One of the best episodes I’ve seen in a while (5x8)
Where do I even begin with this? This was a brilliant, brilliant episode.
The cinematography of deep space, and that shot of Avery on the treadmill. This is where they were saving the budget, huh? To think I thought most of it was for Titan, lol.
But also, the acting, especially from Costa Ronin as Lenya, who has a knack for playing complex Russian characters (on a side note, you should really watch The Americans).
And especially the way they’ve humanized the Marines. That really stood out the most to me. The line from Ruiz about how if they weren’t messed up, they wouldn’t be in the Marines to begin with. Which just goes to show, in my opinion, that what they’re doing is not at all glamorous, and it speaks to the kinds of people employed in these institutions by the elite ruling class. Cops (AKA peckers), the military thinking it’s their right to invade Happy Valley, which may as well be a sovereign state, endangering more innocent people in the process.
And yet, people are raised in a broken society where joining the police and oppressive military is the way to compensate for their trauma. I feel like Avery is going to be radicalized as hell after the ending of this episode. Speeeaking of which:
Ruiz getting killed was just heartbreaking. And that shot of the blood coming out of his suit, and the inaudible scream from Avery. Beautiful storytelling.
Avery not wanting to go to Mars for completely legitimate reasons also lands really well. And then there’s Lenya’s redemption arc, and of course, giving me more reasons to love the hell out of Boyd.
The tension with the detonation. This episode was truly a psychological masterpiece. It’s right up there with the ending of Season 2, Episode 8, when we watched that cosmonaut get killed and incinerated alive in his spacesuit.