 What's up guys and welcome to One Take. I'm Gil and today we're talking about The Expanse. Season five premieres its first three episodes on Amazon this Wednesday, December 16th. But I was lucky enough to see those episodes a little bit early and figured I'd jump on here to give you my quick spoiler free thoughts. The first question I always have when a show comes back for a new season is, is it still good? And I'm happy to say that at least based on the first three episodes, season five is right in line with the quality of season four. The next thing I paid attention to is the tone and style because the Expanse is a show that the further away it's gotten from its pilot, the more the tone style and sometimes even cast of the show has shifted dramatically. The show today I would say hardly resembles the show we started with about five years ago. So how does season five look? The main difference I noticed was the pacing. Season four locked into its overarching conflict and plot pretty early on. I think it was right in episode one that we got introduced to that planet, Illus. We saw the conflict between RCE and the Belters established from the gecko and we had the introduction of those billion year old artifacts pretty early on. Season five seems to be taking its time a little bit more. They definitely planted seeds even back in season four and they continue to grow on those seeds early in season five to tell us where things are heading and what the central conflict is going to be. But a lot of the time in these first three episodes is actually focused more on characters' personal arcs. The crew of the Rasenate are kind of scattered and they're each sort of dealing with their own baggage. I won't go too much into spoilers but I'll mention a few of the things that we deal with. Amos reconciling a bit with his past and sort of taking a look at his propensity for violence. We know that Naomi is trying to track down her son so we pick up on that storyline. Alex has to deal with his abandoned family on Mars and then we have Avicerella who is not as important or powerful politically as she once was. How does she deal with that and how does it impact her family and her relationship with her husband? Overall, I liked the choice of focusing on these personal stories early on in the season because I think it adds some realism. The further we get into this series the less and less believable it is that we have this crew of people on the Rasenate who stick together while getting roped into one major conflict after another. I think in the real world they would start to drift apart a little bit and deal with their own lives. This is a little bit of a bad analogy but it reminded me somewhat of Die Hard. In the first Die Hard you have John McClain, ordinary everyday New York City cop who gets pulled into this terrorist plot. Now we have maybe four or five more Die Hard movies since then I think and each time it stretches credulity that he once again gets pulled into this mess. The expanse avoids that sequel fatigue issue by truly reminding us that each of these characters have their own arcs, have their own personal struggles and don't spend all their time on the Rasenate getting pulled into one global or intergalactic conflict after another. Also by reminding us that each of these characters truly have their own story and their own journey I think when we get into the main thrust of the season when we get into the conflict everything will be that much more impactful because we're dealing with real three dimensional characters. I will say I think your mileage will vary in terms of how invested you are in each of these different characters and their stories but we'll talk about that more next week when I start to get into my spoiler filled reviews. Now I mentioned the pacing as one of the key differences I noticed jumping into season five and for the most part I liked slowing down a little bit of spending time with these characters and their personal journeys but there was one thing I wanted to mention with the pacing which didn't work quite as well for me. And I'll draw a comparison to season one. In that first season we were right there with Miller as he was trying to uncover what really happened. Every time he got a new clue it was a new piece of information to him and it was a new piece of information to us. Things are a little bit different here in season five because last season as an audience we saw a little bit of Marco and Ashford. We know some of what's going on behind the scenes. Sometimes the characters are essentially trying to catch up to us. They uncover some new clue, some new piece of information. They try to figure out what Marco's up to but we kind of already know. So at times I found it a tad frustrating a little bit boring watching characters try to figure out what I already know. It's definitely not a major complaint because there's still plenty of new information uncovered for both the characters and the audience in those first three episodes. And as we move along in the season I don't think we'll be ahead of the characters in any major respect. Another thing I wanted to mention which I really liked about these first three episodes is one thing the Expanse has consistently done really well is that when there's a major event something that would truly impact society the Expanse does not shy away from exploring all of that. I'll give another bad analogy to tell you what I mean. If you look at Marvel's The Avengers in that whole series we had this major event where half of the world population disappeared for five years and then came back. That would have a major ripple effect on society. They pay a little bit of lip service to that but don't really explore it much beyond that. The Expanse goes the opposite way. A couple of seasons back the ring appeared and humanity was gifted with the ability of intergalactic travel. In the world of the Expanse that has completely upended the political landscape it's changed everything. And already in the first few episodes we explore that at the Avicerella political kind of top line strategic level but we also explore the implications of that for the everyday person on the streets of Mars for example. With thousands of new planets to explore think about the impact that would have on the job market think of what that would do to the goal of terraforming Mars and turning it into another earth. Now we have all these other planets. How does that affect people's allegiance to Mars? All of that stuff is explored. So I love the fact that the Expanse has not been afraid to evolve in terms of its tone or its cast like I mentioned before and here in terms of the world building changing society and not being afraid to have major humanity altering events occur and then exploring the ripple effect of that. So I've enjoyed that throughout the series and I continue to see that here in season five. Anyway, it's hard to talk too much more about this without getting into spoilers. So I'll leave it there. Like I said, if you've been enjoying the Expanse if you enjoyed season four, I don't see that changing as you move into season five so that's definitely good news. And lastly I'll say if you enjoyed this video please go ahead and hit that like button, hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon so you get notified the next time we do a video. Starting next week when the new season premieres I will be doing weekly spoiler filled detailed recaps and reviews so you won't wanna miss that. Also be sure to let me know in the comments how excited you are for season five, what are you most looking forward to and we'll keep the conversation going. With that, thanks for watching and see you on the next one take.