Non-Fiction:
Carmen Maria Machado: In the Dream House. A Memoir.
Alexis Coe: Alice+Freda Forever. A Murder in Memphis.
Gabrielle Chen: Rusted Off: Why Country Australia Is Fed Up.
Stuart Schrader: Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.
David France: How to Survive a Plague. The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS.
George Packer: Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.
Fiction:
Fiona Barton: The Suspect.
Stephen King: The Institute.
Bernardine Evaristo: Girl, Woman, Other.
Andrea Lawlor: Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.
Kristen Arnett: Mostly Dead Things.
Nell Zink: Doxology.
Films:
A Quiet Passion (2016, Terence Davies).
Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019, Céline Sciamma).
Lady and the Tramp (2019, Charlie Bean).
La Belle Saison (2015, Catherine Corsini).
As Boas Maneiras (2017, Marco Dutra, Juliana Rojas).
A Date For Mad Mary (2016, Darren Thornton).
Knock Down the House (2019, Rachel Lears).
Shows:
Runaways, Season Three.
The Expanse, Season Four.
Tuesday, 31 December 2019
Music of the Year
Albums:
Stella Donnelly - Beware Of The Dogs.
Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won't Hold.
Solange Knowles - When I Get Home.
Kate Tempest - The Book of Traps and Lessons.
Big Thief - U.F.O.F.
Burial - Tunes 2011-2019.
Vagabon - Vagabon.
Angel Olsen - All Mirrors.
Carla dal Forno - Look Up Sharp.
Sampa the Great - The Return.
Little Simz - Grey Area.
PRIESTS - The Seduction of Kansas.
Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow.
Team Dresch - Choices, Chances, Changes (Singles & Comptracks 1994-2000).
Songs:
Why aren't you scared of me? Why do you care for me?
When we all fall asleep, where do we go?
Billie Eilish - You Should See Me In A Crown (on When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go)
Tell me which one is worse
Living or dying first
Chromatics - Closer to Grey (on Closer to Grey)
You say the world is raining colors
I see you standing close to grey
Lightning Dust - Run Away (on Spectre)
Hey, hey.
Shura - Forever (on Forevher)
Oh let us take this memory
And treat it like a masterpiece
One we can touch
Molly Sarlé - Human (on Karaoke Angel)
But you'd probably say in some kind of linked way
That you're human and you don't love me like I am
Clea - Nothing Breaks Like a Heart (Mark Ronson Cover)
This world can hurt you
It cuts you deep and leaves a scar
Things fall apart, but nothing breaks like a heart
Little Simz - Feel Good Inc (Gorillaz Cover)
So while you fill the streets, it's appealing to see
You won't get undercounted 'cause you're damned and free
Taylor Swift - Lover (on Lover)
This is our place, we make the rules
Charli XCX feat. Clairo and Yaeji - February 2017 (on Charli)
Sorry I tore your heart
I ripped it all apart
Your headlights in the dark
The Mountain Goats - Cadaver Sniffing Dog (on In League with Dragons)
Army crawlers down ash-wet floor
Ready for war
Sui Zhen - Mountain Song (on Losing, Linda)
They don't notice.
Shows of the Year
Best new show:
Euphoria
I don't want to speculate if this is a realist look at what it means to be under 18 in 2019, and I don't think that's the point, much like it wasn't the point with Skins. Euphoria has a large cast of characters, thrives off its incredible acting, especially by Zendaya and Hunter Schafer, and shows what it might mean to make sense of yourself in an environment that is difficult to navigate - both in terms of figuring out your relationship to substances, social media (as a stand in for presenting a public self) and to other people.
I don't want to speculate if this is a realist look at what it means to be under 18 in 2019, and I don't think that's the point, much like it wasn't the point with Skins. Euphoria has a large cast of characters, thrives off its incredible acting, especially by Zendaya and Hunter Schafer, and shows what it might mean to make sense of yourself in an environment that is difficult to navigate - both in terms of figuring out your relationship to substances, social media (as a stand in for presenting a public self) and to other people.
For All Mankind
A departure for Ron D. Moore of sorts here - instead of science fiction set in the future, where space travel has become a reality (Battlestar Galactica), For All Mankind imagines a past with a slight tweak: what if the Soviet Union had managed to land on the moon first? The ensuing speculative trajectory shows us an early 1970s in which an embattled President Nixon tries to get a good story out of NASA (an administration not driven by scientific curiosity, but the need to look good in the press and to win the Cold War). There are few eye-roll half-episodes that focus too much on the shenanigans of the risk-seeking astronauts in their fast cars, but then in episode three (Nixon's Women) the magical thing happens: because the USSR has put a woman on the moon, Nixon directs the space programme to train a group of female astronaut candidates. And of course, that changes everything (and the cast of characters is the greatest thing, from astronaut wife Tracy Stevens, who is re-discovering what she wants to do with her life but has to prove that she is more than the newspaper story that Nixon wants, to two veterans of the space programme who are supremely qualified but won't sell the way the administration wants, to mysterious heiress JODI BALFOUR). It's an episode about women's ambition and drive in an environment that is built around heroic men.
A departure for Ron D. Moore of sorts here - instead of science fiction set in the future, where space travel has become a reality (Battlestar Galactica), For All Mankind imagines a past with a slight tweak: what if the Soviet Union had managed to land on the moon first? The ensuing speculative trajectory shows us an early 1970s in which an embattled President Nixon tries to get a good story out of NASA (an administration not driven by scientific curiosity, but the need to look good in the press and to win the Cold War). There are few eye-roll half-episodes that focus too much on the shenanigans of the risk-seeking astronauts in their fast cars, but then in episode three (Nixon's Women) the magical thing happens: because the USSR has put a woman on the moon, Nixon directs the space programme to train a group of female astronaut candidates. And of course, that changes everything (and the cast of characters is the greatest thing, from astronaut wife Tracy Stevens, who is re-discovering what she wants to do with her life but has to prove that she is more than the newspaper story that Nixon wants, to two veterans of the space programme who are supremely qualified but won't sell the way the administration wants, to mysterious heiress JODI BALFOUR). It's an episode about women's ambition and drive in an environment that is built around heroic men.
Best show:
Mindhunter
In its second season and third or fourth year, Mindhunter refocuses from Jonathan Groff's Holden Ford to Anna Torv's Dr. Wendy Carr and Holt McCallany's Bill Tench, who each go through personal struggles. Wendy finds out what the true toll of having to stay in the closet is, and that being a woman makes it that much harder for her to be allowed to do fieldwork. Bill's young adopted son is involved in a horrible death, and the question is raised of whether he recognises the first signs of what he knows from the serial killer he interviews in his own house. Meanwhile, Holden gets involved in trying to solve the Atlanta Child Murders, which due to the victims (black children) have not been properly investigated. Let's hope the next season isn't two years away.
