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selenakMeanwhile in tv land.
For All Mankind 5.08:
The episode opens and closes with a much missed trademark of the show, breathtaking space exploration sequences - first, we catch up with Sojourner as they have to isten to their Russian Cosmos-1 competition failing to land on Titan and burning to death as a consequence, hammering home how incredibly dangerous even with the better tech this ‘verse has space exploration still is, and then, in the final sequence of the episode, we see Sojourner with Kelly at the helm actually managing to land on Titan. In between, things go from bad to worse for just about everyone, as Dev in order to force Team Revolution to surrender had ordered Palmer & Co to sabotage the agro domes, which gets done in the middle of Mars-night just when Lily and friends execute their birthay surprise for Alex, meaning that as a consequence not only get a lot of teenagers wounded but one is already dead, and the remaining food will last about two weeks. This leads to an ever increasing number of people on Mars willing (and demanding) to return to Earth, as they don’t want to die for the Revolution.
Elsewhere, back in the USSR, which still exists in the FaM-verse, the struggling to keep in power President has decided to blame the entire Mars fiasco on Governor Oleg and forces his wife to denounce him on public tv, and the fact that she monages to morse him a message that she loves him while doing so is meagre consolation. The most interesting thig about this is that Irina told the Governor ahead of time it would happen, meaning that she really does have sources still providing her with intel despite being locked up by the revolutionaries as the Governor himself is. (“These people can’t run prisons”, Irina says with professional scorn. No proper gulag this, indeed.) Given that the Mars revolutionaries have just been dumped by ISN because ISN was threatened with war by the M6 back on Earth, meaning they’re currently out of allies, methinks the show is laying the ground for Irina’s friends engineering a coup back at home and Irina herself getting into the position of direly needed ally for Team Mars, which, given that Aleida for valid Margo and Sergey related reasons loathes her, should be EXTREMELY interesting.
Aleida was willing to return to Earth herself in this episode because Wally the Sojourner commander’s response to the Cosmos-1 disaster had been to decide to abort the mission and return to Mars , at which point Aleida’s presence on Mars would have become superfluous, and she does have family back on Earth. However, Kelly, raised by Ed who never stopped shutting up about the fact his biggest regret was obeying protocol and not landing on the Moon back when he was commanding Apollo 10 in the FaM verse, and faced with the idea that her once in a lifetime chance to finally, finally achieve her decade long goal of finding life not on Earth, sabotaged Wally by feeding in the original program for landing on Titan instead of the new return to Mars program. This is the kind of thing that makes you look heroic when it works and like a selfish asshole who gets their crew killed when it doesn’t, and it’s entirely ic ; one thing the show has always been good at is giving its female characters just as many flaws and dimensions as its male ones. The entire final sequence really pulls out the stops in bringing back both terror and wonder as Kelly and her colleagues (who don’t know yet what Kelly has done) almost burn up but do manage to land on Titan, stepping on its ground - and look up to see what looks like clouds, which to lay woman me signals atmosphere, which means life.
It’s a triumphant conclusion that also connects the various plot lines because Miles had the inspired idea to ask Aleida to broadcast the radio connection to Sojourner through the entire Mars settlement once it became clear Sojourner was actually going through with the landing. This meant all the quarelling various sides were listening to the same thing, feeling united for the first time since eons (Sojourner being a project built and staffed on Mars), and while the way all that tension and fear then gets released into happiness and universal hope and cheer when it does work might have been manipulative, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Testaments 1.07:
After last week’s Lydia narration, we’re back with the girls’ pov this week, where in the present Agnes finds out none of her three possible Aunt-found matches are Garth but do include ghastly Commander Weston, boss of the “Eyes”, who as is shown elsewhere has part of book!Judds backstory (he’s old, he has a history of his wives dying, and pre- rise of Gilead of battery and assault - , while Becka’s two possible matches do include Garth (which makes sense - her father is a dentist, i.e. not ranking as highly the Commanders in Gilead social structure, and Garth is young and will be a Commander only in a few more weeks) . The fact that Agnes still doesn’t get that Becca doesn’t want any husband at all (or rather, she hears it, she just explains it to herself by Becca insisting on remaining a child) makes for a heartbreaking scene between the two.
