Apple TV+’s ‘For All Mankind’ is the Most Nuanced Take on Gender Roles I’ve Ever Seen

For All Mankind doesn’t really lift off until the Apple TV+ show’s third episode. That’s the moment when it leaves any ties to real American history in the dust and imagines an alternate timeline where Richard Nixon demanded women be fast-tracked into the NASA astronaut program. After two episodes watching women be dutiful wives, betrayed wives, and geniuses struggling for respect, we watch them start to soar. As the series goes on, though, we see the constant hurdles women have to overcome, even when a door opens for them. For All Mankind depicts gender roles with a kind of honesty that I just haven’t seen before and for that, I love it.

For All Mankind is a science fiction series that imagines an alternate history where the USSR beat the United States to the moon. This affront to American pride forces a prolonged space race where the US not only is struggling to keep up, but anticipate the Soviets’ next move. When the Soviets stun the US by putting a woman on the moon, it soon becomes clear that America is going to need women in its space program, stat. In Episode 3, “Nixon’s Women,” NASA recruits twenty possible candidates, including two members of the original Mercury 13, a real-life early ’60s program that toyed with the idea of prepping women to be astronauts until it was spiked.

What’s great about this specific arc is it plays with our expectations of women versus what’s often the reality. Too often we’re shown stories where women are either working together for “girl power” reasons or cattily trying to take each other down. The interplay between astronaut candidates Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger), Patty Doyle (Cass Buggé), Tracy Stevens (Sarah Jones), Ellen Waverly (Jodi Balfour), and Dannielle Poole (Krys Marshall) is as nuanced as it is entertaining. Molly and Patty, the Mercury survivors, approach the challenge with an aggressive, cocksure swagger, and a dose of cynicism. Tracy Stevens, an astronaut’s wife obviously picked for PR reasons, is met with jealousy until she proves her worth as a tenacious team player. Dannielle Poole not only has to confront sexism, but racism, and a husband struggling with PTSD. Ellen Waverly seems completely fixated on her goals, to an almost inhuman degree, until it’s revealed that the reason for her hard exterior is she’s hiding the fact she’s a lesbian.

But For All Mankind doesn’t just take care with its flashy female astronauts. Two of the most important characters in Season 1 are Wrenn Schmidt’s Margo Madison and Shantel VanSanten’s Karen Baldwin. Margo is a brilliant engineer who dreams of running NASA. Stopping her? At first her gender, then her brittle personality. Margo doesn’t really come alive until she takes an aspiring engineer, Aleida Rosales (Olivia Trujillo), under her wing, while Karen’s arc as a loyal astronaut’s wife is as tense as it is tragic. Karen takes umbrage when women are let into the program and repeatedly tries to maintain a cool, calm exterior at all costs. Karen is the kind of woman who invests all of herself in supporting her man, even if it’s not a sacrifice he even asked her. Her story is full of pride, jealousy, and ultimately, heartbreak. For All Mankind Season 1 boldly lets a literal Karen be as nuanced as its barrier-breaking female astronauts. And that’s good!

For All Mankind‘s nuanced look at gender roles isn’t excluded to the female sex. Whether we’re getting Ed Baldwin’s (Joel Kinnaman) confused shrug over his wife’s anger over women joining the astronaut core or Gordo Stevens (Michael Dorman) manifesting his own insecurities over a lack of military service by baiting Danielle’s  husband, the men on this show have their own complicated feelings towards their assigned gender roles. One of the best scenes is when Ed and Molly talk about their insecurities in not being good spouses or parents! In fact, my favorite male character may very well be Wayne Cobb (Lenny Jacobson). Molly’s hippie husband is a man ahead of his time: sensitive, intellectual, and fully supportive of his wife’s career in the stars. His only qualm? The stark fear of losing her. In Episode 5, he even pushes Karen to admit her own less-than-perfect fears.

For All Mankind lets its characters be less-than-perfect and that might be why I enjoy it the most. It’s a show about human beings throwing themselves through the wringer to risk their life for science, glory, and the pride of the great USA. One mistake can mean death. The stakes couldn’t be higher for these characters to fit the ideal version of what a man or woman could be. For All Mankind doesn’t just depict the struggle of landing on the moon, but figuring out how to live up to society’s expectations of what a man and — more thrillingly — what a woman should be.

The drama of For All Mankind is not just about whether or not the United States can catch up with the USSR, but if we, as individuals, can overcome the limits placed upon us by society’s gender roles. And sometimes the answer is no.

Where to stream For All Mankind