Stranger Things
My favourite season of this show so far, especially for the friendship and the fact that they let go of the idea that Eleven and Max should be rivals of some kind. Maya Hawke's Robin is a great addition to the cast and a scene-stealer along with Steve Harrington.
Star Trek Discovery
Killing Eve
But will they, though.
But will they, though.
I've been on the fence about including this show, which so perfectly re-enacts late 1990s/early 2000 examples of two female characters who are clearly in love with each other but not allowed to be romantically involved because of circumstances. This show is always and forever saved by the fact that there nobody except Melissa Benoist could play Kara Danvers, the kindest and gentlest superheroine the world has ever seen, and that Katie McGrath does what she does best, which is thwart heterosexuality (also, Brainy! and Nia Nal! and Alex Danvers, who finally gets to be boring after so much suffering, bless her soul).
Saddest goodbye:
Broad City
Weirdly enough, I sometimes feel like it would be good to have Parks and Rec back to guide us through this darkness, or preserve some sense of hope (but then, it has its own darkness I suppose, of actors you wouldn't really want to see again), but then I find myself going back to my favourite episodes of Broad City more often than that. A radical love story, an embrace of mutual support and friendship, and weirdly, something that still works perfectly even when you've reached the age that Abby and Ilana have such a hard time to embrace and grow into.
Runaways and Cloak & Dagger
Runaways and Cloak & Dagger
Killjoys
It took five years for me to catch up with this show, which was by then in its final season. Killjoys developed from a good show to a great one when it discovered that the beating heart at its centre was the relationships between its characters (and Lucy). A classic science fiction show in as far as it depicts a group of very different characters thrown together by several apocalypses, Killjoys twists and turns, has characters grow from central villains to central weirdo heartthrobs. I wish we could just keep following the Jaqobis brothers and Dutch into the breach, and find out what Delle Seyah and Aneela will do with their eternity together (and Zeph, Pree, Fancy and Gared).
The Good Place
On the surface, a comedy show, beneath, for the last two seasons, a show that has explored how humans can be good in a system that makes everyone complicit in the exploitation of other humans and the destruction of the planet (and as said before: maybe Parks and Recreation only works in the Obama years (including its unquestioning love for Joe Biden), but The Good Place is a necessary companion in 2019.
Mr. Robot
Sometimes Mr. Robot was too long, sometimes the odds of it sticking its landing seemed way off, but it was always beautiful, with every image worth a screenshot. Also, a few episodes away from ending, Sam Esmail decided to dedicate a whole episode to Darlene and Dom DiPierro (as close to a human disaster as anyone since Ben Wyatt has ever been), and gave them a self-contained hour, a worthy goodbye, which in spite of its frustrating lack of a happy ending (ARGHH) made complete sense for each of these characters.
And a bonus, a feeble attempts at the shows of the decade, some of which barely make it into the decade, but I like to remember them:
Halt and Catch Fire
The Leftovers
Orphan Black
Underground
Person of Interest
The Expanse
Parks and Recreation
Friday Night Lights
The Americans
Jessica Jones
Forbrydelsen
The Fades
Watchmen
The Handmaid's Tale
Caprica
Broad City
Being Human
Pretty Little Liars
Skins on a technicality
Also:
Unbelievable, Chernobyl, Dickinson, Watchmen, Russian Doll, Sharp Objects, Cloak & Dagger, Runaways, Wynonna Earp, The Good Place, Better Call Saul, Star Trek Discovery, Godless, The Good Wife and The Good Fight, One Mississippi, Sweet/Vicious, Sense8, Mr. Robot, Humans, Defiance, Killjoys, My Mad Fat Diary, The Hour, Luther, Borgen, Parenthood, Breaking Bad, Leverage, Warehouse 13, This is England, Dollhouse, San Junipero
The Good Place
On the surface, a comedy show, beneath, for the last two seasons, a show that has explored how humans can be good in a system that makes everyone complicit in the exploitation of other humans and the destruction of the planet (and as said before: maybe Parks and Recreation only works in the Obama years (including its unquestioning love for Joe Biden), but The Good Place is a necessary companion in 2019.
Mr. Robot
Sometimes Mr. Robot was too long, sometimes the odds of it sticking its landing seemed way off, but it was always beautiful, with every image worth a screenshot. Also, a few episodes away from ending, Sam Esmail decided to dedicate a whole episode to Darlene and Dom DiPierro (as close to a human disaster as anyone since Ben Wyatt has ever been), and gave them a self-contained hour, a worthy goodbye, which in spite of its frustrating lack of a happy ending (ARGHH) made complete sense for each of these characters.
And a bonus, a feeble attempts at the shows of the decade, some of which barely make it into the decade, but I like to remember them:
Halt and Catch Fire
The Leftovers
Orphan Black
Underground
Person of Interest
The Expanse
Parks and Recreation
Friday Night Lights
The Americans
Jessica Jones
Forbrydelsen
The Fades
Watchmen
The Handmaid's Tale
Caprica
Broad City
Being Human
Pretty Little Liars
Skins on a technicality
Also:
Unbelievable, Chernobyl, Dickinson, Watchmen, Russian Doll, Sharp Objects, Cloak & Dagger, Runaways, Wynonna Earp, The Good Place, Better Call Saul, Star Trek Discovery, Godless, The Good Wife and The Good Fight, One Mississippi, Sweet/Vicious, Sense8, Mr. Robot, Humans, Defiance, Killjoys, My Mad Fat Diary, The Hour, Luther, Borgen, Parenthood, Breaking Bad, Leverage, Warehouse 13, This is England, Dollhouse, San Junipero
Favourite books I've read this year
Non-Fiction:
Ocean Vuong: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.
Leslie Jamison: The Recovering. Intoxication and Its Aftermath.
Carmen Maria Machado: In the Dream House.
Leslie Jamison: The Recovering. Intoxication and Its Aftermath.
Carmen Maria Machado: In the Dream House.
Alice Bolin: Dead Girls. Essays on Surviving an American Obsession.
Jia Tolentino: Trick Mirror.
Jia Tolentino: Trick Mirror.
Natasha Lennard: Being Numerous. Essays on Non-Fascist Life.
Jenny Odell: How to Do Nothing.
