.
The first half alone is so jam-packed: from the show's own version of Buffy's The Zeppo in "Sokka's Master", self-knowing (superpower-)teen angst of "The Beach", "The Avatar and the Firelord"'s past-present parallel of epic sweep, to the horror film-tinged atmosphere of "The Puppet's Master". Show's best standalone episode ever happens just before the finale though; "The Ember Island Players" is one great meta-fiction palate cleanser, so hilarious.
Speaking of finale, I have been trying and failing since I completed it to think of a show that saves its very best for its very last, like Avatar did with "Sozin's Comet". Such a spectacular, rousing, pour-all-in finish. Its Part 3 "Into the Inferno", especially, instantly becomes one of my all-time favorite episodes ever. I still get thrills and chills from many music cues and visuals from this finale (Ozai first noticing Aang and zooming towards him; the melancholic orchestra that accompanies that deeply tragic sibling duel). If not for the fact that this has a sequel series, I might be tempted to rewatch the whole thing right now again.
From the least two seasons I'm beginning to think that The Expanse is the strongest at its first half. Like Season 2's Episode 5 ("Home"), Season 3's Episode 6 ("Immolation") is a mid-season finale, and it hits the strongest beat The Expanse has done so far, perhaps since Season 1's Episode 10 ("Salvage"). It ties all the loose knot in a very coherent structure altogether, at the same time. Most story arcs that have developed for a while now (some even from early Season 2) all come to a closing to a very satisfying end. The first half is not as gripping as Season 2's first half, but it is still gripping but nicely paced drama, thriller, and action.
The second half, however, has a noticeable drop. People seem to like it, but I notice less-than-excellent writings with its introduction of new characters. Melba is an uninspiring character, seems like rather tacky plot device to keep the story going, especially with her redemption in season finale. Ashford has a great potential with Camina - seeing their dynamics/rivalries is interesting - however the last three episodes seem to portray them inconsistently, emerging as a necessary antagonist late in the season. The second half also introduced secondary characters, but seem to feel more like stock characters that simply need to be there: e.g. Dr. Volovodov and captains of MCRN and UNN. Compare them with Admiral Souther or Dr. Strickland for example.
It still has the right beat however, but it's been relatively less tight than before. The finale is supposed to be mysterious and awe-inducing, but it didn't give me the same feeling as Season 2. That said, The Expanse is still one of the better (if not the best) sci-fi shows around right now, so I'll stick with it.
Episode average: 8.230769230769231
I'll give it an 8.
There was something missing in this season, I felt. Somehow it managed both to raise the stakes and lower the "compelling factor". I'm still really happy to have high production value sci-fi on TV, and will be watching season 3 of course, but I hope the series returns to the feel of season 1.
What is it about space shows that makes them so interesting? Even when an episode seemed relatively pointless, plot-wise, it was still just a treat to see all the space stuff.
I realized during this season, after visiting Kennedy Space Center at the end (and thereby delaying my viewing of the last two episodes due to being out of town), that not as much of the tech in this show is as far-fetched as it might look. The Saturn V / Apollo building at KSC has an exhibit remembering the crew of Apollo 1, and it integrates transparent display glass not unlike the large control panels we see in The Expanse or the rebooted Star Trek films. It's not a big stretch to imagine that tech being shrunk down for use in handheld tablets/phones. (Certainly, we'll develop that long before the Epstein Drive.)
Time to seriously put the Expanse books on my reading list. I've been lazy about reading them, even though I've wanted to since season 1 wrapped, and here we are at the close of season 2 still with zero pages read…
A science fiction show, part noir and part political suspense, set in interplanetary scale. The show depicts a possible future of space colonization: the life as ordinary persons in the midst of tense cold war and resource exploitation. The show puts class struggle in front and center, as humans living in Asteroid Belts (Belters) trying to survive as the work blue-collar jobs serving the elites in Earth and Mars. The Earthers and Martians, meanwhile, are playing dangerous political games in a race of claiming the riches of the asteroids. We follow the story of a hard-boiled detective, a crew of haulers, and an Earther politician, whose lives are entangled in the emerging conflict that ensues.
The series is not a cyberpunk one, but as we get to traverse the marginalized lives of the Belters, I can't shake the feeling cyberpunk films usually gives me. Thematically it deals with issues of class/discrimination - though sometimes a bit on the face - corruption, and corporate control. Our hard-boiled detective pieces the puzzle slowly. Visually, the neon lights of the Belts, the slums and sewers, and even the food stalls where people eat noodles, seem like paying homage to cyberpunk genres.
For science fiction fans, The Expanse puts the science back in science fiction. Earthers, Martians, and Belters have different physiological forms because of years living in different gravity. Once a while the show takes on a more gimmicky sci-fi like coriolis gravity effect when pouring water, at other times it becomes a plot device that turns the story upside-down. The smaller scale of the setting - interplanetary instead of intergalactic in the vein of sci-fi e.g. Star Wars / Star Trek - makes me appreciate the more realistic touch on sci-fi side much better. There is no jump drive, no hyperspace travel. Ships are propelled with rockets. Space battles don't have that bombastic lasers and explosion, but still intense and perhaps, in effect, much more gripping and consequential. For a TV series, The Expanse has the convincing visuals and excellent set design theatrical films usually have, though like most sci-fi it still excuses itself on having sounds reverberate in a vacuum.