In the Daisy plotline, we get flashbacks to how she got her crash course in spying, err, sponging (which comes with the interesting reveal that Mayday/June originally just wanted to smuggle her out of Canada and into another country , and that it was Daisy’s idea to become a Mayday agent in Gilead instead (both to avenge the murder of her adoptive parents and because she’s a teenager thinking she can handle it and it will be exciting), and how she pretended to be recruited by the pearl girls. The pretend-recruitment is straight from the novel, but I have to compliment the show again, and the young actress playing Daisy, because while she’s clearly good at play-acting from the start you can see the exact moment when the reality of her situation starts to sink in - when the Pearl Girls pray for her. That Daisy in the present, when she’s a far cry from the teenager she was only a few months ago because she’s now constantly aware she could die at any moment (after some gruesome torture) , ends up reciting that first prayer to herself when no one can hear her was a great touch. Before that, she gets interrogated by Commander Weston (whom Rita, a tv Handmaid’s Tale character, had briefed her about back in Canada), because the Eyes are still investigating and have found Daisy’s smuggled in radio/I-pod thing. (BTW, that thing is one of the few nitpicks I have because I couldn’t believe Daisy would keep something so incriminating around - she doesn’t in the book that I recall - but here it serves another purpose in addition to making Daisy sweat when Weston is interrogating her - another pearl girl ends up being blamed for its existence. Daisy didn’t accuse this other girl, but she now has to live with the fact the girl got arrested and most likely will be killed due to her own actions; one of the grimmest facets of spying, no matter how worthy the cause.
The bit with the tattoo in flashback and present day was interesting, because in the novel Daisy’s tattoo, given to her by Mayday, served a very specific purpose (which isn’t to be a more convincing homeless girl, as Daisy is told), and I thought they might have changed this part of the storyline, but probably not, since the tattoo - and its removal by laster courtesy of the Aunts - still happen.
For all its aesthetics, the show continues to be viscerally good at the sheer physicality of terror. Daisy manages to keep her facade in front of Weston, but in between encountering him, she dry heaves (which also causes another great scene between her and Agnes) and after the other girl got arrested and everyone else was dismissed Daisy realises she has literally pissed herself. It means while watching, you never get “used” to Gilead or regard it as a fright soon to be over.
For All Mankind 5.08:
The episode opens and closes with a much missed trademark of the show, breathtaking space exploration sequences - first, we catch up with Sojourner as they have to isten to their Russian Cosmos-1 competition failing to land on Titan and burning to death as a consequence, hammering home how incredibly dangerous even with the better tech this ‘verse has space exploration still is, and then, in the final sequence of the episode, we see Sojourner with Kelly at the helm actually managing to land on Titan. In between, things go from bad to worse for just about everyone, as Dev in order to force Team Revolution to surrender had ordered Palmer & Co to sabotage the agro domes, which gets done in the middle of Mars-night just when Lily and friends execute their birthay surprise for Alex, meaning that as a consequence not only get a lot of teenagers wounded but one is already dead, and the remaining food will last about two weeks. This leads to an ever increasing number of people on Mars willing (and demanding) to return to Earth, as they don’t want to die for the Revolution.
Elsewhere, back in the USSR, which still exists in the FaM-verse, the struggling to keep in power President has decided to blame the entire Mars fiasco on Governor Oleg and forces his wife to denounce him on public tv, and the fact that she monages to morse him a message that she loves him while doing so is meagre consolation. The most interesting thig about this is that Irina told the Governor ahead of time it would happen, meaning that she really does have sources still providing her with intel despite being locked up by the revolutionaries as the Governor himself is. (“These people can’t run prisons”, Irina says with professional scorn. No proper gulag this, indeed.) Given that the Mars revolutionaries have just been dumped by ISN because ISN was threatened with war by the M6 back on Earth, meaning they’re currently out of allies, methinks the show is laying the ground for Irina’s friends engineering a coup back at home and Irina herself getting into the position of direly needed ally for Team Mars, which, given that Aleida for valid Margo and Sergey related reasons loathes her, should be EXTREMELY interesting.