George Packer: The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.
George Packer: Our Man. Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.
Stuart Schrader: Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.
David France: How to Survive a Plague. The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS.
George Packer: The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.
George Packer: Our Man. Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.
Stuart Schrader: Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.
David France: How to Survive a Plague. The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS.
Fiction:
Seth Dickinson: The Monster Baru Cormorant.
Rory Power: Wilder Girls.
Becky Chambers: To Be Taught If Fortunate.
Lisa Ko: The Leavers.
Crystal Hana Kim: If You Leave Me.
Esmé Weijun Wang: The Border of Paradise.
Chloe Benjamin: The Immortalists.
Tanwi Nandini Islam: Bright Lines.
Andrea Lawlor: Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.
Tanwi Nandini Islam: Bright Lines.
Andrea Lawlor: Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.
Ausma Zehanat Khan: The Unquiet Dead.
Elizabeth Hand: Generation Loss.
Laura McHugh: The Wolf Wants In.
Kristen Lepionka: The Last Place You Look.
Paul Tremblay: A Head Full of Ghosts.
Stephen King: Duma Key.
Stephen & Owen King: Sleeping Beauties.
My favourite novel this year is The Monster Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson's long-awaited follow-up to The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Baru navigates a growing world, struggles with newly discovered power structures, and we learn more about the past to give us a more complex picture of power. But the best thing about the novels is its complicated and now literally split protagonist Baru (backed up by a whole cast of other women).
Closely followed by Rory Power's Wilder Girls, which sometimes feels like it is set in Jeff VanderMeer's Area X, except it adds the genius twist of considering what the biological transformation that happens on its island would do to girls who are going through puberty. At Wilder Girls' centre is a boarding school on an isolated island in which a mysterious and unexplained infection (the Tox) has affected every single inhabitant - and is slowly transforming them into something else, a process that seems to inevitably kill the girls. The novel follows three girls - Hetty, Byatt and Reese, as they try to escape somehow.
I spent much of this year re-reading and catching up with the new novels of Stephen King. I started reading him when I was nine or ten, and then stopped abruptly (as far as I remember, the at the time most recent of his novels I finished was Dreamcatcher), with the exception of re-reading It every four years because it felt good to track my own progress as a reader by the novel that I remember vividly reading for the first time in the summer of 1998. I stopped doing that after I just couldn't get over how the book ends, how weird it is to read these scenes now (there's a reason why they were adapted differently in both films). I've not managed to read all the novels, but I did read examples from all the decades (the oldest I managed was The Shining, the most recent one The Outsider, even though I'm looking to finish The Institute before the year is over). I've still not managed to even begin the Dark Towers series, and the one story that I feel has influenced me the most, or stayed with me the longest, is the 1995 television adaptation of The Langoliers, which I must have watched not that long after it originally came out with my grandmother and my cousin, perhaps years before I read any of his books. 
In any case, here are the novels that stood out from the re-read: The Stand (along with the television miniseries), which at the time contributed significantly to my love for apocalyptic narratives, even if it still weird to count this on the same list as Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma, The Tommyknockers, which I like more than 90% of other readers, Insomnia, Duma Key, Under the Dome, 11/22/63, the Mr Mercedes series (which has its issues, and I'd argue that the television show is actually better than the books), and Sleeping Beauties, which he wrote with his son Owen King. This was the first time that I appreciated the range of genre as well as the recurring tropes in all of his stories (I think Sleeping Beauties profits immensely from having a second, younger voice in there). I did not re-read Dolores Clayborne, which I remember I used to count as my favourite especially because it was so unlike the others. I also didn't re-watch Stand By Me. 
An aside here: I was re-reading Stephen King, but the horror novel that will stay with me longer than most of these books is Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts, which finds an incredibly interesting form for its story about a suburban teenager who is either possessed by a demon or suffering from a severe mental illness - the interpretation of her suffering becomes determined by powerful economic and ideological interests, which is maybe true of teenage girls' bodies in general anyway. The story is told from the perspective of Merrie, the younger sister of the girl who may be possessed (Marjorie), but then also features television episode reviews from Merrie as an adult of the reality show that was eventually made of Marjorie's suffering. It all inevitably ends in a catastrophe.
I also read a lot of crime fiction this year, especially most of Laura Lippman's non-Tess-Monaghan novels, all of which feature complex characters and great twists. I read both of Kristen Lepionka's Roxane Weary novels (The Last Place You Look and What You Want to See). I read the thriller-crime novels of Laura McHugh, which are particularly good at capturing the places in which they are set (Arrowood, The Weight of Blood, her most recent The Wolf Wants In, which is one of the greatest portrait of an economically deprived, oxycontin-ravaged area that I've read).
Also, Elizabeth Hand's Generation Loss, an accidental crime novel set on a remote island, a novel of photography as much as about the serial killer that haunts the protagonist who stumbles right in the middle of his artwork. And Ausma Zehanat Khan's Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak novel's, which are always about history and culture, about international conflicts translated into local crimes (The Unquiet Dead for example would make a great companion piece to Juli Zeh's Adler und Engel, which has a similar approach).
And - Lisa Ko's The Leavers, about a boy who loses his mother in the maze of immigration law and is adopted by a white family, and slowly unravels what happened, attempting to explain his trauma. Crystal Hana Kim's If You Leave Me, a complex family saga set before and after the Korean War, the portrait of an unhappy marriage. Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists, four siblings learn when they will die from a future teller and we follow their lives as they unfold, questioning if they are determined by fate or by free will, painting a portrait of the decades as much as of the four characters. Esmé Weijun Wang's The Border of Paradise is haunting, and impossible to describe, but an essential read.And Tanwi Nandini Islam's Bright Lines about a Bangladeshi family living in Brooklyn in 2003, a portrait of characters struggling to figure out who they are. And Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor, whose shape-shifting main character Paul (who thinks Orlando comes closest, but he himself never had the luxury of quiet servants) navigates what it means to be able to inhibit a body that can present as male or female.
Becky Chamber's To Be Taught, If Fortunate, her first novel set outside the universe she created in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet follows four astronauts who are sent on a long-haul space-flight to study the flora and fauna of exoplanets. It's a short novel, but it beautifully tracks their scientific excitement, the details of their work studying worlds that have never been visited by humans, the bonds of their lives together so far removed from the world they came from that news from Earth travels fourteen years before reaching them. There's more to it, and inevitable drama, but I highly recommend this for imagining what it would be like if the future held exploration and science in store for humanity, rather than exploitation of resources. And maybe this is as close to Ursula K. Le Guin's implicit comprehension of the connection between the environment and everything that inhabits it as we can get in 2019.
