For All Mankind: Legacy

December 28, 2023 8:31 PM - Season 4, Episode 8

Plans are made with interplanetary ramifications. Ed begins working with an unexpected partner.

Dani diverts resources to base security. Sergei takes a break from routine. Kelly travels to another polar region to do science. Margo enjoys hotel food. Aleida notes some uncertainties in the orbital calculations.

Dev gives Miles some investing advice; Dev gives Ed some parenting advice; Dev gives Dani some staffing advice. Sam needs a diversion.

posted by cardboard (30 comments total)

my brain: wait that's stupid how could margo have slipped her handlers long enough to—
also my brain: sshhh shh shhh shhhh don't think about things enjoy the space show just watch the space show
my brain: but the discriminator macguffin, that's ridic—
also my brain: shhhhhh quiet quiet quiet you worry too much it's a space heist don't think too hard
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:32 PM on December 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

my brain: oh my god ed is the worst
also my brain: yes.
my brain: miles isn't the new danny, ed is the new danny
also my brain: 🌍👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:32 PM on December 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

Grandpa of the Martian Year!
posted by Nelson at 9:52 PM on December 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving this season... SO much better than the last... but this one had me shaking my head a few times.

- Margo can just go to a restaurant as long as she waits until 10 PM? That's the big covert plan? Her Russian and American handlers should both be fired.

- I did appreciate Sergei filling in all of the details for Aleida. And I'm glad he was trying to warn Margo rather than rekindle the impossible love affair. Margo should know damn well that Irina is KGB by now though.

- Can Margo double-defect?

- Dev talks everyone into his plan without anyone saying "Um, if we're caught, won't we be convicted of the highest-value felony in all of Earth history and possibly executed for treason?" I feel like Miles would do it anyway but I thought Sam had standards.

- Ed is indeed the worst and for a moment I thought they were going to go REALLY dark with an injured (or worse) Alex found in the secure area. They had me almost liking Ed again until his harebrained child-endangerment scheme.

- I guess Ed just abandoned Ilya and became loyal to whoever is making the moonshine today? The worst.

- Theory: Danny didn't die, he left his body and took over Ed.

- Prediction: It looks like Kelly made it to Korolev without incident but I don't think they'd build that (virtual?) set for one little scene. So I'm going to guess that Dev's crazy plan ends up plunging the asteroid straight toward Kelly's team.
posted by mmoncur at 12:16 AM on December 29, 2023

MILES LOST HIS BAR HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. "Please submit a direct complaint to your direct supervisor, worm." LOLOLOLOL.

Kelly is clearly desperate for a babysitter.
"Sink or swim, remember?"
"Oh, that was TERRIBLE advice."

"Stop blowing smoke and speak normal, dude."

OH NO YOU DIDN'T THINK TO ENLIST YOUR SEVEN YEAR OLD GRANDSON IN YOUR DAMN HEIST KELLY WILL KILL YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. I died laughing, seriously. And yet that smile on little Alex's face? It was cute. As was "you look like a bear."

On a related note, if you read any interviews with Joel Kinnaman lately, they involve a lot of grumbling about (a) taking 6 hours for the makeup job and (b) he's annoyed at how Ed is about his family.

Oh, I have missed you, Sergei. Being a high school teacher in Iowa is...being a high school teacher in Iowa. And him telling Aleida what truly happened? Awwwww. I just wish Aleida had said something after, but of course she fucking doesn't.

How would Margo not go back to the Soviet Union? I assume they'll force her? (And yes, can one "double defect?")
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:55 AM on December 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm totally here for Ed Baldwin, Space Pappaw.
posted by HillbillyInBC at 6:40 AM on December 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I presume we'll get back to Ilya somehow. He's Chekov's smuggled gun.

Can't wait for the upcoming hijinx of Alex and Pappaw

• Pappaw needs his seedlings warmed, can little Alex bring them to the reactor core?
• Alex feels lonely because Pappaw ignores him. So he hatches a plan to get attention. It's easy to get oxygen and a spark but Alex needs a little magnesium...
• Pappaw left his favorite jacket in the old hab module but there's no suits available to get there. Alex, you're fast, you can make it in 15 seconds! Here's some duct tape.

posted by Nelson at 8:06 AM on December 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

Dev talks everyone into his plan without anyone saying "Um, if we're caught, won't we be convicted of the highest-value felony in all of Earth history and possibly executed for treason?"

Yeah Earth history. This is Mars! Who even has jurisdiction?
posted by chrchr at 1:08 PM on December 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Yeah Earth history. This is Mars! Who even has jurisdiction?

If "The Martian" is right, it's all under maritime law? So they're committing space piracy, I assume.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:23 PM on December 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Sergei!!! In so glad to see you.
posted by willF at 6:50 PM on December 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

How would Margo not go back to the Soviet Union? I assume they'll force her? (And yes, can one "double defect?")

