Snowflake Challenge: Rec A Thing

Snowflake Challenge #9 is "Rec Us Your Newest Thing." And you guys, I am halfway through For All Mankind and it is really, really great? I haven't fallen this hard for something this fast since...oh, I don't even know. It's been a long time. But to combine this with Snowflake Challenge #10, which is "Five Things!" here are five things I love about this show (so far):

1. THE WOMEN. I probably should not tell you everything I love about all the women, because there are *so many* of them, and they are diverse and complicated and beautiful and sometimes not, and allowed to be right, and then allowed to be wrong. And Wheel of Time does this somewhat, but this is the only other show I know of that allows this many women of all flavors to be this central, and this important. They make the decisions and have the biggest successes and failures and have the most meaning. They save the world. They are the world. And I would follow Margo Madison to the grave.

2. Competence Porn. I was just watching Slow Horses, which is charming enough, but I started to get annoyed at how much our central characters were fuck-ups. It turns out, I just really love watching people be good at things. I love that science and engineering and figuring shit out are at the center of the show, in the way that made me love Sam Carter and Temperance Brennan and all of Leverage and most of Star Trek. This show values smart people, and it lets being smart be good.

3. THE ALT-HISTORY. Possibly I loved this before I loved the rest of it. I'm a US History kid. And like...the subtlety and nuance of all the alt-history is *so* good. It's not just "what happens if the Soviets get to the moon first?" it's also...what happens if Chappaquiddick doesn't happen? What changes and when if women can chart a different trajectory? What happens if Challenger doesn't explode? What happens if Werner von Braun is convicted in a court of public opinion for his crimes? It's so fucking thoughtful about these things. And you end up with this world that looks and feels like ours--or maybe at this point, the one I grew up in--with all these little changes that are fantastic.

4. It's the right level of soapy. This show could take itself very seriously, and it does when it needs to, but it's also got dumb relationship drama and some tropes it shouldn't bother with and some amazing music choices, all of which reminds you this is entertainment. It's silly when it could turn serious, and it's over the top in just the right way. It's got some great ships, both canon and not, and for that I am already staying up too late reading fic, and I have already promised runawaynun a story. (This will take a year, it's fine.)

5. It's hopeful. I hate Ron Moore for many, many things--some of which are still present on the show, if perhaps moderated by twenty years of time and changes in media trends and what we're conditioned to find attractive in the obligatory manpainy white dude--but you can't say he doesn't know how to land that Trek mix of awe and belief in a better future and straight-up optimism in the face of danger. This show kills characters you love and makes you want to punch a couple others--and I'm not done, but I am spoiled, so you know. But regardless, it places human progress and peace and hope for the future smack in the center, and that will always be the thing that gets me, hook, line, and sinker.

And no, it isn't perfect. But nothing is, not even the shows I love like I think I'm going to love this one. You are required to put up with the obligatory mainpainy white dude. The cast is too large and no one gets the time they need. The first season is incredibly tight, but the next one is less so. There are stupid side plots.

But I don't ask my media to be perfect. I just want it to be all of the things this is, so far. Hat tip to runawaynun for pestering vaguely through Tumblr posts for a year to get me to watch this show. Anything that happens next is all her fault.