This year, I also applied for citizenship in the country that I have been living in for the past five years. It is difficult to explain the complex thoughts and feeling that I have about exchanging a citizenship in a country that I have always struggled with for one of a country whose history of colonisation and violence is unresolved in a different manner. The way I have decided to do it is to try and find an intellectual connection, an understanding of the debates and approaches to Australia - and I have been reading the diverse writings in Meanjin and The Lifted Brow to get started on something that will take a lifetime.
Also, The Habitat podcast.
This year, I also applied for citizenship in the country that I have been living in for the past five years. It is difficult to explain the complex thoughts and feeling that I have about exchanging a citizenship in a country that I have always struggled with for one of a country whose history of colonisation and violence is unresolved in a different manner. The way I have decided to do it is to try and find an intellectual connection, an understanding of the debates and approaches to Australia - and I have been reading the diverse writings in Meanjin and The Lifted Brow to get started on something that will take a lifetime.
Also, The Habitat podcast.
Meanjin: The Trouble With Journalism, December 2019
The Atlantic: How Labour Lost the Culture War, December 13, 2019
The New Yorker: How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real, December 16, 2019
The Washington Post: At War with the Truth, December 9, 2019
Foreign Affairs: The New China Scare, December 6, 2019
Autostraddle: Toward an Applicable Theory of Just Not, December 3, 2019
Eater: What Does 'Authenticity' in Food Mean in 2019?, December 3, 2019
Film Comment: Present Tense: Kristen Stewart, December 5, 2019
The New York Review of Books: Lessons in Survival, November 21, 2019
Vice: The Creator of the Shitty Media Men List Isn't Done, November 19, 2019
Vulture: Watchmen Recap: … and Justice for All, November 24, 2019
Longreads: Every One of Us is Other: Looking Back on Representation in "Heavenly Creatuers" 25 Years Later, November 15, 2019
Wired: The Race to Bring Meat Alternatives to Scale, November 8, 2019
Popula: Fuck “civility”, November 1, 2019
Bookforum: Cutting Up, October 2019
Slate: “Hot Topic”: The Complete Annotated Lyrics, October 31, 2019
NPR: Trump Impeachment Inquiry: A Guide To Key People, Facts And Documents, October 28, 2019
Bright Wall/Dark Room: Sparking Joy. Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (2019), October 28, 2019
Texas Monthly: When ‘Angels in America’ Came to East Texas, October 13, 2019
The New York Review of Books: The Culmination of Republican Decay, October 10, 2019
Insider: The story of Jamal Khashoggi's murder and how the world looked the other way, October 2, 2019
The Cut: The Toll of Me Too Assessing the costs for those who came forward, September 30, 2019
The Cut: The Toll of Me Too Assessing the costs for those who came forward, September 30, 2019
The New York Times: How a Shadow Foreign Policy in Ukraine Prompted an Impeachment Inquiry, September 29, 2019
Longreads: Regarding the Interpretation of Others, September 19, 2019
Meanjin: Unearthed. The Last Days of the Anthropocene, September 17, 2019
The New Republic: The Remaking of Susan Sontag, September 12, 2019
Quartz: The Zimbabwean writer who was Robert Mugabe’s nemesis, September 7, 2019
The New Republic: The Danger of a Domestic Terrorism Law, August 16, 2019
LARB: Sally Rooney: The Dark Side, August 15, 2019
The New York Times Magazine: The 1619 Project, August 14, 2019
The New York Times Magazine: The 1619 Project, August 14, 2019
New York Times Magazine: The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison, August 8, 2015
Slate: Toni Morrison Reshaped the Landscape of Literature, August 6, 2019
The Paris Review: Not Gonna Get Us, July 29, 2019
Rolling Stone: Kamala Harris’ Moment, July 23, 2019
The New York Magazine: I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked, July 17, 2019
The New Yorker: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the 2020 Presidential Race and Trump's Crisis at the Border, July 10, 2019
LitHub: In Patriarchy No One Can Hear You Scream: Rebecca Solnit on Jeffrey Epstein and the Silencing Machine, July 10, 2019
ICWA: Austria’s far right faces life after scandal, June 21, 2019
The New Yorker: Inside a Texas building where the government is holding migrant children, June 21, 2019
New York Magazine Intelligencer: E. Jean Carroll: “Trump attacked me in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman.”, 21 June 2019
Buzzfeed: Going Overboard, June 18, 2019
Vulture: The Decadent, Visceral Pleasures of Killing Eve, May 29, 2019
Vulture: What We Left Behind Boldly Argues for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Place in the Black TV Canon, May 17, 2019
Bandcamp: The Power of Community: Team Dresch Return, May 16, 2019
Bright Wall/Dark Room: It’s a Secret. Christine, May 15, 2019
KCRW Lost Notes Podcast: To Chan Marshall: A Letter to Cat Power, May 2, 2019
KCRW Lost Notes Podcast: To Chan Marshall: A Letter to Cat Power, May 2, 2019
GRANTA: Where Is Kigali?, May 2, 2019
TASTE: When the Next Big Thing in Food Isn’t Actually Next, April 29, 2019
Buzzfeed: “Fixer Upper” Is Over, But Waco’s Transformation Is Just Beginning, April 20, 2019
Lawfare: Notes on the Mueller Report: A Reading Diary, April 19, 2019
Lawfare: Notes on the Mueller Report: A Reading Diary, April 19, 2019
The Intelligencer: What Was the Washington Post Afraid Of?, April 1, 2019
Patricia Lockwood: You kick Miette, March 20, 2019
The New Statesman: How Australia incubated far-right terror, March 20, 2019
Pacific Standard: Indigenous Knowledge Has Been Warning Us About Climate Change for Centuries, March 4, 2019
Pacific Standard: Indigenous Knowledge Has Been Warning Us About Climate Change for Centuries, March 4, 2019
The New Yorker: The New Yorker: An Adopted Obsession with Soondubu Jjigae, Korean Silken-Tofu Stew, February 20, 2019
The New York Review of Books: Undefeated, ISIS Is Back in Iraq, February 13, 2019
Undark: Psychologists Seek a Broader, Healthier Definition of ‘Masculinity’, February 13, 2019
The New York Review of Books: America’s Original Identity Politics, February 7, 2019
Longreads: The Lost Boys of #MeToo, February 1, 2019
The New York Review of Books: Climate Signs, February 1, 2019
Popula: Grocery-store nationalism, January 30, 2019
Bright Wall/Dark Room: Disobedience as a Path to God, January 28, 2019
BuzzFeed: Does LGBT Media Have A Future?, January 25, 2019
The Atlantic: ‘Nobody Is Going to Believe You’, January 18, 2019
Los Angeles Review of Books: Feasting on Precarity, January 14, 2019
The Paris Review: On Being a Woman in America While Trying to Avoid Being Assaulted, January 7, 2019
Buzzfeed News: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, January 5, 2019
Films of the Year
Leave No Trace (2018)
Portrait de la jeune fille en feu
Fast Color (2018)
Captain Marvel
Midsommar
Transit (2018)
The Rider (2017)
Pokémon Detective Pikachu
Mirai (2018)
Bonus shout-outs:
Rentaneko (2012)
The Favourite (2018)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Little Woods (2018)
Booksmart
Tell it to the Bees
Portrait de la jeune fille en feu
Fast Color (2018)
Captain Marvel
Midsommar
Transit (2018)
The Rider (2017)
Pokémon Detective Pikachu
Mirai (2018)
Bonus shout-outs:
Rentaneko (2012)
The Favourite (2018)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Little Woods (2018)
Booksmart
Tell it to the Bees
Sunday, 22 December 2019
The Expanse - I think we need each other.
