Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for For All Mankind S5E2, “The Hard Six” (written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle and directed by Sarah Boyd)
For All Mankind S5E2 begins with Lee Jung-gil (C.S. Lee) being taken into custody as various residents of Mars look on. They’re all shook up, and Palmer (Myk Watford) tells the crowd they need to disperse, citing some kind of law that’s been enacted since Season 4 about how many people can gather at once.
In general, people seem to like Lee. Beyond the fact that he was the first man on Mars, he has a kind soul. The big problem, though, is that he’s set to be extradited back to Earth in order to stand trial, and I wish that those on his side, like Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), would have focused on this a bit more as an issue of principle, instead of focusing on how they believe Lee to be innocent.
To be clear, I also believe Lee is innocent, but all evidence about his case is on Mars, so the idea of holding a trial on Earth just feels wrong if what we’re after is something like justice. Indeed, the M-6 charter guarantees a hearing on Mars for legal citizens, but apparently, since Lee defected from North Korea after the country was kicked out of what was previously known as the M-7, he isn’t one of those.
I hope that For All Mankind explores immigration issues more as Season 5 proceeds, as the science-fiction lens of Mars might help to elucidate some things closer to home, but as it stands, the status of Craters on Mars is less clear than I would like. To what extent do they have legal status? Give me all the nerdy details!
Regardless, having banged his head against the wall of bureaucracy, Ed decides to bust his friend Jung-gil out of prison. Miles (Toby Kebbell) and some others want nothing to do with this plan, but the remaining group devises a scheme to free Lee when the authorities are transferring him. At least Miles doesn’t rat everyone out, despite the pressure Palmer applies to him earlier in the episode.
Ed and Silvio (Jonathan Medina) end up driving the rover that Lee is shuffled into. They de-pressurize the cabin where Lee is detained, knocking everyone out. And then they drive the thing to an ISN base, because ISN doesn’t have an extradition agreement with the M-6.
Along the way, Silvio gets shot, and when Boyd (Mireille Enos) finds Ed, he’s passed out at the controls. He might be dead, and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if he is. But this is TV, and Ed Baldwin has basically been the main character in For All Mankind from the beginning, so who knows.
Regardless, Lee makes it to the ISN compound, so he’s safe for the moment.
Meanwhile, Boyd has been investigating the murder and discovered that the victim was apparently working for Kuragin on the surface of Mars at night. There are two problems with that: 1) they’re only supposed to employ union workers, and this guy was a Crater; and 2) they aren’t supposed to be doing anything out there at night.
Boyd gets stonewalled by Kuragin about this, but it’s bound to matter to our story as we proceed. We’ve shifted from governments being the main players in space to private companies, and it’s interesting how For All Mankind has suggested this move even within the USSR, which continues to exist in this alternate universe.
I won’t get into the weeds on that, but I will assert how I personally feel that space exploration should only ever be done by governments. Getting the profit motive involved is just bound to muck everything up.
In other news, Walt (Christopher Denham) and his team have discovered signs of life on Titan, but they aren’t entirely sure because of issues with their probes. So, Walt intends to send more probes, while Kelly (Cynthy Wu) insists that the new mission should be a manned one.
Walt says no, but during a spaghetti dinner with Ed and Alex (Sean Kaufman), Kelly realizes she can go over Walt’s head. That works, and the next we see Dev (Edi Gathegi) is approving a manned mission to Titan. Which is cool, even if part of me wanted Kelly to respect the sanctity of the spaghetti dinner.
Over the course of four seasons, For All Mankind has seen many characters die, whether through heroism or catastrophe (or both). I wondered, coming into Season 5, how long Ed could make it, given the time jumps.
We know, at this point, that the series has been renewed for a sixth and final season. That could make sense in terms of how it brings us close to the present. But if Ed dies, we’ll have lost our anchor in this series, and I’m curious where it goes from there.
See you next week.
