For All Mankind

Goldilocks Season 4 Episode 5 Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****

For All Mankind

Goldilocks Season 4 Episode 5 Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****

“House Divided” ended with a terrible rift between Dani Poole and Ed Baldwin. Would you believe that “Goldilocks” sees their relationship not just fraying but disintegrating before our very eyes? The thing about decadeslong friendships and collegiality is that shared history is a double-edged sword, creating the conditions for both positives like easy camaraderie and deep mutual understanding and for hideously cruel, zingers-laced, resentment-fueled fights. No points for guessing which way things are headed between these two.

The problem isn’t just the weight of history and unprocessed grief that lie between these veterans of space exploration. “Goldilocks” also concerns itself a great deal with how our memories of the past shape our present behavior and how we navigate the complexities of pursuing professional ambition and meeting family commitments.

Ed has been stymieing Dani for weeks, a walking definition of oppositional defiance, contradicting every word she says and slow-walking her orders, until the Paine Memorial Space Telescope catches sight of an iridium-rich asteroid valued at $20 trillion. Suddenly, the M7 nations have visions of another technological revolution dancing in their heads (though Russia wants everyone to be cool because they’re currently the only reliable providers of iridium), and Happy Valley’s orders are to design and launch a capture plan for Asteroid 2003LC in a ten-week window. Nothing brings people together like a crisis, and 2003LC is a good one — if they fail to capture the asteroid, it would be a damn shame, but nobody is endangered by it. By contrast, creating and executing a successful plan for its capture could benefit everyone. Dani and Ed agree to set aside their silliness (to be clear, it’s Ed’s silliness, but whatever) in order to make it happen and even shake hands to seal the deal.

The good times can’t last forever, of course; Ed is too attached to abusing his authority as XO to resist making little moves that undermine Dani’s authority. It seems like he can’t tolerate not being CO in all but the title, and his latest method of being a snotty little jerk is to appoint himself mission commander and lead pilot. In a training exercise, Palmer notices Ed’s tremors and desperately wishes he hadn’t because now he has to report his boyhood hero for it. There’s no other choice, of course — not reporting it would put all of the asteroid capture team crew members in danger and would be a dereliction of his duty. Myk Watford doesn’t get a ton of screen time, but he makes the most of it here, setting aside Palmer’s usual quasi-chummy gruffness for sincere anguish. Dani is justifiably appalled at this revelation but has no reason not to believe Palmer and sets out to observe Ed herself.

Dani can’t help but reflect on their last big mission together on Mars. Memories of 1996-97 creep into her dreams and intrude on her current thoughts in still moments, reminding her of the camaraderie that marked the first few months after Kelly’s successful departure by rocket and safe labor and delivery. It’s nice to see the Happy Valley team rationing their food supply and maintaining decent morale — they’re playing cards, Ed and Lee (smiling! yay!) are practicing English and Korean together — while Dani visits Danny Stevens monthly to deliver his rations. As the months tick by, though, Dani recalls quietly cutting down her own rations to make sure she has something to take to the North Korean capsule. By this point, everyone at Happy Valley is malnourished and sluggish, while Danny’s mental health is taking a nosedive. His pleas to return to base are heartrending, but there’s nothing for it, and her next visit, to drop off his final rations, is worse: Danny Stevens is dead, sitting up against a rock in his space suit, eyes open, yet seeing nothing. It’s unclear what exactly happened, but the strong implication is that he allowed himself to die of oxygen deprivation.

Each flashback scene ratchets up the anxiety and feelings of impending doom. We know from Avery’s birthday party that Danny’s not around, and it’s clear from Dani and Ed’s argument last week that it’s not because he’s in prison. The dramaturgical inevitability of Danny’s death does nothing to soften its impact. This is the former bright-eyed, ambitious young Annapolis midshipman, the eldest child of moon heroes Gordo and Tracy Stevens, the astronaut who saved so many lives himself in the Polaris space hotel disaster, his life over before he even turned 35.

One of the most affecting and effective aspects of For All Mankind is its insistence on reevaluating the meaning and value of heroism. It’s part and parcel of the series taking place in a slightly different timeline from ours — even if it didn’t incorporate big time jumps each season, asking “what if?” would still be at its core — and I love that there are no easy answers. We can never know what might have been, but the passing of time forces us to wonder, often uncomfortably.

Further uncomfortable revisitation of the past and the radically different ways two people can remember the same incident take us barreling toward Ed and Dani’s second big confrontation. If we thought last week was a brawl, their argument at the end of “Goldilocks” is a two-person riot. Ed is removed from flight duty, pending an evaluation of his tremor by Dr. Mayakovsky, and he responds to this news with all the good grace of an enraged bull.