The Expanse: 4x10 Cibola Burn.
One of the great advantages of being a major power in the universe of the Expanse is that nothing truly catastrophic ever happens. Earth may struggle with its economic difficulties, its lack of opportunities for its citizens, but even in the military conflict with Mars, the home world was never affected. The same is true for Mars - it may no longer seem like the great dream, dreamed by generations, to turn Mars into a planet that has breathable air and arable land, but still, the closest that all of the chaos and nightmares of the past have come to the planet is those Marines on Ganymede. Elsewhere, millions are displaced and seeking shelter and a life, millions were killed on Eros and Ganymede, but Mars and Earth have always been blissfully save from any of the fall-out of the conflicts it has wrought.
Avasarala correctly predicts that the narrative emerging from Ilus - Belters and RCE personnel working together to establish a new settlement, Holden returning victorious (after allowing Lucia to return to her family and covering up her crimes) will play right into Nancy Gao's election campaign. The story emerging from the new planet across the ring gate is one of hope, not of defeat. And she is correct, and loses the election to a candidate who is running on a platform to colonise all these planets, even though nobody has any clue about who the species is that has destroyed the creators of the gates. As she says, in her concession speech from Luna - "One of us is wrong. I think it's you, but I hope it's me". The Rocinante returns with its mission fulfilled, Felcia will get to study, and Amos takes revenge for Murtry making him kill a woman he liked, for a bit (always good at interpreting orders, he knows he gets to punch back as long as he's not the one who is throwing the first punch).
Holden and Naomi send the rest of the protomolecule which has been hiding on the Roci into a sun - but is it really the last of the protomolecule?
And elsewhere, Ashford is eager to capture Marco Inaros, after watching him capture some asteroids which he assumed he will thrown on Medina on Tycho station. He boards the ship, only to find himself overwhelmed by none other than Filip Inaros, Naomi's lost son, who regards his father like a god. Ashford is a stand-out character on this show especially because he knows that his view of the world is outdated - and instead of doubling down, he constantly tries to readjust, tries to re-integrate his values with the world he finds himself in. Except now it seems that reality has outrun him, and, as Marco tells him before spacing him, the Belters have always had little dreams, and his little asteroid - masked with Martian stealth technology - is heading straight towards Earth.
Because, on Mars, Bobbie is the one who realises that their new mission which has an unknown goal has a connection to the upper echelons of the Martian military and the science team working on the protomolecule. She realises that they are heading into darkness just before the catastrophe happens - Esai dies, Leelee is heading off planet, and Bobbie contacts a now powerless Avasarala accepting her offer of cooperating right after an unknown Martian ship is lost to the great conspiracy. Mars is a planet that has existed based on a great, unfulfilled promise - but what will happen if that promise is fulfilled elsewhere, perhaps beyond the ring gates, powered by unimaginable technologies?
The Expanse - Yeah, that could be a problem.
The Expanse: 4x09 Saeculum.
The concept of the "Saeculum" refers to the lifetime of a population - the time that has to pass for a population to completely renew itself, with the idea of a certain civilisation being given a certain amount of saecula in the background. The protomolecule-creators once had a civilisation spanning the ring-gates, and centuries ago, they sent the samples that would later be found on Phoebe, and create all that has passed in the last years. The creators themselves are dead, but bits and pieces of their civilisation exist everywhere - some of them in Miller, who has been tasked with finding what has destroyed the creators themselves.
"I reach wherever I wanna reach motherfucker"
The Miller that now reappears in front of Holden is one that has fought back against what the protomolecule has turned him into. He retains aspects of who Miller used to be, and instead of just being the Investigator, the creation of the protomolecule-makers, he is his own man, and he has his own mission. He carries the voices of Eros in his head still, those millions of people who are perpetually screaming, and all he wants is peace and quiet. The only way to accomplish this is not just to find what has killed the creators, but to finish the job. And he has identified a dead spot right within the alien structure, a place that his mind cannot go to, a black hole of existence. This is where he sends Holden, to find his answer and to finish his mission once and for all.
This mission takes place while the Rocinante faces off with Edward Israel's bomb-wired shuttle, while Murtry goes off to retain his planet. Murtry is exactly what Drummer described in disgust in the previous episode, the kind of man that would enter a land to steal it, claiming terra nullius, claiming that the only way to be a man of the frontier is to be cruel and violent. He will do whatever it takes to stake his claim to the riches of Ilus, but he and his second-hand woman Chandra have no idea what they are up against. Chandra, who I haven't mentioned at all in this recaps, has built a relationship with Amos, falsely thinking that he is the mirror image of Murtry who once saved his life, having no concept of how far Amos would go to protect his family, the people that guide his moral compass. In the end, Murtry doesn't stand a chance against any of them, and all of his arguments that he is the man that the frontier needs, and Holden is what follows after civilisation has been established, fall flat. His idea of a frontier is outdated, the whole conflict playing out beyond the ring gates is nostalgia about the past, in which the distinction between Belters and Inners mattered - out here, all that still has any currency is who will adapt fastest to the alien worlds that lie ahead, and who will comprehend first that there is a danger that goes way beyond the blinding microorganism or the neurotoxin-carrying slugs. When they speak of what happened here, Miller and Holden both realise what it means that the creators of this awesome network, of all these civilisations on all these planets, were wiped out - what it means that humanity is now deciding on using a network that was created by something that was wiped out completely. It will be a problem to awaken whatever thought it necessary to wipe out the creators of the protomolecule.
