I guess I just worry about a GOT experience. I had read all those books prior to the series, and most of my dislike of the TV show stemmed from having read the books and being disappointed in the choices of the show runners that seemed to betray the books.

Your choice not to be amused by subverted expectations.

George RR Martin, while he did write a few episodes, was never as involved with the show's production as Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham (they are "James SA Corey"....) have been with The Expanse. And while GoT on TV ran out of published material about halfway through its run, they have already published 8 Expanse novels, with the 9th and final volume due next year. So the book series will be completed long before the TV series ends.

My worry is actually that the TV series will get cancelled after season 5 or season 6. The 9 novels are actually 3 trilogies and this season marks the start of the middle trilogy. 9 seasons is a lot for any TV series, much less one that streams.

Thus far, the shows have really done a fantastic job doing justice to the source material.

Hopefully Bezos being a fan will be enough to get us all the way through book 9.

The full 4th season is now out on amazon and also in 4K HDR.

Oh shit. There goes my weekend.

Watched the first two episodes of season 4 now.

Really good so far. As in maybe the best season yet.

Bezos did right saving this show, mother****er holy shit

Finished Episode 3 last night. I was worried because this part of the series I felt was one of the weakest in the books, but damn are they nailing it on the show!

Different experience watching it on my phone, but I binged 7.5 episodes last night and the rest this morning. Not sure I liked everything they did on Mars, but it was good to keep Bobbie involved (she vanishes for a bit in the books, although this was I think taken from a novella). Good too the way they introduced Marcos and Filip, and set season 5 up. I'm now sure how season 5 will work, the way the book plays out marks a pretty drastic change in the series, but they've handled everything really well so far.

Whoever convinced Strathairn to sign on with this show deserves lots of ****ing love. Mein Gott.

Just finished episode 6. By far the best season of The Expanse so far, which is awesome since the source material was much stronger for the first three seasons of the show.

Just finished season 4. Excellent job! Although, the last episode, last scene....well shit, didn't really want to see that!

This show kicks so much ass.

Just finished season 4 and enjoyed it. Fun to see all of the agendas unfolding. The one thing that continues to bother me is that one woman's voice. Her carton a day wheezing rasp continuously pulls me out of the story. So distracting.

How dare you.

Finally finished season 4.

Best season so far no question. Last two episodes are cliff-hangers; a little pissed I have to wait a year for season 5.

Really great season. Really, really pissed to see Ashford get outplayed. Didn't really like the way that went down, as he's usually a Masterful strategist with an ace up his sleeve.

Murtry might be the best villain they've had on the show yet. Really nasty dude.

I mean be thankful he even came back at all after the brief cancellation.

.. Though, you know, it could have even been better dramatically had he not returned as Ashford and it was Drummer instead.

****ing December!!!!!!!

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OMG. This season is going to rock.

Literally.

ROFL

Full disclosure: I did not like the book this season is based on the first time I read it, for reasons I won't spoil here now. But after reading through it again, as well as what follows, it became one of my favorites.

Hell yes! Only 1 1/2 months to go.

Ok, give me guidance -

Watch this or Ozark? I'm starting both from the beginning.

**** Ozark. That shit gets boring and isn't anything new or original.

Watch The Expanse. Then when you've finished it, rewatch it instead of watching Ozark. The Expanse starts slow, so be aware and be patient.

Ozark is OK. But Expanse is way better. I admit I'm a sucker for scifi. But it's a very good show regardless.

No contest! The Expanse.

Renewed for a 6th... and FINAL season. Yeah, I don't quite understand how they're going to weave 5 remaining books into 2 seasons. Granted, I've also only read the first book of the series, so maybe there's something in it all that I'm missing.

The authors have been working with the showrunner for the entire duration, so I assume they're not just going to take a huge shit on the remaining season just because time is up for whatever reason.

https://deadline.com/2020/11/the-exp...ng-1234621032/

You neglected to mention that Cas Anvar will not be in season 6.

My initial response to this when I saw it a couple of days ago was disappointment.

I just don't think they can wrap it up in one season. They'll have to scrap almost everything. I guess we're lucky to get as much as we have.

Haven't read book 5 & 6 yet, but a friend says ending after the 6th book is actually a perfect break.

I assume the character of Alex will be re-cast?

