For All Mankind Review: The Grey (Season 2 Episode 10)
For All Mankind Season 2 Episode 10, “The Grey”, lives up to the ambiguity in its title — it is, as Karen described life itself in “Triage”, something that’s neither good nor bad, but somewhere in between. Something different. Something new.
It’s an overstuffed finale — clocking in at a whopping 81 minutes — that ties up most of Season 2’s outstanding plot points and clears the deck for new adventures in the series’ third season, “The Grey” deserves praise for actually pulling the many disparate things happening this season into a cohesive whole.
Full of emotional highs and really bizarre lows, as a microcosm for the season writ entire, it is pretty representative of what’s worked and what hasn’t.
The bulk of “The Grey” deals with the fallout from the Soviets’ breach of Jamestown last week, as an imminent nuclear meltdown threatens the lives of everyone on the moon, and the folks back home inch closer to a world war. That any of this works out, narratively speaking, requires some suspension of disbelief, but for the most part, you’ll be pretty content to just enjoy the ride, no matter how out there it gets.
The thing that will stay with me the most, however — and truly I can’t believe I’m about to type this — is the way that For All Mankind brought Gordo Stevens’ arc on the moon full circle, and how richly satisfying every moment he shares with Tracy here is.
Gordo has spent most of the season attempting to shed pounds and inner demons so that he could return to space and face the ghosts he left behind there. Your mileage may vary on how well you think Season 2 handles this — I personally find too much of his story about his unacknowledged tendency to fail upward rather than earn redemption — but there’s no denying that Gordo is a hero here, and more than makes up for every wrong choice he made on his first lunar journey.
Plus, whew, did I not expect to be able to get emotional about duct tape of all things.
The edge-of-your-seat sequence in which Tracy and Gordo fashion space suits from what are essentially household materials and undertake what is essentially a suicide mission on outside the base is beautifully horrifying,
I understand why For All Mankind felt like it made narrative sense for Gordo and Tracy to die together and, to be fair, the gut-punch shift between wild elation — that both somehow miraculously survived the trip outside — and crushing despair at the realization that they were lifeless in each other’s arms was truly something else.
But, as a viewer, I just loved Tracy, and it didn’t entirely feel, for me, like her story was over. This moment felt full circle for Gordo, but Tracy…I don’t know. The tension between her external identity as America’s sweetheart and her internal desire to just be a good astronaut never felt fully resolved. But maybe that’s what tragedy is…unresolved potential.
On the flipside, the threat of international space war is averted not by diplomacy between world leaders or threats of military might, but by the simple decision of an American woman and a Soviet man to do what they went to space to do — to shake hands, to attempt unity. And in doing so, they miraculously manage to bring peace.
It’s the sort of twist that shouldn’t work at all — but does. And maybe it wouldn’t have in a season that had been less about the failures that lead to the various disasters happening at Jamestown base while the world-saving handshake takes place above them.
If mankind hadn’t decided to bring the worst parts of themselves to space with them, if they hadn’t repeatedly chosen fear and violence, and giving in to their inner demons rather than their better angels, maybe this gesture — this moment of fundamental hope for a better future of humanity — wouldn’t have landed so hard. But, reader, I cried, because at the end of the day, I want to believe in a world where this might actually happen.
Stray Thoughts and Observations
- The music selection in this show is once again outstanding in this episode. Absolutely perfect use of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” — from an album that itself delineated one era of music from another — to draw the line between our exploration of the moon and Mars.
- I would truly have loved to see what Gordo and Tracy would have looked like as sort of elder statesman astronauts to the new breed of young astronauts heading to Mars.
- There was so much in this episode that it never could have adequately addressed the fact that one of the major things that prevented nuclear war was a Black woman who decided she was tired of being told to wait her turn by the higher ups that ignored her, but I feel like it’s worth acknowledging here, anyway.
- I was FULLY TERRIFIED that Kelly would somehow discover that her mom had slept with her crush in the fallout shelter. Thank you whoever saved me from that horror.
- Speaking of terrified, the Jamestown hallway sequence in which Tracy watches helplessly as her Marine friend Vance gets killed by Russians felt straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- I wish I were shocked that U.S. military was secretly making nuclear weapons on the moon but I am not.
What did you think of this episode of For All Mankind? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Critic Rating:
User Rating:
Season 2 of For All Mankind is now streaming on AppleTV+.
Follow us on Twitter and on 
Instagram!
Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!
Lacy Baugher
Lacy is a pop culture enthusiast and television critic who loves period dramas, epic fantasy, space adventures, and the female characters everyone says you're supposed to hate. Ninth Doctor enthusiast, Aziraphale girlie, and cat lady, she's a member of the Television Critics Association and Rotten Tomatoes-approved. Find her at LacyMB on all platforms.
3 comments
The only thing bad about Episode 10 is now that I will have to go cold turkey til next season, presumably February. You are absolutely right, it was a stunning finale. I would only add for me, the end of Episode 9, with the Russians shooting the hab to cause explosive decompression, was a shocking, masterful stroke of screenwriting, and I think of it as the start of the finale. Just for grins, I will throw in what I think is a “science mistake” in the Episode. Towards the end, when Ed shoots down Seadragon, we subsequently see pieces of it crash to the lunar surface. But there was no retro force applied to Seadragon that I could see, so it seems like the debris should have stayed in lunar orbit. If someone can explain it differently, I am all ears. But this exception just proves how magnificent the show is in almost every technical aspect. Speaking of which, if someone knows how the tech special effects make the zero gravity scenes so realistic, I’d love to know.
I think the force applied by Ed blowing up Sea Dragon caused some pieces to be sent hurtling towards the Moon, simple as that.
I loved the first season and this one picked up the pace towards the end and the final couple of episodes were excellent.
But the pacing left a lot to be desired with too many episodes just spinning their wheels due to a lot of extraneous soap opera type scenes which didn’t add much to the plot and suddenly put a brake on the momentum.
Basically this could have been compressed to six or seven episodes without losing much and still providing fantastic entertainment.
Comments are closed.