For All Mankind (SciFi Apple TV+)

Slydice

@TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote:

mainly because this show has a habit of skipping large chunks of time, so we could tune in next episode and she's been in jail for 3 years already 😄

Brilliant! 😁😂

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119314782#Comment_119314782

They fired Molly and then next ep she's a painter, apparently 😄

pixelburp

Episode 4, and this show doing what it does best: crisis management in space, while tapping into the inherent sense of awe and terror the void instills. All those advances and technology still can't move past the time lag. Ending the episode where it did was just a fine bit of dramatic cockteasing, a good example why weekly releases still have value.

And for a relatively bloodless show, that moment at the end as the Russian ship rolled across Sojourner? Shudder. Absolutely nasty stuff.

Glad the veil has lifted from the Helios CEO cos the longer his pretence of ideology lasted, the less believable it became. As Poole observed, he's am àsshole.

Still scratching my head about how the show continues to ignore Waverley and Wilson's facade of a home life. Not so much as a mention, though maybe the show trusts its audience enough to know we don't need it hammered home.

_Kaiser_

The only reason I can think for the whole Danny/Karen bit is for Ed to find out and have a meltdown, jeopardising the mission. It's pointless soap opera level drama otherwise and the weakest part of the overall season.

It also strikes me as a bit ridiculous that in an era where the US/USSR space race and Cold War never ended, and the KGB is still the adversary it is, that the CIA or FBI haven't caught wind of Margo slipping classified designs to the Russians, or that they weren't shadowing her as the head of NASA on her trips to the UK. The only one who has started to figure it out is Aleida, and even she's not all the way there yet.

The actual bits in space though are the highlight and these other elements (especially the first one above) really need to get resolved at this point.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

I thought when it happened the Karen/Danny thing would be to cause some conflict between Karen and Tracy, and then the obvious marriage breakup for her and Ed. But then when S2 ended as it did, I thought maybe they were going to have Kelly and Danny become a couple and it would be this underlying secret threatening to come out at any time through S3, just personal drama. I know it's going to come out now at the worst possible time and cause the most drama possible on Mars, of all places, but that being the outcome feels like the least interesting option? If any of the possible outcomes from it were ever interesting.

Acosta

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119314888#Comment_119314888

It is a shame they carried the soap opera stuff over from the last season, but besides that it's been really good.

pjcb

how did the American ship not take more damage?

Acosta

I thought they would pick up directly at the point the previous episode finished. I should probably watch the end of it again, but my first reaction to the start of the latest episode was that it felt that I'd skipped an episode.

I thought maybe this episode would be the NASA ship having big problems while Ed and co. tired to regain control of their ship to go and assist them.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Another great episode this week, although really not where I was expecting the focus to be. I was wondering when they would bring Ellen's storyline back to the fore again. I think it's really interesting the way the writing has all these advances in the alternative timeline but every now and then it reminds us that people are just **** sometimes.

Will be interesting to see what happens then the scandal breaks about her husband, its Lewinski 2.0

pjcb

Karen a COO? how did she end up going from running a restaurant to being in charge of a hotel in space again?

did she ever go to college, was she in charge of the chain of outpost restaurants?

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119343264#Comment_119343264

She went into business with Sam when she sold him the Outpost to become a franchise, and then spent 10ish years working with him at his company which eventually led to the space hotel.

pixelburp

Episode 5, and for a show that hasn't really indulged many comedic moments, that last moment produced a genuine LOL from me. Two astronauts wrestling to be first, funny stuff.

The rest of the episode was solid as ever, with a nice thematic callback to the Apollo 10 mission way back in season 1. though minus points for the script lampshading the entire Karen & Danny subplot, by far the weakest strand of the whole show, and it won't go away. Namedropping The Graduate was a wee bit unnecessary, and Danny's slide into Space Madness isn't helping things either.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119344277#Comment_119344277

The episode in S2 where Karen and Danny slept together wad called "Here's To You Mrs Robinson" so they've been doing that Graduate thing since day one.

I was listening to the official show podcast for S3 and on the first episode they had the show runner on and asked him specifically about the Karen/Danny thing and they acknowledged the audience reaction to it was extremely negative. He said though that he stood by it and was determined to not just leave it in S2, he wanted to have it have ripples into S3.

Generally speaking I'm a believer in showrunners sticking to their guns, but listening to him talk about this it didn't sound like they made it happen in S2 because they knew exactly where they were going with it. It sounded more like something they just did and now have to try and make work in S3.

pjcb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119343790#Comment_119343790

I thought she was going to leave the restaurant business and go back to college?

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119345687#Comment_119345687

She really got the COO position because the business would have been finished without her. They are quite good at juggling a tremedous amounts of storylines with the gay president, danny's psychosis, the soviet and the daughter, the nasa chief being compromised. I predict alot of characters will have unhappy endings

Slydice

3.6: Well. This big development.. I'm not sure about.. they haven't really gone into it yet.

Spoiler Warning

I can't tell if they've actually found liquid water.. that might not actually pan out.. things could go sideways on that.

Anyway..

Well.. there's the hab mission I mentioned missing out on from the earlier episodes. Sure seemed to land itself ok.

I wonder what the deal was with the formula Sergei wrote. Kinda cool spycraft there.

Looks like the Danny story is gonna go south. Feels like they are leaning into something like once-a-Stevens-always-a-Stevens

One of the top moments in the episode I thought was the interplay between Karen and the head of the USSR space agency with the 50% negotiation 😁

So at this point, my impression of the intelligence services of the USA in this universe is something at the level of:

😁😂🤣

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119345044#Comment_119345044

Ah ok, was thinking in a diegetic sense, it was the first time The Graduate got name dropped within the show.

