Quicksand Fans

Well, so far it's just as good as the first season. They managed to 'cure' Miller and Holden of their Rad Exposure, although they do state clearly, "don't have kids" They did manage to get some info from the Mad Scientist cocksucker who engineered the deaths of a hundred thousand people, but when it seemed Fred Johnson was on the verge of giving him a deal, Miller shot the fucker in the head. And then after a beat, twice more in the face You don't make deals with fucking genocidal madmen. Ever.
That had some hurt feelings of course But his week was interesting, since Holden, who was all fucking spazoid-level indignant over that, and in the ep after, had to come to realize that, gee, sometimes ,you just gotta kill someone. Delicious.
No big spoilers, since gotta see next week to either piss a lot of fans off. and/or do something about the WTF moment.....

Well
They either just killed the best character in the show, or they are setting up for some really weird whiskey tango foxtrot down the line.

All I know is this better not be the season, or the series finale.

Oh, something is up, of that I am certain. Just without any silly plots, Miller mentioned more than once, that something strange is going on. First, an ASTEROID powers up like an ImpStar and dodges an ship. Then proceeds to accelerate sunward, on an orbit aimed square at Earth. While all that going on, nothing is felt by him. When the Racci is trying to chase them down, they are burning at 15+ Gs, and the crew dying on anti-g-juice, while he's strolling around hauling a nuke without major problems. And never mind what he finds in the remains of the motel
No, I'd say its a safe bet that there more to come yet

S2 Episode one, the Battle

Video slowly starting to show up on youtube from the series; and yeah, I agree with the commentors - this is probably one of the best depictions of zero-g space combat yet. Rocinante is what you expect in a warship; ALL engine Sure, got railguns and missiles, but you need that raw, brute thrust for the bone-crushing maneuvers....

The do seem to be mixing in a lot of political nastiness with some of the obvious action-stuff. Avasarala, who supposed to be interested in peace, diplomacy, etc, to me is just another fucking Boingo-like scumbag who thinks she's smarter than she is. With the fiasco on Ganymede (UN vs Martian ground units, orbital units) getting into a bit of a scuffle (shredding a half-dozen orbital FARMS and ships for bonus, fireteams on surface killed...) and the Martians taking the blame to avoid a shooting war, SHE then thinks it's a good fucking idea to get cute and question Bobbie Draper (the only survivor on the surface, Martian Marine, who shades the statement to look like they shot first - actually, its unclear. The UN types were FLEEING something... which in wounded-haze looked like a black thing, with glowing blue eyes like the protomolecule.. and not wearing a vac suit on the surface...) trying to either be cute, or blow the deal.

Complicating things, the first science ship gets to Venus and starts getting data from the crater where Ceres landed . And detecting organic molecules in an atmosphere that melts metals. I get the sense this wont end well.

And our heros, keep stumbling around, planning on sneaking into Ganymede covered as relief personnel, and first thing they do is get in middle of graft-types and kill them in a shootout. Awesome cover guys. Haven't seen low-key like that since Solo disintegrated Greedo....

About the only guy who seems competent here is the pilot of the Raci, and I not sure about him...

I get the sense they deviating from the books somewhat now, which is ok , really in the sense that books don't always translate onto television the same. But really some WTF moments, especially with our BOingo-clone politician basically flat-out fucking lying to Draper about who developed the 'weapon' -- THAT, would be 180 degrees off the plot. Mars, knew NOTHING about the protomolecule. It was Wong's people, and EARTH that developed the program to make 'supersoldiers' out of people who were too sick or helpless to live normal lives. Perhaps thats too Dr Mengle for them . BUT that's exactly what fucking happened. Not to mention the resources needed to do, Mars doesn't have, or spare (their budget is guns, guns, guns, to the extent they have cut the terraforming project back a whole fucking century) And the bit where Bobby wants to see the ocean? Ok, I get being from Mars, that'd be a thing. But busting out of your hotel room and nearly getting killed falling off the building, to see it from NEW YORK? Fuck me. The East River is not on my vacation, or swimming lists
The last act though is a serious oh-shit moment. Since our heros, still stumbling around on Ganymede, think they have a line on the lost little girl. Unfortunately, Alex waiting up in orbit, hiding behind one of Jupiter's many moons (the bit with him just goofing off in zero-g is pretty nice, pros need a break, and fuck, he's been alone there for a few days with only comm chatter to listen to. Being a little bit of a retard is allowed ) where he's interrupted by a message to All-Ships in Jupiter Space, declaring a no-fly zone around Ganymede. Well. THAT, is going to make picking up the gang interesting... scooting in with all the traffic coming n going was one thing. Trying to do it when you the only ship and the entire Martian and Earther deployed navies shooting at you? That's something else

