It’s the unfortunate reality for every show post-Andor that depicts rebellion: It’s automatically compared to Andor. Sadly — and unfairly, as Andor is gold-standard stuff — “No Sudden Moves” can’t keep up with an episode like the lump-in-your-throat “Who Are You?” from Andor Season 2. But it does have its own bag of big ideas about how revolutions fail, even if its approach makes its politics feel a little lukewarm.
The Sons and Daughters of Mars have taken over MOCC! People are tied up, the governor of Mars got beaten up, comms to everywhere (including the mid-flight Sojourner crew) are down. Now what? It’s clear they have not thought through their plans beyond a physical takeover of the space, which makes for an interesting idea — what happens when righteous anger blinds people to their actual goal? — that bothers me deeply given the roots of the organization. In this season alone, Episode 1 literally included a scene of SDM in an organizing meeting that they’ve been presumably having for a decade, after they orchestrated an asteroid heist (even if Ed and Dev were the main brains behind it). What have they been doing this whole time if not thinking about what they wanted from Earth? What was in their petitions? Sure, the automation news is fresh and shocking enough to incite action, but getting their demands together didn’t need to be like pulling teeth. They can’t be this rudderless without Ed!
Which leads me to Miles (Toby Kebbell) and Boyd (Mireille Enos), the two least charismatic negotiators in Happy Valley who come together — coincidence No. 1 in an episode that overrelies on people running into each other — in the spirit of “everyone calming the fuck down” to deescalate the Marsies’ revolt. (If I had a dollar for every instance in the 49-minute runtime of this episode we were told that they were the only two sensible people on Mars, I would have enough money to buy myself a New York City-priced sandwich.) It is kind of a fun idea, putting the guy who’s been straddling both sides and the gal who’s seen as a troublemaker by her colleagues as the supposed cooler heads in the center of this big mess.
In actuality, their “just chill out” plan is not the most winning strategy, outside of withholding weapons from the trigger-happy MPK and anxious SDM. But as Irina, as a hostage, reminds them: “Without the willingness to follow through on your threat, you have no leverage.” Even after they hand-hold SDM into making demands and threaten to withhold iridium shipments to Earth, using Lenya as the messenger, President Bragg (Randy Oglesby) comes back with a hard no. Mars is cut off from all of Earth’s supplies. However, Lee Jung-Gil (C.S. Lee) has made his way back to Happy Valley; let’s see if he can step into Ed’s shoes of being the one true stabilizing force.
Coral Peña gives the standout performance of the episode — Happy Valley has hugely benefitted from Aleida’s arrival on Mars over these last few episodes — as she breaks through the SDM line to reopen communications with the Sojourner crew as they make their way to Titan. On the other hand, the blossoming romance between Alex (Sean Kaufman) and Lily (Ruby Cruz) drove me absolutely nuts. The two of them getting together was to some degree inevitable, but For All Mankind once again has crammed plot points into spaces where they really don’t belong. The “love flourishes, even in the most trying of times” sentiment comes off as wholly unnecessary and cloying at this exact point in time. At least they can hold hands as they play their small part in cleaning up this Mars mess.
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