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Uh let me know if you want spoilers on that or if we're past the S3 spoiler window
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Oct 20, 2023 23:26
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If we don't have an AI Karen this show will be garbage forever.
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Oct 20, 2023 23:32
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General Battuta posted:I don't like a lot of stuff about season 3. I like it when the show keeps the spaceflight side low-key and naturalistic, with respect for the politics and procedure as well as the human drama. There were just too many disasters, collisions, fuckups, deaths and general mishaps in 3. The entire conceit of the "race" to Mars among the three crews and their interactions during that journey was wildly unrealistic. They treat the thing like it's 3 boats crossing an ocean between static continents, not spacecraft moving between two orbiting bodies with narrow transfer windows. There's no "trying to go a little faster" to get there a couple days sooner. You must move at the proper velocity to arrive exactly at the right time based on when you left. If you go faster than that you will get to the orbit of Mars before the planet gets there and you'll miss it. If you adjust your velocity during the transfer you will gently caress up your orbit and miss. The solar sail thing was cute but to make that work, that additional delta V would have to be accounted for in the initial launch time and velocity. i.e. before the NASA ship unveils it's solar sail, it would look to the other ships like they will miss Mars entirely, and totally hosed up their launch. Not, "oh lol you guys are gonna be 5 days later than us" but "oh poo poo you guys are going to take a 12+ month journey out to the orbit of Mars and back to Earth!"  On top of that, the journey takes 4-8 months, depending on how fast you can go. Cramming a half-dozen people into tiny rear end ships for that long is absurd. There's plenty of human drama to explore in such an expedition, but this show does none of that. And don't get me started on the North Korean guy getting to Mars in a Soyuz capsule and surviving on the surface for months while exiting the thing every day to take a walk (where does his 2 year supply of air and water come from??) Space has tons of material to mine for drama and conflict without ignoring basic physics. For a show that is supposed to be alt-history and grounded in reality, they don't seem to care much about that. anyway, to paraphrase our most American president, I'll still watch that garbage bawfuls fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Oct 21, 2023 |
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Oct 20, 2023 23:52
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bawfuls posted:Space has tons of material to mine for drama and conflict without ignoring basic physics. For a show that is supposed to be alt-history and grounded in reality, they don't seem to care much about that. Yeah, the whiplash between season one presenting relatively grounded alt-history with obvious prestige tv ambitions and season 2+ presenting increasingly dumb popcorn soap opera stuff is... very hard to ignore. FAM is one of several recent shows where the writers don't seem to understand the strengths of the show they're creating; "I just can't wait to see what Ed Baldwin does next" is a thought I'm only thinking if FAM has fully transitioned from a really creative alt-history to a weird parody of itself. But hell yeah, still watching it and v. excited to find out what kind of pickle Karen finds herself in this time!
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Oct 21, 2023 00:15
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if you want actual sci-fi watch pantheon (2022) if you want a soap opera just watch how i met your mother and admit you're trash
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Oct 21, 2023 00:40
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bawfuls posted:As the seasons go on, the show seems to think it must diverge further and further from realism in order to inject drama and conflict. In S3 it's the worst, for all the things you alluded to and more. Yeah, this is exactly what I was getting at, they've just kinda abandoned the idea that they're doing realistic Hard Work Heavy Math space travel. The solar sail is a really good example -- if we were in a ship on the open ocean, then sure, you can rig up an extra sail to give you more thrust, but lol it's a goddamn spaceship. You've explained how ridiculous it was better than I could, but I remember thinking "how on earth could that have surprised everyone? it's not just a piece of tin foil, they've gotta have all sorts of extra systems for it to work with, it would have had to be part of the mission plan from the start." The damnedest thing, though, is it's not BAD, I did more less enjoy all the space stuff that we got, but it feels like they musta struck lightning with season one without ever really understanding why it was so good. And yeah, I woulda liked to see the months-long journey! Or the ramifications of the Russian vessel scraping the poo poo out of the Sojourner, or the tension and integration between the crews, especially once Kelly got pregnant(!), but they just kinda skipped past it with timeskips or more scenes of Gordo's terrible failsons. Like I said, lotta weird decisions about what to spend their screentime on.
