I come in peace... three times a night -- FOR ALL MANKIND (Apple TV Plus)

Awesome show, can't wait to get started on the second season.

About to watch S1E1 which is free, I guess.

Gus?

Thanks for starting the thread Leee! I was very taken by this show. Article about the deepfakes they pull off in S2 here

Third season has already started filming and I'm very excited that it will cover the 90s and Mars!

Does anyone else think Gordo looks kinda like Ron Swanson with that mustache in S2?

heard Michael Dorman from Patriot is in it so automatic add to watch list

Happy to see the thread. I'll try not to spoil until enough folks here have seen S1.

Love this show, the attention to detail is both brilliant and never overwhelms the story.

s2e1, lol at Margo's chili hair.

I wholly attribute the single pop-culture alt-history bit that keeps popping up to Ron Moore’s boomerism (as some here have already heard me mention)

Trying not to read the thread yet. Just watched "Red Moon." Great stuff, right in my wheelhouse. See you soon. Now entering LOS.

i just realized i have hardly watched any s2

:O

will start putting that right tonight

Cape cookie sighting early on, S1E2!

This is really good, says I after watching three episodes.

Real James is correct in his description.

Season 2 Gordo is a thing of beauty (beauty = sadness)

S1 = TOS cowboy/cowgirl lawlessness
S2 = TNG apex of bureaucratization (at least 2 episodes in)

As for Gordo: Damn this show for making me empathize with an ex-jock has-been!

oh when we were talking about fact v fiction

i forgot add for anyone who is unfamilliar, Molly Cobb’s character is based on aviator/Mercury legend & badass Jerrie Cobb (who rules) - S1E4 is dedicated to her

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrie_Cobb

The story about the big rocket at the very end of S1

Another weird fact vs. fiction which is a small S2 spoiler: Ellen Wilson seemed likely to be based on Sally Ride (particularly keeping her sexuality private), but then Sally Ride also becomes a character on the show!

This is so good, says I 1/3 of the way through S1.

:D

WVB stuff is incredibly well done imho

Probably didn't need to hide that, but who knows.

James: agreed -- I thought it a very important thing to show people who are urbane and charming were capable of being complicit in atrocities, and also the human cost of scientific progress.

S2: early on when Tracy eyes Danny all grown up, it was REALLY uncomfortable because of the smaller age difference between the actors.

Yes, at first I thought they were going to shy away from von Braun's past, but they really DID NOT

If I may go there, while there are some obligatory retro quotation marks, all the personal emotional relationship stuff is deeply, um, relatable, those quotation marks are not at all of the moronic ironic scary variety, as someone like our old friend Momus may have described them.

Feel like maybe that is TMI. We don’t talk about those things.

Houston, how long until that TMI?

can you re-state it in a less oblique way? sorry to be dim but idgi

Sorry I was obfuscating. Just feel like the characters aren't just stranded in their fate in the alternate timeline past. There is some bit of self-awareness in them under the uptightness. Which seems to have been done pretty carefully, so they seem both of their time but more up to date as well. I imagine this becomes more apparent later, I am only in the episode after "Hi, Bob." Don't know if I have explained any better this time around, sorry.

Maybe I just don’t watch enough tv these days and every show already does a good job of avoid this trap 🪤 I imagined while I was suffering from space isolation

Or, to paraphrase what I think JM said on this thread or maybe it was the other, I came for the tech fetish but stayed for the characters.

Okay, maybe I didn't want to go there, but I am especially relating to some of the stuff about being married and being a parent, the way it is handled.

the parenting / marriage stuff is so good, and it just gets more impressive/affecting/devastating as it goes

i know Moore only had a hand in writing a few episodes but careerwise his strength as a show runner & writer has always been his ability find the humanity in characters over beating you over the head w tech/concept

the writers are never so locked into the era/concept that they ever deny a character’s ability to respond like a human person

it’s a really underrated quality

i bawled my damn eyes out over s2e3, let alone s1 — will need tear duct surgery soon if they keep it up

Roger, VG, you are go on that TMI.

Showing the consequences on the characters' personal lives is a strong theme, and I think it's handled very well. Sci-fi as a genre doesn't have the best track record with it either

Watching this episode now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clvrPmTx4n4

Also wanted to say it was driving me crazy wondering who that actor was until I saw in the credits it was James Urbaniak.

So my ickiness at Tracy ogling Danny gets doubled down on in s2e7 when Danny kisses Karen.

Just you wait

Just finished S1. Now to see what this S2 is all about.

I get the impression that the creators of this show definitely watched Halt and Catch Fire. And it’s not just the parallel Gordons.

Just you wait

Hah ikr. Also, s2e8: THAT ENDING. OMFG talk about nightmare fuel.

S2E1 was kind of big adjustment for me but now getting into it

yeah its weird getting used to seeing Ed wuth a few extra pounds & riding a desk

I get the impression that the creators of this show definitely watched Halt and Catch Fire.

Another show I completely adored

wow yeah the gordos are definitely of a piece

Love this show, I feel one of the connections with Halt & Catch Fire is (for me) unfortunate and that's being a bit bashed over the head with seemingly unconnected period music, HEY it's the SIXTIES! Sitars!!! Jumping Jack Flash!!

Although that one Petula Clark song they chose was rad.

yeah the bummer about Ed in his dotage is him slowly morphing into every boomer i’ve ever hated lol

Couldn't help it... I watched the season 5 debut. Bleh

lol vg, I've had very similar thoughts watching the show

I enjoyed S4 and I'll most likely watch this show to the end (S6, reportedly) but I feel like it's become as nonsensical as BSG

Oh I didn't realize Ronald D. Moore was not the showrunner on For All Mankind after S2. Guess that comparison makes less sense now

Mireille Enos appeared on screen and I thought, yes, I see I'm watching a new season of The Killing

why is Ed still here

nice to see Oleg though!