Learning though the whole arc is just something invented for cheap drama is disappointing; means Danny's actions make even less sense than already, the whole Space Madness thing even less credible. This wasn't Ronald Moore speaking was it? Cos he has form for making **** up from his time with the Battlestar reboot 😂

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119345824#Comment_119345824

It was Moore yeah. To be fair it was at the very start of the season and they weren't giving much away about what was to come, but the impression that I got from what he said was that they didn't necessarily have a plan for how it would carry over to S3, just that it definitely would. He actually said that his automatic response to criticism like that is to double down and give the audience even more of it, which I actually found quite funny, but he said that's not what he did with S3 but that he was determined not to just drop it.

I just find it a very weak link in an otherwise immaculately plotted show. To have Danny obsessing over Karen for this long when it apparently was only that one night, its pretty lazy, i think. No spoilers but there's stuff in this week's episode regarding Danny and it feels very lazy too. Like there were ways to get Danny to Mars in a not great mental shape that didn't have to be this. And they even could have brought up the Karen thing for more drama with Ed without having him be a creepy weirdo. The way they've done it just makes the character very unlikeable. Given who his parents were we should at least be sympathetic toward him, but I'm really struggling to care.

Sudden Valley

It is does point to the weakness in Ed's character that he didnt dismiss Danny. He is acting strange for way too long to be allowed perform critical tasks.

I hope Pam doesnt reconcile with Ellen. She has consistently treated her badly.

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119373325#Comment_119373325

Well at least it's resulted in more than just Danny sulking around the base and hacking Ed's messages while popping pills.

Ed putting up with as much as he has is because of who Danny's parents where that's all. He feels responsible for him after their death. It's understandable, but he let it go too far.

JP Liz V1

Renewed for Season 4

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

I still feel like having him sleep with Karen and then still be obsessing over her 10 years later was completely unnecessary, but at least it actually caused some big stuff to happen this week.

No idea where the Jimmy stuff is going but the fact he's messed up about his parents too kind of makes the Danny/Karen thing worse for me. They absolutely could have got Danny to the same place he's in now without that happening at all. And the animosity towards Ed could have come from that place too. Gordo and Tracey weren't great parents, they were absent a lot, and then they died in an avoidable situation. Ed was even partly responsible for Gordo back into space in the first place, if I recall correctly? He kind of caused the animosity with the Russians too when he held the cosmonaut hostage, I think?

But as I said, at least something big actually came from it at last.

Slydice

3.7: Feels like the creatives and cast are putting the work in but like the writers have taken their foot off the pedals.

The USA still have no intelligence services that I can make out 😁

I couldn't believe they mentioned tinker tailor soldier spy and not realise they've left out USA intelligences services from this universe.

Spoiler Warning

The Danny story had moments but damn.. this Nick dude who Ed left in charge.. what a tool.

"oh there's just like 60 critical seconds where maybe I should sit here and pay attention... but nah.. I know I was left in charge but I'm gonna walk away.. do some math and then saunter back in with a cup o coffee.. that dude over there who I know is off his head on drugs and kicked my toy dog to bits... no problemo.. he's got everything in order"

Still though.. the effects of the avalanche were cool and I wonder how this water is going to show up.. boiling.. or frozen.. could be either I guess.. they did mention the level of pressure and I know that has an affect on the boiling point of water

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

I wonder what the whole thing with Kelly and the water is about. Maybe it was just a way to have her and Ed fall out before the disaster happened, add a bit more drama to the mix.

Dav010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119376875#Comment_119376875

I suspect that opens up another story thread about the effects of Martian microbes, when she asked about killing a planet by not checking the microbes first, was it Mars, or earth?

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119376910#Comment_119376910

When she was talking to Ed she said he'd be the first man to kill life on another planet. But I'm not sure if she meant they'd accidentally kill something that lived in the water, or that they shouldn't be drinking it because they'd all die?

Dav010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119376984#Comment_119376984

I think one of the issues they might explore in this or the next season, is what they bring back with them.

I reckon there is another shoe to drop on Sergei, like Margot finding out there is no family and that the fight in the hotel was staged, and that she has been duped. Like a previous poster, I find the lack of CIA and that the two hippies could walk into NASA so easily, even if one is the son of hero astronauts, a bit too difficult to believe.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119377007#Comment_119377007

I don't know if maybe the altered time line means the CIA aren't as on the ball with the Russians as they were in our timeline? Or it's possible they are there but are playing a long game and we'll see that revealed at some later date? But yeah, it seems pretty convenient that the head of NASA isn't being watched at all times.

As for the life on Mars thing, I was thinking the same regarding what they might bring back. I thought it might be a case of everyone getting violently ill this season from drinking it but after what happened this week I'm not sure they need any more drama on Mars, or even how many people will be left up there.

Cina

The Danny storyline has always been a scourge on the show and continues to be now. So awful and unnecessary.

also seriously who the leaves OxyContin, one of the most addictive pills on earth, in an open medicine cabinet? C’mon!

AlmightyCushion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380128#Comment_119380128

This is the 94. Back then it was considered to not be addictive or prone to abuse. Doctors in the US were prescribing that shít for headaches back then. So, it's not that hard to believe that he had easy access to it. Also went it originally in a locked cabinet and the took them.