Apple TV+ For All Mankind (2019) - Season 4 (2 Viewers)

[Alex...]

The 10-episode fourth season of Apple TV+ space drama For All Mankind will premiere globally on Apple TV+ on Friday, November 10, followed by one new episode weekly every Friday through January 12, 2024.

‘For All Mankind’ Releases Fourth Season Trailer And Artwork At New York Comic Con

The 10-episode fourth season of Apple TV+ space drama For All Mankind will premiere globally on Apple TV+ on Friday, November 10, followed by one new episode weekly every Friday through January 12,…

deadline.com

 

[Walter Kittel]

I am so on board for this series to return! Nice to see some of the old hands are still around.

Avoid this if you aren't caught up on the series...

Spoiler

I remember how startling the final moments of S03E10 were with Margo's new reality. Really curious to see where the series goes with that, since we catch a few glimpses of her in the season four trailer. I didn't see Ellen in the trailer, so is she out of politics and living the good life with Pam? I hope we get some closure on her character.

- Walter.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

It looks like at least two episodes were dropped.

Just about done with the first episode of the new season. I am limited to an hour on the treadmill and this runs a little over 10 minutes longer.

So far, it's okay. I would not expect much from the first episode. Look forward to stopping in here every week and discussing the show. Should have more tomorrow when I finish Episode 2.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

 

[Sean Bryan]

Just about done with the first episode of the new season. I am limited to an hour on the treadmill and this runs a little over 10 minutes longer.

You don’t want to watch this in your theater on your Projector?

 

[JohnRice]

I've been torn over whether or not to return to this show. The finale of Season 2 was so melodramatic, silly, over the top, I was put off about continuing.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

You don’t want to watch this in your theater on your Projector?

I should, right? Perhaps starting with the next episode I will. The sound mix should be pretty damn good not to mention the visuals.

 

[Josh Dial]

I should, right? Perhaps starting with the next episode I will. The sound mix should be pretty damn good not to mention the visuals.

I might be misremembering, but my recollection is that I wasn't that impressed with the Atmos sound last season. Mostly music pushed to height speakers, and no discrete placement of objects.

 

[Sean Bryan]

I should, right? Perhaps starting with the next episode I will. The sound mix should be pretty damn good not to mention the visuals.

Yeah, you have that really nice JVC. Apple’s stuff always looks great, and this material definitely deserves a more “theatrical” presentation at home. I watch pretty much everything I’m “seriously watching” on mine. I say go for it.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

BTW, I made the mistake of saying two episodes dropped. That is partly true, though only the first episode can be played.

I will continue watching this season projected with surrounds. You are right that it's a sin watching this any other way.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The display on Apple+ can be a little confusing - when they release a new episode, they also release the thumbnail for next week’s episode which includes its title, running time and a listing of the date it will be available.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

A good start to the season, I thought.

It's implausible that Ed Baldwin would still be such a critical part of the space program in his mid- to late-seventies, but they explained it away as best they could: Basically, he just won't come back, and he's become an institution like J. Edgar Hoover was at the FBI, now difficult to dislodge. But with his hand tremors, it's pretty clear that they're setting this up to be his final run.

At first I thought the new NASA administrator was Bill Strausser, because they made Daniel Stern look so much like him.

Helios hiring oil rig guys gave me Armageddon flashbacks, but it also made sense that they would be logical choices for space mining. And I like that the show is exploring the downsides of moving away from fossil fuels as rapidly as was done here.

So was Margo's "friend" in the park a Soviet, or an American/Western spy? Could she end up being a triple agent?

It sure sounds like Danny killed himself at some point during the time jump, and didn't go out quietly when he did.

I always enjoy the alternate history stuff, and the catch-up news clips covering the time jump feature an interesting mix of the old and the new. It makes sense that John Lennon is still alive, since the circumstances that led to his assassination were so specific. It also appears that the US and Soviet Union are neck and neck as the dominant economic superpowers, with the other Mars-7 nations trailing behind. China's economic miracle doesn't appear to have happened in this timeline, with the rescue of the North Korean astronaut appears to have thawed relations with that reclusive state.

This timeline didn't have a 9/11, but the NASA bombing (despite Oklahoma City being a closer analog) seems to be filling a similar function.

