Review: For All Mankind, "No Sudden Moves" | Season 5, Episode 6
It sounds (slightly) better when you don't have to watch it?
I’ve been staring at this review for about ten minutes now, writing attempts at a first sentence about “No Sudden Moves” and deleting them. I’m resorting to meta-reflection out of desperation, hoping that it forces me to confront what exactly For All Mankind is doing with its fifth season right now.
The core of my problem is that I think it’s going to seem less bad if I start to write about it, and I’m not sure I want that? This is a profoundly boring episode of television, but it sounds in the abstract like it should be interesting. Mars takes the governor hostage in the MOCC, endangering the entirety of Happy Valley? Peacekeepers are forced to pick sides between the rebels and their corrupt leadership? The respective missions to Titan forced to communicate with each other when their Comm link to Mars disappears? There’s clearly a story here, and you can’t claim that the show isn’t pushing the narrative forward.
I just don’t care about any of it. The governor is a complete non-entity, brought to life perfectly fine by Costa Ronin but to no particular effect as far as the story is concerned. I suppose I’m moderately concerned about the rest of Happy Valley, but once Aleida shows up it takes away any threat of the base actively imploding with employees returning to their stations. The peacekeeper storyline is anchored fine by Mireille Enos, but there was nowhere near enough runway for her to become a meaningful character in the larger narrative, and pairing her with dead end Miles is not helping matters. And while Kelly is—along with Aleida—one of the few characters that still resonate within the narrative, the missions to Titan are such an afterthought that I don’t even necessarily know what’s being threatened.
