Captain Planet analogue goes crazy and kills coal workers - Morty is devastated, he agrees it's right to feel bad the planet's dying but the ep implies the correct answer is to do nothing.
Not even 'subversive' Rick and Morty could dare suggest blowing up coal/gas plants without demonising the act (it's quite doable to do such a thing without killing workers....)
Ala a recent trend in modern blockbusters where villains are morally correct in their actions right up until they kills civilians for no reason- just to force a third act showdown, effectively negating their positive ideas.
Also there's an opening joke that is an explicit merch promotion that isn't even ironically done. Just a shitty shirt effectively done to camera. At least Schezuan sauce actually made sense in the show, this was just pure shit. The other eps are good, but the industry in culture industry will rear its head anytime you get big.
I found that extra dumb because by this point in the show the OPA has a small arsenal of nukes AND the fucking evil space goo bio weapon. The idea they weren’t in a good enough bargaining position with earth and had to resort to throwing rocks at them seemed fucking dumb.
The idea was that he wanted to start a war so he could use the weapons I think. Which is totally nonsensical.
I think it was supposed to be like a 9/11 allegory or something but they just decided to make the Osama character a socialist
Pretty sure if the Taliban had nukes they wouldn’t have had to fly planes into building tho.
Why bother blowing up earth if you can get everything you want by threatening to blow them up (or have them be eaten by space goop)?
Just absolute insanity. The whole plotline makes no sense. Still a pretty fun show though
I kinda lost interest after the season where they go to the other solar system
The latest season is pretty good, the stuff on Earth is cool. They show Philadelphia as a massive sprawling slum plauged by inequality and exploitation. There's no dancing around the fact that the UN/Earth is a failed capitalist state that's been preventing the revolutions of the second (Mars) and third (Belt) worlds.
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Oh shit you're right
Part of the drama in The Expanse revolves around people making shitty foolish choices because they overestimate their position. The OPA and Earth getting into a military exchange, and the fallout that ensues, isn't a bad subplot on its face. Each side assumes the other will blink and... they don't.
The conflicts and the ensuing mass migration are a big part of the story. Cut that stuff out and there's not much of a show.
Also, I think "The OPA is socialist" is a bit of a stretch. They're anti-Earth liberationists, but none of them seem shy about doing their own brand of localized capitalism. If any place is socialist, it's Mars.
Mars is meh, it's very clearly a corporate colony. Like half the dialogue about it is like "ohz your family has a monopoly on the terraformers" and "financial incentives" and shit. It's like a South Korean military/corporate welfare type state.
The OPA people talk more about liberation using proletarian language "it is who build their ships, it is us who mine their ores and water, and we never get anything in return". Fred Johnson is also pretty clearly an internationalist, he is big on cooperation and leveraging the Belt's labor power to extract concessions and control over the ring gates from Earth and Mars.
The OPA is basically the IRA or the PLO. There are tons of factions within it and some are pretty clearly socialist (Fred) while others are nationalist (Marco) and others are just Mafia style mob bosses (Dawes).