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

who knows

moore is not exactly the kindest of showrunners, re expectations etc

He was definitely sending V-mail to Jimmy: his name came up on the screen for a moment. (many xposts)

I’m guessing that the Ed/Danny thing is going to play out in a way that subverts expectations, but I think I’d rather be surprised than guess at this point

Kind of hope it involves Danny growing the fuck up and growing past the whole Karen thing

Right, feel like he should move on from Karen to Lee Remick.

I wonder if they'll find Martian life? Would that be the first time the science itself has gone speculative?

Dunno, but one of the upcoming episodes seems to be called “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” if that’s any indication.

Solid episode. Appreciate the small twist that it's (presumably) Larry not Ellen who will cause the scandal.

So is Ellen going to be forced to come out?

No, she is going to throw Larry under the Mars-94

I think it depends on whether the Oval Office recordings get subpoenaed as part of an investigation into Larry (iirc Watergate didn’t happen in this timeline so Ellen doesn’t know that recording everything is a bad idea). The Larry/Ellen conversation about Deke happened for one reason (coming up with DADT) but maybe it happened for two.

it feels inevitable that Danny is going to try to kill Ed now lol - also omg that Dino & Ricky needledrop from Rio Bravo for Ed’s arrival on Sojourner was the fucking BEST <3

Yup.

As someone who has liked every episode of this show so far, this is the first one that I completely disliked. Not the acting, not the writing, not the FX, not the characters, not the A/B/C/D stories. Nada. Don't care where any of this goes.

.

Should stress that "don't care where any of this goes" was just my reaction to a lot of these melodramatic sub-plots, like Danny and Karen, or Kelly and the Russian, or Ed and Danny, or all the closeted characters, which all seem more ... conventional TV tropes to me. I'm definitely sticking with the show, though!

You forget to mention the Margo triangle!

yeah, I don't really care about Margo and that Russian either.

basically, I like all the drama about space, the space drama. not the drama in space.

I liked the family stuff about Ed and Karen and Shane in the first season, felt that really got at something. But after and apart from that yeah, it seems to have just become some more generic plot device stuff.

The fiveheaded hippy kid is offputting for reasons I cant put my finger on but its his head/face. I dont know.His hair? Is that a wig cos he looks weird.

lol, yes. and they keep implying he’s a rube for the people wanting to sabotage shit but are doing a slow burn. they’re gonna fuck you, man

I feel like this show is just doing a trope of people who are on the train to success, and the people inadvertently derailing the train, and you’re on one team, the other, or wildcard

Obviously in point of crisis they try to make us think everyone is wild

I feel like they might have one plot point that gets fixed by the kgb this season because ffs you space idiots, kgb just makes it work

Danny hijinks fortunately not enough to derail the show getting its 4th season picked up: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/apple-renews-for-all-mankind-season-4-1235184977/

jfc christ Danny, even Gordo wasnt this much of a screwup

that toy dog sucked tho tbf

i was thinking oh these weirdo friends of jimmys are going to blow the building and pull some kind of oklahoma horrorshow but no they just stole the statue lmao wtf 🙃

however sunny def gives me normcore squeaky fromme vibes

run far far away jimmy

otm

that toy dog sucked tho tbf

yeah that scene went a long way towards humanising Danny

I don't think I got the truthers' plan - steal an access card so that they could vandalise a statue that's not even inside the building? I guess they must have something else going on

yeah you would have to think so?
otherwise it makes zero sense
like if thats all they have to show for it then they are the wet bandits of trutherdom

didn't spot it but apparently one of Ellen's advisors was Karl Rove

Feel like they are somehow grooming Jimmy to do something himself.

xpost we were laughing abt that!
- also he invokes “Lee” ie Atwater at one point too, special easter egg for the neocon hive watching along at home lol

thinking a bit about the faithfulness to our timeline - even after 30 years of divergence, the main non-space storylines are shaping up to be:

- alternate timeline DADT
- alternate timeline Lewinsky
- alternate timeline Oklahoma City

not sure whether to ascribe this more to laziness or to an intentional concept of "even with space, people are more or less the same"

i think they feel like they have to keep ~some~ historical signposts so that it’s less of a heavy lift & just to try to ground the series overall somewhat

it’s a little eyeroll-y and not necessarily effective but it doesn’t bother me too much

This season feels slight by comparison, but still enjoyable for sure, can't wait until a golden-eyed being teleports in to save them all from the crazy dust storm caused by the drilling mishap and take us off in another direction.

Joel Kinnaman's Ed, not the most dynamic of characters seems weirdly enervated this season, like he's half asleep all the time.

Ha, waiting for some bee gun or something too.

Feel like his shtick is to be kind of tightly coiled guy with a short fuse, like Toshire Mifune or Gandolfini as Tony S. Assuming he survives, there's going to be a moment when he has to back away from offing Danny the same way he backed away from doing something else at the end of last season. Not sure why I think this, just a funny feelling I get for some reason.

Why is it that when there are pill-popping, psyche-unraveling drug scenes in tv and movies there's always a bathroom mirror involved? I'd have thought if you were a wretched husk, beholden to oxy or somesuch, the last thing you'd want to do is watch your own emotional breakdown in the mirror.

i said to Mr Veg it’s not just that Danny has become a terrible crewmber but Ed is the worst commander you could have in this situation esp wrt interpersonal crises

chewing danny out in front of everyone for being strung out AND challenging him to a FIGHT in the command room is pretty much peak Ed

HI BOB YOURE DOING GREAT

(of course I’m here for it)

Sorry, Toshiro.

Maybe the placement of “My Rifle, My Pony and Me” signaled that this was going to play out like one of those embittered old man Westerns? Oh wait.

This episode was better than the last one but jesus

Ed: "You are a huge fuck up! You're hopped up on goofballs! You can barely stay awake! You're zoning out all the time! What are you going to do, hit me? You're pathetic! You're a psycho that smashes dogs! OK, one more fuck up from you and I'm locking you up. In the meantime, here, take over the second most important ship duty on the mission."

Also, how the fuck do a couple of crazy galoots steal a giant statue from NASA's front door?!

"You! You three! What the fuck are you doing out there?!!"

"It's ok, we have an ID."

"Oh. In that case, keep removing that big heavy statute. Do you need a hand putting it in the back of your pickup?"

I like this show when it at least skirts some sort of proximate "what if?" realism, but this kind of shit is just stretching it.

OTM x 2

JIC OTM WRT FAM H2O!

Ed: "You are a huge fuck up! You're hopped up on goofballs! You can barely stay awake! You're zoning out all the time! What are you going to do, hit me? You're pathetic! You're a psycho that smashes dogs! OK, one more fuck up from you and I'm locking you up. In the meantime, here, take over the second most important ship duty on the mission."

To be fair, with limited crews and everyone having different skill sets, this is exactly the sort of thing that happens in real life space/deep sea missions.

.

I mean, you can't confine someone to a brig or do without them; you've already slimmed your crew down to the most efficient lowest number possible.

yeah exactly

Maybe but...still seemed like that the Heilos crew was kind of oversized and some of them were missing. Were they sleeping? On the mothership? Tear the roof off the sucker! Can you imagine Dino in your funk? Gamin' on ya!

Also, you haven't addressed the Manson Family statue abduction issue.

Also, couldn't Robot Dog Boy have done what he was doing whist still keeping one eye on the pressure gauge? Hmm I'll just mosey one over to this conveniently distant corner of Phoenix Base and come back in a half hour to see if everything is going swimmingly. It's like William Demarest giving Eddie Bracken a chance to escape in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek: You get me?