They already did it with Avasarala's husband, though that's certainly not as important of a role.

I’ll definitely be curious how they approach it, i.e. either re-cast a major character in the final season or completely depart from the source material. That being said, I haven’t read the books, so maybe there is a resonable way to do it.

So they've hinted at some of the big shit to happen in the coming books, but I'm like others that I don't see how it's possible to even come close to covering the ground that the remaining books (and there's still one more!) have covered.

Like... it's a HUGE amount of ground to cover. It was almost unsettling to me (I just read all the books in the last few months during COVID) how crazy far the books go in changing the world. Just not sure how they can do it in the series with that limited number of episodes with which to work.

How well did Amazon pull off Season 4? From what I'm told (have only read the 1st book but am caught up on the series) it's the only season that largely tried to follow the book's arc trajectory beginning to end so that the end of the season lined up with the end of the book. How well did they capture that? I assume things were left out and embellishments were added to make it work for TV, but do you think they left out anything big or perhaps went too fast like they did to wrap up the third season?

Yes. The last season is pretty on target. The problem is that you have like 4 books to cover in the next season (s). I'll put a spoiler below that doesn't give away much in the way of plot details, but does reveal some of the general structure:

The plan is to stop the series after the events of Book 6, I believe. Do you think that could work? At the very least, do you trust the writers of the books (who are heavily involved with the production) to clean things up enough?

Yeah. That makes sense, actually. It basically cleaves off a huge plot twist that I'm not sure I love anyway. I can definitely see how they could change things a bit there and end up with a satisfactory ending.

If "Mr. Corey" is in to it, I'd love to see something like the Vesta Incident turned into a telefilm.

So life as it will happened with me the last few years and I never got around to watching this. I finally FINALLY dove in and binged almost the first two seasons (I was almost tempted to turn off the turd of a game against the Broncos and get back to it. Almost). I'm at the part where Draper asks for political asylum on Earth.

This show is absolutely amazing. I haven't been drawn into a show like this since Game of Thrones up til about season 6. I stopped reading this thread around post 100. I'll be back when I'm all caught up. :)

And no, I never ended up reading the books, either. After I'm caught up on the show, I'm 100% sure I'll dive into those as well.

This show has been crack. I'm to the point where Holden and crew are on Ilos. I can't get enough of this, lol.

And Amos might be my favorite character of any series in some time, haha.

Have you seen Bobbie yet?

The actor that plays Amos does a really good job and particularly as the show progresses.

I suspect you would also really like the books.

I was initially bummed out by the news but the comments about ending with book 6 in the source makes a lot of sense. With it having been cancelled once and all of the other shows it seems not getting endings these days I’m glad this one at least will.

Oh yeah. I like her as well - an equal badass but with emotion. If her and Amos end up with a kid, they'll end up ruling all the portal worlds lol.

The **** you mean I have to wait until February 3 for season 5?? DO THEY NOT UNDERSTAND MY LEVEL OF ADDICTION TO THIS SHOW??

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Man, Seasons 2 and 3 were sooooo good. Hopefully 5 can get things going again.

???


It's starts Wednesday. Did the release date get pushed?

I was mistaken - Episodes start tomorrow and the season wraps on Feb 3!

Thanks for the clarification! Happy to have gotten that wrong!

Whoo-hooo!!!

Damnit! They only dropped 3 episodes. Looks like 1 episode a week after today.

Luckily, I saw that before I started watching, so I'm saving ep. 3 for Sunday night or something. First two were pretty good though.

Well. That escalated quite quickly.

Thoroughly enjoying this season so far.

Call me Tiny again.

.

I'm glad I got off my dead ass and starting watching this. This show is my viewing crack right now, and season 5 has been fantastic through 5 episodes.

I'm holding off until Feb to watch them all at once.

"You gotta ask yourself: just how much damage can I do to you in two minutes before the gas gets me?"

That would probably be optimal, but there is just no way I have that kind of willpower for this show, lol.

I really wish I did. I think season 5 may be one of my favorite seasons so far, but it would be so much better if I could sit down and watch it all in one day. It's been a slow and steady buildup, but I just want more every time I watch.

So many shows do that shit. Drives me crazy. Kind of why i like Magnum, P.I. Each show is a separate story. Don't have to worry about being left hanging at the end of every show.

