At the beginning of For All Mankind when the soviets beat the USA to the moon, it made me laugh so hard watching the Americans stewing about it. The rest of the show is boring and mostly sucks.

It's probably the only scene worth watching from the show and to its credit I think its an amazing scene. The build up of dread subverted by a celebration from a history we don't know, it's great. What's not great is realizing that you're not meant to be laughing at all the American characters who are like, kicking dogs over this, but in fact you're meant to identify with them and be angry as well.

They even go out of their way to show you that Mexico is watching and is as excited as they should be. It's only the yankees pissed off. It'd be such an incredible way to reinforce the theme of mankind needing to put their differences aside and contribute to a wider goal together, but unfortunately, the show thinks the americans are the good guys.

When I first heard about it I thought it would be cool. But when I read the description a few months ago I felt it will be quite annoying.

S1 of For All Mankind had a neat idea; I don't think it was explicitly stated, but was a theme. basically it illustrated that not only was there a technological, scientific Space Race which we all hear about as a central motivating idea of post-war USA. But there was also a political, economic Social Competition. The presence of Communist countries created "progressive" pressure in capitalist regions, even when diluted so as to be entirely non-revolutionary.

The USSR wins the space race by landing on the moon first. Shortly thereafter, they go back, this time with a woman. In the world of the show, this is seems to be understood by the global population as openly flaunting the Soviet's superior implementation of egalitarian principals, which are purported to be values under liberalism. The mechanisms are unclear, but somehow, this spurs a social movement which creates pressure directly from the president of the US to enforce sex and racial integration in NASA. The federal government comes to be of the belief that the racial and gender discrimination policies were the cause of its inability to dominate the USSR in technological advancements.

Therefor, it sets about to do affirmative action and implement diversity hiring policies in the early 1960s (at least in NASA). They do better sex-wise than race-wise, which is not very commented upon in the show. But it does sort of show that the motivation is so much following the Soviet example. Because of the alternative history where integration was at least nominally implemented voluntarily, scientific advancement was faster than in the real timeline. So within the boundaries of the show, which take for granted the american exceptionalism, pursuit of military dominance etc as desirable, it does show in a very unusual way how the tension of people living in a different way somewhere else can influence for the better. It wishes for a world where Communism was more powerful, more long-lasting, and where its reach was extended. That's also very unusual.

Unfortunately, when they depicted Soviet culture in the later seasons, it was very stupid and cartoonish. The state tortures all its people, just for fun. The one Soviet engineer who is a returning character, the KGB bring him to a gulag and kick him "in the organs" over and over again specifically to make him have chronic health conditions. From what I understood, this is just to keep him in line because he is so smart. And everything else going into the 80s and 90s is basically like that. It is a society characterized by extreme paranoia, assassinations, incarcerations, blackmail, torture. They seem to have entirely given up on the Social Competition. Actually the motivations of the USSR are not really described much. Just some hunger for power maybe. All the Soviet citizens just seem to be following orders out of fear.

My impression is that this is how the Star City is going to be.

No intention of watching it. For all mankind fell off hard and ramped up the anti communist sentiment with each season. I just knew this would be dog shit.

oh goodie a steaming pile of anticommunism!

Oof. It just keeps pissing me off. I can't stop watching it.

this seems ripe for dubbed fan edits

I kinda liked first season, don't remember what happens on the end of s1 that made meh about continuing with it.