For All Mankind Recap: Coup Coup Cachoo

For All Mankind
No Sudden Moves
Season 5 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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“No Sudden Moves” is mostly a study in two contrasts: good leadership versus bad, and Earthlings’ view of Mars versus Marsies’ views of Earth. The other big moments deliver love, sweet love (Alex and Lily! Yay! Lee and Moon Yeong! Yay again!) and one very ominous closing line. 

First, a word on how to coup effectively (based on my extensive knowledge of coups, from all the ones I’ve seen attempted by characters in books, TV, and movies). You have to start as you mean to go on, and poor Gerardo, bless his little cotton socks, knows only about starting. He’s fine on short-term tactics like corralling the people he objects to into a small space and zip-tying them into acquiescence, but he’s hopeless with strategy. What are his demands, exactly? His objectives? Does he represent anyone other than himself? “Stop the automation” is a reasonable starting point, but it’s only a starting point. How are you going to stop the automation? Who are your allies in this project? Who do you have to convince? What leverage do you have? How much time do you have? Gerardo has answers to none of these.

Fortunately for Gerardo, he’s got Miles, Boyd, and Aleida on his side, to varying degrees, anyway. Aleida’s two top priorities are monitoring and supporting the Titan mission and the crew of Sojourner, and ensuring the protection of Happy Valley’s life support systems. This episode is a showcase for Aleida’s unapologetic, highly skilled direct communications style. She won’t spare someone’s feelings when lives are on the line, and I am grateful! Once she gets to MOCC and convinces one of the rebel guards to let her in, the sight of everyone huddled on the floor in zip ties, some with bloodied faces and Lenya with duct tape over his mouth, the dam breaks entirely. Her fury at Helios employees being treated so shabbily is matched only by her disbelief at Ger and his crew’s recklessness in allowing the consoles monitoring and controlling all of Happy Valley’s life-support systems and communications with the Titan mission unstaffed. Miles intervenes with Ger, convincing him to untie everyone but Lenya. I’m sorry, but I laughed. The poor guy is not remotely equal to the task he’s been given as Mars governor, and it shows more with every scene. Worth noting: Irina’s silent, extremely smug face during all of this. 

Irina finds a way into conversation with Miles by asking him about bathroom access and then thanks him for the calm humanity he’s brought to the situation. They get into a gentle back-and-forth about how whatever leverage the Marsies have is contingent on their willingness to follow through on the threats they make. Irina pulls a classic from her repertoire, trying to co-opt Miles by telling him that he’s not capable of shooting anyone. She’s right that Miles’s superpower is his fundamental gentle reasonableness, but we all saw what a hurt he put on that MPK last week. Everyone is capable of anything, so let’s keep an eye on what I hope will not become another Chekov’s (Morozova’s?) gun, shall we? 

Boyd and Aleida should get along very well, as she doesn’t suffer fools or even well-intended presumptuousness, such as Miles’s notion that she would hand over the weapons she and a small crew managed to get to before Palmer and his guys found them. They’re hidden somewhere safe, where nobody can use them, which strikes me as a very Good Friday Agreement-lite sort of solution. This trio has the capacity to grasp nuance and integrate it into their thoughts and actions. They have moral clarity and the ability to communicate it to and inspire it in others. They seem to gravitate naturally to harm reduction before all else as well. Now! That’s what I call leadership! Everyone at Happy Valley is safer and likelier to emerge from this situation alive and whole thanks to Aleida, Boyd, and Miles taking on these big responsibilities. 

Representing poor-to-potentially-catastrophic leadership, we have Gerardo, Lenya, Palmer, and President Bragg. Gerardo’s got the right idea, but no ability to put anything into action beyond his first impulse. In Lenya’s inability to read the room or meet the moment, he shares the blame for the riot down in the business district with Palmer and the Bad MPKs. Once taken hostage, he can’t resist pouring gasoline on the fire by announcing loudly that everyone participating in the coup will face charges of treason once order is restored. Should Gerardo have tased him immediately thereafter? No, but would I have raced to stop him? Who’s to say? Palmer is blessedly absent from this episode, but Boyd quickly figures out that he’s busily scampering around Happy Valley to find and clear out the MPKs’ secret weapons caches. A good-faith gesture for the ages! 

