For All Mankind S04E01: 'Glasnost'

© Apple TV

For All Mankind starts a new season that’s far too close to the present as it delivers the old standards of pain and victory.
by Jeremy Fogelman

The season opening of the new season of For All Mankind is called “Glasnost” after the real life term for openness and transparency reforms the USSR implemented as it neared the end in the 1980s. Here instead we skip past the implications with a classic season opening montage that teases and gives all sorts of interesting details.

There are still issues on the Moon with jobs, Bill and Hillary Clinton divorce, Al Gore actually wins, Harvey Weinstein is charged with assault, former President Ellen gets married, and Happy Valley on Mars has become a large multinational habitat. As we join our old familiars, we see a gray, older Ed still out there -- and it’s revealed later he has yet to come back to Earth since Karen died.

It’s also clear that the Russian and US people have a fairly friendly back-and-forth rapport, and Ed and Grigori are very close friends (making the tragedy to come more significant). The big “thing” this episode is a large asteroid found in space that could be towed to Mars and is chock full of valuable ores that could help sustain the habitat for years. But back on Earth, Aleida isn’t running things, although she’s still at NASA -- her trauma from the bombing has clearly kept her from truly succeeding.

© Apple TV

Instead we get newcomer to the show Daniel Stern as the new NASA head Hobson, who seems capable enough -- and gets more interesting later on after things go terribly wrong. At that point he wants Danielle to replace Ed as the commander of Happy Valley, but it’s a tough decision since she’s been so happy and settled with her family all these years.

This story is interconnected with another newcomer, a troubled father and offshore rigger named Miles struggling to find work, whose tale we are introduced to -- his money troubles, his complicated home life, and his desperation to help his family. So when we see two ends of the power structure on the ship out at the end of the episode, it’s pretty stark -- the replacement commander Danielle and a potentially troubled bottom tier worker both staring off into space.

© Apple TV

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, and does seem to imply something important important for this Miles character -- exactly what is still up for debate. We also catch up with Margo with her isolated, sad life in the USSR, the most in depth glimpses we’ve had yet in this alternate history -- where it seems regular citizens are pretty happy about how well the economy has been going. Yet there is another mystery coming, a lady who offers a hint of something Margo leaps to take advantage of, because what else can she do?

I can’t really speak too much on the loss of astronauts as usual, even though the show loves to make you care about these people and then kills them off -- Grigory Kuznetsov, as played by Lev Gorn and so great on The Americans, was a wonderful presence and is immediately missed by me and everyone else on the show.

It’s a lot of setup and moving pieces, both in space, and back on Earth in multiple countries and with multiple characters. The show has sometimes struggled with handling too many things, but it’s still as compelling a tale as ever, and it can be difficult not to simply want to watch the next episode even when they’re available. For this show I really do prefer to take my time on it, because the worldbuilding is handled with a lot of care and the characters are well-defined, even when (and especially when) they annoy you. A strong, affecting start to the new season overall.