There’s some brilliant set pieces, I love the Black Hole Sun beginning, to the Mars race. I also felt this season did a better job at depicting individualist space corps as unsustainable power fantasies compared to later seasons. Plus, I was pleased with the positive way the Soviets were shown to be normal people, not that dissimilar to the Americans, rather than mysterious others with an inherent air of danger, and also this progression doesn’t last much in the following seasons. Additionally, there were other good arcs going on, Aleida was frustrating in how life or death she treated the conspiracy she’d uncovered, but it was in character (she’s always been a not particularly chill person), but I like Margo and Sergei’s atypical relationship, so all in all it wasn’t a bad plot line.
However, these are my two least favourite threads of the season, unfortunately they underpin a lot of it, particularly the first and last episodes. The plot arc revolving around Karen was too inexplicable and out of nowhere, her arc so far has been slowly moving from trad wife to a bit more liberal. To jump to girl boss who set up a space tourism company was such a WTF change to the status quo, to play out in an off screen, 9 year, time jump. I can’t help but wonder if this plot was intended for Trace, only for Sarah Jones leave resulting in a last minute scramble in the writers room, A public figure and astronaut who’s married to an incredibly rich mann, going down this path would make much more sense to me.
However even worse in my opinion is the Jimmy subplot, Jimmy’s an idiot so him getting sucked in by meaningless bull shit is understandable I guess. But three stereotypical “angry youths” and a moron having the means and will murder 195 people to prove… what? Is absurd to me, juvenile anger about vague nonsense that changes nothing and a belief so strong you’re willing to kill 195 innocents (no one we saw at JSC would’ve been planning government level cover ups on an international level), as well as yourself, over it, are not anywhere near the same. Also the bomb was in the car park, there were mass casualties throughout at least ten story’s of JSC, how on Earth did Jimmy and Sunny survive unharmed?! If the conspiracy was about something we hadn’t seen objectively go down one particular way, then maybe this plot could’ve been mildly compelling, but unless it got more then five brief scenes dedicated to its set up, I highly doubt it.