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Oct 21, 2023 01:25
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The thing that irritated me about the solar sail was more along the lines that at least on the surface level the show was telling a story that there was a conflict between NASA having lost its "spark" and become more about following established procedures within set safety parameters vs. Helios being adventurous, innovative and thinking outside the box. This is personified in Molly and Margo arguing over Ed and Danielle leading the Mars mission etc. Anyway, then it turns out... NASA is actually loving around with experimental new ideas like the solar sail, and I thought this was going to be the start of a slowly dawning understanding on Ed's behalf that he'd been hoodwinked by the surface level excitement Helios was presenting that masked that they didn't really have any new ideas at all, and when he called off the landing maybe it was going to show growth as he realized time and NASA was passing him by and he was just a relic being used purely for image. That... didn't really happen. While Ed (and Danielle, and Helios, and NASA too, to be fair!) suffers setbacks and gets upset and makes mistakes, by the end of the season it still felt like he hadn't really learned or grown and was still trying to run things like it was still the 1960s and he was still the best "man" for the job of being at the forefront of the space race.
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Oct 21, 2023 01:46
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Yeah lol, that's a perfect example of where could have gone with the story! Like they've got such a cool premise, so many different interesting things to work with, and instead so much of the season hinges on Gordo's idiot stalker kid being an rear end in a top hat.
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Oct 21, 2023 01:56
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The pregnancy is still my biggest beef with season 3. Kelly deciding to take a loving baby to term is monstrous and incredibly selfish. Food is a scare resource and she's literally stealing calories from everyone else.
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Oct 21, 2023 05:23
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:The pregnancy is still my biggest beef with season 3. Kelly deciding to take a loving baby to term is monstrous and incredibly selfish. Food is a scare resource and she's literally stealing calories from everyone else. The way the show goes from the Russian characters conspiring about the Mars Child at the end of episode eight, to suddenly not giving a gently caress anymore the next episode makes me think there was way more drama here originally. And probably loving should have been tbh.
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Oct 21, 2023 05:33
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bawfuls posted:There's no "trying to go a little faster" to get there a couple days sooner. You must move at the proper velocity to arrive exactly at the right time based on when you left. If you go faster than that you will get to the orbit of Mars before the planet gets there and you'll miss it. Season 1 must have had some kind of Space Consultant, even if they weren't always listened to. Season 3 writers didn't even bother to google poo poo, it may as well be Star Wars physics. A real Mars mission as we know it would take months, but the way it's depicted in the show the NASA crew was basically flying a tour bus. I doubt anyone could stand it in there for more than a few weeks.
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Oct 21, 2023 06:01
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bawfuls posted:As the seasons go on, the show seems to think it must diverge further and further from realism in order to inject drama and conflict. In S3 it's the worst, for all the things you alluded to and more. I mean, it might be possible to do an earlier Mars interception by doing constant prograde acceleration during the first half of the journey and then decelerate for the second half? You could definitely get to Mars very, very fast if you had some kind of magical high thrust free energy drive that allowed you to accelerate all the way there and move almost in a straight line. But yeah, hauling around all this solar sail weight and mechanical components just to cut the travel time by a couple of days seems completely absurd. Technical realism has left this show like a ghost a dead body. Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:The pregnancy is still my biggest beef with season 3. Kelly deciding to take a loving baby to term is monstrous and incredibly selfish. Food is a scare resource and she's literally stealing calories from everyone else. You just can't handle living in the gray.
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Oct 21, 2023 15:41
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Imagine if Kelly's dad had died launching her to Helios (as he probably should have, given the landing). Terrible thing! And then she hears her mom got blown up by Space Timothy McVeigh! Poor mars baby... I know that in every TV show ever aired the women characters come in for the worst hate and the most unsympathetic readings possible, so I want to make it clear here that the blame is absolutely on the writers. They wanted to do 'what happens when someone gets space pregnant?', which is a great question and one that any human colonization program has to consider in the long term. But to do that story, even in the most cursory fashion, required them to force the characters into some pretty unbelievable and unprofessional behavior. I don't think Kelly would have put herself in that position. Actual astronauts pretty routinely choose not to have periods, which would make a lot of sense for Kelly, who has previously worked in an Arctic outpost. I am not saying that women can't menstruate in space or in Antarctica or should be forced into amenorrhea, nor am I giving the Russian dude a free pass for busting risky nut on Mars. But this feels like the kind of thing an astronaut on a Mars mission would consider as a health option, just like freezing sperm or eggs in case your gonads get irradiated. I dunno maybe I'm being a weirdo. I like Kelly as a character a lot and don't like the choices they made with her in late S3. And I don't like it when writers don't consider the wide range of very cool reproductive technologies we've invented to give ourselves agency.
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Oct 21, 2023 16:14
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Yeah, nah, they really wanted to have a Mars baby and they really wanted it to have this extra symbolic weight freighted upon it by virtue of it having a Cosmonaut dad and an Astronaut mum. I reckon this baby was probably on the cards from the start of the show, in some way shape or form. So yeah, they had to contrive Kelly into that position or otherwise the plot wouldn't eventuate.
