After the news that the entire population of Eros was eradicated by the mysterious protomolecule, Joe Miller and the Rocinante crew led by Jim Holden team up and decide to find out where it came from. They track it down to a space station and infiltrate it, finding scientists led by Dresden, who tells them that protomolecule is of alien origin, and that they infected Eros hoping it will combine with humans and help them evolve to a higher species. Miller, disgusted by such mass murder, kills Dresden. Miller and the others decide to blow up Eros, to eradicate the protomolecule on it, but it evolves into a spaceship with a collision course with Earth. On Eros, Miller finds Julie Mao alive, combined with the protomolecule, and persuades her to crash Eros to Venus. On Ganymede, Bobbie, a human Martian, is the only survivor when her military unit and Earth's unit get killed by a mysterious humanoid being without a spacesuit. On Earth, Bobbie is advised to cover up the incident, but she teams up with Avasarala, the UN Secretary-General. Prax is searching for his daughter, fearing she will be used in an experiment of hybrid humans-protomulecule.
The second season of "The Expanse" is a bit better than the 1st one, yet still not enough to sway the viewers into accepting such a long stalling and endless exposition with only minimal pay-off. In the post-"Game of Thrones" era, numerous TV shows adopted its formula: cram in a dozen subplots, with fifty characters, aim for hypernarration to make the story seem more ambitious, yet many of these shows just left the viewers with the same sense of frustration that it takes 20 hours of set-up until the story becomes really good. Unfortunately, there is again too much set-up and exposition in this season. If you need so much explanations and annotations, at least make them fun or interesting, instead of dry, like here. The only truly excellent episodes are no. 2.4 and 2.5, when the story enters a truly fascinating subplot that intrigues on a higher level: the alien protomolecule evolves asteroid Eros into a spaceship, and moves it to avoid being destroyed, setting its course to Earth. Moeover, Miller finds Julie Mao has merged with the protomolecule, receiving a fluorsescent blue body. Other episodes fare less. There is an interesting detail in episode 2.9, where humans who have been living on Mars travel to Earth for the first time for a hearing, and thus they have to adapt by taking pills for bone density (since Mars has only 38% of Earth's gravity), one man gets sick from too bright Sun, whereas Bobbie (great Frankie Adams) walks awkwardly due to Earth's gravity, and wants to see the ocean; and one example of a visual style stands out: the one where the camera zooms in onto a star, all until it turns out to be a spaceship fyling in space. Some dialogue is interesting ("Bad men do things believing it's for the good of all mankind."; "All the old farts like me will be telling you this is how you do it, and this is the path you take, we're all going to be experts on how you should grow up..."), yet, conversely, many more are just too schematic and plain, and one has pitty for the actors having to recite such exhaustingly monotone lines. This 2nd season shows signs of improvement, yet only Bobbie stands out as a truly memorable character.
Grade:++
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