For All Mankind Season 4 – Is It Still Good?

Release Year

I haven't seen a season of For All Mankind for a few years, but now that the new baby arrived my wife and I are digging out some of our old shows. I think I liked the third season, but then again we didn't rush to watch this one. Maybe we should've continued to sleep on it, because I was bored and disinterested most of the way through.

Story

The plot is still interesting, although muddled. The basic premise is that there's a colony on Mars, with some class dynamics and conflict with the contributing nations on Earth. Although there is a lot of potential with this setup, the execution is a resounding "meh".

Spoilers

A lot of the problem with the story is tied into how bad the characters are this season. I didn't care who won out in any of the conflicts, because even the characters that I liked in previous seasons were just annoying this time around. Instead of a cool rebellion in the Mars colony, Ed Baldwin as a grumpy old man and Dev Ayessa, richest man from Earth become the main insurgents. The plot line on Earth is just Margo and Aleida dealing with their own drama, instead of any real Russia – U.S. tension. I didn't look forward to any of it.

Characters / Acting / Dialogue

This was the real weak point of the season. What happened here? Even the returning characters that I liked, I don't like anymore.

Spoilers

What happened here? Danielle, Margo, Dev and Aleida have always been mid to lower-tier characters. Ed used to be a quality conflicted protagonist, but now he's just angry and miserable. Miles and Samantha both have some potential, but get moved out of the way to make room for Ed and Danielle to fight over the station for bad reasons. If I had to TLDR the entire season, it would be "Ed doesn't want to go home, throws tantrum".

Drama / Fun

I was looking for the season to be over pretty quickly, but there's a default level that I enjoy some of the space colony stuff so I'm giving it a somewhat undeserved 12/25 for fun.

Audio / Visual / Other

The old person makeup and costumes are pretty offputting, but the space colony makes up for it. They seem to have a good but not great budget, but I think the rest of the show looks good.

My Score

IMDB Score

8.1

RT Critics

100

RT Audience