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Oct 21, 2023 16:19
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Electro-Boogie Jack posted:Yeah, the whiplash between season one presenting relatively grounded alt-history with obvious prestige tv ambitions and season 2+ presenting increasingly dumb popcorn soap opera stuff is... very hard to ignore. FAM is one of several recent shows where the writers don't seem to understand the strengths of the show they're creating; "I just can't wait to see what Ed Baldwin does next" is a thought I'm only thinking if FAM has fully transitioned from a really creative alt-history to a weird parody of itself. That’s a good summary, one of the strengths of season 1 was a sense of being in uncharted waters where anyone could die so the tense space moments had more weight. Season 2 was good & I liked the space base arc, not perfect but felt like some effort was being made to keep it plausible. Like others have said season 3 is not good & too much of a mess to care about the drama. One of the biggest issues is we’ve had a 30 year time skip & badly need to rotate out characters especially as the core cast is passable but not outstanding & it’s silly they are still in center stage. Also as an alt-history fan the start of season 2 with a montage of different events was like candy until I realized they had no plan or roadmap so most of it was meaningless. Having a whole forty years of alt-history pop culture could have led to fascinating arcs, like mention of a new sci fi show in the 60s and then in the 90s it’s a film franchise, or even hinting at larger trends with what cartoons kids are watching. Have a quick GI Joe cartoon making the moon base event look super patriotic, you have Apple money try a little.
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Oct 21, 2023 17:14
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They wanted a mars baby but they couldn't wait until season 4 or later when there was a more established presence on mars and the concept was more believable, they just HAD to jam it into season 3
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Oct 21, 2023 17:50
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For me the mars baby situation is the one thing demonstrates the issue with S2-3 the best imo. I could accept some science fuckery for the sake of story. But here they created this extremely complex situation that could drive a season worth of debates, arguments, and fights over resources, health of the mother/baby, ethics of raising the child on a tiny space prison, all sorts of stuff and and other drama... and just skip over it entirely. 
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Oct 23, 2023 09:15
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Two seasons from now Mars Baby will be a main character because this is a story about the Baldwin Clan and no one else
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Oct 23, 2023 15:57
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bawfuls posted:Two seasons from now Mars Baby will be a main character because this is a story about the Baldwin Clan and no one else This post reminded me that Mars Baby Sr. is dead and lol
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Oct 23, 2023 16:20
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Danny. My biggest problem with S3 is Danny - and how others interact with him. The moment Danny became a liability Ed should have sidelined him but instead he put him in charge of a mission-critical station. That was the moment I knew the writing team had just given up and was having characters make decisions not because they made sense for the character but because they needed them to act stupidly to further the plot.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:08
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I think in that case, it kind of makes sense. Ed has a big "be a man" mentality as shown when Gordo was having mental breakdowns while trying to train for going back to the moon. So when Danny fucks up on Earth, Ed decides that if Danny just mans up and does the mission, he will get better. Then Danny starts loving up in space. Ed decides that if Danny just mans up and does the job, he will get better. It's clear to us that Danny will not get better, but Ed doesn't know that because "be a man" has seemingly worked for him his entire life. It's not until Danny fucks up so bad that people die that Ed can finally realize that his old ways don't work. But even then, he doesn't really learn because the then sends the guy with mental health problems off to be isolated. Cojawfee fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 19:19
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"No, actually the mc is stupid" isn't really a defense for a series of stupid decisions required by bad writing
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Oct 23, 2023 20:24
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Cojawfee posted:I think in that case, it kind of makes sense. Ed has a big "be a man" mentality as shown when Gordo was having mental breakdowns while trying to train for going back to the moon. So when Danny fucks up on Earth, Ed decides that if Danny just mans up and does the mission, he will get better. Then Danny starts loving up in space. Ed decides that if Danny just mans up and does the job, he will get better. It's clear to us that Danny will not get better, but Ed doesn't know that because "be a man" has seemingly worked for him his entire life. It's not until Danny fucks up so bad that people die that Ed can finally realize that his old ways don't work. Yeah, I agree with all of this. It's also very clearly set up from the start of the season; Ed's got a fairly explicit bias towards Danny, partly out of bigotry and partly out of guilt about his son and his ongoing desire to play dad. He just believes that Danny will learn and improve on the job, and trusts him over far more qualified pilots. None of this arc comes out of nowhere or appears to be heavily contrived, it's the logical extension of various failed checks and ignored warning signs set up ages in advance. Danny's failure is basically just an extension of the exact same structural biases that let Ed get away with so much throughout the show, including season three. Ed's also hugely unqualified to travel into space, but he bends the system to his needs. And he seems to experience no blowback to his actions either, given that he still seems to be doing space stuff years later. Seems like a tale as old as time, certain privileged classes falling upwards and getting the benefit of the doubt that their colleagues (Dani) never get. It's really only obviously poor writing if you're arguing that characters loving up and systems loving up are examples of poor writing ("if I was in a horror house, I would simple not panic and break my ankle").