Since the timeline diverged, the presidents have been:

• 37. Richard Nixon (1969 to 1973 -- loses reelection, Watergate scandal doesn't happen)
• 38. Ted Kennedy (1973 to 1977 -- no Chappaquiddick scandal, but loses reelection narrowly in a 2000-esque election controversy)
• 39. Ronald Reagan (1977 to 1985 -- four years earlier than in our timeline)
• 40. Gary Hart (1985 to 1993 -- no extramarital affair scandals, benefited from Space Boom)
• 41. Ellen Wilson (1993 to 2001 -- first gay president, only fictional character to be president thus far)
• 42. Al Gore (2001 to present)

Al Gore in this timeline was Hart's vice president for both terms. It's not specified whether he didn't seek the nomination in 1992 (when Bill Clinton was the unsuccessful nominee) and 1996 (when Jerry Brown was the unsuccessful nominee), or if he simply didn't win the nomination. It makes sense that he would be a more attractive candidate in the more technocratic political environment of this timeline.

It's also interesting that the Republican party developed in the opposite way from our reality, with the moderate surging to seize control from the hard-liners and evangelicals. At the same time, it makes sense that George H.W. Bush would be defeated as the nominee in 2000. Much like Al Gore in our reality, it's hard to follow a two-term president as vice president, because you carry with you all of the previous administration's baggage. And at 76, he would have faced many of the same criticisms and concerns that Joe Biden did in our timeline in 2020.

 

[SamT]

4x01 Glasnost

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed and was surprised by how they changed the story. It's like a 180 turn. No one would have imagined, not me.

Instead of the same thing we had for the first three seasons, bleak and confrontational super powers (which is closer to reality), I like that now they say the Cold War is over and the superpowers are friends like in a bright fantasy like future. I don't know how things will turn out but I love it if they continue it.

 

[DaveF]

“For All Mankind” connects S3 and S4 timelines with over 15 minutes of fictional news clips - 9to5Mac

“For All Mankind” returns for a fourth season on Apple TV+ next Friday. As a teaser, a new round of...

9to5mac.com

I watched the premiere last night but hadn’t yet had time to see if there was supplemental material. I’ll look for the linked news clips when we’re watching next.

But I’m bummed that the podcast apparently isn’t returning for season 4.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Wondering if the writers and actors strike prevented them from recording the podcast at the time such elements would have needed to be produced and delivered.

 

[jayembee]

At first I thought the new NASA administrator was Bill Strausser, because they made Daniel Stern look so much like him.

I had no idea that was Daniel Stern until I looked up the episode to see who Stern played (saw his name in the main titles).

So was Margo's "friend" in the park a Soviet, or an American/Western spy? Could she end up being a triple agent?

I'm guessing it's an agent of the woman at the Soviet Space Center that she's been trying to meet with. Perhaps her masters don't want her meeting with Margo, and this was her way of reaching out.

It sure sounds like Danny killed himself at some point during the time jump, and didn't go out quietly when he did.

Didn't he find the Korean's gun after he was exiled to the Korean lander? My guess is that he ate a bullet.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

This reminded me a lot of the premiere of the previous season, with another disaster in space that once again has Ed in the center.

I have such a weird relationship with this show - I find the space exploration stuff to be endlessly fascinating, but I think it leans in too heavily on TV tropes and conventions. I still feel that the biggest problem the show has is in reusing characters whose storylines should have naturally wrapped up long ago (especially given the time jumps between seasons), simply because those actors are regular cast members. I'm halfway surprised they didn't find a way to repeal the 22nd amendment within the world of the show to keep Ellen Wilson around as president.

It's not that there's anything wrong with Joel Kinnaman as an actor, it's just hard to buy that his character is still in the picture. They did a lot of plot maneuvering last season to find a semi-plausible reason for why he might have made it on a Mars mission, but I'm having a hard time accepting that he's still there at his age, nevermind the apparent health condition. It's not like NASA was sending Neil Armstrong anywhere in 2000. Keeping Ed in the picture also seems like a way to keep Kelly in the picture, and again, with all respect to the actor who gives a fine performance, if that character is out of the space program and living on Earth, I don't see the relevance to what's going on.