Possibly a top three episode of the entire series, wow.

Definitely the best episode of the season, though I was not terribly high on the season as a whole.

I've been hooked into this season so far. I've enjoyed it more than season 4 for sure, and S4 wasn't bad.

Have you read the books by chance?

I've enjoyed this season (I'm only through Ep6). Man, some other boards I'm on are REALLY down on it. They're vicious about how "awful" the Naomi/Phillip storyline has been and feel that the entire season has been basically watching Naomi be emotional and whiney about her relationship with Phillip. I don't know... I think they could have condensed it down, but it just didn't bother me that much.

I am a book reader, so when I watch... I'm kind of taking the book perspective with me... so I might have a little more understanding and background knowledge on the Naomi situation than non-book readers. I dunno.

But without that storyline, how else do you tell the inside narrative of what a manipulative rat bastard Marco is? It sounds like those posters are just tired of seeing Naomi get beat down mentally for pretty much the entire season. :shrug:

Finished the season last night.

Not sure if this is much of a season spoiler since there was news about it, but whatever. Here it is in the tags anyway

Yeah, agreed with that. Totally caught me off guard with the abruptness. Thought it was a terrible way to go with the way they did it.

Overall it was a really good season which doesn't surprise because I enjoyed the book associated with it. Like previously mentioned I was surprised with how the abruptness of Alex's death. It felt like it was crudely spliced in after the season was finished (which it may have been).

The one aspect that disappointed me was the space battle scene in the final episode. Earlier seasons had some epic battle scenes but this one left me disappointed. I figured when Bezos decided to save the Expanse that we would see more killer space battles given Amazon's deep pockets.

Not my favorite season at all. Got tired of having to watch all of Naomi's bullshit.
I mean, how many times did they have to drive the narrative about Naomi, Phillip, and Marco and how ****ed up they are? Guess what, when Marco and Phillip killed millions of people I got it. I feel like there was so much time spent on those three when they should/could have been telling more of The Expanse story.

Have you read the book? If not, they told The Expanse story nearly exactly how it is in the book. This is the weakest book in my opinion, but I have not read book 7 onward yet.

No, not yet. It's on my list but it'll be awhile.

No, I’ve never read the books, just a show watcher.

For the record, I’m not saying the season was bad, but it’s my least favorite of the series. If I were forced to rank them, it would probably be 3,2,1,4,5.

Of all the separate side quests story arcs of the Roci crew, only Amos’ kept my interest. The Naomi storyline was fine for a while, but it just dragged on. The two episodes leading up to the finale are probably the worst episodes of the series for me. I liked some of the Avasarala stuff, but that seemed to peter out as the season went on.

Honestly, if they just reworked the last several episodes before the finale, I probably would’ve liked the season much better as I enjoyed the first half well enough.

I finally decided to binge today, and did all 10 eps in one sitting. Much like season 4, I was surprised how good of a show they made out of the two weakest books. I didn't think splitting the crew would work, but it definitely did. As far as Cas Anvar goes, he got a much better death than I expected, and I thought it needed to be abrupt, because anyone following the press would know he'd gotten himself in real world trouble. They gave him a hero's death, really, and still provided closure to Alex as a character. So well done, I thought.

The bigger surprise to me, after the announcement of the show ending after 6 seasons, was introducing Duarte and Laconia. I don't know how they can possibly do that story arc - which is literally the second half of the book series - in 10 episodes. Not to mention the 30 year time jump in the novels. But why introduce Duarte and Laconia, and the introduction of the protomolecule into the orbital stations that eventually construct his crazy advanced ships in the books if you aren't going to follow through on everything that happens?

One season can't possibly be enough...

Anyway, I thought it was a really good season. Not many shows can keep me engaged for 10 hours. I do think binging helped, because I would have been disappointed with the ending of a couple of the individual episodes had I been forced to wait another week for more.

Some spoilers in there, bro. Maybe they leave it on a cliffhanger in hopes it causes some pressure to get a final couple of seasons from somebody.

I don't think it's possible for the things that happen in the novels to happen in one final season of the show, so not spoilers IMO. I think they're going to do vastly different things with Marco Inaros and scrap most of what happens with Laconia.

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Bad part is that it's the last season

It's the last season but it may not be the end. There's been discussions about adapting the remaining books as a series of movies.