For All Mankind (spoilers)

[Ran]

Having seen some Russian cosmonauts speak English, I think the remark about Polotev's English was more that it was particularly good and idiomatic compared to his colleagues. That was my read, in any case.

[Mindwalker]

14 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Her Veep finds out and attacks?

The reason I doubt it will be about her identity is that I don't think the Secret Service and the press would cover for a woman the way they do/ did for the likes of JFK (noit even if she had male lovers, let alone female ones).

Good point about the Veep though, wasn't he introduced as very right-wing? That hasn't paid off yet.

As for Danny, yes, he's a drag and a remnant of Soapy Season. I think they're trying to handle it as un-soapy as possible this season short of writing him out, but there's only so much they can do I guess.... I always feel a little guilty because he wasn't the adult in that certain storyline, so I should be more sympathetic to him, but I just... can't.

The almost-ONS scene a few eps back summed up his character very well: Pick up someone to cheat on your wife (whom btw you only married because you couldn't get the woman you really want), commit a crime by entering and using that property without telling her, take the easy way out, leave his date in the lurch and don't look back.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

The reason I doubt it will be about her identity is that I don't think the Secret Service and the press would cover for a woman the way they do/ did for the likes of JFK (noit even if she had male lovers, let alone female ones).

Good point about the Veep though, wasn't he introduced as very right-wing? That hasn't paid off yet.

As for Danny, yes, he's a drag and a remnant of Soapy Season. I think they're trying to handle it as un-soapy as possible this season short of writing him out, but there's only so much they can do I guess.... I always feel a little guilty because he wasn't the adult in that certain storyline, so I should be more sympathetic to him, but I just... can't.

The almost-ONS scene a few eps back summed up his character very well: Pick up someone to cheat on your wife (whom btw you only married because you couldn't get the woman you really want), commit a crime by entering and using that property without telling her, take the easy way out, leave his date in the lurch and don't look back.

 

And Danny’s wife came off as creepy as all hell a clone of the “1950’s wife” hairstyle dress and everything…

[Mindwalker]

Speaking of secrets... I'm sure there'll be a dramatic fist fight between Ed and Danny while still on the mission, so how will it come out? We learned that both Danny and Karen have confided in at least one person. Wayne would never blab, but Danny's brother might, or Ed will overhear someone's com accidentally...

Wait, maybe Danny does something really stupid, then they get into a fight, and *then* he'll tell Ed about Karen...

Edited July 9, 2022 by Mindwalker

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

42 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Speaking of secrets... I'm sure there'll be a dramatic fist fight between Ed and Danny while still on the mission, so how will it come out? We learned that both Danny and Karen have confided in at least one person. Wayne would never blab, but Danny's brother might, or Ed will overhear someone's com accidentally...

Wait, maybe Danny does something really stupid, then they get into a fight, and *then* he'll tell Ed about Karen...

Can’t Ed just quietly toss Danny out an airlock?  That would solve so many problems.

[Spockydog]

I did wonder if Danny would grab the controls when Ed aborted the landing, causing them to crash and burn.

It would serve them both right, tbh.

[3CityApache]

On 7/9/2022 at 11:09 AM, Maia said:

Also, not that it was taught particularly well, outside of specialised schools, but everybody had 7 years of English at school and a couple of years at college, so "where did you learn English?" was a rather nonsensical question. 

As a matter of fact, I didn't have English in elementary school, before the fall of the Iron Curtain. I only had Russian as a foreign language. And started learning English only in high school, after the fall of communism in 1989. I believe it was even more strict in Soviet Union itself. And the Iron Curtain didn't fall in For All Mankind universe, after all.

Edited July 11, 2022 by 3CityApache

[Maia]

1 hour ago, 3CityApache said:

 I only had Russian as a foreign language. And started learning English only in high school, after the fall of communism in 1989. I believe it was even more strict in Soviet Union itself.

 

I graduated school in USSR very shortly before it's fall - I know what I am speaking of *. Foreign languages were taught for 7 years, beginning with the 4th grade. English, German or, very rarely, French.   It was the case for me and for my parents.  Only sometime during the 20-ties - 30-ties when my grandparents went to school was there a short period when  foreign languages weren't part of the general school curriculum. Ditto a couple of years for colleges/universities. Granted, the goal was mostly to be able to read and translate, rather then converse with or understand native speakers, though larger cities did have specialized foreign language secondary schools, where some of the subjects were eventually taught in the foreign language and students could speak fluently. It took serious connections to get a kid in, though. Likewise, people who graduated from  language programs at universities, etc. were also fluent.

