Janine The Barefoot
Wacky Norwegian Woman
So, is it me or is S2 the best Sci-Fi currently on TV or what?
I'll confess, I watched season 1 with some trepidation. It felt a bit like an overburdened beast. Unable to successfully move forward, somewhat confused about where it had been and was going but completely unwilling to just sit down and give up. The belter language was difficult (but I'm a huge fan of Brit TV so accents don't bother me that much for very long), the bouncing from ship to station to Earth to Mars & meteorites made me feel like Will Rogers without a robot to warn me about what was "dangerous" and I was completely unable to connect with Miller at all. Which left me a female UN member of questionable motives and the crew of the Rosi (who'd been bounced around like beach balls so often it was hard to figure out where they really fit in).
But I stuck it out, I waded through some pretty convoluted plotting and learned what I needed to (and could) about who was who and where they fit in and I thought... OK, I'll go back for one or two eps of S2 just to see what they do with it and then check-out if that's what it comes down to (cause, let's face it, no show is the actual "Hotel California").... and then boom!!!!! S2 took off like a bloody nuke in Area 51 and I've been nothing but breathless & captivated ever since.
It isn't Firefly. There isn't that sense of a "love connection" that I had with the Serenity, Mal and his crew (and I still want to know Rev. Book's back story damnit!) but there's no more question about whether or not the show owns me... it does. I wait for each week's installment like it's Christmas and when the season ends I'm going to spend 2 solid days binging each season like a crack addict, mining it for data like the belters do with rocks in space. Because it's that smart. Because I haven't seen genuinely awe-inspiring world-building like this since Firefly and if I'm really honest, this may even be better because Earth, Mars and The Belt are all characters of their own and it's not just one crew on one ship, it's the whole Galaxy at risk fighting an enemy most don't know anything at all about and others are refusing to share any data on. We don't even understand the enemy yet or, for that matter, even really know if it is actually an enemy. Which, for me, is the very definition of must-see-TV. Every episode this season has contained jaw-dropping info, miraculous views of space and still never quite giving over enough info to make any kind of solid prediction possible. Which is another thing I'm quite unaccustomed to because I don't just watch visual media, I'm a voracious reader and once you get up to 1000 books or more (over 60-70% of which have been Sci-Fi and/or Fantasy) prediction becomes an autonomic part of the experience that you can't just eliminate because it comes right along with you as you turn every page and there are only a few authors I'm currently reading who have the capability to shock me senseless with utterly unexpected plot developments.
So yeah, I'm saying it. The Expanse is, in my estimation, the best "true" science fiction on TV right now and Killjoys, the show about the crew who lost their memories (sorry, forgot the name) and anything put out by Fox or Marvel just cannot compete at this level. Hell, they're not even trying to accomplish what The Expanse manages to put into just 5 minutes of viewing. If I didn't know otherwise, I'd think this story was being written by Phd level physicists, chemists, NASA engineers and some of the most highly awarded Sci-Fi authors of 2-3 generations. But Herbert, Asimov and (I think) Harlan Ellison are all dead. Scalzi's Old Man's War series is pure genius but I don't think he's writing screenplays and CJ Cherryh is, to my knowledge, still in Spokane WA prepping the next book in her Foreigner series for it's upcoming release. This isn't Webber's style and Ringo simply cannot give this many characters as much depth as I'm seeing in The Expanse. Strazinski's Babylon 5 and the reboot of BSG were great but this show has blown even them right out of the water as far as I'm concerned and (don't hate me cause I'm a die-hard Trekkie of ALL of them) even G.R and the devoted teams who followed him weren't painting with a brush this big. I once thought that Almost Human was some of the best Science-Fiction I'd seen but this show is set largely in space so I'm not going to compare it to anything else that isn't... just doesn't seem right to do that somehow.
So I'm standing up and shouting loud & proud that Sci-Friday is back with a vengeance and the channel that I berated and bitched about when it picked up the WWF and switched it's name to "sifee" is the one whose bringing it to us.... Wow, that kinda sucks just a little now that I think about it.
So y'all, what'dya think???????
(Don't forget that I've already admitted to being a crazed Norwegian woman who regularly puts her foot in her mouth!
)
I'll confess, I watched season 1 with some trepidation. It felt a bit like an overburdened beast. Unable to successfully move forward, somewhat confused about where it had been and was going but completely unwilling to just sit down and give up. The belter language was difficult (but I'm a huge fan of Brit TV so accents don't bother me that much for very long), the bouncing from ship to station to Earth to Mars & meteorites made me feel like Will Rogers without a robot to warn me about what was "dangerous" and I was completely unable to connect with Miller at all. Which left me a female UN member of questionable motives and the crew of the Rosi (who'd been bounced around like beach balls so often it was hard to figure out where they really fit in).
But I stuck it out, I waded through some pretty convoluted plotting and learned what I needed to (and could) about who was who and where they fit in and I thought... OK, I'll go back for one or two eps of S2 just to see what they do with it and then check-out if that's what it comes down to (cause, let's face it, no show is the actual "Hotel California").... and then boom!!!!! S2 took off like a bloody nuke in Area 51 and I've been nothing but breathless & captivated ever since.
It isn't Firefly. There isn't that sense of a "love connection" that I had with the Serenity, Mal and his crew (and I still want to know Rev. Book's back story damnit!) but there's no more question about whether or not the show owns me... it does. I wait for each week's installment like it's Christmas and when the season ends I'm going to spend 2 solid days binging each season like a crack addict, mining it for data like the belters do with rocks in space. Because it's that smart. Because I haven't seen genuinely awe-inspiring world-building like this since Firefly and if I'm really honest, this may even be better because Earth, Mars and The Belt are all characters of their own and it's not just one crew on one ship, it's the whole Galaxy at risk fighting an enemy most don't know anything at all about and others are refusing to share any data on. We don't even understand the enemy yet or, for that matter, even really know if it is actually an enemy. Which, for me, is the very definition of must-see-TV. Every episode this season has contained jaw-dropping info, miraculous views of space and still never quite giving over enough info to make any kind of solid prediction possible. Which is another thing I'm quite unaccustomed to because I don't just watch visual media, I'm a voracious reader and once you get up to 1000 books or more (over 60-70% of which have been Sci-Fi and/or Fantasy) prediction becomes an autonomic part of the experience that you can't just eliminate because it comes right along with you as you turn every page and there are only a few authors I'm currently reading who have the capability to shock me senseless with utterly unexpected plot developments.
So yeah, I'm saying it. The Expanse is, in my estimation, the best "true" science fiction on TV right now and Killjoys, the show about the crew who lost their memories (sorry, forgot the name) and anything put out by Fox or Marvel just cannot compete at this level. Hell, they're not even trying to accomplish what The Expanse manages to put into just 5 minutes of viewing. If I didn't know otherwise, I'd think this story was being written by Phd level physicists, chemists, NASA engineers and some of the most highly awarded Sci-Fi authors of 2-3 generations. But Herbert, Asimov and (I think) Harlan Ellison are all dead. Scalzi's Old Man's War series is pure genius but I don't think he's writing screenplays and CJ Cherryh is, to my knowledge, still in Spokane WA prepping the next book in her Foreigner series for it's upcoming release. This isn't Webber's style and Ringo simply cannot give this many characters as much depth as I'm seeing in The Expanse. Strazinski's Babylon 5 and the reboot of BSG were great but this show has blown even them right out of the water as far as I'm concerned and (don't hate me cause I'm a die-hard Trekkie of ALL of them) even G.R and the devoted teams who followed him weren't painting with a brush this big. I once thought that Almost Human was some of the best Science-Fiction I'd seen but this show is set largely in space so I'm not going to compare it to anything else that isn't... just doesn't seem right to do that somehow.
So I'm standing up and shouting loud & proud that Sci-Friday is back with a vengeance and the channel that I berated and bitched about when it picked up the WWF and switched it's name to "sifee" is the one whose bringing it to us.... Wow, that kinda sucks just a little now that I think about it.
So y'all, what'dya think???????
(Don't forget that I've already admitted to being a crazed Norwegian woman who regularly puts her foot in her mouth!
)
