QFT.
Ok, you have two repeats about some "bioweapon" in this episode, just before Miller gets his ass fired for being too competent for once.
My own speculation is that, since basically the second book is a smaller-scale repeat of the general book 1 plotline (bad corp doing bad things with stuff they shouldn't have done), they are basically merging book 1 & 2, but the resulting plot is too dense for a 10-ep season so they're spreading the entire stuff over two seasons.
In the books, he's the joke cop. The cop the boss gives stuff that she doesn't want to get solved, like, I don't know, the case of the father wanting Julie Mao, OPA operative currently on assignment on the Scopuli. After Havelock scrams out of Ceres, his new partner finally break the news to him that everyone knew that (just one page before he gets fired for incompetence in time of tight budgets).
On top of which he's deluded about the situation, thinking he's still top shit until he has it spelled out to him, when there are a ton of clues right in front of him. He's also an alcoholic and suffering some kind of psychosis - in general he's a much more of a sad, broken down kind of character than he is in the show (physically as well - he's not described in especially flattering terms, whereas he's a well dressed and good looking guy in the show).
I did a rewatch of the first 6 ep this saturday, and I agree. It does feel a lot better if you chain the episodes. I'm still going to watch every ep as they come, but I'll probably rewatch the entire series when ep 10 comes out.
In the books Belters spoke a patois that was a smattering of numerous earth languages, but primarily Spanish based. The words were Spanish based anyway, but the accent was unclear. I like the show's take on the Belter accent. I agree that Jared Harris is doing a great job.
My one complaint about the show is that they keep adding random shit in and changing book events. I can't stand it when shows/movies do this. Don't get me wrong, sometimes the producers/directors have time/money constraints and have to cut certain things out. Sometimes they even need to combine characters or summarize events to simply very complex situations. I don't like those things, but I understand them. What I donotunderstand is when some asswipe studio exec or aspiring screen writer decides thattheyknow better than the author of the books how the story should unfold and adds random shit in just to "spice things up."
