The Astronaut Wives Club Review: Rendezvous (Season 1 Episode 7)

Welp, things haven’t slowed down like I hoped they would. In fact, this week on The Astronaut Wives Club, “Rendezvous” we cover months at a time, including several deaths. Spoiler alert!

Astro wives unite! – The episode opens with some sort of weird class about how to be an astronaut wife. The good news is that the wives all seem to be getting along now (there are more than 30 of them!). The bad news is that the class is super offensive and basically designed to tell the wives that they aren’t allowed to do anything that could ‘distract’ their husbands. You know, annoying stuff like try to talk to them or get pregnant. So, when Marilyn C’s husband dies and NASA handles it really, really poorly, the ladies band together to demand some changes. At first, it’s just a few of our original gals, but the new girls pull through in the end and show up just as NASA is all ‘don’t you ladies need to go make dinner or something?’ Needless to say, NASA agreed to the changes.

The new girls – It seems that since some of our original guys have been grounded we are going to have to get to know some of the new girls. And, honestly, it’s too many people to keep up with. We meet one women who is pregnant but not telling anyone (including her husband), another woman who has an ill child and a missing astronaut, and Marilyn C, who we only get to know through the death of her husband. Way too much, way too fast.

Louise and Trudy to the rescue – So I’m going to focus on the wives I do feel like I know. When Louise and Trudy learn that Harriet (one of the new wives) has an ill child, they first turn to NASA to ask that her husband get more time off. Too bad it isn’t NASA keeping him away from home. So, like we all would do, Louise and Trudy hop in Trudy’s plane to confront him. They find him hiding with a woman (and her child? His child? I don’t know). He has some flimsy excuse about not being able to handle seeing his son in pain, but Trudy and Louise basically rip that apart. I love them. I also love that Trudy is operating an airport at this point.

Marilyn C – Fine, I’ll discuss Marilyn C. for just a minute since her husband did die. When he dies, NASA sends some of the wives over to keep her busy (so she doesn’t hear the news from someone else) until they can get to her. There’s an odd attempt at comedy here as each wife says she’s out of coffee and that’s why she’s stopping by. I couldn’t really handle it, though, since I already knew why they were really there. It was just stressful. I did appreciate that the ladies fought for her to be able to get his personal possessions from his desk. That was a nice moment.

Paris – Speaking of stressful, Gus decides he and Betty should go to Paris since they never got a honeymoon. This is a sweet idea, but it has to be put off once he realizes that Apollo is a ‘lemon’ that he needs to address with NASA. Because I already knew what was going to happen, I could barely handle watching. I really wish more time was dedicated to this.

Time warp – But instead of more time, we get less. The end of the episode fast forwards through several months, showing us a lot, including that all of the Gemini missions happened and now it’s time for Apollo. At this point we are literally speeding through the months and the thing is, I’m just not sure why. It’s pretty odd to me that after only seven episodes things have to go this way.

Gus – We fly right through to testing for Apollo and we learn, rather anti-climatically, that Gus has died in an accident. It is a tragic moment, but it was almost difficult for me to concentrate since we seemed to just be zooming toward this moment. It all felt disjointed and awkward to me.

Louise is rich – The last thing I have to say is that I love that Louise’s dedication to Alan has paid off. Literally. Apparently he bought a bank. Wish I had more information, but this was basically mentioned in passing.

I have to say, this episode left me feeling weird. In the past, emotional moments have been handled well. This time, I barely even reacted. I feel like we just moved through too much, too quickly, and because of that didn’t get to build to anything. I know I said this last week, but I’d really like things to slow down. Please?

What did you think of this week’s episode of The Astronaut Wives Club? Leave us your thoughts in the comments below, and don’t forget to add your own rating.

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The Astronaut Wives Club airs Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC.

Amanda Coyne

Amanda is an associate editor for Tell-Tale TV. She is a writer, teacher, and pop culture enthusiast with a love for 30 Rock and The Mindy Project. She is also the proud mother of two orange cats. Follow @amandarcoyne