In Saeculum, that something is like an angry eye of god, nothingness waiting to be fed with the remains of the protomolecule. Miller is like a question trapped without an answer, an unfinished line of code waiting for the final command. He wants to extinguish himself, and every trace of the protomolecule that remains on Ilus, but in the end, it isn't Holden who throws him into the nothingness of non-existence, it's scientist Elvi, who once said to Holden that she would give anything to commune with the alien lifeforms, to ask for answers and comprehend what has happened. She doesn't understand the burden that Holden carries in Miller, but maybe now that will change. In the end, Murtry and his agenda is nothing but a footnote, something utterly unremarkable, an old narrative that never mattered on this new world, in this new paradigm of human existence.
The Expanse - We were both in impossible positions.
The Expanse: 4x08 The One-Eyed Man.
Imagine that in an episode where a group of people, who have gone blind, are trapped in a confined space with slugs that fall off the roof and emit an instantly lethal neurotoxin, that big shock moment comes not from their fate, but from Chrisjen Avasarala proving what a consummate political animal she truly is. Following the death of the twelve Marines she sent to retrieve Marco Inaros, everything seems to be going downhill for her: Her General resigns in protest of her using the lives of his soldiers for electoral gain, Nancy Gao threatens an investigation. She gives a speech, seemingly going off-script, in which she relates the death of her own son, who was a Marine killed by Belters, to the loved ones of the dead soldiers. She shows regret, and tells them that she is to blame. It appears to be a concession speech, ultimately, a moment of triumph for Nancy Gao. Except, as Nancy and Avasarala's husband are soon to find out, it was all a game to change the narrative: because seconds after this story comes out, another one overshadows it. Avasarala has leaked images of the nuclear explosion on Ilus, which falls right into her narrative about the dangers that lie beyond the ring gates, and the caution that is necessary in crossing over. It underlines her point of waiting for ships to cross, and undermines Nancy Gao's platform which is built on colonisation. It's a dirty game - nobody was meant to see these images - and it horrifies Avasarala's husband that she would have used the death of their son for political game, and is now playing a game of fear with the voters, but on the other side (to be fair to Avasarala) - what Holden and the settlers are going through on Ilus/New Terra should make everyone cautious about what kind of dream colonisation is. As much as Avasarala is scoring these points because of her fear of the unknown, the fear of not being in charge of the future of mankind, she is right that what lies beyond the ring gates poses threats that humans at this stage can't even imagine.
The counterpoint to that argument is that in spite of the deadly slugs, the blindness, the flood, the unknown alien machines waking up beyond the surface of Ilus, human resourcefulness and imagination still wins, somehow. At the beginning of the episode, Holden is the titular One-Eyed Man, someone with perfect eye-sight but perhaps as always carrying a load to heavy for his shoulders, a responsibility for every single blind settler and RCE personnel in the ruins. He has to guide them, dispose of their bodies, find them when they wander off, take them to the latrines in groups. He has to wipe out every single slug that makes it through the barricade, and does so with growing frustration and anger. The feeling in the books - of a Holden who gets more and more tired the longer the horror drags on - is absent here, but it is clear that this situation is utterly hopeless. Except - somehow, there is always hope. There is Amos sitting in the dark with all the demons of his childhood, a man who feels like he is dying when he doesn't have the option of fighting his way out, a man close to death, whose friend knows that he has to do something to save him. And he does save him, because Elvi realises that the reason why Holden is immune to the blindness is the radiation drugs he has been receiving ever since being exposed on Eros. All she needs to do is synthesise those drugs to restore everyone's eyesight. And the water has receded enough so that everyone can go back. It's a great triumph, and an unlikely one, one of human ingenuity, matched only by Alex, Naomi, Lucia and Falcia's success in towing the descending Barb higher into orbit in a space manoeuvre for the history books. As much as Avasarala fears the unknown, perhaps there is nobody better equipped than humans.
Except, the downside to the equation will always be humanity's endless ability to be its own wolf at the gates. Faced with the prospect of the Belter settlers returning to the surface, Murtry checks in on the progress of his wired-up shuttle, ready to make him claim on this planet that was never his to begin with.
In a way, the two other storylines fit in perfectly with what is happening on Ilus. Bobbie with her newfound riches learns that her next job is better paid than any of the previous ones, but she won't be told what it is she is stealing, suspecting rightfully that it may be weapons or other technology that can cause harm - which would be crossing the moral line she has drawn in the sand. She also hears from Esai what we have known all along, that the Martian dream has died with the opening of the Gates, because all the great minds of Mars previously engaged in making the generational dream of terraforming possible will soon be crossing those gates to planets that area already habitable rather than investing a lifetime into a dream that won't become reality until generations later. It's hard to really state what a massive shock this is for Mars, a planet built on the idea of a generational investment in a future that nobody will see within their lifetime. Bobbie realises the truth to the extent that she begins to look down on anyone who still believes in that dream, and continues to play the game, in spite of how hard it has become (her nephew making the cut, her lover taking a job on Europa). Bobbie needs a purpose, and at the moment, she is without one, which is a dangerous proposition for someone who is usually idealistic.
And on Medina Station, the fall-out of the UN's failed mission to capture Marco Inaros plays out. Fred Johnson, leader of the OPA, comes to visit, and is met first with Drummer's fist, who is furious that he shared sensitive information with the UN that ultimately led to the death of all the Belters on the ship. Drummer is fed up with the Belt playing the same political game that Earth and Mars have engaged in for decades, one that costs the lives of people who never had much to begin with. She resigns from her post, and in one of the best moments this show has ever had, explains to Ashford that she cannot bear a future in which the Belt becomes like the Inners that it has always despised: a force that invades homelands and plunders, like those images in her office on the Mormon's generation ship - colonisers and imperialists. What she has always feared has come true: after the peace treaty, the Belters are now complicit in the destruction of their own people, and she no longer wants to play that political game. Ashford offers her the position of an XO on his ship, because he wants to hunt down Marco Inaros and float him - but Drummer turns down that proposition too. Like Bobbie, she's an idealist without a cause, and we'll see where that goes.
The Expanse - I'll see for the both of us.
The Expanse: 4x07 A Shot in the Dark.
