Like Joel Kinnaman's Ed Baldwin, For All Mankind Season 1 Episode 1, "Red Moon," finds the urgency of moving past frustration and getting down to what's really important: the work. Though the episode spends a lot of its time on leisure, the ideals of family and camaraderie in the face of professional failure, it's in its boundless enthusiasm of pushing on where the episode finds its most potency. Ed's revealing of NASA no longer having the guts that it once possessed is perhaps the most honest statement of the episode. It's perhaps too honest, but he unwittingly sparks that fire, that anger and frustration, that is only felt but not seen beforehand. His comments may hurt him, but it does ignite something more powerful: to prove him wrong, in a sense. The offer to Karen, his wife, to convince Ed of reversing his comments in order to secure his spot on Apollo 15 is a great moral dilemma. Ed's stubborn from what we've seen so far, and so giving up his honor for his future sets up a question of what kind of character he will become from here on out. Taking back his truth would likely be a burden on him. For All Mankind is making a larger point of how this space race is touching lives from all over, how it's a cultural touchstone that ties everyone together. The American push to catch up and exceed will be a difficult one, and Ed may be the very voice needed to exceed. Or perhaps it's in other voices, still silent but ready for a chance, that will rise to the occasion.
