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.

I feel like the cliche is that 70s period music lends gravitas, whereas 80s music does the opposite. I'm sure there are many counter examples to that (The Americans had a few), but that's my general impression as someone that watches way too much TV

I mean that across all TV/movies, not this one specifically, but might explain why they would use less period music in S2

It’s just the LOI, watch out
It’s just the LOI, look out, babe
It’s just the LOI

S2E6Loving this discussion about Laika over what seems to be a Ramones song I can’t hear loud enough to identify

Also liked Tracy talking to Deke’s memorial/burial site

.

Made it to the end of S2.

My reaction roughly similar to Leee’s, perhaps I will have more to say later

What to watch next after this, The Patriot?

Also I guess I shouldn’t be surprised but still am at all the completely convincing non-Americans in the cast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OGzlpkH74

Kinnaman’s father was from the US and he spent some high school time here so even though he grew up mostly in Sweden he naturally speaks with American accent, but Jodi Balfour is from South Africa, Michael Dorman is from New Zealand and Sonya Walger (not in the video) is basically British, born in London to an Argentine father, although she is now a US citizen.

Wrenn Schmidt is from South Carolina so she comes by her accent pretty naturally, although I’d guess she amps it up for the character.

Patriot is a black comedy, very different show, but Michael Dorman is also great in that. Halt and Catch Fire has some parallels to FAM (computer pioneers rather than space pioneers, takes place over different time periods, with heavy focus on their personal lives) but no alternate history, basically. I know Man in the High Castle IS another alternate history show but I haven't seen it

I don’t want to admit how far into this show I was and the sense of loss I felt when I got to the end of S2. Except maybe others like VG and JM already said something similar, I think.

Even though I nearly stopped watching when Margo was getting ready to go to work to the tune of "Rockit"

Man In High Castle is great (but also can be maddening & make you want to throw your tv out the window at times).

The Imposter is another good alternative reality show (on prime)

alternate *history

Do you have a link to that imposter show, vg? Please! The stuff I’m googling doesn’t sound right.

lmao would help if i had the name right

COUNTERPART ffs

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4643084/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZzDKUkJB6E

lol

Counterpart is so low key, definitely worth your attention but it absolutely doesn’t loudly telegraph the important parts — which are really the little characters moments and JK Simmons doing subtlety

Aha, cool, thank you!

Counterpart is amazing! I think I raved about it on a different thread. I never would have made a connection between the two shows, but I can see it now that vg has mentioned it

In that video I posted Kinnaman is talking over some of the other cast members, which is kind of obnoxious, I think.

Apparently that whole Gary Cooper thing was just acting. Who knew?

Okay, since I pretty much trust y’all on these things I will take a look-see at this Counterpart.

:D

It seems to affect a lot of recent shows with otherwise high production values but this show in particular seems to be not even trying to age up the actors with makeup when 10-15 years are supposed to have passed, with the exception of colonel droopy's fat thor arc -- and he ends up looking younger than in season 1 by the end!

!

the trick is that you de-age every time you go to space

Flight, we are go on S1E1 of Counterpart.

Wilco

Trailers are not an option.

Re: Counterparts S1E6 enjoyed the big reveal at the end, even though of course they had already made it pretty clear before

Ha, sorry, no ‘s’ at the end, it’s not the story in Dubliners.

Just wait till the next episode, I think it was my favorite of the whole series

OMGWTF at that episode

Meaning Excellent payoff, detailed and creepy

Going to be hard to top. Btw is S2 worth watching?

i am saving s2 as a gift to my future self

lol

Absolutely worth watching

Thanks! Just as long as there is no 80s hair "Rockit" montage

I could watch any number of montages, time-appropriate or not, set to that wonderful song

So the guy who played Gene Kranz in For All Mankind went on to play Chris Kraft in The Right Stuff.

DO U SEE?

Have to say the use of pop music in Counterpart show is a little more sparing and subtle and less Forrest Gump-like than in the titular show. Particularly liked discovering this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ55A__qO3o

Also there was a John Cale song I didn’t know too well that was cool.

“Big White Cloud” from Vintage Violence, which I haven’t listened to too much.