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selenakWhich scintilla10 requested. Before talking about my favourite examples, it's worth pointing out a few others.
When I rewatched some s1 episodes recently, I was reminded Ed in the early stages of the training programm for the female astronauts is actually a good teacher, treating them no differently than he would male recruits, and not in the sense of yelling at them - he's calm, with the right mixture of supportive and challenging. (This in stark contrast to his interaction with his son whenever he wants to teach Shane something, of course.) And Deke, for all that he starts out sexist, fulfills the cliché of the tough-but-fair drill sergeant fighting for the women he's training when the programm is in danger of being cancelled. You can see Deke's long term effect on NASA as a mentor also in the way both Ed and then Molly behave when following his footsteps professionally. His statement that his job needs to be done by a pilot who has experienced what they put other through is quoted by them, as is his practice of assigning himself a seat in the program. (And then here's his well meant advice to Ellen after she outed herself to him, telling her to never, ever do that again or her career is trash. While he was probably right in the sense that Ellen would never have become President otherwise, the cost to Ellen as a person was considerable.)
It's to the show's credit that Deke's well intentioned mentoring in general often turns out to be not exactly a good thing. (While keeping Deke's memory as a sympathetic character.) Because good people do make mistakes, and what is a good trait in a test pilot can be a disaster once the same person is given an administrative position. Deke including himself into season 1's last Apollo mission leads to his death. Ed and Molly going by personal friendship and preference as well as the convictions that Pilots Know Best when assigning other people to critical missions just barely works out in s2 when Ed does this with Gordo - Gordo does get back into shape and is able to save the day at the expense of his own life (and Tracy's) in the season finale -, but could easily not have done, given the last time he was on the Moon, Gordo had a nervous breakdown. The same approach leads to utter disaster in season 3, when Molly first assigns Ed instead of Danielle to the Mars mission and later, once Margo has fired Molly and revoked that assignment, the transferred to Helios Ed successfully pushes for Danny Stevens to join Helios' Mars mission despite Danielle warning him in no uncertain terms that Danny is not psychic or emotional shape for such a task.
Speaking of Danny: he's among other things one personal illustration of failed mentoring. (Which doesn't mean he doesn't bear full responsibility for his own decisions in s3. He's an adult man, he does.) When he works for Karen in The Last Outpost in s2 as a summer job, you could say it starts out as a mentor-protegé relationship, especially given her friendship with his mother - and it ends up in a brief affair which he takes far more seriously than she does, which is the one thing a mentor/protegé relationship should never become. Ed clearly sees himself as a mentor to Danny in s3 and repeats what he thinks worked with Gordo. Not to mention that because of Danny's childhood friendship with Shane, Ed is bound to see Danny as a "what if?" in this regard. All of which blinds him to the fact Danny has serious problems, and his dismissal of Danielle's advice leads directly to the ongoing trainwreck that is Danny's storyline in s3. This is truly a case of the way to hell being paved with good intentions, as Ed does try to get through to Danny more than once when he has to notice Danny is having a slo mo breakdown, but he's never willing to draw the correct consequences of relieving Danny of duty until it's too late because he still hopes for a repeat of the Gordo experience.
Not a straightforward mentor/protegé relationship but with elements of mentoring is the friendship between Wayne and Karen that starts in s1, and the elements of mentoring are mutual (and go far beyond Wayne teaching Karen how to use weed). Karen is familiar with being the spouse of an astronaut, with the terrible emotional stress and with the constant media pressence once your spouse is on a mission, and that's something she teaches Wayne. Who in turn teaches Karen not to repress her anxieties and fears but to pronounce them, and to look for ways to express herself beyond the "wife and mother" parameters society expects of her. They become each other's confidants and remain so until Karen's death, very much on equal terms with each other, though I would argue Wayne-as-mentor-in-sussing-out-your-emotions remains present even decades later.
Lastly before I get to the core mentor/protegé pairs of the show, s4 has what is the show's most unconvincing mentor/protegé pairing so far via Ilya and Miles, with Miles going from fuck up to able to replace Ilya seamlessly within two episodes and Ilya showing completely unearned loyalty in the finale when rescuing Miles. It's as if someone had a very superficial look at Breaking Bad and didn't notice how careful both Jesse's maturing and the Walt/Jesse relationship was developed there.
