For All Mankind Season 3 Review by Josh Davis : Pop Culture Leftovers

For All Mankind Season 3 Review by Josh Davis

June 12, 2022 4:38 pm |

“For All Mankind,” over two seasons on Apple TV+, has quietly become one of the best shows on television.

With a simple premise — what if the Soviet Union beat the United States to the moon — it’s both a believable elseworld story and the best kind of prestige TV. If there’s an award for acting, writing or production it hasn’t won yet, that’s a planet-sized crime.

For those who stuck with the show, the season two finale paid off the tumultuous love story of Tracy (Sarah Jones) and Gordo (Michael Dorman) Stevens in the best/worst way. Anyone who watched and wasn’t sobbing by the end doesn’t have a pulse.

Season three jumps another 10 years into the future. It’s 1992. Bill Clinton is just taking office, The Beatles’ long awaited reunion tour is kicking off (because changing the space race changed history), and space tourism is already a thing.

Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt), now head of mission control, still sleeps in the office. Aleida Rosales (Coral Peña) is a first chair now in mission control, and just received orders to travel to the moon for the first time.

The next big race is to Mars, and the Soviet Union publicly announces their intention to land on the Red Planet by 1996, potentially making them first yet again and giving the U.S. another black eye in the ongoing Cold War.

Meanwhile, Karen Baldwin (Shantel VanSanten) is the spokesperson for the first space hotel, Polaris.

Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) is now remarried. He and Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) are on Polaris with Karen for the wedding of Gordo and Tracy’s son, Danny Stevens (Casey W. Johnson).

Back on earth, Margo wants Danielle to be the commander of the first U.S. mission to Mars. Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger), who leads the NASA astronaut training program, wants Ed to lead instead. The competition between the two veteran astronauts is likely to be one of the major plot threads in season two.

Margo is also still friendly with Sergei Orestovich Nikulov (Piotr Adamczyk), a member of the Soviet space program. They’ve been feeding each other information for the last decade and plan to meet up again at the upcoming IAC Conference. Only, Sergei is being watched and Soviet Intelligence is pushing him to pry more secrets from Margo.

The premiere episode has a lot of set up to do and it drags toward the middle, until a potential tragedy in space ups the stakes and picks up the pace.

On Polaris, just as Danny his new wife, Amber (Madeline Bertani), are having their first dance, a piece of space debris flies into one of the orbital thrusters, wedging it open and causing the ship to spin faster. Two men attempt a spacewalk to make a repair, but they’re knocked away from the ship when a cable comes loose.

Throughout the craft, the weight of gravity increases and the pressure drops, causing everyone to feel disoriented. Figures on a wedding cake sink into the icing, and a shoe thrown across a room drops halfway. Things intensify quickly, and it looks like the whole ship could break apart, killing roughly half the established cast. It’s a credit to the writers that that kind of threat can’t be taken lightly by the audience. The season two finale proved that no one is safe, and anyone could be taken out at any time if it serves the story.

With things still getting worse by the second, Karen calls for an evacuation. Gravity swells to 2.5 times normal and the elevators to the escape shuttle go down.

After Ed fractures his leg, Danny – now an astronaut himself – decides to attempt a daring rescue to save the ship and its dozens of passengers and crew. Three people have already died.

Just as gravity swells to four times normal — the maximum the ship can hold without breaking apart — Danny saves the day. But, as he does so, he’s knocked off into space. Up until the very last frame, it appears he’s another casualty, and his bride will be a widow on her wedding night.

“For All Mankind” is the best kind of cinematic television. It looks, feels, and moves like a movie, and the writing, acting and production is some of the best on the small screen. Every single one of the actors are in top form once again. It’s also a credit to the makeup team that the actors have now been aged up 20 years from the first season, and it’s a subtle but believable effect.

Although the season three opener moves slowly at first, it certainly ramps up near the end, and there are more than enough dangling plot threads to keep the drama and intrigue coming throughout the remaining nine episodes.

Series creators Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi have proven themselves with the first two seasons that are, hyperbole be damned, some of the best in television history. Judging from what we’ve seen so far of season three, “For All Mankind” remains vivid, gripping television at its very best.

PCL Rating: Tupperware

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH