Watching Westworld - 210 – The Passenger

Reasonable people may disagree, but for Jim and I, the finale of  HBO’s Westworld season two, “The Passenger” failed to justify an ultimately flawed and uneven 10.5 hours of television. We’re not ready to write the show off by any means, it’s too well constructed with too much talent for that. But we can’t help but think of it as a misstep that is going to justify a lot of fans decisions to give up on the show. Next week, we’ll be back to discuss our overall thoughts on the season, and what we hope for and expect coming into season three. Please send us feedback if you want to join in on that discussion!

Beltalowda - A podcast for The Expanse - 311 – Fallen World

Another spectacular episode of The Expanse this week in “Fallen World”. The episode is remarkably well paced, makes zero g environments feel truly alien and threatening, and offers solid character developments, particularly in the relationship between Ashford and Drummer. Anna even gets a moment to be awesome. Anna! Can’t wait for next week’s episode, we’ll see you then!

Watching Westworld - 209 – Vanishing Point

This week’s episode of HBO’s Westworld, “Vanishing Point” does a excellent job of setting up next week’s finale. That finale has a lot riding on it, with seemingly endless permutations of possibilities of who’s a host, who’s a human, what’s real and what’s simulated that have to be coalesced down to a single possiblity. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, because if you watched this episode purely for it’s plot mechanics you missed out on a lot of wonderful writing and acting that lead to some amazing character development for most of the main cast, revealing brand new relationships we didn’t even know were there, giving more depth to the ones we had, and utterly shattering a few more. And yeah, there are just a ton of theories involving who is a host and what will happen in the Valley Beyond next episode! Can’t wait to discuss it all with you then!

Beltalowda - A podcast for The Expanse - 310 – Dandelion Sky

SyFy’s The Expanse goes full on 2001: A Space Oddity on us, and we couldn’t love it more. “Dandelion Sky” covers a lot of territory even as it’s physically constrained to the inside of The Ring. “Miller’s” nature, the origins of the protomolecule, Holden embracing his role as reluctant hero, Amos having no fear, the struggle for the command of Behemoth. We discuss all this and much more. See you next week!