Now for my favourite mentoring examples, both involving Margo Madison, once as protegé and once as mentor: Wernher von Braun and Margo, Margo and Aleida. I really love what the show did with this. (And doing so had some risk, because WvB was a real person, but then so was Deke, if a lesser known one outside the US.) Both relationships involve early idolizing with a shock reverse when the protegée figures out a terrible truth about the mentor. Both relationships have the mentor recognizing the potential in their future protegée when said protegée is still a child (we don't see it on screen with Margo and von Braun, but the dialogue between them makes it clear that he started to notice and encourage her when she was still a child in Alabama). Both mentors contribute far more than solely engineering knowledge and the encouragement of engineering ability. Margo's musical ability got noticed and encouraged by WvB as well, and Margo arranges for a trip to the moon for Aleida because she knows Aleida has always dreamed of this. Both mentors offer unsolicited personal advice that at the time feels unwelcome and intrusive to the protegé (WvB re: Margo and her father, Margo to Aleida when teenage Aleida seems to listen to her hormons and to being in love with her boyfriend over the chance to attend an engineering college), but in general keep the balance between being a mentor without overstepping into domineering (or trying to domineer) their protegée.
There are also moments where the mentor fails their protegée on a human level. By which I don't mean the exposure of WvB's past or Margo's help for the Russians. WvB tries to use his knowledge of Margo (and the way things stood between her and her father) to restart their personal relationship in her visit mid s1; Margo uses her knowledge of the way Aleida's father was treated by the FBI and what this did to Aleida to (temporarily) manipulate Aleida out of her suspicion in s3. And then there's also Margo refusing to consider teenage Aleida's request to stay with her when Mr. Rosales gets deported in s1. Yes, Margo is a crisis of her own at the time, but she still should have considered that Aleida has literarally no one else to stay with and what a refusal without providing an alternative would mean. On the other side of the emotional spectrum, both mentors accomplish a major feat for their protegée even after the fall from the pedestal. WvB clearly hoped to win Margo back as a friend/protegee, and get her forgiveness, but even after that fails (since she clearly doesn't mean it when she says "fine, I forgive you, can you give me the file now?"), he comes through for her as a mentor by providing her with not just the correct analysis of the problem du jour but the leverage and the advice to use it to get the flight director job which TPTB have just refused her despite her qualifications. Conversely, Margo protects Aleida from the fallout of their mutual sabotage of the asteroid mission and thus enables her future career. Both protegees are taunted about their relationship with their mentors by their fellow workers - Margo gets called "Eva von Braun" in 1.02. while Aleida gets called "Margo's girl" repeatedly in s3. Both do owe their mentors their jobs but not in the sense of not being qualified - which they both are, very much so -, but in terms of no one else at the time being willing to give them that chance.
The show includes various visual callbacks to point out the parallels, like Margo looking at WvB's portrait at NASA once the truth about his war crimes has sunk in to Aleida looking at Margo's portrait after she's figured out who the Russian mole has to be, the gift of a ruler from one to the other, the observation lounge at NASA as the location of key conversations between mentor and protegee - before making the explicit dialogue reference when Margo talks about being mentored by WvB to Aleida in the s4 finale. It's also the first time she talks about him (post- truth exposure) without being upset, even with some affection - and the time that makes a key difference between them very clear. All three - WvB, Margo and Aleida - are incredibly talented, driven engineers with great dedication and willpower. But WvB not only used "science never comes without cost" as an excuse (to himself as well as others) for participating in a monstrosity but never was able to accept responsibility for his own actions. The public shaming in this alternate timeline didn't change that. When last we see him, both his affection for Margo and his inability to admit to his own culpability are unchanged. (Ironically, the leverage he gives her to become flight director very much depends on the government's unwillingness to accept responsibility as well.) Whereas Margo while at first following WvB's footsteps in chosing flight and the service to a formerly hostile government (which in this universe becomes a dictatorship again) over accepting responsibility (and imprisonment, bereft of the work that gives her purpose) chooses differently the second time she gets to make that choice. (And of course her original transgression didn't cost the lives of hundreds of slave workers but happened out of a mixture of idealism (sharing intel with Sergei to begin with) wanting to protect a life (Sergei's). When Margo tells Aleida "progress always comes at a price" in the s4 finale, she has reversed von Braun's meaning: she herself is paying that price. Not other people. I think that's also why she is at peace with his memory in that episode in a way she wasn't before.