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Oct 24, 2023 02:06
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Yeah the fact that Ed keeps getting all these opportunities, that he disagrees with Danielle's decision to ground Danny for actions that could have knocked him entirely out of the space program itself, and that he ALSO has the temerity to accuse Danielle of only being picked to lead the mission because she's black is maddening... but also sadly all too believable.
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Oct 24, 2023 03:14
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People born in the 1920s don’t really have the most progressive views on things.
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Oct 24, 2023 03:25
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MarcusSA posted:People born in the 1920s don’t really have the most progressive views on things. At least by 2003 they'll have no choice but to have moved aside for the current generation! I'm fully expecting an episode this season where Ed tells Danielle without a hint of self-awareness that she's too old to be going into space or to be on Mars. Also he's somehow flown his 1970s sports car to Mars.
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Oct 24, 2023 03:31
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Jerusalem posted:At least by 2003 they'll have no choice but to have moved aside for the current generation! Buddy just wait until robot Ed shows up on a mission to Neptune or some poo poo.
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Oct 24, 2023 13:26
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The news clips in between seasons 3 & 4 are up on the apple TV app in the bonus features for the show HW Bush as VP in 1996! China is a "major independent space power" that is just off screen all the time! East Germany and Yugoslavia still around. A faster spaceship so they can handwave all the travel time to Mars away. Gore defeats HW Bush in 2000 lol
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Nov 3, 2023 18:15
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Cojawfee posted:I think in that case, it kind of makes sense. Ed has a big "be a man" mentality as shown when Gordo was having mental breakdowns while trying to train for going back to the moon. Were these really mental breakdowns? I mean, it sure seemed weird to his kids when they found him, but I thought it was actually a pretty healthy (if strange-looking) way of dealing with his issues. He knew he had a hard time with the loneliness on the moon last time, so he was finding ways to simulate that environment safely so he could face his fears and get over it. Okay yes its fuckin weird to find your dad at the bottom of the pool, but from Gordo's point of view he was just training himself to tolerate being alone and dependent on his gear to breathe.
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Nov 3, 2023 18:23
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ixnay posted:The news clips in between seasons 3 & 4 are up on the apple TV app in the bonus features for the show Can't wait to watch these, they're so much fun.
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Nov 3, 2023 18:31
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Phenotype posted:Were these really mental breakdowns? I mean, it sure seemed weird to his kids when they found him, but I thought it was actually a pretty healthy (if strange-looking) way of dealing with his issues. He knew he had a hard time with the loneliness on the moon last time, so he was finding ways to simulate that environment safely so he could face his fears and get over it. He was doing those things because he was freaking out when being fitted for the space suit and getting ready to go back. I might be remembering wrong, but I think there was a moment where he talks to Ed in a hangar and says he is having problems and Ed tells him to just man up and do it.
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Nov 3, 2023 18:38
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ixnay posted:The news clips in between seasons 3 & 4 are up on the apple TV app in the bonus features for the show  Why didn't I see election 2000 coming?
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Nov 3, 2023 20:16
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The website still only has the 2 to 3 videos.
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Nov 3, 2023 20:20
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Maybe NASA invented a better ballot for use in zero gravity???
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Nov 4, 2023 03:42
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ixnay posted:The news clips in between seasons 3 & 4 are up on the apple TV app in the bonus features for the show How are you getting the news clips to pop up? They weren't there when I checked on apple TV's app on my computer, tv, and phone.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:56
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Yeah I still can't get them to show up on the site or my ipad. I also had issues with this in previous seasons. I think Apple just sucks at making a website.
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Nov 4, 2023 21:53
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Cojawfee posted:Yeah I still can't get them to show up on the site or my ipad. I also had issues with this in previous seasons. I think Apple just sucks at making a website. They show up on the website when I go here. https://tv.apple.com/us/show/for-all-mankind/umc.cmc.6wsi780sz5tdbqcf11k76mkp7
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Nov 4, 2023 22:01
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I only see "Connecting Seasons 2 & 3"
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Nov 4, 2023 22:03
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Wow that's weird.
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Nov 4, 2023 22:05
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Getting ready for hot 86 year old Ed Baldwin.
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Nov 5, 2023 02:54
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