- I have the wrong type of personality for streaming services.
- There should be some sort of test before you’re allowed to sign up.
- Basic questions.
- “Have you ever eaten any amount of cookies other ‘all the cookies that were available?'”
- “Have you ever had cocaine left when you woke up?”
- That sort of thing.
- Because I watched the first season of The Expanse, slept for a while, and then immediately put the second season on and watched that, too.
- Just in case you were wondering where I’ve been.
- Usually, there are new skits and make-’em-ups and wacky hijinks every morning, but not the past couple days.
- Daddy had his teevee-watchin’ pants on.
- (Also, I decided to start referring to myself as “Daddy.” Deal with it. This is the new reality.)
- The Expanse is certainly the best scientifictional program ever made, and can even be judged favorably alongside respectable programs.
- It’s about the exact same themes as the high-toned stuff–class and power and the human goddamned condition–but folks get tossed out of airlocks so the show gets lumped in with Farscape and that kind of shit.
- I’d vote for Trump before I watched fucking Farscape.
- Or any of the Star Trek nonsense.
- Some of you love Star Trek, and that is your right as Americans, but Star Trek is about a post-scarcity society and is thus uninteresting and devoid of humanity.
- Being human means needing shit.
- You need air.
- You need water.
- You need those motherfuckers over there to leave you alone.
- First rule of the universe: everything’s hungry.
- The Expanse, like no other zippity-pew show I can remember, gets that.
- I am sure there are Enthusiasts clearing their throats in the Comment Section.
- “TotD, sci-fi novels have been dealing with deeper themes for many yea–“
- CHUH-SWHWAP
- That was the airlock opening.
- You’re floating in space now.
- Blood’s boiling, lungs exploding, skin freezing, the whole shmear.
- Simply the worst way to die.
- And you brought it on yourself.
- I hate scientifictional books: they’re all a thousand pages long with dozens of characters named Dre’x Fartbluff or the like, and there’s always 20 chapters describing engines or sex robots.
- Just tell me there’s a sex robot.
- You don’t have to list all the manufacturers of its parts, sci-fi writer.
- I’m glad you did your research, but you don’t have to share all of it.
- Or–God help us all–the power armor.
- Ever since Heinlein, we poor readers have had to sit though page after page of intricate detailing of the fucking power armor.
- I don’t wanna read about the power armor, man.
- Do I wanna see a Space Marine wearing power armor rampage through a unit of bad guys?
- Fuck, yeah.
- But ten pages on how the OS for the helmet display works?
- Shit, no.
- …
- What was I talking about?
- Right, The Expanse and why I love it so much that I’ve decided to stalk at least one of the actors.
- The basic premise: Hundred of years from now, humans have colonized everything from Earth to the moons of Saturn; there is no warp drive, but we can go a lot faster for a lot less fuel than we can now.
- Basically, a future in which we’ve solved the Rocket Equation.
- But–and here’s The Expanse‘s first sales point–the rules of physics still apply, kinda, mostly, and as much as the budget will allow.
- (Like, sometimes the characters are in zero-g and have to use their magnetized boots to walk around the ship, but their hair doesn’t float, cuz it would’ve cost a trillion dollars. Or that there are several location where gravity is less than half that of Earth’s, but nobody bops around like the moon astronauts. These are overlookable and explicable flaws.)
- When the ship is accelerating, there is g.
- When the ship is not, there is zero.
- Which is how space works.
- Gravity is another thing human beings need; I forgot to mention that.
- But we just need one.
- Precisely one g.
- Anything else will fuck up us over a long period of time, or kill us quickly.
- And The Expanse, unlike any other space-based show I can remember, gets this right.
- (Again: yes, yes, I know that the effects of gravity and inertia on the human body have long been a common topic in sci-fi novels, but I’m talking about teevee here. Usually, the spaceships can make 90 degree turns while going 18 million miles per hour and the actors will just lean slightly. In The Expanse: you accelerate too fast, you die. Stop too suddenly? Also dead. Which is how space works)
- Anyway, you got Earth, you got Mars, and you got the OPA, which stands for something.
- I am assuming that the “O” is for Organization.
- Although the “A” could be for Association or Alliance, which would rule out the “O” standing for Organization.
- Whatever, the initialism refers to Belters.
- Belters are Everyone Else.
- The large settlement on the dwarf planet Ceres, and the farmers on Ganymede, and the rockhoppers mining the asteroids in between Mars and Jupiter.
- Earth is dying, and Mars is ravenous in its need for raw materials with which to terraform their planet.
- Belters keep the Inner Planets alive.
- You’ll never guess how the Inner Planets treat them.
- The Expanse is the closest that any teevee show has got to Full Commie.
- The program is an indictment of capitalism with the occasional zap-gun fight.
- But it doesn’t hit you over the head with it, which is nice.
- In fact, The Expanse just flat-out doesn’t explain a ton of shit, and kudos to the producers for that decision.
- For example, most of the Belters have a tattoo around their neck.
- And at no point does this conversation take place:
- “I like your ink. What does it mean?”
- “It stands for my people, and harbledooblebabble.”
- And y’know why?
- Because everyone in that universe would be aware of that information.
- It would be like a private in an army movie asking another private about his necklace.
- “You mean my dog-tags? What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
- Another reason The Expanse is superior: something for everyone.
- Enjoy hard-boiled detectives with ludicrous haircuts and haunted eyes?
- That’s in here.
- Do you like diverse hotties in jumpsuits yelling at one another about attack vectors and other such foolishness?
- Also present.
- What about saris?
- Do you like saris?
- Because there is a character on The Expanse with the fanciest fucking saris you’ve ever seen.
- At least 20% of the show’s budget was spent on ethnic dresses.
- Look at this bullshit:
- That woman’s name is Shohreh Agdashloo, and here’s how wonderful she is on The Expanse: I actually looked up her name out of respect.
- I will not look up her character’s name, though.
- She’s the Deputy Secretary of the UN, which is in charge of all of Earth, and she is wily and political and knows secrets and has a voice like an idling V8 motor.
- And when she has to go to Montana, she wears this:
- I mean, COME ON.
- If Hillary had shown up to the first debate in that outfit, she’d be President today.
- There’s a lot of characters on the show, but no one else wears such insouciant color combinations.
- Mostly everyone else is in jumpsuits, except for Thomas Jane, who is a private eye from 1940’s Los Angeles.
- He’s looking for a lost girl.
- That’s what private eyes from 1940’s Los Angeles do.
- And it turns into this whole thing that may or may not end with a planetoid coming to life and trying to eat the solar system.
- The situation complexifies itself, y’see.
- Even the whole solar system isn’t big enough for us to get away from ourselves.
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so true about personality types and streaming services
marvelous use of insouciant
I keep desperately trying to not make the leap to Spotify or any other such services, because I know I would become completely paralyzed trying to listen to all the music, all of it, for free, all of the time.
But this “Ex-Pants” show sounds ace. Gonna give it a shot. Where’d all the cookies go, man?
Thank god you didn’t do a Last Thoughts on the Last Jedi because that shit is awful.