Aleida, for her part, like Margo goes through the "how can this person whom I've looked up to and admired so much, whom I even loved as a teacher/mentor, have done something abhorrent?" shock, but because the initial transgression is not as horrible, because she's lived for nearly ten years with the belief that Margo is dead (and thus has gone through the experience of seemingly having lost her forever) and because the choices Margo makes later are different from WvB's can work through her anger and arrive at a place of acceptance and affection again while healing herself. (Not that while Aleida at the start of s4 is unable to work in a position where she's responsible for human lives in space due to her untreated trauma, Aleida by the end of the season is not only able to do that but to multitask under incredibly high pressure.) If there is a season 5, I think Aleida is ready to mentor a protegé(e) of her own now. (I mean, I love her new friendship with Kelly, but a) that's a a different type of relationship and b) it's going to be tricky with Kelly on Mars...) You know, coming to think of it, this chain of mentor/protegees remind me of nothing so much as Jedi and Padawans. WvB is one of the fallen ones, obviously, but he still had important lessons to teach and has thus contributed to shaping his lineage in a better way than inventing the Saturn V. As for Margo and Aleida: they are Jedi. :)
The Other Days
scintilla10 requested. Before talking about my favourite examples, it's worth pointing out a few others.When I rewatched some s1 episodes recently, I was reminded Ed in the early stages of the training programm for the female astronauts is actually a good teacher, treating them no differently than he would male recruits, and not in the sense of yelling at them - he's calm, with the right mixture of supportive and challenging. (This in stark contrast to his interaction with his son whenever he wants to teach Shane something, of course.) And Deke, for all that he starts out sexist, fulfills the cliché of the tough-but-fair drill sergeant fighting for the women he's training when the programm is in danger of being cancelled. You can see Deke's long term effect on NASA as a mentor also in the way both Ed and then Molly behave when following his footsteps professionally. His statement that his job needs to be done by a pilot who has experienced what they put other through is quoted by them, as is his practice of assigning himself a seat in the program. (And then here's his well meant advice to Ellen after she outed herself to him, telling her to never, ever do that again or her career is trash. While he was probably right in the sense that Ellen would never have become President otherwise, the cost to Ellen as a person was considerable.)
It's to the show's credit that Deke's well intentioned mentoring in general often turns out to be not exactly a good thing. (While keeping Deke's memory as a sympathetic character.) Because good people do make mistakes, and what is a good trait in a test pilot can be a disaster once the same person is given an administrative position. Deke including himself into season 1's last Apollo mission leads to his death. Ed and Molly going by personal friendship and preference as well as the convictions that Pilots Know Best when assigning other people to critical missions just barely works out in s2 when Ed does this with Gordo - Gordo does get back into shape and is able to save the day at the expense of his own life (and Tracy's) in the season finale -, but could easily not have done, given the last time he was on the Moon, Gordo had a nervous breakdown. The same approach leads to utter disaster in season 3, when Molly first assigns Ed instead of Danielle to the Mars mission and later, once Margo has fired Molly and revoked that assignment, the transferred to Helios Ed successfully pushes for Danny Stevens to join Helios' Mars mission despite Danielle warning him in no uncertain terms that Danny is not psychic or emotional shape for such a task.
