For All Mankind Season 4 Episode 5 Review: Goldilocks

A rogue asteroid has the potential to change the future of technology on Earth — and the profitability of the Mars colony — forever on For All Mankind, Season 4 Episode 5, “Goldilocks,” but the reason this installment is the season’s best to date is firmly grounded in the show’s past. 

Given the series’ repeated time jumps, Danielle Poole and Ed Baldwin are two of the longest-serving characters on the show. They not only have history together, but it’s something we’ve seen play out between them over episodes and years.

We’ve seen the ups and downs of their bond, the things they were forced to survive together, and how both were changed by them. It’s why every scene between the two feels so rich. And why this episode feels so doubly heartbreaking. 

Things haven’t exactly been going great between Dani and her XO in the weeks since she decided to send Svetlana back to Earth, ostensibly to face trial for punching the guy who called her a whore and causing an accident that nearly killed him. (I am very much on Svetlana’s side in this, sorry show!)

The situation between the Happy Valley leadership is tense, and Ed is unsurprisingly being a huge jerk, pettily pushing back on every one of Dani’s decisions because he’s not suddenly going to become a completely different person who can talk about his feelings four years into this series.

That things finally come to a head between them isn’t surprising, it feels inevitable that the two of them would eventually have to battle this all out. (Of course, this is the week Dani finally finds out about Ed’s hand tremor too.)

And it’s as awful as you might expect, full of real big Mom and Dad are fighting energy. No one can hurt you quite like someone who loves you and knows you well. Both Dani and Ed say some pretty terrible things to each other — though she makes an extremely valid point about the dangers of allowing a man with a tremor to pilot a spaceship! — and it’s all really painful to watch.

What makes For All Mankind so brilliant, though, is that it’s not content just to show us two characters we have all come to care quite a lot about at such emotional odds with one another. It also takes the moment to fill us in on some unseen history, and in doing so, further underlines just how many horrors these two have had to survive together and how many mistakes they have to blame themselves for. 

Intercut between the present-day scenes of Dani and Ed’s argument, we get our first flashbacks to the dark eighteen month period the original Mars crew spent on the Red Planet after getting Kelly safely back to the Phoenix.

To save her and her baby, the group — including Ed, Dani, Kuznetsov, and an exiled Danny Stevens — essentially signed up to spend an extra year and a half trapped, subsisting on reduced rations, and waiting for the day someone in the space program comes back for them. 

We’ve heard little about this period, behind dire hints that Something Bad Happened to Danny during it. And, that’s true, but seeing it play out is somehow even more awful. The crew essentially starves slowly, subsisting on what appears to be an unappealing tin of sludge each day.

(I’d bet it’s the same crap they’re eating below decks at Happy Valley right now.) Danielle schleps regular shipments of rations to Danny’s lonely outpost in the crashed North Korean module, where he seems to be slowly going mad.

That Danny dies on Mars, that Ed and Dani discover his body together, just as they were planning to tell him that they’d run out of food, that they turned down his defeated request to return to Happy Valley, even if it meant he could never leave his bunk. None of these things are surprising.

It’s pretty much what we’d all assumed happened to Danny anyway, and the show leaves it fairly ambiguous as to whether he took his own life in the end or was simply a victim of some accident. But watching Ed and Dani go through it, watching them fade away precisely as this kid they both loved wastes away from loneliness and despair is heartbreaking from every angle. And, of course, it explains so much about why they both are where they are, mentally and in their relationship with each other. Did Dani run from Mars — from NASA — because she blamed herself for Danny’s fate? Does Ed stay there because he does? (He is, after all, the reason Danny was even on that mission in the first place.)

Where they go from here is anyone’s guess — Ed’s not being sent home, he’s just grounded, and will probably end up assigned to a desk the way he probably should have been ages ago. He’ll be miserable, but less miserable than he was on Earth, and given how little screentime we’ve spent with anyone else in Happy Valley leadership, it seems unlikely that Danny will have many other options to turn to when this whole asteroid situation 

As for the rest of the show, the big news is Goldilocks, a rogue asteroid suddenly hurtling toward Mars, that’s packed with so much of a rare and particularly valuable mineral that every country and their government are falling over themselves to get their hands on it. Nicknamed Goldilocks, it’s causing geopolitical awkwardness (an Al Gore gaffe about “discovering’ it doesn’t help the rising tensions with Russia) and a combination of anticipation and unrest among the Happy Valley residents.

The lower deck Helios workers are both eager at the chance to finally earn some of the bonuses they were initially promised. But a few, like Tassey, have been hit by the realization that their employer essentially views them as disposable, so why should she go risk her life for someone who doesn’t care if she lives or dies? Union, anyone?

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• Despite multiple mentions of Svetlana, there is no news on what has ahappened to her since she returned to Earth. Is she on trial in India? Has she been secretly extradited back to the Soviet Union? 
• With Aleida headed to Moscow to discuss the whole asteroid wrangling situation in Dev’s place, next week is when she’s going to find out Margo’s alive, right? Right??
• So, on the surface, the idea of bringing a child to Mars is basically insane, and there is no way Kelly should take her son into space with her. But, on the flip side, I love the prospect that maybe the surviving Baldwins might get a chance to be a family again, and we all know Ed needs her. 
• Kelly’s replaying of her message from Karen made me teary. This show really knows how to carefully deploy all the history it’s built up with us. 

What did you think of this episode of For All Mankind? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of For All Mankind stream Fridays on Apple TV+. 

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