For All Mankind has now concluded three seasons with a shootout. Every time it writes itself in a corner, the showrunners go back to a gun, an explosion, or both. For a show about the vastness of space and the unlimited potential of the human spirit, it is an incurious soap opera that never asks the big questions.
Now in its fifth season, For All Mankind is running out of legacy characters. Those who are still around seem to appear out of contractual obligation. The great Wren Schmidt and Joel Kinnaman have little to do this season but scowl and remind us just how much they shouldered with their impeccable performances.
Luckily, Coral Peña and Edi Gathegi remain major figures. Without them, I don't know what this series would do. Each lousy plot point feels somewhat better thanks to their commanding presence, especially when the show lays on the saccharine extra thick.
An early moment between Schmidt and Peña is particularly poignant, where both fantastic actors get to showcase their natural chemistry and immense charm. It's in these moments that For All Mankind is most like its great first season, before it all started to go downhill and fast.
Similarly, Joel Kinnaman is superb as the aged and bitter Baldwin, who still holds out hope that his work has some meaning. Kinnaman and Schmidt were always the MVPs of the show, but it's nowhere as clear as it is here. Every time they have the screen, For All Mankind discovers a glimmer of its early spark.
It's a good thing that Peña remains another series stalwart, though she gets frustratingly little to do this year. For All Mankind knows we're approaching the generational shift, and it does a lot to build up the next batch of leading characters in the eight episodes sent for review. The problem is that none of them is anywhere near as compelling as their parents. Part of that is because For All Mankind sets them up in the same scenarios as their predecessors, which only highlights how small the story beats really are.
What makes this series so frustrating is its inability to change. There's a constant promise that next season the timeline will split even further. Each year, we get a new montage, and it's like a mission statement for the show to make the most bafflingly mundane, timid choices. What if Al Gore were president? Shock and horror! This time, everyone has a smartphone a decade early!
But for all its supposed bravery, For All Mankind never expands upon its vision of a new world. Whatever pop music we had in the 2000s in this timeline exists in the other. It doesn't matter if it was written in protest over unpopular wars and presidents; we need it to give people a shorthand about what year it is.
A generous reading would be that it's a statement on humankind's inability to change despite major technological leaps in the past half-century. That we're still the same violent species without the ability to look beyond ourselves into the stars. If For All Mankind offered any of that optimism or wonder about the world beyond the frankly uninteresting hallways and offices that make up the fabric of the show, I'd have an easier time buying it.
Season 5 picks up another decade after the previous one, and Mars remains a hotbed for political unrest. Most of the episodes circle the Martian colony demanding worker rights and independence, yet it remains, once again, an incredibly timid portrait of both. As if on cue, we also get a procedural thrown into the mix, as a contract guard (played by the superb Mireille Einos), investigates a suspicious accident that might be anything but.
Right off the bat, For All Mankind hits the kind of tired tropes that hinder the series at every turn.
In an early scene, a doctor explains how a corpse found outside on the surface of Mars lacks ruptured eardrums. "If the cause of death was rapid decompression, his eardrums would be ruptured, but they are not," he explains. "Which means he died in a pressurized environment."
"Can you please explain that in normal terms?!" Another security guard demands, and my eyes begin to glaze over.
This kind of writing repeats itself throughout the season, as it did in previous seasons. For every moment of genuine pathos, like the wonderful moments between Schmidt and Peña, there are a dozen ones like this, where the show refuses to treat its audience like adults.
My frustration and annoyance with For All Mankind stems back years. I love the first season. It was what made me a firm believer in Apple TV as a platform. To date, it remains a high point in alternative sci-fi and a prominent companion to The Expanse, one of the best TV series ever made.
Since then, I've tuned in every year, each time hopeful the show would grasp a semblance of that first season. To date, it hasn't. Instead, it moves further out of reach at a steady pace, like a lost object in space.
