For All Mankind Review: Triage (Season 2 Episode 9)
Things escalate from bad to worse on For All Mankind Season 2 Episode 9, “Triage”, as the Jamestown astronauts try to save the one still-living cosmonaut shot at the mining site while Margo, Ellen, and the rest of the NASA crew try to prevent the U.S. and the U.S.S.R from going to war over what took place on the moon.
Meanwhile, bigger dangers lurk in the distance as Ed’s Pathfinder launch is moved up so that an armed shuttle can be present (if need be) to face off against a Soviet shuttle, which intel reports confirm is also now armed. (And possibly plotting to shoot down the Sea Dragon resupply ship.)
Oh, and did I mention that the episode ends with Russians — who have themselves gotten guns from somewhere — breaking into Jamestown, and clearly intent on doing Very Bad Things.
In short: Everything is a huge mess. Sending guns to the moon was such a mistake, y’all. Hashtag vindication for me, I guess.
The thing is, this all feels so inevitable. Like, is anyone surprised? Even though this is an alternate historical reality there’s just no way that this could have ever ended any other way once the American government decided to put weapons in space.
The only reason it probably took as long as it did was so the big American/USSR face-off could happen in the finale.
To be fair, it’s thrilling television. Most of these characters are fairly second-tier, so it feels like literally anything could happen at this point and all lives are genuinely at risk. (And since I don’t know that the show knows what to do with either Gordo or Tracy anymore these days anyway, there’s no guarantee they’re safe either, IMO.)
For All Mankind rightly doesn’t pull any punches about what a huge screw up this has all been on the part of the Americans, and the anger of the Russian cosmonauts as well as Helen’s guilt over her involvement in taking a man’s life is properly given space to breathe. (I was nervous the U.S. troops would try to justify their actions instead of admitting how wrong it all went, but that didn’t happen and I’m so glad.)
Back on Earth, Karen decides to come clean with Ed about her infidelity, though thankfully she doesn’t tell him that it was their friend’s college-age son. There’s a certain rushed quality to it all — I’m not sure if Karen ultimately decides to tell the truth because Ed bullies her into it or because she couldn’t risk him going to space to die with it on her conscience.
She admits that she’s not sure whether she wants to stay in their marriage, and though I suspect Ed’s subsequent bender and near-hookup with a random Outpost patron before he realizes he can’t go through within is meant to make us feel sympathetic toward him, it doesn’t entirely work for me.
Basically, because I’m not sure I should be rooting for Karen to stay in her marriage. Though For All Mankind has always been clear that Ed and Karen do love one another, it’s also been equally clear that they aren’t always good for one another. We’ve repeatedly seen Karen make herself smaller or contort her own desires into uncomfortable shapes in order to mesh with those of the man she married, and Ed’s never seemed to notice, let alone recognize that fact.
Speaking of people in relationships that need to get out of them, Ellen’s have-it-both ways situation of getting a relationship with Pam and a Senate-confirmable job at NASA falls apart when Lee Atwater shows up to convince her husband that Ellen should run for Congress. Pam overhears all this and realizes there’s no place in the Republican party for an out Ellen with a girlfriend and leaves her a note saying she’s gone back to the girlfriend we met a few episodes ago.
This is all very neat and convenient, but there’s some part of me that’s more than a little annoyed that For All Mankind gave Ellen such an easy out, one in which she herself had to make no hard choices or decide what it was she really wanted. (I get that it was meant to be a kindness on Pam’s part, and I think that’s a big deal for her character, but I think forcing Ellen to choose would have made for better TV.)
For what it’s worth, I think Ellen would have picked running NASA over an out life with Pam, and I lament not seeing the character work that would have come from her being forced to make an explicit choice in the matter.
Stray Thoughts and Observations
- I think Tracy and Gordo maybe decided to get back together or at least decided to hook up and I am not even given any time to process this because now they have to hide for their lives? Seriously, show??
- The Molly subplot should have all been moved back an episode or two. (We had some dead weight in the middle of the season, let’s be real.) Because while I know I should be moved by her growth and acceptance of her illness, there’s just too much other stuff going on here for me to care about this as much as I should.
- I don’t think I’ve mentioned how much I love that For All Mankind may not have made Sally Ride the first woman in space but they have made her exceptional and awesome on her own terms here.
- The whole Sea Dragon thing really is such a cool concept.
- We’re definitely headed to some kind of uncomfortable Margo vs. Ellen fight in the finale, aren’t we?
What did you think of this episode of For All Mankind? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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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.
5 comments
The IQ of the series just dropped by 100 points. If it was an app, I’d delete it.
So I guess you were OK with the Soviets stealing the American lithium mining operation, huh? That’s the reason weapons were introduced to the moon in the first place.
I’m going to leave the other issues, like Karen’s asshole move in dumping on Ed just when he’s taking off on a mission that might end up as a trigger for WW3, or Larry NOT disclosing that Lee Atwater is head-hunting Ellen for the GOPs first female President. The other thing that’s ringing bells is this is NOT our timeline: Jimmy Carter was never a President who ended US control of the Panama Canal, hence it is still very much a US strategic asset that the Soviets can threaten with a potential blockade, a flashpoint that WE didn’t have to deal with. The larger question- the 1990s are moving into view. Does the Berlin Wall come down? Does the Soviet Union break up? I’m betting on NOT in this timeline. There were a lot of reasons for the collapse of the Eastern block, but I’ve often wondered if their failure to even put a man on the moon at all might have been such a telling blow to their morale, that the economic and social issues assumed a much greater influence. Forget the mushy personal stuff, this is BIG history in the making: if there’s still the Soviet Union on 9/11/2001, does anything happen to the WTC?
Why the loss of pressure at the station at the end of the episode looked like it was happening on a passenger airliner flying at high altitude? why all that suction and objects flying all over the place? fell completely wrong to me.
Marcelo — I’m not sure of the physics of it, but there is near zero atmosphere, or atmospheric pressure on the moon. So I imagine a bullet sized hole could indeed cause explosive decompression as the inside and outside of the habitat gases try to equalize. Whether it would be as forceful/dramatic as depicted, I have no idea. After all, this is Hollywood. ;<]
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