I mean, she would technically be on treason charges given she literally abetted and aided the USSR. Even if they waived the constitutional punishment of a hanging, that's presumably a life sentence. She'd need a Presidential pardon, and in the next 24 hours it may not matter much if the theft causes WW3. Like maybe the best case scenario is the economic loss here so damages the USSR that it falls and she disappears to a non-aligned country for the rest of her short remaining life.

Wildcard: after the failure of the capture program, she is safe nowhere on earth and defects to Mars. Maybe that Korean wife sits on the seat across from her. Or luggage compartment or wherever you smuggle whole people into Mars.
posted by pwnguin at 7:01 PM on December 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Margo waking up and getting dressed on Mars" would certainly fit the show's pattern for the beginning of next season...
posted by mmoncur at 7:13 PM on December 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Dev talks everyone into his plan without anyone saying "Um, if we're caught, won't we be convicted of the highest-value felony in all of Earth history and possibly executed for treason?"

Haven't watched this episode yet (well, I got to the part where Dev laid out his horseshit plan but had to turn it off to do something else right after), but we are already waaaaaaaaaaaay past the point where in real life Helios would have been forcibly nationalized at the request of the DoD, and all kinds of people on Mars would have faced a firing squad long before they got anywhere close to the actual treason they are planning now. Even if the Americans wanted an actual trail before the firing squads (for due process and all that), some of the other countries up there would be killing the fuck out everyone standing in the way. There would likely already be a nuclear shooting war between some/all of the members of the M-7

But I bet "treason" isn't even the worse thing they are going to be accused of. I'm going to call it now: Dev and his band of chuckleheads fuck up their calculations somehow, and instead of a stable orbit around Mars they send it on course to land in the Gulf of Mexico or something. Margo and Aleida then put aside their differences to come together to single-handedly (since that's the theme of this show) figure out a way to get the asteroid to miss Earth, thereby saving humankind from extinction. The rest of the crew gets jailed pending a trail for their 8 billion charges of negligent attempted murder, but Dev sanctimoniously walks out the airlock himself saying something like "Now I'm a true Martian."
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 7:44 PM on December 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I just have to quote this bit from the Joel Kinnaman interview that jenfullmoon linked above:

Ed's been unlucky enough to come in second so many times in this show. What would you like to see Ed do first before his time's up on the show?

Joel Kinnaman: I don't know. Take care of his g--damn daughter.

posted by mmoncur at 8:55 PM on December 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

Uh-oh, polonium!

(Vis-a-vis what Margo could expect upon a second defection)
posted by sixswitch at 9:01 PM on December 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

okay, screw it, this isn't a prediction because the show is all about shock twists that mess up predictions,¹ but the fun not-a-prediction thing that i'd really like to see is margo smuggling herself across the border to mexico. that weird "coalition of communist countries for spaceflight" thing that mexico is in also contains titoist yugoslavia as a leading member, which implies that the cccs is in fact independent from the soviets and may be v. v. interested in picking up a highly experienced top-flight rocket engineer who happens to be intimately familiar with the operations of both of the two largest nation-state space programs.

the really delightful thing about this would be that, sure, margo's storyline echoes wernher von braun's, but also shock twist! it's actually kinda aleida's in reverse.²

1: also it's about blisteringly stupid soap opera plots that nevertheless end up being occasionally super interesting despite/because of their soap operaicity, because after all this is a ron moore joint.
2: also i wanna see margo and sergei chilling on a beach in mexico, maybe watching the cccs launch their cutting-edge high-tech nuclear-powered space yugo from their oaxacan spaceport
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:33 AM on December 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

oh no everything's going wrong with the launch every alarm at mission control is blaring all the lights on all the consoles are flashing angry colors everyone is panicking all hope is lost — but then! — the scrappy young woman off in the corner who's been frantically flipping through technical manuals shouts:

put it in h!!!
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:51 AM on December 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

"...put it in h!!!"

Sounds like an SCE to AUX moment. Love it!
posted by ewan at 11:36 AM on December 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

"what country is this rocket from?"

"ehhh it no longer exists in your timeline"
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:34 PM on December 30, 2023

Stupid prediction - they get the asteroid into Mars orbit and the Soviets nuke it there to avoid their iridium monopoly being wiped out. It seems to me they would only go along with a capture mission in order to sabotage it at some point?
posted by boogieboy at 3:24 AM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

i kinda want to tally up the potential chekov's guns sitting around at this point in the season, since 1: ron moore's whole deal is to set up a whole bunch of chekov's guns and then fire them all in the last three episodes, 2: pretty much none of them got fired last episode, 3: the writing for this show is so what i'm going to politely call uneven that sometimes it's hard to tell what's a chekov's gun and what's bad writing:

