"For All Mankind," Year Three

"For All Mankind" is in the running for the most frustrating series that I am currently watching.  It's an exceptionally engaging science fiction story about an alternate history of the American space program.  At the same time, it's a godawful melodrama that really needs to jettison a few characters who have outstayed their welcome.  Every time the show does something spectacular, it's undercut by the outlandish behavior of the characters and shameless manipulations of the writing.  It's still a fun watch, but I'm disheartened by how the show has gone from prestige television to almost a guilty pleasure over the last two seasons.

Unlike season two, there's a much stronger driver of the plot this year: the race to become the first humans to land on Mars.  The Americans and the Russians both have teams, with a private company, Helios, run by Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi) as a surprise third.  The best part of the season is the first three episodes, where the politics of who gets to lead these missions, and the interesting character dynamics in play are all explored.  For a brief stretch, it feels like Ed Baldwin was being set up as a villain, which would have been so much more interesting than how events actually play out.  I didn't even mind that Karen had been upgraded from the owner of a bar to the owner of a space hotel, in order to keep her in the story.  Kelly and Danny both end up on the crews of different teams, while Danny's brother Jimmy (David Chandler) gets into trouble back on Earth.  As hinted at previously, Ellen is now the first female American president, and Margo remains the head of NASA.  Aleida is now a full-fledged rocket engineer. 

Despite my grumbling over how unrealistic the show is when it comes to its characters, "For All Mankind" is still a hard science-fiction series about scientists and engineers working out the nuts and bolts of space travel.  The science is fairly well-researched, and occasionally the basis for some good episodes, like the premiere where the space hotel's artificial gravity gets out of hand.  The alternate history elements are also pretty solid, if very surface level.  Ellen is facing opposition because the new technologies created by NASA are putting people out of work.  The fight for LGBT rights in the US plays out differently.   The Soviets are still a major rival in this timeline, and Helios is just as much of a headache in its own way, with Dev doing his best impression of a Silicon Valley tech guru.  When it wants to, the show can still do a very good impression of the kind of rousing, romantic Space-Age chronicle that it was in the first season.    

Except, of course, the characters keep making incredibly poor choices to pile on the drama.  There are very few new additions to the cast this time out, so we can focus on characters we already know, who already have years of shared history to draw from.  I like how Margo's relationship with Soviet engineer Sergei Nikulov (Piotr Adamczyk) plays out, and I like Karen as a businesswoman.  On the other hand, Danny not only hasn't gotten over the events of the previous season, but it turns him into a walking disaster in space.  Kelly, Aleida, and Dani are all smart, capable women of color who are positioned to take over parts of the narrative from characters like Ed and Margo, except that the writers never pull the trigger and actually let that happen.  There's a development in the last third of the season involving Kelly that is absolutely ridiculous on its face.  

I continue to like the idea of what "For All Mankind" is more than the actual series.  Despite my still enjoying Joel Kinnaman and Wrenn Schmidt's performances, I'm getting tired of the original cast still being at the center of the show.  I'm ready for new characters and new relationships as we press on inexorably toward the present day.  If we have to have the melodrama, I wish the writers would put more effort toward it, instead of just borrowing random plot points from "Mad Men" and "The Americans."  This season is better than the last, but feels less convincing and more contrived than ever.  I imagine that's only going to grow more apparent as we enter the 21st century.   

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