Holy hell! Great end of the episode! I'm dying for the season finale next week! I just love this show! Season 2 definitely has a much different tone than season 1 (in many ways), but I still love it. Dying to see last episode, but then will be sad because will have to wait until get a Season 3 (fingers crossed!)
12 Reviews
Stunning! Can't wait for the finale!
adiaz77717 April 2021
Warning: Spoilers
The Baldwins are on the rocks, Pathfinder and Apollo 75 fly into danger, the Stevenses are rekindling, and the Cold War's gone hot--on earth and the moon. The creators have raised the stakes of the finale to historic.
Incredible episode
scottsideasare19 April 2021
WOW!
iamitsk17 April 2021
I stuck with this show in the first season because of my love for all things space. The first was average in my opinion, but THIS oh man I have been loving the tone of the second season a lot better. The fantasy elements they've written into our history is getting very interesting now.
Sets up the finale perfectly
ofckingb17 April 2021
Oh my God that ending.... I still think this could've been integrated into episode 8...season 2 has bits that could've been cut in my opinion. The opportunity for a more intense editing was there. But still. Love this show. Can't wait for the season finale.
Now that's how you do a cliffhanger ending!!!
terrylarosa17 April 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Both my wife and I were stunned when we saw that final shot. What suspense and it could end in so many ways; most likely none that are good. The drama between a multitude of characters is as always intense, emotional and superbly acted. And what a great myriad of characters this show has. On top of that we're treated with 3 great launches. One from the ground, one from the sky and the jaw dropping one from beneath the ocean at night. Once again Ed is in Space with horrible news hanging over him. Will he ever get a break? Practically every episode is like a mini movie. Hope the Season finale is as pulse pounding as the first one.
On the dark side of the moon ...
bosporan23 May 2022
Superb penultimate edition sets things up nicely for the finale. Lots of interpersonal issues come to a head, but the overarching theme is the rise in tension between the two superpowers. How will the Russians react, can the handshake go ahead and will this escalate to war in space?
Excellent tension building with various setback and gains with a superb cliff-hanger ending - bring on the finale!
Excellent tension building with various setback and gains with a superb cliff-hanger ending - bring on the finale!
Best episode in a long while
tswiftma-5842314 May 2021
First episode out of many that I didn't have to fast forward through long boring soap opera side plots. I have a serious love hate relationship with this show. It has unbelievably great special effects, good characters and great inspiring plots related to the action. But many episodes are dragged down by politically correct soap opera sub plots. If this show was edited down to 45 minutes per episode of the good stuff it would rank as one of the best sci fi dramas of all time.
Dark side and light side
moviesfilmsreviewsinc12 August 2022
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. 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. 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. 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 . 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. 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.
Much better then the last, but things had to be resolved
stiansmerud19 April 2021
The soap opera plot/plots from the two last episodes had to have consequences of course and needed to resolved, and I'm glad they did not use to much time on that this time. The show is still great, but all critique of things going forward to fast is a result of the soap opera plot. If the soap opera plot had been dropped we could had more time with the tension on the moon.
Right now the episode feels like and 8, but I will give it a 7 because of subplots that I honestly skipped.
To be clear, when i say soap opera I mean soap opera, not the medical thing and sight thing that was great and sad. I'm thinking of "you know who" not being able to resolve their mistakes or issue.
Right now the episode feels like and 8, but I will give it a 7 because of subplots that I honestly skipped.
To be clear, when i say soap opera I mean soap opera, not the medical thing and sight thing that was great and sad. I'm thinking of "you know who" not being able to resolve their mistakes or issue.
Better, but still room for improvement
plossl-120 April 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Per the rating system I used on the previous episode, this one gets 6 stars for about 60% original premise content, and about 40% soap. I might have been a bit more generous if the Sea Dragon launch they finally gave us had blown me off the sofa. Instead we got an Estes 1/2A model rocket. Seriously, as the rocket was rising from the ocean, I initially thought it was just the escape tower. It turned out to be the whole rocket. After waiting all this season for the payoff on season 1's tease, we get a squib. Hang on for a minute while I go re-watch a Starship test flight... ok, I'm better now.
My predictions about "Here's To You" are mixed, but they weren't predictions so much as worst case scenarios.
1. Danny did not participate in this episode. Ed is safely aboard Pathfinder, and Karen is smoking in the backyard rethinking her life. But Danny is still out there somewhere. This could come back to life like Christopher Reeve in "Death Trap".