Speaking of Danny: he's among other things one personal illustration of failed mentoring. (Which doesn't mean he doesn't bear full responsibility for his own decisions in s3. He's an adult man, he does.) When he works for Karen in The Last Outpost in s2 as a summer job, you could say it starts out as a mentor-protegé relationship, especially given her friendship with his mother - and it ends up in a brief affair which he takes far more seriously than she does, which is the one thing a mentor/protegé relationship should never become. Ed clearly sees himself as a mentor to Danny in s3 and repeats what he thinks worked with Gordo. Not to mention that because of Danny's childhood friendship with Shane, Ed is bound to see Danny as a "what if?" in this regard. All of which blinds him to the fact Danny has serious problems, and his dismissal of Danielle's advice leads directly to the ongoing trainwreck that is Danny's storyline in s3. This is truly a case of the way to hell being paved with good intentions, as Ed does try to get through to Danny more than once when he has to notice Danny is having a slo mo breakdown, but he's never willing to draw the correct consequences of relieving Danny of duty until it's too late because he still hopes for a repeat of the Gordo experience.
Not a straightforward mentor/protegé relationship but with elements of mentoring is the friendship between Wayne and Karen that starts in s1, and the elements of mentoring are mutual (and go far beyond Wayne teaching Karen how to use weed). Karen is familiar with being the spouse of an astronaut, with the terrible emotional stress and with the constant media pressence once your spouse is on a mission, and that's something she teaches Wayne. Who in turn teaches Karen not to repress her anxieties and fears but to pronounce them, and to look for ways to express herself beyond the "wife and mother" parameters society expects of her. They become each other's confidants and remain so until Karen's death, very much on equal terms with each other, though I would argue Wayne-as-mentor-in-sussing-out-your-emotions remains present even decades later.
Lastly before I get to the core mentor/protegé pairs of the show, s4 has what is the show's most unconvincing mentor/protegé pairing so far via Ilya and Miles, with Miles going from fuck up to able to replace Ilya seamlessly within two episodes and Ilya showing completely unearned loyalty in the finale when rescuing Miles. It's as if someone had a very superficial look at Breaking Bad and didn't notice how careful both Jesse's maturing and the Walt/Jesse relationship was developed there.
Now for my favourite mentoring examples, both involving Margo Madison, once as protegé and once as mentor: Wernher von Braun and Margo, Margo and Aleida. I really love what the show did with this. (And doing so had some risk, because WvB was a real person, but then so was Deke, if a lesser known one outside the US.) Both relationships involve early idolizing with a shock reverse when the protegée figures out a terrible truth about the mentor. Both relationships have the mentor recognizing the potential in their future protegée when said protegée is still a child (we don't see it on screen with Margo and von Braun, but the dialogue between them makes it clear that he started to notice and encourage her when she was still a child in Alabama). Both mentors contribute far more than solely engineering knowledge and the encouragement of engineering ability. Margo's musical ability got noticed and encouraged by WvB as well, and Margo arranges for a trip to the moon for Aleida because she knows Aleida has always dreamed of this. Both mentors offer unsolicited personal advice that at the time feels unwelcome and intrusive to the protegé (WvB re: Margo and her father, Margo to Aleida when teenage Aleida seems to listen to her hormons and to being in love with her boyfriend over the chance to attend an engineering college), but in general keep the balance between being a mentor without overstepping into domineering (or trying to domineer) their protegée.
There are also moments where the mentor fails their protegée on a human level. By which I don't mean the exposure of WvB's past or Margo's help for the Russians. WvB tries to use his knowledge of Margo (and the way things stood between her and her father) to restart their personal relationship in her visit mid s1; Margo uses her knowledge of the way Aleida's father was treated by the FBI and what this did to Aleida to (temporarily) manipulate Aleida out of her suspicion in s3. And then there's also Margo refusing to consider teenage Aleida's request to stay with her when Mr. Rosales gets deported in s1. Yes, Margo is a crisis of her own at the time, but she still should have considered that Aleida has literarally no one else to stay with and what a refusal without providing an alternative would mean. On the other side of the emotional spectrum, both mentors accomplish a major feat for their protegée even after the fall from the pedestal. WvB clearly hoped to win Margo back as a friend/protegee, and get her forgiveness, but even after that fails (since she clearly doesn't mean it when she says "fine, I forgive you, can you give me the file now?"), he comes through for her as a mentor by providing her with not just the correct analysis of the problem du jour but the leverage and the advice to use it to get the flight director job which TPTB have just refused her despite her qualifications. Conversely, Margo protects Aleida from the fallout of their mutual sabotage of the asteroid mission and thus enables her future career. Both protegees are taunted about their relationship with their mentors by their fellow workers - Margo gets called "Eva von Braun" in 1.02. while Aleida gets called "Margo's girl" repeatedly in s3. Both do owe their mentors their jobs but not in the sense of not being qualified - which they both are, very much so -, but in terms of no one else at the time being willing to give them that chance.
