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

Ah, they should have played How Bizarre over the end of episode reveal imo.

*bump*

HOLY SHIT

But no post-credits flash-forward!

What do you mean?

Oh.

Curious to hear what the non-James posters think.

my review: mostly lol, kind of sad

One thing I meant to post about after my recent rewatch was the almost-totally-unexamined evocation of the colonisation of America as the precedent for space exploration...like I think literally once someone says "what about the Indians?" but it's all Lewis and Clark and the Mayflower and Jamestown and pioneer days. I get that it is totally how e.g. Gordo would see things but considering that attention to other aspects of social justice is a defining characteristic of the show it's pretty weird to put it in the season-closing monologues in S1 (by Ellen) and S3 (by Kelly).

the Margo exfiltration twist was ridiculous and totally out of established character (not to mention how did it even happen)

oh yeah Danny in space prison (with a halfheartedly buried gun nearby) also ridiculous

This season was okay, it feels like the excitement of the alt-history aspect has faded, not that they're not pursuing that line, obv, but maybe it's just not sustainable. I liked the cold-war-iness of the first season best.

If the whole Jimmy plot was just a device for the last episode, then ugh, that could have been so much better done, and the exact purpose of this weird cell of 'activists' should have been telegraphed a bit more clearly and could have been written with more genuine threat imho.

Rmde at Radiohead.

pretty bad season, i expected a downturn but not one this steep

the Margo exfiltration twist was ridiculous and totally out of established character (not to mention how did it even happen)
I assume it was organised by the Russian lady from the Americans? And the fact the building got blown up was a convenient happenstance to let Margo look like she'd died.

I assume, speaking of which, that was based off the Oklahoma City bombing?

LOL @ Danny in Space Jail.

hm I meant to spoilertag all of that oh well.

I was with every single ridiculous moment all the way to the end INCLUDING dangerously pregnant Kelly propelling herself into orbit if only to prove that NASA still thinks of astronauts as crash test dummies AND exiling Danny to Shuttle North Korea AND bewigged weirdos blowing up JSC because, well, uh. its 1995 and we have to…. but they just couldn’t help themselves and they just fucking make Margo LIVE?!

for why?

I trust Moore for one thing and that is to just fucking wholesale kill major cast members on a whim and if he is not going to do that them what are we even doing here

also i really fucking hate Pam and her stupid groucho eyebrows

i do really love this show though

or i will in a couple of days

sorry last thing

cut to kelly delivering baby on earth and the doctors being all sorry you are both completely made of radiation theres no way either of you can live we’re sorry beeeeeeeeeep

I really wanted some sort of alien contact scenario to happen and for the whole series to make a left turn, also given the episode's ending, jump-ahead moment, they're gonna run out of timeline pretty soon, totally praying that they're not cooking up some sort of Q/Trump/4Chan/Conspiracy/tinfoil hat story.

…isn’t that what we just had???

In a way, sure. But I wonder if there will be a full-on Trump analog (with all the bullshit that goes with it) in the same way this was an Oklahoma Bombings one.

wtf VG, Pam’s great

i can’t stand her & i don’t know why so i’m putting it down to eyebrows and I stand by it

Love Pam.

I see a lot of love for Pam elsewhere too, but I kind of think she's something of a non-entity? Probably her s1 appearances coloring my outlook.

Nitpicky complaint: Apparently the trip to Mars takes 6-7 months -- how could the DPKR capsule sustain TWO people for that long? If their capsule had more compartments for food/pooping, wouldn't any other space agency have been able to determine it was bigger than an unmanned probe?

Also this isn't another point, I just wanted to see how adding an empty newline works in spoiler tags.

I think the capsule that landed would have only been a part of the larger ship that got them to Mars, so the capsule itself only needed supplies, etc, for the time AFTER landing.

And then with one crewmember dead, the survivor then had twice as much food.

Presumably there’s an uncrewed North Korean ship in a decaying Martian orbit that nobody has spotted yet, since Mars hasn’t got a big network of satellites looking out for such things.

yeah that was my thinking too

So Margo and Sergei kinda switch places ? I like Sergei as a character and actor - though sounds unlikely he will survive to next season with all the torture. RIP Molly and Karen but Molly more. The whole Jimmy / nutters angle was poorly written. Hopefully we’ve seen the last of the Stevens brothers. The original cast should have aged out of active roles, it’s should be up to the Aleida, Kelly and space baby in 2003. Overall not as good as S1 and S3 :(

Why are we assuming S4 will jump to 2003? That couldve just been a flashforward, and Margo wont be seen again (a la Martha), or much anyway.

Surely at least they'll have to do a catchup of what happened to the remainders on Mars. Jumping 8 years without any explanatory story would be utterly daft.

WTF why does the hide tag fail if I have a line spacer?