And then we have President Bragg. You may recall my skepticism about his loud and essentially meaningless yammering about Earth First in the season-opening montage. It sounded vaguely George W. Bushian at the time, and in this episode, we get a moment that’s equal parts funny and horrifying, with footage of Bragg being informed of the SDM’s seizure of MOCC by an aide during a school event in Florida. The clear allusion to Dubya set up his very big and important high-school vice-principal-ass pronouncement about a full embargo on goods being shipped to Mars. The pronouncement, in turn, ensures that there’s no path back toward trustworthiness for Bragg. He’s old but lacks the gravitas of maturity; his big rejection of the Marsies’ demands — for substantive political representation in the M-6, and for a halting and revisions to the Mars automation plan — brands them all as terrorists; all but guarantees military action against them; and announces a full embargo of food, supplies, and medication until they fall in line and resume shipping iridium back to Earth. 

This is a clear threat of a siege, right? Sieges, which are illegal under international law due to the danger they present and the damage they inflict on civilian populations? That kind of siege? Every single time one or more nations of Earth have resorted to attempts at rule by force and violence on any of the spinning rocks we visit on this show, it’s gone badly, but I guess the M-6 wants to run it back one more time, just in case it could work? Only one way to find out, by dispatching a bunch of armed young people whose brains haven’t fully developed and telling them to make everyone obey, or else! There’s no way this will end in bloodshed, tears, and rage, right? RIGHT?

The gulf of understanding between Earthlings and Marsies continues to widen, with people Earthside undervaluing what Mars gives them and overvaluing the supplies they send up to Mars. Marsies have been asking for years to be treated as actual human beings, not a permanent servant class, and I just don’t see how President Bragg and the other leaders of M-6 nations have a leg to stand on at this point. Humans’ value is intrinsic and cannot be calculated in proportion to the speed and volume at which they extract minerals from a planet that folks on Earth will never be required to visit. Bragg & Co. — and here, I’m sorry to have to include brand-new OPEF trainees Marcus and Avery — aren’t asking the right questions. It’s not What the hell is wrong with these people? but What conditions exist up there that are making these people lash out like this?

Let’s close out on a couple of happier notes, and on queasy hope that there will be a bunch more of them to enjoy in future episodes. Love is in the air! Nothing brings two crazy kids together faster or more durably than a near-death experience, as evidenced by Lily and Alex finally dropping the “we’re just friends!” fig leaf and kissing. Dima sees Lily and Alex across the Medbay and smiles quietly to himself. Maybe he’s thinking of Kelly and Alexei way back when; regardless, this is a guy with stories to tell. Spinoff web series, perhaps? Is that something we can manifest? 

I chatted with Ruby Cruz this week, and when I asked her about this shift in Lily and Alex’s relationship, she elaborated a bit on the role of the riot in bringing them together, saying that it was “such a fun thing to explore, finally taking that leap and acting on those [long-simmering] feelings you’ve had your whole life but didn’t quite understand. Having the heightened environment of what we’re going through brings everything into sharper focus, making things clearer: what you care about, who you care about, who you want to be close to in these times.” 

A similar line of thought brought Lee back to Happy Valley under the protection of some of his hosts at the ISN base to see if he could convince Moon Yeong to return there with him. She’s determined to stay so she can help the people who helped him escape, and these two good dumplings are such peas in an ethical pod that Lee agrees to stay, too. 

Dev dragging himself back to Helios, bloodied but ambulatory after getting jumped by some angry Marsies as he tried to make his way to the Medbay to check on Alex, and then instructing his security team to lock the doors, does not bode well for the future of Happy Valley. Nothing gold (or, in this case, iridium?) can stay. 

Houston, We Have Some Bullet Points

• We got another solid scene between Boyd and Fred. As angry as she still is with him, and as regret filled as he is, it’s primarily a touching “more in sorrow than in anger” breakup scene. Sigh. I hope Fred will reverse his acute cranio-rectal inversion ASAP — I still hope that guy can once more become someone worthy of Boyd’s friendship. 

• Miles, freaking out a little bit with Boyd: “I’ve got Palmer on one side trying to storm the Alamo, I’ve got Ger on the other trying to pull a My Lai!” You know you’re in a bleak situation when these references count as even the tiniest moment of levity. 

• I appreciated a moment of heartwarming, sincere solidarity early in the episode, when the crew of KOSMOS-1 reaches out to Sojourner-T to share that they’ve learned about the coup from Star City. The competition between Kuragin and Helios leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so it’s nice to see the two crews leading with their shared humanity. It sets up the moving moment later, when Aleida delivers difficult updates to her crew with honesty, care, and no bullshit.