They building up *no pun* to the season finale, with Bobby defecting in spectacular fashion to the Earthers; at least they fixed the bullshit about who behind the weapons-project. If this Mau character doesn't dies in the most gruesome way you can come up with, they really need to get schooled. Really the show needs to be longer, since with so much going on, it's compressed. Alex figuring out how to sneak in, at the same time guessing the 'supply run for refugees' is a load of bullshit (drop food off in middle of nowhere? Uh...) is pretty sharp. Plotting a gravity-assist flyby only trajectory in was pretty cool, looping and diving around dozens of moons. Right up until he almost collided with a Martian Navy Frigate, just like theirs.... They can't see you, and all you have are eyeballs. Makes for excitement. Sure space is big. But... Nice dodge though. Down on Ganymede things go so so, with the plan to rescue Pax's little girl going great until he sees her cute toy napsack... which goes sideways and starts a firefight, with the scientists running behind a locked door, and all the other baddies down. But Amos gets shot, again. Good line by him "how come I always get shot??" You're a meatshield son, deal. They find a body, in a cryo box of some kind, in incinerator. It's unclear if the kid in it is dead, but they torch it anyways, since the protomolecule IS there. Then they have to deal with one of the mad scientists chucking in a grenade, which Amos chucks back just in time. After the boom, there are a lot of screams, and breaking noises - not like boom-stuff. Then the see signs of decompression. By time they get in, they find all dead minus one who's gurgling out fast. Something broke out from an anesthetic cube. Then busted out an airlock. Alex shows up, just having set down and here to rescue, but WTF... SOMETHING is outside, and running away. With no vac suit. To be continued....

Hey! Man I love The Expanse, wish I saw this earlier down here in the OT section. Yeah, I think there are two episodes left this season. It's great to see the novels brought to the screen. Season 1 hooked me and my wife even liked it haha! She got me the first 5 books for Christmas, I plowed through those pretty quick at work. A great series overall though. The show this season though, like you mentioned seems a little too compressed. They crammed the last half of Leviathan Wakes (Book 1) and what seems to be most of Caliban's War (book 2) into this season, which is cool but I mean the whole first season was basically half a book so the character build up and motivations were a little more believable to me.

Changing the story up A LOT and cramming that much plot into a season makes it hard to follow in my opinion and I even know who everyone is already and their story line. Some of the logic jumps characters make are pretty out there, just to advance the story. I'm afraid they might lose some viewership and worst of all SyFy might drop it before it really gets crazy. I'm still not sure whats up with that 10:00 PM ET slot lol.

I like some of the story changes they have made for the show... especially Prax, good lord he was annoying to read in the books. Not so bad in the show though. I thought it was really cool they brought out the fact that artificial eco systems, like on Ganymede, are one small problem away from catastrophe... not that an orbital mirror crashing down onto a food dome is a minor problem haha.

One thing I wish they would've done is not shy away from the Vomit Zombies and stuff the protomolecule creates initially when it infects someone so that it can readily spread. Makes the protomolecule more gruesome by far. I read on the Reddit (good grief I'm super nerded out here) that the creators were scared of getting labeled a 'space zombie' show. In turn they didn't really show the creature that wipes out Bobbys patrol, which ends up being a pretty major part of the book. They are finally giving us a look at it though.

I felt like they kinda started getting the act together with this last episode. I really liked the pacing, it seemed much more even and they advanced the story on steadily, which is my biggest criticism with this season so far. Some episodes seemed like the characters were literally checking boxes as fast as they could to get to the next plot point and then it would slow to a crawl half the episode and nothing would happen. I know the first season wasn't super action packed but I felt like it was a steady drip and really built up the characters and their motivations. I mean my wife didn't ask any questions about what was going on the first season (except for Millers haircut lol) but this season I've had to pause it an explain what's happening a couple of times since if you blink you miss it major plot points will slip by.

Yeah, it's always hard trying to cram 45m of stuff in with 3-odd plots running simultaneous. Not easy, and the cast is doing a good job

One thing, Venus still is the Hell of the Solar System, and all the fancy tech we got , it still beats the shit out of probes.
But, that 10-seconds of video are literally "What The HELL is THAT??" Yup. Protomolecule NOT dead even surviving a gigaton-level impact on a planet that resurfaces itself weekly on the geologic scale Plus, gee... it's almost like it's building something....
Are we so fucked we don't know it yet , or what??