For All Mankind Season 3 Episode 7 Review: Bring It Down
If the bulk of this season hasn’t already sort of predisposed you to hate Danny Stevens, For All Mankind Season 3 Episode 7, “Bring It Down,” will probably be your final straw.
I mean, he beats the crap out of an adorable robot dog for no reason, purposefully shuts off the comms with the Helios/Soviet drilling mission while out of his mind on stolen pharmaceuticals, and helps cause an explosion that injures several people.
Oh, and he maybe also helped cause a Marsquake? (I”m not too clear on this part, but it feels extremely possible and I’m mad at him so he’s getting the blame.
Maybe I’m being too hard on Danny, but at some point, his choices (and the consequences thereof) have to be his own. His obsession with Karen has essentially become stalking at this point since she’s made it repeatedly clear that what happened between them more than a decade ago was a mistake she doesn’t care to repeat. (And even if she did, that wouldn’t excuse the gross way he’s been hacking into her and Ed’s messages.)
So much of this season is about the long-range fallout of the choices we make—Gordo and Tracy’s choice to save the Jamestown base and sacrifice themselves in the process continues to reverberate through the lives of their children, neither of whom seems ot have managed to make anything like peace with the void their deaths left in their lives.
But Danny is a grown man with a wife and a child of his own, who is consciously choosing to steal drugs, spy on his superior officer, and work in a condition that puts his teammates at risk literally millions of miles from home. At what point are we supposed to expect him to be responsible for his actions?
What I’m saying is: Yes, Ed’s verbal smackdown of Danny was perhaps a bit too heavy on the machismo, chest beating type vibes. But just because he handled that confrontation poorly doesn’t make him—or any of the things he said—wrong.
I mean…if someone dies as a result of that disastrous mining mission, I don’t know how it’s possible for it to not be his fault.
As it turns out, Danny’s not the only Stevens that’s struggling (or turning into a monster, depending on how charitable you’re feeling at various points during the episode.) Back on Earth, Jimmy’s obsession with a group of NASA conspiracy theorists is becoming increasingly disturbing, even if I don’t think he entirely believes their wacko ideas about how his parents died.
Or, at least, I hope he doesn’t. I mean, it seems clear that Jimmy would probably be willing to believe anything if he felt like it might give him closure—a reason for what happened to his family, an explanation for why he feels the way he feels, something, anyone to blame.
There’s something heartrendingly sad about Jimmy’s obvious desire to have someone, anyone in his life who sees him first as himself, and not Gordo and Tracy Stevens’s son. He’s a junkie as much as his brother is, but rather than oxycontin, Jimmy’s hit of choice is approval and acceptance. And he’ll take it from anyone, in any form.
The thing is, it seems natural in many ways that he wants a pack of his own—after all, his brother has literally followed in their parents’ footsteps and the circumstances of Tracy and Gordo”s deaths—and the evolution of those deaths into a national myth that doesn’t necessarily reflect the truth of either their lives or the truth of how they died—means that even they don’t necessarily “count” as his anymore.
But his desperation to claim someone, anyone as strictly his own, has led Jimmy to hook up with the absolute worst people. (Sunny is a monster is what I’m saying. Tracy would never approve.)
Elsewhere in a weird flip of the sexual scandals that plagued the Clinton Administration in our reality, in the world of For All Mankind, Ellen’s presidency teeters on the brink thanks to Larry’s new boyfriend’s big mouth.
Look, I don’t believe anyone should have to live in the closet. We all deserve to be able to live as our true selves, and Ellen’s Uniforms First policy is as dumb and discriminatory as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell ever was. But I just…I’m having a hard time suspending my disbelief at some of the behavior that’s happening from both sides of the First Couple here.
Rightly or wrongly, this is a life they chose. Not just chose, chased for the better part of a decade. I have a really hard time swallowing that neither of them thought about any of this—what living a closeted life as the most powerful people in the world might mean—prior to this moment.
Stray Thoughts and Observations:
- Larry lying to Congress will surely end well!
- So, I guess Kelly is 100% gonna find life on Mars after this?
- The scene where Margo and Sergei said goodbye to one another was heartbreaking all around—but nothing so much as that shot of Margo screaming helplessly into a pillow, forced to muffle her feelings and desires once more, even as she denies herself the thing she wants most.
- I’m sorry, I don’t believe Ellen Wright is dumb enough to not only have a fight with her husband about their respective sexualities in the middle of the Oval Office where she knows everything is recorded?
- Not only that, I just…the idea that Ellen would truly drop everything to run to see Pam. (She’s the President guys!!).
What did you think of this episode of For All Mankind? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Critic Rating:
User Rating:
New episodes of For All Mankind stream Fridays on Apple TV+.
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.