As far as political catastrophes go, Chrisjen Avasarala is having a terrible time in her election campaign. She has to admit that the man who has spaced all the Belters seeking a better life across the ring gates and then sought to use the Sojourner to attack Earth is still running free. She has to admit that her precarious alliance with the OPA to police the gates is crumbling. Her opponent Nancy Gao is closing in on her, and her political advisers tell her to do things that she doesn't feel confident with, like admitting errors instead of showing strength.This new political situation isn't playing to Avasarala's strengths, and worse than that, her husband is worried because for the first time ever, she seems to want to win for the sake of winning (or, as she puts it, because she is afraid of the uncertainty of losing), rather than because she wants to accomplish something. Avasarala has always been a consummate political animal, someone who steered clear-headed through the past's many catastrophes and paradigm changes, but it seems as if perhaps her time is now coming to an end. What will the future look like without her?
To save political face she is given two option by her military leadership: they can destroy the Belter freighter that Marcos Inaros is hiding on, risking the political fall-out of killing civilians but avoiding the risk of losing UN Marines, or they can choose a tactical strike, which comes with all the risks and unknowns but the upside of possibly apprehending Marcos alive, and making him an example of him to deter future pirates from attacking the ships waiting to cross the gates. Avasarala knows that she needs the latter, especially with Nancy Gao at her heels. They watch the strike - they hear the shots, the screen going black, the life-signs of each and every Marine going flat, and then, the news that the freighter has disappeared.
On Ilus, the horror of space continues. The Belters and the RCE military personnel have settled in different parts of the alien structure, and Murtry is gearing up for what he predicts will be a war for the few resources that everyone has, with a possible rescue becoming more and more unlikely to happen soon as everyone's ship is without fusion drive. The only other solution - for Miller to reappear so that Holden can fix whatever he activated - seems more and more unlikely the longer Miller remains conspicuously absent. With tensions rising between the well-stocked RCE and the Belters that outnumber them but are running out of clean water to drink, Elvi's news that an alien microorganism has co-opted a new biological niche - human eyes - doesn't exactly come at a good time. Everyone is going blind, except Holden, who is special. Plus, to make matters worse, a few minutes after Murtry shares his idea to get rid of Holden and claim Ilus for himself and anyone else who wants to make a good profit, everyone realises together that another organism has entered the arena: killer slugs, whose trails are literally everywhere. With Holden being the only one who will be able to see and protect people from them, someone is about to never get any sleep again.
Up in orbit, Lucia struggles with what she has done, and the fact that her daughter Felcia refuses to speak to her after finding out what she did. Felcia made it to the Barb, trying to escape this new world so she could study in the old one, but now instead she is learning engineering on-site from Naomi. Lucia is the one who comes up with an idea to prevent the Barb from crashing in 2 days - hook her up to the Rocinante with a kilometre-long cable, and use the Rocinante's remaining battery power to drag her up higher, with the hope that the laws of physics will start to apply again once the ships cross the range of Ilus' many moons. It's a daring endeavour, maybe as daring as the Belter's original colonisation of Ganymede, the home world they so tragically lost to the protomolecule.
Saturday, 21 December 2019
The Expanse - The usual state of nature is recovering from the last disaster
The Expanse - 4x06 Displacement.
Previously, from orbit in the Rocinante, Alex and Naomi watched one of the little islands on Ilus blow up like a nuclear reactor. The event will have dire consequences for the settlement: a massive shockwave will hit soon, followed by a tsunami wave that will cover the planet. It means that leaving the settlement has turned from Murtry's pipedream to get rid of what he considers squatters into an absolute necessity to preserve lives. But Holden pressing a bunch of buttons without knowing what they do has more consequences that the ships in orbit, the Rocinante, the RCE's Edward Israel and the Belter's Barbapiccola (by the way, it is always a good idea to look up the people that Belter ships are named after) soon discover. It's further proof that the creators of the protomolecule influence these worlds billions of years after their demise. As a reaction to the explosion of the island (which was presumably caused by one of the creator's structures turning on but failing?), the protomolecule creators have turned off nuclear fusion. Physics that power spaceships have changed. This doesn't just mean that the settlers and the RCE team can't be evacuated into orbit - all of the ships are slowly but surely falling, the Barb more dramatically than the others because she is closer to the surface of the planet.
It's a reminder that every solution that Holden has ever come up with has always had dire consequences that spiral out - what is happening currently on Ilus is just another example after the ring gates. Because there are now no other options, Holden suggests taking everyone into the superstructures, hoping that they were built to last for billions of years and will survive what is coming. Previously, he has lost his leverage by promising the settlers that he will speak for them to Avarasala and support their claim on the land, which means that Murtry is now officially an opponent. Murtry is already planning to kill off settlers in case there is a shortage of resources while they wait for the next ship to come to Ilus, but probably, worse things will happen first - Elvi has discovered a fungal-like growth in her eyes that is slowly turning her blind, and we already know that a lot of other people on the planet are experiencing the same symptoms. What could be worse than being trapped in the dark in an alien structure and surrounded by people who want to kill you? (Cibola Burn, the book these episodes are based on, in bits read like Pitch Black, a great horror film in a science fiction Trojan horse).
On Medina station, Drummer's decision to let Marco Inaros live is spiralling out of control as well. The UN sends the Tripola into ring space, basically to oversee what the Belters are doing, in a breach of the peace treaty, and a clear sign of disrespect. Both Drummer and Ashford know that once the Inners appear, they are less likely to leave. They are also making Marco's prediction come true, that it is only a question of time before the Inners will betray the Belt again, and start plundering the riches. The commanding officer of the Tripoli is already eyeing the Belters' hard-won Mormon generation ship with greed. Drummer knows what she has to do - capture Marco Inaros again and end him this time - and in trying to find him, she discovers that his ship is communicating with an unknown vessel that has Martian technology on board - which could mean many things, especially since Bobbie has been busy stripping Martian bits to sell them off, but it could also mean that Marco's prediction is true: Mars is now different, and something is happening out there that will change the course of history.
And Bobbie is unknowingly working towards the same thing. She is now full-time security for Esai's secret smuggling ring, stripping and selling off Martian tech to Belters (or at least that's what she knows), using her abilities as a Marine to help them. She is raking in money, but something still tells me that this isn't the whole story.
Tuesday, 17 December 2019
The Expanse - There is a path.
The Expanse - 4x05 Oppressor.