In S2 and S3 the previous season's flashforward comes about halfway through the story, so S4 may start late 90s ish? with the millenium bug as the primary antagonist?

https://www.vulture.com/article/for-all-mankind-wrenn-schmidt-margo-finale-interview.html

I second her suggestion to get even more members of The Americans cast on the show. I was going to joke about hoping Margo meets up with the Jennings, but considering the Soviet Union seems much more successful in this alternate history, maybe they never had to feel the US. Sergei better be careful of any new neighbors that move next door...

Isn't air in a show like this pretty much a supplied commodity. so if a craft with seemingly heavily limited resources crash lands how does it remain breathable for however long that was. Seems not to be very likely surely.
It is something I have wondered about before in shows with low budget space travel. Air needs to be present in some form even if it is cannisters to supply a spacesuit. Having it freely available creating an atmosphere inside a ship surely does take some doing. Not sure what you need for it and presumably a lot of the time they create a mcguffin to cover how it's sustained. Looked like Korean guy was stranded for months.
Am I missing something.

Also killing off Molly offscreen is kind of a dick move, though probably happened for budget reasons.

With efficient carbon dioxide scrubbers you can reuse your atmosphere for a long time. The ISS reuses its atmosphere repeatedly, it isn’t constantly supplied with big oxygen tanks.

More hints about s4.

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2022/8/12/23301727/for-all-mankind-season-3-finale-joel-kinnaman-interview-apple-tv

I always thought the show was going to have a hard time introducing itself to the audience because it’s not until Season 3 that you really understand what the grander vision of the show is.

so happy that S3 revealed the true nature of the show :(

I get the sense that he may not be a good interview subject.

Wrenn Schmidt comes across as a much more thoughtful interviewee. I’d forgotten about the Werner von Braun plot in S1.

I had a long piece typed out that got fucked up, but I'll say I agree with "mostly lol, kind of sad."

But anyway:

So much of this season's finale, which was generally competent (acting/directing) was set in motion by so much silliness and stupidness and people being stupid in service of stupid television. Just totally contrived. It's a show about space and solving space problems. I don't need all this manufactured cliche drama.

Jimmy's whole subplot was dumb. Who hates NASA that much? Why? And we all know NASA security sucks, because look what this news van managed to bring in, and the stolen statue, but pistol whipping Jimmy in a crowded news scrum parking lot? Then tying him up? I mean, come on. There are dozens of reporters there with cameras etc.

And Karen, when she learns that something is clearly going on, when someone not Jimmy picks up the phone and she *sees it*, she ... doesn't get security?

I'm glad Ed put Danny in his place, again, finally saying out loud what we'd all say - "you think after that I'm going to put you in charge of something so important!?" - but space jail? Really? To what end? I'm not sure I want to watch a show with Danny and Jimmy still in it. Fuckin' Stevens kids.

And North Korean guy, how had he survived? Where did he get enough food? How was he planning to ever get home in the first place? Was the gun sent as a suicide failsafe? Anyway, it is now Chekov's gun, because for no good reason they conveniently buried it and marked where it was buried ... right next to the space jail. (How did Ed remember so much Korean several decades after his casual war exposure?)

Kelly ... who even cares about Kelly and her stupid space baby? She was dumb to even risk getting pregnant in the first place, and her flying through space was super dumb.

And Margo ... not only was escaping to Russia dumb (how?!?), but why would they smuggle her intel-connect boyfriend into America after learning he was the other anchor of a multi-year spy ring?

And so on.

Whoops. Spoilers ahoy!

("Sorry, don't know what went wrong." - me, and also the show's writers)

who hates government agencies? and what if they’re maybe hiding big things? maybe they’re a corporatist lesbian conspiracy! maybe one of the two

seriously though, man, “to even risk getting pregnant” like, space condoms are 100% magically and doing it in the space program isn’t hot?

have your experiences been like “yes earth wife, the condoms are tight and the time is right and we’re on earth so variables are ok”

Some of these are not questions needing asking:

And Margo ... not only was escaping to Russia dumb (how?!?), but why would they smuggle her intel-connect boyfriend into America after learning he was the other anchor of a multi-year spy ring?

Margo’s military contacts smuggled him in, who are seperate from the FBI, and so had no idea he was part of anything.

nd North Korean guy, how had he survived? Where did he get enough food? How was he planning to ever get home in the first place? Was the gun sent as a suicide failsafe?

He was the sole survivor if what was probably meant to be a multi-month 2-person mission, so had double the food he needed, and as for planning to get home, he obviously wasn’t (landing craft wrecked) hence the whole intending suicide thing. The gun was presumably included because 1. it was a traditional part of Soviet space kit (Gagarin had one on his first man in space flight) and 2. this is a history that has already had armed US/Soviet combat on the Moon, so who knows what would happen

When I saw Margo looking around her office then sitting down at the piano I was certain they were gonna find her in there at some point having taken her own life.