2. I hadn't considered Karen telling Ed about her dalliance BEFORE the Pathfinder flight. We almost hit the fast forward button when Ed and Karen were arguing in the driveway. My wife gritted her teeth and waved me off the remote. Pathfinder is rerouted to the moon, and its missiles probably can't reach the Baldwin backyard past trans-lunar injection. But Ed is distracted, and the stakes couldn't be higher. Can he maintain focus? Can the writers?
3. The rabbit is still sitting inside a box waiting for a cesium atom to decay. Karen did mention "not feeling right" while arguing with Ed. It could be more than just a guilty conscience.
4. It turns out that an airlock at 1/6th g makes an adequate love nest. Clearly this melodrama is going to continue. Gordo and Tracey's indiscretion could lead to a technical plot thread of dealing with a low-g pregnancy. If so, I hope they keep the scandal aspect to a minimum and stick to the medical details. Better would be if the whole romance gets put on the back burner now that the Soviet's have opened fire on Jamestown.
New thread: Ellen now has a chance to weigh the burden of maintaining a show marriage against any political ambition she may have. I didn't realize she had any. Perhaps the writers will give her the hidden desire she always had to run for office so she can reveal it next week.
The good outweighed the bad this outing. The wounded Soviet astronaut wants to defect. I did NOT see that coming. Apollo/Soyuz is still on and the US commander quoted James T. Kirk in an amazingly relevant, poignant, and satisfying way for a lifelong Trekkie who watched the original series as it aired the first time. The Soviets have retaliated on Jamestown base as armed Soviet and American shuttles are heading for lunar orbit.
There's plenty of story here without adding plots about family stress that are irrelevant to the basic premise of the show. Ultimately a story about characters and their interactions with each other. But this show's premise is about how those characters participate in a grand story of technological goals and global politics. All plot threads should be evaluated through this filter. For examples of this done well, see "Apollo 13", "The Right Stuff" (1983), or Tom Hanks's "From The Earth To The Moon".
When "For All Mankind" is good, it is very good. But when it flounders in the suds, it's awful.
My predictions about "Here's To You" are mixed, but they weren't predictions so much as worst case scenarios.
1. Danny did not participate in this episode. Ed is safely aboard Pathfinder, and Karen is smoking in the backyard rethinking her life. But Danny is still out there somewhere. This could come back to life like Christopher Reeve in "Death Trap".
2. I hadn't considered Karen telling Ed about her dalliance BEFORE the Pathfinder flight. We almost hit the fast forward button when Ed and Karen were arguing in the driveway. My wife gritted her teeth and waved me off the remote. Pathfinder is rerouted to the moon, and its missiles probably can't reach the Baldwin backyard past trans-lunar injection. But Ed is distracted, and the stakes couldn't be higher. Can he maintain focus? Can the writers?
3. The rabbit is still sitting inside a box waiting for a cesium atom to decay. Karen did mention "not feeling right" while arguing with Ed. It could be more than just a guilty conscience.
4. It turns out that an airlock at 1/6th g makes an adequate love nest. Clearly this melodrama is going to continue. Gordo and Tracey's indiscretion could lead to a technical plot thread of dealing with a low-g pregnancy. If so, I hope they keep the scandal aspect to a minimum and stick to the medical details. Better would be if the whole romance gets put on the back burner now that the Soviet's have opened fire on Jamestown.
New thread: Ellen now has a chance to weigh the burden of maintaining a show marriage against any political ambition she may have. I didn't realize she had any. Perhaps the writers will give her the hidden desire she always had to run for office so she can reveal it next week.
The good outweighed the bad this outing. The wounded Soviet astronaut wants to defect. I did NOT see that coming. Apollo/Soyuz is still on and the US commander quoted James T. Kirk in an amazingly relevant, poignant, and satisfying way for a lifelong Trekkie who watched the original series as it aired the first time. The Soviets have retaliated on Jamestown base as armed Soviet and American shuttles are heading for lunar orbit.
There's plenty of story here without adding plots about family stress that are irrelevant to the basic premise of the show. Ultimately a story about characters and their interactions with each other. But this show's premise is about how those characters participate in a grand story of technological goals and global politics. All plot threads should be evaluated through this filter. For examples of this done well, see "Apollo 13", "The Right Stuff" (1983), or Tom Hanks's "From The Earth To The Moon".
When "For All Mankind" is good, it is very good. But when it flounders in the suds, it's awful.
Just no
JuuBBe17 April 2021
Biggest twist of the season happens because Russians and Americans cannot speak to each other simple English. Then they meet again and there is no problem in communication with much harder vocabulary.
For me the season has been a big dissapointment. I truly enjoyed the first season.
For me the season has been a big dissapointment. I truly enjoyed the first season.
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