In the show, he was definitely a bad and corrupt cop that nobody liked. The Mao investigation was something he got really fixated on, mostly because of selfishness. He saw a picture of a pretty girl and made up an idea she could redeem who he became. Or love him.

I didn’t expect him to be reliable. But the season did such a great job focusing on him, making him three dimensional, that I didn’t expect him to be a relatively minor character in the grand scheme of things.  And also, besides Cowboy Bebop, there’s not a whole lot of noir detective/noir stories in space. I guess Doctor Who also, to some extent - though that’s more akin to Scooby Doo (not a criticism). So it wasn’t just Miller for me that made me feel betrayed. It was also the change of genre.

I didn’t read the books, but the show’s storyboarding is certainly atypical. I appreciated it a lot more starting in Season 3 when I was able to reflect on the series as a whole and see the genre changes in each season as a creative choice.