The show spends most of its early episodes (Eps. 1-3) to world-building. The pace is a bit slow and the piecing of the puzzles may make the story feel a bit convoluted. Characters are introduced, but most don't really make a strong impression, except for perhaps Detective Miller (played by Thomas Jane), who despite the cliched trope, manage to be a leading figure in driving the plot forward, thanks perhaps to the impressive acting by Jane.
However, unlike most shows nowadays that get a strong start but becoming weaker as it end on season finale, The Expanse becomes much better exactly in the second half. The pace gets steady, character gets more developed as they interact more like persons, and in a couple of episodes it hits the suspense notes just perfect. Eps. 4 has one of the better shootout and political suspense I've seen in series. Eps. 8 has a brooding pressure Alien series gives as the crew investigates the mysteries. The season ends with all pieces of puzzle being pulled together, but still asks more questions further for the next season.
The Expanse Season 1 is one of the most satisfying show I've watched this recent years. Binged-watched it only in 2 days. I'm eagerly waiting for the chance to watch the next season.
:asterisk_symbol::asterisk_symbol:A Great Concept, Pretty Well Executed, Shame About The Profanities - 7 / 10:asterisk_symbol::asterisk_symbol:
This is a great idea for a fresh take on a superhero action show; real 3 dimensional characters that just happen to have super powers but are just as fallible as humans; selfish, greedy, callous and prone to using their powers for deeds on all spectrums of good and evil.
Two sticking points for me;
Karl Urban’s poor British accent. As the second to leading character in the series they really should have cast someone with a real British accent if it was going to be such a prominent feature. It has no bearing on the story, I’d have preferred he was just a Kiwi or cast an American and forget the foreigner thread all together.
The egregious use of the word CU:asterisk_symbol:T. Whoever was sat around that writing table and signed off on Karl Urban’s character calling everyone a cu:asterisk_symbol:t every 5 minutes needs to go read some books. It’s safe to assume that whoever it was that made the poor “British accent” choice was the same person; clearly us brits that use the C-word every two minutes and that’s the only way to communicate that characters brash humour right. I’m no prude but there are cleverer ways to write than that.
Otherwise solid entertainment.
7 / 10
Average episode rating this season: 6.96153846
It is a solid season, with only one episode managing to score less than a 6/10 from me. ("Second Sight" was really not good…)
I say that despite not rating anything lower than 6/10 in season 1, because I haven't technically rated all of the first-season episodes yet. And, actual ratings aside, season two just feels a lot more consistent overall than season one. The show, like all Trek series before and after it, only really started finding its footing in the second season, and didn't reach what I would call "greatness" until the third or fourth.
The real highlight of this season is the Dominion build-up, and how we go from hearing the name thrown around here and there to watching a Galaxy-class starship get destroyed mid-retreat by a now very determined new foe. I'd say the season was quite effective at priming the viewer's fear of the Dominion, the Jem'Hadar, and perhaps even the Founders (though we don't yet know that Odo is a Founder, so he's still cool). Part of me questions the plot-armor quality of losing an entire Galaxy-class ship and crew to rescue Sisko, but I do realize that this is 1990s Star Trek. It's as different from modern television as it is from the original series.
For once, I got a terminating decimal average rating for a season: 6.5
I'm going to buck my own tradition and not round this one up to a 7. There's just too much that needs improvement. The humor doesn't really work in this format, and it's mostly low-quality jokes anyway. Almost none of the stories have a satisfying dramatic structure—whether due to rushed resolutions or lack of depth, there are never any stakes.
Star Trek developed (or at least, its spin-offs did) a wonderful way of getting the audience to believe that something could go wrong, that we really might lose one of our beloved characters if things didn't go just right. Sometimes it even seemed plausible for the entire ship (or station) to be lost if anything went wrong, or even the whole Federation. Even though disaster almost never struck, and the vast majority of Star Trek stories end in resolution and a return to (more or less—DS9 being the obvious exception in the latter half of its run) the status quo. Trek's writers used this to great effect over the years, because when the stakes got really high and the protagonists lost, it was that much more impactful.
So far, the crew of the Orville never loses. They somehow always come out ahead, almost as if by magic, and we the audience can see it coming light-years away. Aside from the lowbrow humor, that's the most detrimental flaw in The Orville's first season.
Fox renewed The Orville for a second season back in November, so it's reasonable to expect that we'll get to see some evolution of the concept whenever it returns (likely late next year, around the same time the first season started). If the show doesn't evolve in season two, I likely won't continue following it.
The second season didn´t provide much progress compared to the first. They were still doing what worked best before. I saw little in terms of character developement.
The whole idea of the show was to put a ship literally "where no one has gone before" but we only see glimpses of other cultures. Instead they keep dragging the Kazon along and it became more and more aparent with every Kazon episode that they didn´t work. As the writers and producers agreed later it was unfathomable that you travel a year and a half at high warp and still haven´t left them/their space behind. After all they were a sub-culture that overthrow their supressors just 30 years ago.
I still couldn´t pick a favorite character. Althought I don´t really hate one each of them had a minor flaw or two as far as I saw it. K. Mulgrew does a great job but I never could bring myself to like Janeway. Chakotay is kind of the dog that wants to please his master. The Doctor was still to arrogant but showed promise. Neelix is symply irritating. I can´t really say why I never liked Tuvok. Kes is a non-factor - they just didn´t found a way with her. B´Elana, Tom and poor Harry Kim all had there moments in the show but nothing that got to me. This was unusual because with every other Trek incarnation I had a favorite right from the get-go no later than the end of the premiere season.
But overall it still was on a level back at the time that few shows had so there was reason to go on.