He spits out accusation after accusation, telling Dani she’s way out of line (for choosing safety over his vanity), that she’s a quitter (for returning to and remaining on Earth once their harrowing first Mars tour finally ended), and that she’s to blame for Danny’s death (for keeping him in solitary confinement, which was the unanimously approved consequence for having nearly killed them all). Dani’s rebuttal is long overdue and full of truths Ed has no capacity to receive and process: For the last 30 years, she’s been forced to endure watching him make wrong, selfish decisions and never learn from their consequences; he should have retired years ago; and, by the way, she’s also relieving him of his XO duties. Good day, sir.

Meanwhile, on Earth, every normal, hardworking person is getting whiplash from having to deal with unwelcome complications inflicted by some of our most capricious and annoying fellow humans. Kelly and Aleida are blindsided by Dev’s abrupt decision to bid farewell to this planet in favor of moving permanently to Mars, while poor Eli Hobson once again suffers the consequences of being too reasonable for his own good. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Kelly and Aleida learn about Dev’s plan nearly by accident. For all that Dev is a man in data-loving STEM, he seems to live and work on pure, uncut impulse. He assumes that Kelly — a single parent to a medically fragile child — will accompany him to Mars at the end of the month to launch her quest to discover life there. Before I get too deep into the weeds of Dev’s character flaws, I’ll say that his callous assumption is rooted in his own past experiences. Once again, we’re treated to a scene where two people remember and interpret the same events very differently, as Dev drops by the local Kenyan Community Center to tell his estranged mother that he’s leaving. In his memory, she abandoned him and his father when he was a kid; in hers, she implored him to leave with her. When Kelly arrives in his office to propose bringing Alex with her to Mars, her obvious love and refusal to leave her child for a year or more win Dev over instantly. She doesn’t see the tears in his eyes and is left to think (not entirely incorrectly) that he’s a weird and self-involved person.

Dev’s impending departure has immediate, disruptive consequences for Aleida too: She’s going to have to branch out from pure engineering and project management to take on legislator-wooing duties. Procrastinating on familiarizing herself with the dossiers on likely allies in Congress is not going to cut the mustard, especially when she learns that she’ll be taking lead negotiation duties at an upcoming emergency M7 summit in Russia.

Yeah, about that: Remember too-reasonable Eli Hobson? President Gore has really put him in a pickle twice over, first by dumping the awful West Wing staffer Ron (Is he somewhere in the Chief-of-Staff hierarchy? A speechwriter? Unclear, but regardless of his title, he’s an officious and ignorant toady who only cares about ensuring a reelection win for President Gore) and then by stating publicly in a prepared speech that he “took the initiative in discovering this asteroid.” For the love of Mike, will no one deliver Eli from this troublesome president?

Probably not. Eli’s subsequent conversation with Irina involves consuming a staggeringly large serving of crow and agreeing to her proposal that the M7 nations negotiate a new agreement regarding the asteroid’s bounty. She reasons that a successful summit “would nullify the hardliners in our Politburo” and, naturally, would love to serve as the event’s gracious hostess. Just a few months ago, Irina urged Margo to be patient, but now that she’s in a position of power, she doesn’t let grass grow under her feet. When Brant from Helios’s Government Relations department calls Aleida to tell her about her upcoming trip — “Get ready and pack warm!” he chirps — we learn that the summit begins the following week.

Finally, we loop back to Asteroid 2003LC and what all of these capture plans may mean for Happy Valley’s worker corps. Ilya’s bar (can we call it Cheers? Do they have Cheers in this timeline?) is abuzz with excitement about sweet, sweet overtime wages and years of steady, remunerative work, but Massey is skeptical. A major iridium mining operation would create many new jobs, but it’ll take time to hire and house those workers. In the meantime, the ten-week timeline is ticking down, and everyone who’s already working will be expected to work nearly around the clock, with minimal training.

Even snagging a plum asteroid capture crew assignment has Massey rattled. All she can think about is how it emphasizes the power gulf between workers and Helios. She turns down Miles’s offer to cut her in on his lucrative red obsidian export side business, saying she can’t walk away from her co-workers. It’s just as well, because Ilya has discovered this little side operation and he is not pleased.

Houston, We Have Some Bullet Points

• Karen Baldwin haunts this episode in a sad but lovely way as Kelly relies on advice and support via an old vidmail. Karen assures her that she’ll be a great mom because “you’re stronger than all of us put together … I keep thinking about how nurturing you’ve always been since the day your father and I met you.” I don’t mind when a show actually earns my tears.

• More tears, because why not? Former NASA administrator and dyed-in-the-wool space romantic Tom Paine died two seasons ago, so the moment where we see the name of the Paine Memorial Space Telescope is a nice way to remind us that he was here and he mattered.

• Dev Ayesa is supposed to remind us a bit of Elon Musk, so naturally he can’t drive a Tesla. Instead, he rolls up to the Kenyan Community Center in a snazzy black McLaren — I believe it’s a 750S. Vroom, vroom, bitches.

For All Mankind Recap: Who’s the Boss?