I….did not care for it. I thought it went way too grim. For not enough payoff. To see the lone American man on the moon under emotional duress? Or the drama of keeping a secret like this from someone on the moon? The plot points and characters and character traits it explored and developed were just not enough to go there.
I’d even have accepted like…if it cost Tracy her place in the program, staying with Karen. Not that I’d have wanted that, but at least it’d be something where a woman was being punished for what women are expected to do, support each other in times like this, even though it’s something all decent humans should be doing and women disproportionately carrying the burden of. So it’d be a particular consequence of this alt timeline where she’s in a job like that but still facing a woman’s responsibilities. Just anything that would be unique to the situation the show has set up or even relevant to that era, either one, but it was just a very specific one-off situation that might have happened even now, right, an astronaut and their family separated as something terrible happens at home.
I even expected the Russians to come and meet him face to face, THAT would also be something worth all this, that this man alone has just lost his son. Maybe it’ll be in the next ep. Or we’re gonna see a drunk on the moon. I don’t know. But no, I didn’t care for it. I know that it seems like I’m only against f/f deaths, but I’m against a lot of deaths and deep traumas that don’t do much. Will this make Ed leave the program? Will he be dealing with it for the rest of his time on the show, as he should? I guess I’ll have to reserve judgment to see if the payoff comes after this.