There are many personal and political failings in the episode which will have repercussions beyond belief. The main one is Avasarala, failing her first debate against Nancy Gao, who predictably leverages her background to argue that her plan for colonisation not just for the colonisers, but for the working men and women, the engineers, the masses desperately competing for a few spots that may lift them up, is the right on leading into the future. She seals the deal when Avasarala, under time pressure, decides to blow up a ship that bears the signature of the ship that Marco Inaros pirated, incidentally blowing up the women and children upon this ship (we will see who managed to pull that off).
All of this, while her argument that colonisation isn't safe yet becomes more and more salient back on Ilus, where Holden, after receiving news about how much alien artefacts are waking up beyond the surface, decides to try and evacuate the settlement. This is, not surprisingly, unsuccessful, since it plays right into the hands of Murtry, who wants nothing more than the settlers to leave so he can successfully claim the planet for RCE. Holden has always been bad at seeing different sides to a conflict beyond his earnestness, and his attempt now to simply tell everyone the truth and hope they will make the correct decision once they have all the information fails - because trusting a man who says he has the voice of a protomolecule emissary (who has been conspicuously MIA) in his head doesn't carry as much leverage as he would have thought. The settlers decide to stay, and take two RCE employees hostage. Murtry, furious, tells his ship up in orbit to rig a landing shuttle into a bomb, presumably to do something to the settler's vessel which is about to carry Lithium back beyond the gate.
We've just left with Marco Inaros regaining his freedom because Drummer thought it was the salient political play - to counteract this idea, Naomi tells Lucia about what kind of a man her former lover is. Lucia is battling her guilt over helping the conspirators to blow up the landing pad, which she thought would happen well ahead of the RCE landing team getting anywhere near it. She wants to die because she cannot live with the guilt (barely reacting to the news that her daughter Felcia has disappeared), so Naomi tells her how much she wanted to die after Marco manipulated her into sharing code that would manipulate drive cores, which ended up with several hundred victims. Drummer has hinted at what kind of damage this did to Naomi, and how long it has taken her to live with the guilt for something she didn't have much control over (the books are very good at detailing how manipulative and abusive Marco was to her), but that finding a new family, one she never expected, on the Rocinante, made all the difference. This storyline works well and is a change from the books, where the husband is the one who laid the charges.
The Expanse - We're here to help.
The Expanse: 4x04 Retrograde.
I think as unique as Avasarala is, and as different as their backgrounds are, the closest to her cynical realism that any other character on this show comes (well, perhaps with the exception of Amos, but he's not much interested in big power politics) is Camina Drummer. She's worked her way up in the OPA, she's managed to help make the OPA a credible player on the political scene, one that can stand up to its great rivals and oppressors Earth and Mars, but this credibility comes at a high cost: a lack of credibility with the very people she represents. Belters have been oppressed and subjugated by the Inners for generations, they have seen the wealth of the Belt exploited, their hard labour stolen, without seeing any of the fruits of that labour. It is a long and one-sided history that this newly found association cannot paint over. When Marco Inaros is delivered to Drummer and Ashford, and they are ready to make short work of the pirate, in part because of their very personal grudges against him (Drummer) and because their allies demand that someone be held responsible for the dead colonists that were floated, it doesn't take long for Drummer to realise the extent of their burden. Marco is a revolutionary, he is the gift of speaking eloquently and convincingly of the struggle of the Belt, he is, ultimately, one of them, engaged in a fight that only a few months ago would have called a fight for freedom, rather than the act of terrorism that the Inners see. He does not accept that the Rings have changed anything about the situation of the Belt, if anything, he comprehends that they represent the same danger to the Belt's way of life that they do to Mars': a life downwell does not mix well with how the Belt has always lived, and the Belt has always been rich, without its inhabitants enjoying any of these riches. He argues, convincingly, that the appearance of the ring gates has not changed the former oppressor. He argues convincingly enough that two OPA factions agree that he should be freed after sharing his spoils with them.
Ashford sees him as the danger that he is, and wants him dealt with quickly, by getting rid of him. Drummer ends up being the deciding vote, and in the most shocking moment of the episode, she decides to free him as well, because she understands how politics work. If she had decided to kill him, than the factions within the OPA, which is a fragile and precarious alliance of wildly differing groups, would have opened right back up. And she also knows that there is a good chance that Marco is right about the inevitable betrayal of the Inners. It's an interesting decision precisely because she hates him so very much personally for what he has done to Naomi (and, a sidenote, how great is it that The Expanse keeps hinting at how serious Naomi and Drummer were back in the day, up to where Marco mocks her for Naomi now not being with her, and instead siding with the Inners, pressing all of her buttons). It's the correct political decision in the moment, but also a very, very historical one, because who knows what Marco Inaros will go on to do now, especially after what he's hinted to Ashford is an alliance with the demoralised factions on Mars.
This is the other side of the coin, right there on Mars, with Bobbie trying and failing to clean up the mess she made. Mars has lost its entire raison d'être after the peace treaty with the UN. It's two aspects that make up Martian identity: full employment through military expansion (Mars has always been shown to be a highly militaristic society, almost to the extent of Starship Trooper's "service guarantees citizenship") - a contrast to Earth's issues with having masses of its people unemployed and on Basic - and the prospect of terraforming the planet into a place that is habitable on the surface without the massive underground system that currently supports life. The former has ended because the peace treaty, the latter is now meaningless because there are endless habitable planets beyond the gates that do not require a generational effort. For the first time, Bobbie sees lines of unemployed Martians lining up to be placed in jobs, and for the first time, after quitting her job because all she finds when she commits to her crimes is people who want her to commit more of them, she herself is unemployed. It's a new world, one she does not recognise. And in the end, she finds herself in a cell, and is recruited for full-time work by Esai (except in the back of my mind I'm suspecting she's going undercover to figure out what's happening, and she'll be on the other end of discovering whatever alliance Marco was talking about).
On Ilus, Amos, furious, tries to attack Mortry's team, and is arrested for the effort. Naomi tries to protect Lucia, who admits to her that she had something to do with the plot to blow up the landing platform (it's a nice mirroring of what Naomi, back in the day, did for Marco, without realising the extent of his willingness to kill people for his cause), and everyone makes it back to the Rocinante safely except Amos, who remains in custody. Everyone except Holden, who disarms Murtry (and what a decision, by the way, to have the equivalent of a violent and sociopathic colonialist be played by Burn Gorman) and goes back to do the freaking job an increasingly frustrated and politically under threat Avasarala gave him. And in orbit, Doctor Fayez on the RCE vessel Edward Israel discovers that there are a whole more machines buried underground on Ilus, just waiting to wake up from their billion-year slumber (and I'm guessing everyone's eyes are starting to itch, as well).
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