For All Mankind Recap: Bye, Bob

For All Mankind
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Season 5 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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For All Mankind choosing to give Ed Baldwin a graceful exit is no small matter. This is a series that’s blown up spaceships on the launchpad, crushed one character between two very slowly colliding spaceships, buried others under untold thousands of pounds of Mars dirt, and most wrenching, burned two of its best to a crisp while sucking their blood out of their bodies through their makeshift duct-tape space suits. For this episode to arrive the same week we’re getting to watch the crew of Artemis II on their journey around the moon, reminding us of what humanity can do with our curiosity and capacity for creative thought — sending us extraordinary footage and photographs, naming a crater after the late wife of one of the astronauts, being enthusiastic science ambassadors, and giving Nutella a spontaneous product-placement moment out of a marketing department’s fever dreams — feels almost cosmically predestined.

When death comes for our series patriarch, he gets the last moments all of us deserve and so few get: feeling no pain in the comfort of home, holding the hand of a loved one, and in his own mind, walking into the light alongside his best friend, past an honor guard of fallen colleagues, and his first wife and child. It’s time, and Ed is at peace knowing that he wrapped things up by rescuing Lee, keeping a promise he made some sixty years earlier to another fellow pilot shot down somewhere over Korea. Sure, it’s schmaltzy to learn now that Shane Baldwin was named for the fallen pilot Shane Barnhill. It’s also in keeping with Ed’s views on honor and mutual obligation for him to have kept Barnhill’s memory alive in his son, and equally on-brand for this show to have cut that son’s life off at about age 10, midway through its first season. It’s a real “take the rough with the smooth” universe here, friends. 

On the rough side, we have everyone on both Mars and Earth freaking right out about Operation Dumpling Freedom. NNC has framed Lee’s defection to ISN as a “brazen escape” and SDM as a “radical group.” ISN’s leader has shrewdly woven Lee’s plight together with their M-6 conflict over iridium access, proclaiming that “we won’t release [Lee] to the wolves, and we won’t be bullied!” Palmer is doing his best to weather Lenya reading him the riot act, reassuring the Mars governor that he’s got it all in hand, but the boss’s feathers will not be smoothed. His fury and humiliation at Ed — “practically in diapers!” — being the brains behind it all is particularly funny to me. One final shit-disturbing escapade by a generational talent, true connoisseur, and reigning scholar of sticking-it-to-the-man-ology; what a perfect farewell gift both to and from the old man. 

What minor fun there is to be had comes to a screeching halt with two further developments around law and order in “Home,” thanks to the opposing forces of Boyd’s investigation of Yoon’s murder and the possibility of Kuragin’s involvement in it. Palmer sends a directive to the MPKs to arrest anyone doing anything even remotely suspicious. Palmer has exactly no time for Boyd’s hypothesis that Yoon’s death just might be connected to the fishiness of Kuragin’s off-books cargo shipments and orders her to keep her head down and help out with getting their arrest numbers up. Relying on impressive-sounding but fundamentally meaningless stats is a great strategy that will definitely work. No concerns here! 

Lenya’s wife’s reassurance that he’ll be able to right the ship, regain control over the situation, and launch a campaign for the presidency once they’re back home does not take into consideration factors such as an arrestee asking, “What is it exactly that I’m supposed to have done?” and Lily Dale, arrested alongside her fellow recent graduate Gulsara, shouting, “We have rights!” Lily, you are so close, you should have rights, but as your arresting Woodpecker (hee!) correctly informs you, Mars isn’t bound by the First Amendment. Learning that Lily was arrested for spray-painting “Free Mars” all over Lenya’s HAB was the brightest moment of the episode for me. An age-appropriate, moment-meeting, nonviolent, very funny, and victimless crime: My child, you have won the first round of Marsie Civil Disobedience Olympics! Well done!

But what’s this? Miles isn’t proud of his daughter? Booooooooo! The MPKs are failing to distinguish between nuisance crimes and a massive security breach. National space agencies like NASA and Roscosmos appear to have ceded all ground to Helios and Kuragin. Happy Valley is plainly a police state run for the benefit of massive corporations. You know this is not a situation Palmer can arrest his way out of, and his leverage has all the weight of a pocket full of dryer lint. Please team up with Boyd ASAP. Palmer has threatened her job, but she’s still taking time out of her off hours to pop down to Level 5 to continue her investigation and get knocked out by a pipe to the face for her trouble. The contrast between Level 5 — mostly an open-air compound where residents are sharing food and sleeping spaces meant for one person and hanging laundry where they can — and the aggressively tidy mall–slash–food court up on Level 1 is quite striking. Boyd’s source, Mahmoud, can’t give her much, but he could tell that Yoon was really upset during his last Kuragin shift after his argument with Lee.