The show includes various visual callbacks to point out the parallels, like Margo looking at WvB's portrait at NASA once the truth about his war crimes has sunk in to Aleida looking at Margo's portrait after she's figured out who the Russian mole has to be, the gift of a ruler from one to the other, the observation lounge at NASA as the location of key conversations between mentor and protegee - before making the explicit dialogue reference when Margo talks about being mentored by WvB to Aleida in the s4 finale. It's also the first time she talks about him (post- truth exposure) without being upset, even with some affection - and the time that makes a key difference between them very clear. All three - WvB, Margo and Aleida - are incredibly talented, driven engineers with great dedication and willpower. But WvB not only used "science never comes without cost" as an excuse (to himself as well as others) for participating in a monstrosity but never was able to accept responsibility for his own actions. The public shaming in this alternate timeline didn't change that. When last we see him, both his affection for Margo and his inability to admit to his own culpability are unchanged. (Ironically, the leverage he gives her to become flight director very much depends on the government's unwillingness to accept responsibility as well.) Whereas Margo while at first following WvB's footsteps in chosing flight and the service to a formerly hostile government (which in this universe becomes a dictatorship again) over accepting responsibility (and imprisonment, bereft of the work that gives her purpose) chooses differently the second time she gets to make that choice. (And of course her original transgression didn't cost the lives of hundreds of slave workers but happened out of a mixture of idealism (sharing intel with Sergei to begin with) wanting to protect a life (Sergei's). When Margo tells Aleida "progress always comes at a price" in the s4 finale, she has reversed von Braun's meaning: she herself is paying that price. Not other people. I think that's also why she is at peace with his memory in that episode in a way she wasn't before.
Aleida, for her part, like Margo goes through the "how can this person whom I've looked up to and admired so much, whom I even loved as a teacher/mentor, have done something abhorrent?" shock, but because the initial transgression is not as horrible, because she's lived for nearly ten years with the belief that Margo is dead (and thus has gone through the experience of seemingly having lost her forever) and because the choices Margo makes later are different from WvB's can work through her anger and arrive at a place of acceptance and affection again while healing herself. (Not that while Aleida at the start of s4 is unable to work in a position where she's responsible for human lives in space due to her untreated trauma, Aleida by the end of the season is not only able to do that but to multitask under incredibly high pressure.) If there is a season 5, I think Aleida is ready to mentor a protegé(e) of her own now. (I mean, I love her new friendship with Kelly, but a) that's a a different type of relationship and b) it's going to be tricky with Kelly on Mars...) You know, coming to think of it, this chain of mentor/protegees remind me of nothing so much as Jedi and Padawans. WvB is one of the fallen ones, obviously, but he still had important lessons to teach and has thus contributed to shaping his lineage in a better way than inventing the Saturn V. As for Margo and Aleida: they are Jedi. :)
The Other Days
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Date: 2024-02-03 09:07 pm (UTC)I really like how you pointed out Ed and Molly following Deke's example in terms of "pilots know best" as a kind of mentorship, especially how it backfires on all of them. Ed's disastrous mentorship of Danny Stevens in the more recent seasons (and his relationship with his son) had overshadowed those first season moments where he was such a good teacher and supportive mentor to the women astronauts.
Aw, and Wayne and Karen mentoring each other, yes! Their friendship is so charming to me, I really like the two of them.
Margo and Aleida's relationship is one of my faves of the show, and I like how you laid out so many of the resonances and parallels it has with Marge and von Braun's relationship, especially the visual callbacks.
When Margo tells Aleida "progress always comes at a price" in the s4 finale, she has reversed von Braun's meaning: she herself is paying that price. Not other people
Yes! This was such a rich, complex characterization moment.
Good point about Aleida being ready to mentor someone! I hope we get to see her in that position in season 5.