• the super leet russian pilot who got shipped to india for punching a hardline tankie
• the soviet hardliners' coup against gorbachev in general
• miracle asteroid or killer asteroid?!/1!?!?!?!?
• kelly's lifelong search for a godawful small affair
• formerly super leet pilot ed baldwin's shaky hands
• cia kgb wtf
• literally everything related to north korea
• miles. miles miles miles what do you think you're doing how do you think you're smart enough to run a crime ring you do realize there's a lot of kgb cia wtf around, a whole lot of kgb cia wtf
• what's in the basement, huh? cause there sure is a lot of basement down there that no one's allowed to see
• "non-lethal" mars guns
• fancy red rocks from mars: what's up with that?
• literally every piece of background geopolitics. i'm obsessed with that cccs oddity but in general the only mention of the governance of happy valley outside of the big 2 was when whatshisname mcchryslerguy remembered india exists
• what is iridium used for what is iridium used for tell me your plans for this iridium, show because until you do it just seems like you're just nodding toward the thing that killed the dinosaurs (see bullet point above re: miracle asteroid or killer asteroid)

additionally, we have had no closure on whether or not they ate danny and i demand closure, i demand closure goddammit.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:07 AM on December 31, 2023 [9 favorites]

kelly's lifelong search for a godawful small affair

If the asteroid does hit Mars, it 100% lands in kelley's crater, destroying any evidence of life on Mars she may have just discovered. Possibly because the CIA/KGB spies fuck up the heist. And then Ed Baldwin will have to tell his own grandson that he has now been squarely involved in the death of both his parents.

Of course, I'm kidding. Ed Baldwin would never own up to making a mistake; he'll lie to his only surviving heir.
posted by pwnguin at 12:55 PM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

oh additionally just because i haven't seen anyone talking about it: i think there were at least one or two shots of that one student in sergei's class who was actually engaged with the material that made it seem like they're introducing a new character who we'll see in later seasons. like am i the only one who got that impression?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:18 PM on December 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

Oh, I have missed you, Sergei. Being a high school teacher in Iowa is...being a high school teacher in Iowa.

If you manage to get a key Soviet scientist to defect, don’t you, you know… use them for their genius? What’s the point of leaving Sergei to languish in a suburban high school? How did this actually shake out in our timeline?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:57 AM on January 2 [3 favorites]

I suspect the Americans extracted everything Sergei knew in the first six months, then had no idea what to do with him. No way would they trust him near the actual rocket program.

It's not that different from what happened to Margo; she didn't even have students to teach. She seemingly was doing nothing for years until Natasha Fatale Irina came along and tortured Margo so that she'd want to work for Роскосмос. Except Margo was already very eager to work for on Soviet space program, still unclear why we needed a whole episode of Margo being brutalized.
posted by Nelson at 7:34 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]

I was so distracted by Sergei living in California Iowa, but it was wonderful to see him again and....his wife? Welp, I assume he's not going to be a jerk and leave his wife for Margo because that's not the type of person Sergei is. He's a NICE GUY. Or was. Maybe they'll make his wife an actual CIA plant to monitor him and it will be revealed when she shows up to rein him in and the love wasn't real at all. Just a job.

Calling it now: Ed Baldwin sacrifices himself to stop the asteroid from A) blowing up Kelly or B) blowing up the Earth. Or not. But shaky hands astronaut who's grounded doesn't usually fade into obscurity.

I expect the Soviets would be okay with the asteroid at Mars if only because it'd take years to build the infrastructure to mine the lithium and bring it to Earth, so their prices remain pretty stable. Even better, they refuse to commit their own funds to do so to slow down the process, and it just ends up making Mars a local supplier and becoming some cold barren techno utopia or something. Who knows.
posted by Atreides at 8:30 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]

formerly super leet pilot ed baldwin's shaky hands

To be fair, these took Ed off pilot duty and all that spare time led to his for once paying attention to worker conditions with the new contracts and from there to sticky-beaking into the proto-union activites. Not so much a gun as a gun-holder.

miracle asteroid or killer asteroid?!/1!?!?!?!?

I think it's too small to be a killer asteroid according to some webpage I googled weeks ago. I wouldn't want it to land on me, but it's not fimbulwinter material.
posted by Sparx at 1:45 PM on January 2 [2 favorites]

That's probably right. I guess it's headed for Kelly then...
posted by mmoncur at 12:32 AM on January 3

I was so distracted by Sergei living in California

Heh, I actually didn't catch where in real life the shooting locations where for this show, even though in the back of my mind I knew I could probably see their soundstage from my office window in Culver City. I thought maybe they were using Virginia to stand in for various places or something.

But then Sergi and Margo meet in front of Frank's Coffee Shop (located at the corner and Olive and Victory in Burbank) and that put that notion to rest, lol.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 10:47 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]

You referencing Virginia, and made me think of every episode of Bones where they leave DC and end up somewhere in the California countryside.
posted by Atreides at 7:03 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]