At least Boyd gets six weeks of paid leave out of her minor misadventure. Palmer has his limitations, but he steers clear of looking a prime gift horse in the mouth when it’s being paraded right in front of him. Boyd’s paid leave comes with two black eyes, but at least she can lord those injuries over Fred, who jokes that she clearly felt the need to compete with his single shiner. Their warm banter during this little bedside visit is sincere and funny (“I hear Uranus is lovely this time of year.” Of course I laughed! I am 12!) and does exactly nothing to allay my suspicion that Fred is the person who furnished Boyd with those black eyes. 

Women in politics aren’t having a great week, but women in STEM are not letting a few setbacks … uh, set them back. First up, Aleida and Margo work the problem. For All Mankind is particularly good at in-world bonus content, and I think that Aleida and Margo Work the Problem could be a fun addition to the mix. They can start simple and easy and work their way up to matters such as this week’s doozy. Kuragin has pulled off a feat of corporate espionage, having learned of Walt’s team’s discovery on Titan, and is planning to launch a mission of its own in just six weeks. What’s done is done, so now the task becomes figuring out how Helios can accelerate its own launch calendar. The best option is a vintage spacecraft, Sojourner I, which Aleida herself helped design way back in season three. It would need a lot of work to make her space-worthy again, and Margo immediately shifts into stern pep-talk mode to start convincing Aleida that the only way this plan will work is for her to go on up to Mars to oversee the process herself. Graciana and Victor’s encouragement (along with the many inadequacies Aledia disgustedly calls “Stu’s shitty vidmail”) seal the deal. Wooooo, Aleida’s going to Mars!

That’ll be a nice reunion for her and Kelly, who could really use a friend right about now. Her dad’s been keeping his condition a secret from her. Alex freaks out and disappears for a bit, and she yells at Dima and tries to do everything she can to buy Ed more time, only to find he doesn’t want that at all. Ed’s literal dying wish, part of the reason he’s withheld his worsening diagnosis from Kelly despite Dima’s urgings, is for her to participate in the Titan mission. I disapprove of his methodology, but I do like Ed’s insistence on Kelly pursuing her professional dream. He’s not going to participate in any of the treatments she’s trying to line up for him, so she may as well invest her energy in preparing to pilot her soon-to-be-refurbished ship. 

This episode really highlights the betwixt-and-between-ness of Alex this season. He’s technically an adult but still very much a kid who is going to need some kind of guidance from caring grown-ups. I hope he’ll continue to play chess with Dima, but right now, Alex’s mentor is Dev. Dev is an unlikely advice-giver when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but he’s got lots of experience with difficult, demanding father figures and knows Ed well enough to be able to counsel Alex, with believable authority, to talk to his Poppy before it’s too late to face what’s “not an easy love” head-on and make the most of what they have. This might be the most emotionally intelligent thing Dev has ever said? I’m still processing it. 

The Baldwins’ last mini-adventure together entails — what else? — Ed doing a runner in his hospital gown to enjoy some whisky and Elvis Presley tunes on Ilya’s jukebox. He grumbles about the lack of Sinatra, reminisces with Alex and Kelly, gives a much-deserved shout-out to Karen, who would have been absolutely nuts about her grandson, and agrees to go home to his HAB. Alex and Ed join forces to convince Kelly to join them in what will absolutely, definitely, for sure be Alex’s first-ever shot. It’s sweet, and I will allow it. 

RIP, Ed Baldwin. You were valiant and cantankerous and loyal and infuriating, and, to quote one of your daughter’s favorite musicians, you had a heart so big, it could crush this town.

Houston, We Have Bullet Points

• Could this be the last time Margo and Aleida have one of their collaborative strategy sessions? Margo may well still be alive when (if?) Aleida returns to Earth, but their last pre-Mars conversation has a finality to it that makes me even sadder than Ed’s death. You know what could take the sting out of that sadness? The (as-yet imaginary) debut episode of Aleida and Margo Work the Problem (working title).

• Also making me weepy: Dima is so gentle with Kelly while she’s raging at him, and I recalled that he knew she was pregnant with Alex even before she did. He’s so tender with them both, and I like seeing that life on Mars hasn’t hardened him. 

• Moon Yeong’s comment to Lily that all of the willy-nilly arrests make Happy Valley feel more like North Korea every sol is chilling. Lily marveling at Ed’s prescience about the MPK’s creeping encroachments on freedoms and correctly scolding Miles for being in cahoots with Palmer has me thinking we’ll see more than just graffiti from her pretty soon.