I don’t know if I’m making it to episode 3 of this season.

ok im watching the new season i guess

ed looks like knoxville as bad grandpa, sure hope we do NOT see old man balls

invoking gordo without gordo is just wrong (and highlights how far we have strayed from gods light re this show)

the only thing interesting now overall is them being on mars. the newer characters are so dull!
i’ll keep watching but it’s kind of a snoozefest so far

Man this show has got so boring!

why is Ed still here

― sous-vide summer camp (seandalai), Saturday, 28 March 2026 00:49 (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

at least they did something about this

Don’t remember it being a thing in previous seasons but really thrown by all the Apple products they’re using on Mars.

They're in 2012 (the last season started at 1992) and passed the year boundary where consumer hardware started to be used in space, and also the threshold where Apple was actually a popular consumer pick again, so all of the reasons to not shove those products in are over

..although now that I've gotten further into the episode, those iPhone-like things they're all using for communication aren't any Apple product that ever existed in our world

Man this show has got so boring!

OTM. Just bring on the aliens.

I'm up for a good conspiracy thriller on Mars but idk if this is good

I haven't seen a 'easily access someone else's computer and find out their password to access secret files' scene that lazy in years.

conspiracies, ranked:

- Dev planted the files to incite the Mars resistance movement: obvious
- Russians did it because Russian: boring
- Aleida did it (to screw over Dev somehow?): interesting character development
- Margo did it: wild card, I like it

or the files are real and the weird nighttime cargo movements have something to do with it. alternatively, whoever is doing the unknown thing planted this as bait

Current events which tend to drive shows like this suggest it might be corporate espionage or corruption, which suggests Dev or that company doing the illegal shipments. but i don’t know if i care enough to find out :(

exporting mars dust to earth and people snort it. it doesn't actually get you high, but people keep sprinkling it in joints and snorting it because they think it does

read that as "people keep sprinkling it in jorts"

this was pretty much as mediocre as a big FAM landing episode could possibly be

wonder if there is an ilxor on Mars in 2012 who keeps boring their friends about Sky Ferreira

any time someone expresses genuine, kind of cringe, joy on this show it means something terrible is going to happen

Just rewatched s1 - what stands out is how confident the season is, it knows exactly what it's doing with each character and where they're going.

― TWELVE Michelob stars?!? (seandalai), Thursday, 28 July 2022 23:04 (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Went back to the beginning again, four episodes in the execution is absolutely perfect. One thing I didn't spot before is that in S1E2 Deke gives Ed the Apollo 11 plaque that turns up again to give Kelly a pep talk in S5E7 (do we see it again in the intervening seasons?).

I'm not sure I've ever gone back and watched one of these serialized shows all over again from the start, but I wonder *how* I would watch it, knowing the show gets bad, vs. watching it the first time around before I knew it would take a turn for the worse.

very Expanse-y episode - totally fine and entertaining, but rewatching S1 at the same time reinforces that it's such a shallower show now

I haven’t seen it, always meant to. Is there a good time to quit before it gets bad?

general consensus is the first two seasons are classic, after that keep going at your own risk

First two seasons are great. Then it becomes ... a regular TV show.

You’ll kinda know when you’ve crossed the demarcation line

Right around when you start reaching for things to throw at the TV.

So speak of the devil, it turns out someone in my family just started this, so I popped in and watched an episode from the first season with them. Boy, it's just such a clever, well-executed conceit, packed with surprises due the way it tweaks and subverts expectations. I guess it was inevitable it couldn't keep the concept going, but those first couple of seasons ...

OTM

not sure much happened but moving pieces into place I guess

we have baldwin and stevens scions rolling into the last holdout together, at least

I’ve enjoyed the last few episodes a lot more than early S5, at least they’re doing some space stuff again!

I ended up watching the rest of S1, and even knowing/remembering much of what comes next, it stood up as great television, especially watching with someone that was seeing it for the first time.

Also, it was kind of wild to see so much set up as early as the first season, even if I didn't like where the show ultimately went with it all.

Oh, and I had no idea there was a spin-off. Is that out yet? The Soviet-focused one?

Not yet - May 29 iirc

Feel like FAM always has just enough there to keep me watching it, but talk about a show that doesn't play to its strengths anymore. Bland lead characters, and so much emphasis on soap opera stuff. You're on Mars, people! Do we have to focus on whether these two teenagers will hook up? (I did enjoy the finale though.)

Finished this thinking it was the last ever only to see that they've now renewed for another season rmde. I didn't really get what the tease at the end was indicating (other than to remind people to watch Star City I guess?).

yeah same, nashwan. before I go look it up, my guess was that spacecraft are all automated in 2020?

looks it up

lol, I'm completely wrong. Mars-94, the ship we see at the end, was the Russian ship they had to abandon in S3 because the ship was becoming radioactive. I saw a theory that the ship had some wake-up code that has now been enabled after years of floating through space

Gave up on this season but the first ep of Star City is promising. Quite grim.

Looking forward to S6 continuation of
- Farming redemption arc
- Protomolecule Kelly
- Alien franchise crossover
- More descendants of S1 characters doing more of the things

Star City rules? Go/no-go for a new thread?

Yeah I wasn't sure if the spinoff needed its own thread or not!

Ok I did one:

Two cosmonauts for every boy: STAR CITY on Apple+