The EXPANSE Amos and Peaches Explained | Timmy & Clarissa

when we get back to luna they're gonna kill me aren't they if you're lucky yeah un still has the death penalty on the books but they don't use it much i figure you'll be living in a tiny cell for the rest of your life if it was me i'd prefer a bullet how long until we get there about five weeks they were silent for a moment i'll miss this place she said amos shrugged actuator arm huh worth checking you want to help me take a look i can't she said gesturing at the clamp on her leg [ __ ] i can reprogram that least enough to get you down to the machine shop we'll grab you a tool belt peaches let's crack that thing open an hour later she was running her hand over the frame of the door looking for the telltale scrape of binding sites this was me she thought i broke it what you think peaches amos asked from behind her feels good to fix something she said hey guys pete here today i'm going to talk about amos burton and clarissa mal two characters that have very different backgrounds but come together to form a really interesting bond i'll be talking about how that happened how the seeds were planted their backgrounds and why they work so well together this video will contain spoilers if you haven't watched the expanse through season 5 episode 8 then you'll need to go do that to get caught up first i will be talking about some things i picked up from the books without giving away future spoilers from them but we'll also be including some details from amos's past that you would only know if you read the expanse novella the churn with that out of the way let's get to it right up front let me tell you that what draws me to these two characters is that they're both killers they were both facing what amounts to a life sentence and then both got a chance at a different life killing of course is extreme and i'm not condoning it not saying i'd like to be a killer or that anyone else should be thinking about becoming one but i do think this idea of having a chance to become someone else is fascinating i think there's something universal there at some point you feel unsatisfied with your life becoming someone else sounds pretty good but if you weren't you who would you be it's like literally all you know and what if who you were was a bad person and you're not sure you could be better so even if you're stuck in a terrible situation the unknown can still be frightening by the time amos comes to visit peaches in the pit he's already had some time and distance between his rough beginnings which we'll come back to in a bit he seems compelled to want to go see her but doesn't really have a plan and there's not really much he can do to improve her situation he tells her people like us the things we do it's not just on us this world is messed up and it can mess you up he says he's lucky that he got out of his situation because lydia helped him and when she asked if he's there to help her he says he guesses he is and things take a turn when the rocks hit not only does this effectively void clarissa's sentence at least as far as it destroyed the prison where she's being held it also provides a situation where amos can more naturally utilize his skills they're in survival mode and then so how did we end up here you might be wondering why when amos went back to earth in season 5 he wanted to go visit clarissa in the first place it's been a while since i read nemesis games for the first time but it was kind of a surprise that he wanted to see her as i remember it in the third book abaddon's gate she is a point of view character as melba cole so we do learn more about her story in that but it also feels like her story is concluded when she has that change of heart at the end and helps save the day if you've only watched the tv show you probably remember that the first time these two characters met amos wanted to kill her he was convinced that this was the right course of action when anna intervened he let go of the idea but he tells her this one won't be grateful for your mercy amos knows about killers clarissa tried to kill his crew and really that's all amos needs to know a thing that stands out when you go back and re-watch is that anna tells him not killing her isn't about her it's about us amos doesn't respond to that but we do see the wheels spinning around in his head as he thinks about what she said in the timeline of events the rossi returns to luna turns her over to the authorities and then eventually leaves for illis at abasarala's request on the way there the show added this video call in the first episode of season four clarissa is now serving her sentence at the pit and amos is the only person she can think to call now that she has that option available to her she thanks them for the time they spent together and she brings up a question she had at some point in the trip amos sent her by herself to work on the seals of the airlocks and while she was there she realized that controls were overridden and that she would have been able to space herself after the fact she realized that amos was offering her a way to get out of this life sentence and he confirms that saying that he would want a choice if he was in that situation so where he started out telling anna that it was a mistake to show clarissa mercy in that time they spent together in his own way he was trying to show her mercy by the end the seeds were planted there so who are these characters well clarissa mal was the daughter of jules pierre mao and the thing about her is her backstory isn't nearly as harsh or harrowing as amos's she grew up super rich and at least materially speaking she had access to anything a person could want her dad is a prick though without a doubt jules pierre is a bad person we saw what his legacy actually was and on top of that he is also a particularly bad father clarissa tries to be the good child she's desperate for her father's approval and does what she can to keep