Based on the season premiere alone, this is a show that continues to aspire to the heavens, but remains too tethered to the earth. But for better or worse, there is not enough speculative realistic space travel fiction being produced for television or theatrical right now, so I will continue to go for the ride and hope that the season has more moments looking forward than backwards by the end of it.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I viewed the season four premiere on Wednesday and find myself agreeing with most of the comments in this thread. I sort of agree with Josh's critique of the show relying too much on some of the actors through unreasonably long periods of time, undermining some of the credibility of the series. On the other hand - I tell myself that it is a television series and many viewers do enjoy continuing to see characters for whom they have developed an emotional affinity.

I am on board for the series as long as it continues to run.

- Walter.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The second episode introduced a real upstairs/downstairs element with the hired hands, with the split screen montage comparing Dani's first day with Miles's. And in the process, we get more evidence that Ed is no longer the right person to be XO. He's an astronaut, he's only ever been an astronaut, and he has no respect or appreciation for the hired hands that followed in the astronauts' wake. The point is driven home particularly hard with the memorial patches for the famous cosmonaut who died, while the Helios tech who died has been more or less forgotten.

It's interesting to see that Helios, after driving out its Steve Jobs, has essentially become the Haliburton of Mars. They get contracts for everything that NASA and the other space nations don't want to do themselves. And they very much operate Happy Valley like a company town, leveraging their monopoly on Mars to funnel workers' incomes back to Helios's shareholders. To Dani's credit, she immediately picked up on the morale issue and got communications reestablished for the lower decks. But some of the bigger problems are structural in nature and will elude such relatively easy fixes.

Kelly and Aleida was the pairing I never knew I needed. I continue to be fascinated by and appreciate the show's exploration of mental health, and how characters choose to deal with their trauma or not. We saw Gordo take his mental health struggles seriously, put in the work to get them under control, and then go out a hero. We saw his son not take his mental health struggles seriously, resulting in some sort of tragic end. Right now Aleida's closer to Danny than Gordo. But she's also a genius, and benefits from having a project to focus on. I loved the smile on the face of Aleida's husband over breakfast when he realizes that his wife has a constructive outlet again. He knew something was very wrong, knew he couldn't fix it, and also knew that whatever Aleida was up to with Kelly was good for her, or at least better than the spiral of the past few months.

It sure looks like there's been a coup against Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. The geopolitical situation in this timeline is obviously radically different than in our timeline, but in both timelines Gorbachev was a reformer who pursued reforms under a glasnost policy. The main difference being that the space revenues in the show's timeline gave the USSR the breathing room needed for his economic reforms to be successful. Given the (relative) prosperity that was ushered in under his rule in this timeline, I would imagine that he's a relatively popular figure. So him being deposed by hardliners, presumably including the KGB, will not be a popular development and could even lead to civil war. And whoever Margo's mysterious friend was last week, it seems pretty clear that she knew that this was coming.

Any attempt to turn back the clock on Gorbachev's reforms would almost certainly be disastrous economically as well as politically; the nearest analog I can think of is Xi Jinping's ongoing crackdown in China right now. But it also means that the warm and productive partnership between the world's two dominant superpowers is going to get very rocky, very fast.

 

[jayembee]

You pretty much said everything that was going through my (and my wife's) head while watching this episode. Four additional comments, though:

(1) As soon as we saw the elevator start descending to bring the Lower Deckers to their quarters, I said to my wife, "This is not going to end well." I was really expecting to hear one of the LDs humming the song "Sixteen Tons" at some point in the episode.

(2) When Ed said to Miles, "You're on a different fucking planet," my wife said, "Boy, he's being a real asshole," to which I replied, "Well, he's pretty much been one since the series began." The funny thing is that my wife had forgotten how much she hated a previous Joel Kinneman role: that of the detective partner of lead Mirielle Enos in the US remake of The Killing. As a person of Swedish descent, she's annoyed that there's a Swedish actor in American TV that she doesn't like.

(3) I have a sneaking suspicion that Aleida and Kelly and going to end up taking their proposal to Dev.

(4) I'm curious to see if they'll hint that Gorbachev's overthrow is being engineered by Putin.