Aleida was willing to return to Earth herself in this episode because Wally the Sojourner commander’s response to the Cosmos-1 disaster had been to decide to abort the mission and return to Mars , at which point Aleida’s presence on Mars would have become superfluous, and she does have family back on Earth. However, Kelly, raised by Ed who never stopped shutting up about the fact his biggest regret was obeying protocol and not landing on the Moon back when he was commanding Apollo 10 in the FaM verse, and faced with the idea that her once in a lifetime chance to finally, finally achieve her decade long goal of finding life not on Earth, sabotaged Wally by feeding in the original program for landing on Titan instead of the new return to Mars program. This is the kind of thing that makes you look heroic when it works and like a selfish asshole who gets their crew killed when it doesn’t, and it’s entirely ic ; one thing the show has always been good at is giving its female characters just as many flaws and dimensions as its male ones. The entire final sequence really pulls out the stops in bringing back both terror and wonder as Kelly and her colleagues (who don’t know yet what Kelly has done) almost burn up but do manage to land on Titan, stepping on its ground - and look up to see what looks like clouds, which to lay woman me signals atmosphere, which means life.
It’s a triumphant conclusion that also connects the various plot lines because Miles had the inspired idea to ask Aleida to broadcast the radio connection to Sojourner through the entire Mars settlement once it became clear Sojourner was actually going through with the landing. This meant all the quarelling various sides were listening to the same thing, feeling united for the first time since eons (Sojourner being a project built and staffed on Mars), and while the way all that tension and fear then gets released into happiness and universal hope and cheer when it does work might have been manipulative, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Testaments 1.07:
After last week’s Lydia narration, we’re back with the girls’ pov this week, where in the present Agnes finds out none of her three possible Aunt-found matches are Garth but do include ghastly Commander Weston, boss of the “Eyes”, who as is shown elsewhere has part of book!Judds backstory (he’s old, he has a history of his wives dying, and pre- rise of Gilead of battery and assault - , while Becka’s two possible matches do include Garth (which makes sense - her father is a dentist, i.e. not ranking as highly the Commanders in Gilead social structure, and Garth is young and will be a Commander only in a few more weeks) . The fact that Agnes still doesn’t get that Becca doesn’t want any husband at all (or rather, she hears it, she just explains it to herself by Becca insisting on remaining a child) makes for a heartbreaking scene between the two.
In the Daisy plotline, we get flashbacks to how she got her crash course in spying, err, sponging (which comes with the interesting reveal that Mayday/June originally just wanted to smuggle her out of Canada and into another country , and that it was Daisy’s idea to become a Mayday agent in Gilead instead (both to avenge the murder of her adoptive parents and because she’s a teenager thinking she can handle it and it will be exciting), and how she pretended to be recruited by the pearl girls. The pretend-recruitment is straight from the novel, but I have to compliment the show again, and the young actress playing Daisy, because while she’s clearly good at play-acting from the start you can see the exact moment when the reality of her situation starts to sink in - when the Pearl Girls pray for her. That Daisy in the present, when she’s a far cry from the teenager she was only a few months ago because she’s now constantly aware she could die at any moment (after some gruesome torture) , ends up reciting that first prayer to herself when no one can hear her was a great touch. Before that, she gets interrogated by Commander Weston (whom Rita, a tv Handmaid’s Tale character, had briefed her about back in Canada), because the Eyes are still investigating and have found Daisy’s smuggled in radio/I-pod thing. (BTW, that thing is one of the few nitpicks I have because I couldn’t believe Daisy would keep something so incriminating around - she doesn’t in the book that I recall - but here it serves another purpose in addition to making Daisy sweat when Weston is interrogating her - another pearl girl ends up being blamed for its existence. Daisy didn’t accuse this other girl, but she now has to live with the fact the girl got arrested and most likely will be killed due to her own actions; one of the grimmest facets of spying, no matter how worthy the cause.
The bit with the tattoo in flashback and present day was interesting, because in the novel Daisy’s tattoo, given to her by Mayday, served a very specific purpose (which isn’t to be a more convincing homeless girl, as Daisy is told), and I thought they might have changed this part of the storyline, but probably not, since the tattoo - and its removal by laster courtesy of the Aunts - still happen.
For all its aesthetics, the show continues to be viscerally good at the sheer physicality of terror. Daisy manages to keep her facade in front of Weston, but in between encountering him, she dry heaves (which also causes another great scene between her and Agnes) and after the other girl got arrested and everyone else was dismissed Daisy realises she has literally pissed herself. It means while watching, you never get “used” to Gilead or regard it as a fright soon to be over.
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Date: 2026-05-10 12:49 pm (UTC)