things together in the family without much recognition or support her sister julie does the exact opposite and she's their father's favorite despite rebelling against him and the rest of the family and that's all sort of boo hoo poor rich person a privilege finding out what it's like when you lose a little bit of status and she did lose her father but he got what he deserved overall you can't really feel too bad for her based on what she decides to do and you're not really supposed to she's introduced pretty clearly as an antagonist i think what makes the character work though is there's some complexity there that drive to get the approval from her father that she'll never be able to get there's just no way that it'll ever happen and how that unattainable goal poisons things in such a way to foster a series of bad ideas that bear consequences all around when her father gets locked up she makes one final attempt to earn his approval she goes to great lengths taking on a fake identity getting an endocrine enhancement implant or a mod which we'll talk about a bit more and basically throwing away what life she has left to go after james holden james [ __ ] holden who took her father and his legacy away from her and she doesn't just want to take him out she actually worries that he'll be remembered as a martyr if she just kills him so she wants to ruin his name make sure he has no legacy left behind and yeah she wants to kill him not for everyone a tidy little redemption that leads to that trip back to luna on the rosinante where amos gives her the nickname peaches if you're wondering where that comes from it's never actually explained but the popular theory is that since she went by the name melba amos calls her peaches because there's a dessert called peach melba for as long as i've been around the expanse subreddit someone comes up with this every so often and the obligatory comment is it's better than calling her toast she does get a life sentence and because of her mods she has to serve it underground at the pit it's pretty harsh but a lot of people died as a result of her actions her ideas about holden her father and who she is or wants to be are all shattered she takes responsibility somewhat sadly isn't sure she deserves any kind of redemption but also doesn't believe she's irredeemably evil this comes out in the poem she wrote in prison which says i have killed but i'm not a killer because a killer is a monster and monsters aren't afraid peaches is a killer she escaped a life sentence and then she got a chance at a different life so what about amos considering that he is a member of the rossi crew and has been in the thick of things throughout the series his story is a lot more complicated on the one hand we know a lot more about him but on the other the fact that he didn't talk about his past made him an enigma and the fact that he wears an amiable smile and doesn't shy away from violence really makes you wonder there's a lot going on there at one point he told alex that he hasn't felt fear since he was five years old he appears to lack empathy or at least has trouble connecting with people emotionally he doesn't trust his own moral compass so he looks to other characters like naomi and holden tries to think of what they might do in a situation and then follows that lead this has led to a lot of speculation over the years about what was actually going on with him and it's not until he goes back to earth that we get a better understanding of just how traumatic his childhood was and the kind of effect that had on him his mother who died while he was young was a sex worker under the control of a local baltimore gang his real name was timmy and he was born into a life of abuse and exploitation he was forced into child prostitution at a very early age until he grew older and then lost value for the people who were exploiting him from there he moved into providing muscle for the gang and it's in that period of his life where we meet him in the story the churn after his mother died one of her friends that was also a sex worker looked out for timmy and tried to take care of him at one point he's given the job to kill his childhood friend eric because of some trouble they got into together essentially there was evidence left behind a computer that could be tied to eric so his boss the real amos burton told him to take care of the problem he's ready to do it and when he tells lydia about it she looks at the situation and realizes that she'll probably lose amos if he doesn't follow through with the job because of how it played out he would basically have to run away and hide at the same time she knows that if he does it it will mess him up more than he already is and this is the nature of amos's life sentence because of his upbringing because of his situation he was always going to be stuck in this life of crime where he would probably end up dying or being incarcerated lydia gave him a chance and this is where she delivers that line that we saw at the end of the second episode of season five she tells him she loves him but she's not righteous she can't teach him to be that but they can pretend to be if they want and that's almost the same as if it were true this is where that idea comes from that there are ways you can live a good life without being a good person in the end he decides to kill his boss rather than killing eric that means he has to leave earth leaving lydia for good to keep her safe from any backlash and he uses a fake identity that eric had made up for their boss and that's how he became amos burton the documents got him into the apprenticeship program he became a mechanic years later he ended up on the canterbury where he met the other members of the future crew of the ross ante and we know what happened after that knowing his whole backstory we can see how he became the kind of person he is he had to be a survivor and he had to be a killer to get out of baltimore in the first place the