Martin Scorsese + Succession + James Bond = For All Mankind Episode 403

For All Mankind is a science fiction show — many of the characters are living on Mars, after all — but it borrows liberally from other genres. After Karen slept with her son’s friend Danny, sometimes in felt like we were in a soap opera. When Ellen Wilson was president last season, For All Mankind felt like it was channeling The West Wing. And there’s always been plenty of family drama.

But eventually, things always looped back around to the space race; how were the scientists at NASA going to beat the scientists in the Soviet Union (and later, at private companies like Helios) to the moon, to Mars and beyond? The newest episode, “The Bear Hug,” might be the first I can remember that has almost no science in its fiction. It makes the episode feel a bit less substantial than usual, like the show is marking time before it gets where it means to go, and considering how carefully For All Mankind usually unfolds over the course of a season, it probably is.

MarsFellas

Let’s start on Mars, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to widen. Blue collar worker Miles Dale (Toby Kebbell) came to Mars in the hopes of making enough money to support his family, but is being crushed by corporate wage theft. And it’s not like he can just quit and go home; he’s millions of miles from any other job. Instead, he turns to Ilya Breshov (Dimiter D. Marinov), a Soviet who runs a black market smuggling ring. Ilya imports whatever people in Happy Valley might need from back home, and Miles can help him take his business to the next level.

We get a walk-and-talk walkthrough on how the smuggling operation works. It reminded me of Martin Scorsese movies like Goodfellas and Casino, where the veteran criminal shows the new blood the ropes. Soon enough, Miles oversteps when he tries to do Ilya a favor by improving the still he uses to make bootleg liquor. The still breaks, and there’s only place they can get the replacement part they need: the North Korean part of the Mars base, which is strictly off limits.

For All Mankind takes place in a parallel universe where the winds of politics blow very differently than they do in our world. Still, it’s weird to think that North Korea is the only nation besides the U.S. and the Soviet Union to have made a spaceship capable of getting to Mars. I wonder if we’ll ever learn the details of this invented history. Anyway, Miles manages to bluff his way into the North Korean base by faking a methane leak. He almost gets out of there with the part he needs, but is stopped by a North Korean officer with a very particularly request: he wants Miles and Ilya to smuggle in…his wife!

How do you transport a human being from Earth to Mars without anyone noticing? I don’t know, but it sounds like the kind of crazy caper that will make for great TV. Or is the show going to drive at making some statement about the amoral way corporations take advantage of workers? Maybe it can do both? I don’t know where Miles’ story is going at this point, but I’ll gladly watch more.

For All Mankind means business

Back on Earth, Aleida (Coral Peña) and Kelly (Cynthy Wu) shop around their new Mars robot program to any company that will hear them, but no one bites. They eventually decide to hit up Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi), the former CEO of Helios who is totally not based on Elon Musk (from back before Musk had a massive public breakdown). Dev has become a bit of a recluse since season 3, and takes some convincing, but after some tough talk from Kelly, he’s ready to get back in the saddle.

Their first move: take back control of Helios by convincing enough shareholders to support reinstating Dev as CEO. They succeed, and Dev marches right into a board meeting to declare that he’s in, everyone else is out, and to get off his plane. It felt to me like a tamer, simpler, more sanitized version of any given scene from HBO’s Succession, a show that has set a very high bar when it comes to turning business deals into compelling TV. For All Mankind can’t quite compete, but as with the stuff with Miles on Mars, this is just a point on the journey to wherever it is we’re going, not the final destination.

My favorite scene from this section is when Aleida goes to visit her old NASA buddy Bill Strausser (Noah Harpster) to get him to support their bid to take over Helios. These two have a long-running bond and it’s good to see that they still have chemistry despite how much has changed in their lives. Bill has become something of a shut-in, painting miniatures and freaking out when Aleida moves one of his toys. It’s sad, but also believable, and hey, if he’s happy, I’m happy. And Aleida verbalizes some of the disorientation she’s been feeling ever since the attack on NASA headquarters at the end of season 3. Since she’s known Bill so long, he’s one of the few people she can confide in about this. It was good for her to get it off her chest and good for us to hear it.

I also liked getting insight into how Aleida feels about Margo’s “death,” which is a bomb you know is going to go off sooner or later. Speaking of Margo…

Margo in hell

The strangest part of the episode involves Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt) getting arrested by Soviet police, grilled, tortured, and finally loaded onto a truck and dropped off at Star City, the Soviet NASA, complete with a job offer from the mysterious Irina Morozova (Svetlana Efremova). After a long, weird break, soon Margo will be back to doing what she does best.

I say this part of the episode was strange because Margo usually has a pretty specific role on the show: she’s in charge, she solves engineering issues, she works the problem. But here, she’s in a state of complete confusion throughout. One minute she’s captured by a group of rebel Soviet officers who have overthrown the government. Then the overthrowers are overthrown. Then both sides come to a deal, but Margo doesn’t know any of this. She’s getting strung up in a dank dark room and probed by mean men with guns for answers she doesn’t have. It’s like the interrogation scenes from a James Bond movie, but Margo Madison is a scientist and administrator, not a secret agent. It’s weird to watch, especially since we’re as in the dark as she when it comes to the bigger picture.

But like I said, it ends with her inching her way back to status quo. I feel that way about the episode in general. Now that Kelly has her funding and Margo her job, we’ll probably get back to scenes of scientists talking in rooms about how to solve engineering problems encountered by the astronauts on Mars, with Miles adding a new layer as he struggles with class warfare on the Red Planet. “Bear Hug” was the show navigating a bit of a bumpy turn, but hopefully the road is clear ahead.

For All Bullet Point-Kind

• Also on Mars, Ed starts a romance with a Soviet officer. It’s nice to see he’s picked up Karen’s pot habit. Also, I liked hearing Wayne’s name mentioned! I hope he’s okay back on Earth. Is it too much to hope that we’ll see him this season?
• So far as I can tell, the title of the episode, “Bear Hug,” refers to a business technique involving a hostile takeover. That’s another thing Succession taught me.

Episode Grade: C+

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