After finishing Orville, I was eager to go to another sci-fi series, and hopefully one that was more optimistic. A friend recommended me 'For All Mankind', so I gave it a go.
Set in an alternate timeline where the Russians beat the Americans in the race to the moon, it offers a genuinely interesting contrast of how the search for the unknown, even if powered by petty desires, selfish politicians and trite needs could better mankind as a whole. Seeking to beat the Russians once again, USA tone down their foreign policy in order to focus on research and development. Its an interesting and feasible point of view that makes you nod and say 'yeah that could have happened, interesting!'. The first season deals with how the changes in policies and the drive to beat the russians changes the main cast, some want to aim higher, others want to clean their act, others want to beat the current norms and see in the Apollo programs a viable way to do so.
The problem is that, the longer the series go, the more bogged in cheap drama it gets. And the main characters don't help in the slightest. The russians in the first season act less of a genuine threat and antagonists, and are treated more like a goal to be surpassed. This is fine and dandy, and a series can go without an antagonist. The problem is, to replace the the time that would be spent in antagonizing, instead of doing montages of research, or developing characters, fleshing them out, everything is spent in drama that is utterly pointlesss to the bigger picture. The characters are by default quirky in a non-comedic way, but the more they spend on screen, more you see that they are good-willed but gigantic jerks, a**holes and worse that bit by bit drain any sympathy they might garner. There are VERY few (one or two) genuinely good people that think in helping mankind, and those don't get even remotely enough screentime to make you feel better. And since there is no 'real' antagonist, by the end of the season any progress they made as people is resetted, or replaced with other negative traits because the writers don't know what to do with them. Hey, character Y decided to seek professional help and talk to a shrink, challenging the norm knowing full well the risks, in the name of being a better person? Next season they're an alcoholic who couldn't cope or surpass the trauma.
Ed, the main character, is the biggest victim in this whole ordeal. Joel Kinnaman showed that he has serious acting chops, and the base character, a war veteran that slowly starts to come up with the fact that he needs to be better, and by being better, he helps everyone around him, ends up squandered in marriage plot tumors and other cheap narrative gimmicks worth of a mexican soap opera. I couldn't reach half of the second season, (Because for every hour of episode, there was a point where it was just 15mins of sci-fi and the rest was cheap drama) and from what I was told, third season is even worse with the drama.
So, Mankind could reach for the moon and mars, but couldn't get out of the bog of pettiness. Ironic!
Series Houston we have a problem...
After finishing Orville, I was eager to go to another sci-fi series, and hopefully one that was more optimistic. A friend recommended me 'For All Mankind', so I gave it a go.
Set in an alternate timeline where the Russians beat the Americans in the race to the moon, it offers a genuinely interesting contrast of how the search for the unknown, even if powered by petty desires, selfish politicians and trite needs could better mankind as a whole. Seeking to beat the Russians once again, USA tone down their foreign policy in order to focus on research and development. Its an interesting and feasible point of view that makes you nod and say 'yeah that could have happened, interesting!'. The first season deals with how the changes in policies and the drive to beat the russians changes the main cast, some want to aim higher, others want to clean their act, others want to beat the current norms and see in the Apollo programs a viable way to do so.
The problem is that, the longer the series go, the more bogged in cheap drama it gets. And the main characters don't help in the slightest. The russians in the first season act less of a genuine threat and antagonists, and are treated more like a goal to be surpassed. This is fine and dandy, and a series can go without an antagonist. The problem is, to replace the the time that would be spent in antagonizing, instead of doing montages of research, or developing characters, fleshing them out, everything is spent in drama that is utterly pointlesss to the bigger picture. The characters are by default quirky in a non-comedic way, but the more they spend on screen, more you see that they are good-willed but gigantic jerks, a**holes and worse that bit by bit drain any sympathy they might garner. There are VERY few (one or two) genuinely good people that think in helping mankind, and those don't get even remotely enough screentime to make you feel better. And since there is no 'real' antagonist, by the end of the season any progress they made as people is resetted, or replaced with other negative traits because the writers don't know what to do with them. Hey, character Y decided to seek professional help and talk to a shrink, challenging the norm knowing full well the risks, in the name of being a better person? Next season they're an alcoholic who couldn't cope or surpass the trauma.
Ed, the main character, is the biggest victim in this whole ordeal. Joel Kinnaman showed that he has serious acting chops, and the base character, a war veteran that slowly starts to come up with the fact that he needs to be better, and by being better, he helps everyone around him, ends up squandered in marriage plot tumors and other cheap narrative gimmicks worth of a mexican soap opera. I couldn't reach half of the second season, (Because for every hour of episode, there was a point where it was just 15mins of sci-fi and the rest was cheap drama) and from what I was told, third season is even worse with the drama.
So, Mankind could reach for the moon and mars, but couldn't get out of the bog of pettiness. Ironic!