help that lydia gave him made him want to try to live a good life even if he couldn't be a good person because he's a fan favorite character there have been a lot of great discussions about amos's personality and psychology throughout the run of the series i think one of the best descriptions i've read came from a recent interview with wes chatham the actor who actually plays him talking to cbr he said so what he's went through in his past which has also kind of become a superpower is that he doesn't have an attachment to his ego or an attachment to his identity in a certain way so it allows him to do the math faster than other people and the reason that amos is able to let go so easily is because it was ripped away from him at such an early age he's never had it so in a way it gives him more clarity because he can't connect because he doesn't have the ego the false self the identity that we all crave he's lost that and so it gives him clarity but he also has a problem with empathy connecting in certain situations and what i like about that is that it is sort of a superpower we've seen it time and time again in the story where that ability allows him to thrive in situations where other people might not be able to come through we also saw this on earth as they're inside the prison as the rock hits he's not afraid he's just figuring out how to get out of that the flip side of that is if he only follows those instincts then he really does worry about where he'll end up he is a killer he escaped his own sort of life sentence and he got a chance at a different life he understands this and it's why amos and peaches work so well together one perfect example is their encounter with the prepper at his compound amos is in full survival mode and hears about this guy they should probably avoid because he's shooting at people who come near his property he realizes that this is the kind of guy who's going to have what they need to survive and thinks that it's worth the risk that he'll probably be able to figure out how to take it from him when they get there he goes there thinking they need that stuff and killing to get it is just something that will have to happen it turns out that just has to use her mods to save amos they do end up getting what they need but she makes the point that it's not the kind of thing good people do not even bad people trying to live like good ones you could pick up a lot from this scene about how they're both broken in their own ways and how they can help each other move in the direction of being someone else she tells him the poem about not being a monster because monsters aren't afraid and this hits amos hard he doesn't feel fear and he worries that he might be a monster when he thinks about her saying that murder isn't something good people do he realizes that he needs to get back to his crew the place he found when he got away from earth the first time and the home where he finds that moral compass from his family they are traumatized and in some ways broken and they also happen to be quite good at being killers for clarissa part of that is that she has these mods and i said i would come back and talk about them a little bit more basically these implants were tested but they weren't considered useful because there was no way to prevent that incapacitation that happens after they use them so for military uses say they could turn soldiers into super killers for a short period of time but then they would have a bunch of them laying around on the ground recuperating they saturate the body with a compound and enable the endocrine system to overproduce hormones and it creates an extreme state of hyperphysical and mental awareness which only lasts for a short period of time when you read her chapters in the book it's almost like time slows down for her and she's super powered she can anticipate what her adversaries might do and exploit their weaknesses all while being able to move at inhuman speed there's a lot of upsides there but there's one big downside in that they do degrade in your body over time she bought these on the black market because like i said they're not popular because of all the side effects as the compounds leak into her bloodstream it leads to terminal illness she will die from it but she can slow that down by filtering her blood and that is most of what there is to know about amos and peaches their bond and time spent together has always been one of my favorite parts of the story learning his backstory on his trip to earth and seeing her struggle to leave who she was behind to become a new person i really love the scene where she's convincing eric that it's time to move on from baltimore because the person he used to be there no longer exists she's able to cut through his denial with an emotional plea because she knows what he's going through she's able to be there at that moment because amos was able to be there for her in a similar situation and it all goes back to what lydia did for him all those years ago and i will leave it there let me know in the comments what you think about these two characters what do you think about amos what do you think about his story what do you think about clarissa and her story timmy and melba please like this video if you enjoyed it please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already thanks for watching i'll talk to you soon

Channel: Pete Peppers

Views: 129,834

Keywords: the expanse amos and peaches explained, the expanse amos and peaches, the expanse amos and clarissa, the expanse amos burton backstory, the expanse amos backstory, the expanse amos history, amos burton, pete peppers, amos and peaches, the expanse clarissa mao, wes chatham, nadine nicole, the expanse clarissa, the expanse amos explained, the expanse season 5, the expanse the churn, the expanse season 5 amos and clarissa, the expanse, the expanse explained, expanse season 5

Id: YhpHB2AqLGw

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021