As an aside, students who went to one of the schools with instruction in the language of a given Soviet Republic also had Russian at school that was taught very seriously from the first grade on  and  an additional year of school because fluency in Russian was so pushed by the state. Whereas kids in  Russian schools had the official language of a given republic from the second grade on, but how much importance was put on it, varied wildly from republic to republic. In some cases it had such a low status that there was no instruction in it for years, because no teachers could be found. Which contributed to the problems with native Russian speakers in many regions after the dissolution, of course. Kids in Russia proper just had one subject less.

But naturally, people who needed it for their jobs, would have received additional instruction to refresh and improve their foreign language skills, like for instance the cosmonauts in this continuity.

* BTW, that's why I can also authoritatively say that Margo being able to call Sergei on a public payphone  from abroad was absolute nonsense.  They didn't call it the Iron Curtain for nothing! In fact, you couldn't even call from or to another city via such corner payphone, it was strictly local.

[3CityApache]

@Maia Well, I graduated school in Poland in the eighties and I very definitely didn't have a possibility to learn English there, not because I didn't want to, but because it wasn't allowed. Same goes for my parents, who never learned English because of it. It changed when I went to high school in 1990, obviously. For the very least then, it wasn't so obvious in the Eastern Block to have a possibility to learn English at school.

[Werthead]

6 hours ago, Maia said:

 

* BTW, that's why I can also authoritatively say that Margo being able to call Sergei on a public payphone  from abroad was absolute nonsense.  They didn't call it the Iron Curtain for nothing! In fact, you couldn't even call from or to another city via such corner payphone, it was strictly local.

I was wondering if there was some kind of shenanigans because the Soviets wanted her to call him, but yup, it is still fairly implausible.

I am wondering as well if, post the 1983 crisis in Season 2, glasnost came about earlier and in Season 3 we're seeing a relationship more like if glasnost has continued without the USSR actually falling, with maybe more open communications. We're far enough down the alternate branch of history at this point that they can handwave almost anything.

[Werthead]

 

[DaveSumm]

Finally caught up! Whew. It’d be so cool if the forum had a feature where it flagged up episode dates in discussions like this. Had to keep cross referencing airdates and post dates. 

Such a great series, but gotta agree about Danny. It was so out of character for Karen to sleep with him, and now he’s just a ticking time bomb and we’re just sat waiting for him to fuck up his life. Agree with the previous post; he’s absolutely stupid enough to tell Ed. I put money that he does by the end of the season. It’s a bit of a shame that we’ve only seen him act like a jerk, the part where he got his life together and became an astronaut was off screen. All we’ve seen him do is pine after Karen.

Edited July 12, 2022 by DaveSumm

[JGP]

I’ve been wary about the Russian contingent and how they might feel about the defector. I really don’t want it to be stereotypical bullshit.

Episode up.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Was that the Season Finale?

[JGP]

Nah. 8 total I suspect. 

Solid episode. I'll resign myself to the Danny arc even if it's hard to trust where that's going. Ed will always choose his family. Helios has a lot of leverage at this point.

Spoiler

Ticket off planet, and half owners of all that water. 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Danny is such a douchecanoe…

[Werthead]

There are 10 episodes in Season 3.

[DaveSumm]

So, I was 11 in 1994* and wasn’t paying attention to the progress of gay rights in the US. Did the level of outrage seem about right here? It kinda felt overdone but I’m not sure. I know the military thing would be an issue, but it would’ve been nice to balance that with some segment of the population being happy for him. Maybe swap out a Danny scene… another classic from him. “Doesn’t think I’m cut out?! I’ll show him!” *destroys some equipment*

*actually, I had a feeling that was too early for Supergrass - ‘Alright’, do we assume we’ve rolled around to July 1995? Did Kelly get sent the song from Earth?

Edited July 15, 2022 by DaveSumm

[Ran]

Danny again. So tiresome. And I really hate to say it, but the actor is kind of a void. He has a tough role, the writing does him no favors, but he's not really doing anything with it that alleviates the tedium.

It was an otherwise fine episode, but I have to say the outrage over the Russians and Helios hiding the fact that they were going to explore a supposed liquid water deposit. NASA would have done the exact same thing!

@DaveSumm

The quote from the VP about a poll saying 73% of Americans thought homosexuality was wrong sounded off to me, so either he was cherrypicking a poll from a conservative pollster of the era, or the situation is a lot more dire in the show's alternate history, which I don't think is their intention. In actual fact, Gallup's polling since 1977 showed that a majority of Americans were okay with gay men and women serving in the Armed Forces, although some portion who said yes appear to have had the caveat that it should be private and not something disclosed. In 1993, over 60% of Americans were fine with homosexuals in the military so long as their orientation wasn't disclosed, while over 40% were fine even with disclosure. 

That the Republican evangelical wing and cultural conservatives would object is true enough. Losing 50 votes for the jobs bill, I could see it. 

Speaking of all this, I do think it's a little too on the nose to manufacture an Oval Office sex scandal to mirror the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Feels a little lazy.

[Spockydog]

20 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

douchecanoe