“First Light,” written by co-showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi, is nothing more than a slow setup. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. FAM‘s premieres tend to do that to catch us up on the show’s alternate reality, but there’s usually some action involved. But as the series lands in 2012, what we get is a whole lot of table-setting. There are updates about the alternate reality that range from JFK Jr. debating a run for president to the fact that there’s an increase in undocumented immigrants on Mars and that Brazil, China, and Pakistan have formed a coalition against the established M-6 treaty (i.e., the U.S., the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, India, North Korea, and Japan). With these details out of the way, “First Light” sets up its new normal. Ed, who was tried in absentia and found guilty for helping incite the riots 10 years ago, has stage three cancer. He can’t even fly an M-SAM anymore, which has got to hurt. He hasn’t told Kelly or his grandchild, Alex (The Summer I Turned Pretty‘s Sean Kaufman). Instead, he’s focused on getting Alex involved in his political agenda.
Ed is still secretly working alongside Helios employee Miles (Toby Kebbell) as part of the Sons & Daughters of Mars group to ensure their demands are met by the government back on Earth, all while the Happy Valley base has expanded to add Domino’s and other restaurants over the past decade, including one run by Ilya (Dimiter D. Marinov). Alex, however, isn’t ready to join yet. Having just graduated from a high school on Mars (alongside three other students), he’s figuring out how to live under the pressure of his family being kickass astronauts and space researchers. In fact, he yearns to go back to Earth and spend his time on beaches, like any normal 18 year old. To take a breather, Alex suits up and rides a bike on the planet’s surface, only to stumble upon a dead body. At first, it’s presumed to be a suicide victim because apparently, a lot of residents have been killing themselves due to depression and isolation. Thanks to a clever security guard, Celia Boyd (Mireille Enos), cops realize that the man was likely murdered. The episode ends with Lee Jung-Gil (C.S. Lee) under arrest for seemingly killing his North Korean comrade.
And with that, news reporters announce that Mars—which now has its own cornfields, by the way—has just had its first murder. A freaking whodunit? I’d like to think the show’s writers are more creative than that, but this is only episode one, so let’s see where this storyline goes and how it affects the U.S.-Soviet relations. For now, the political climate back home is just as chaotic, thanks to POTUS Jim Bragg’s (Randy Oglesby) “Earth comes first” notion. It has sown the seeds of discord not between countries but planets. It’s partly due to the iridium-filled asteroid Goldilocks being in Mars’ orbit, but through this, FAM wants to comment on humanity’s incessant need to topple itself with fighting. It doesn’t matter that people have made enough scientific progress to reside on celestial objects, because we’re always going to be greedy to win over each other. I get what they’re going for thematically, but it takes away from the riveting space stuff that made FAM work so well.
Heck, even Aleida is growing tired of it. She visits Margo—now an old lady with dentures—in prison to talk about not feeling fulfilled despite the personal and professional successes she’s had. At least this mentor-mentee friendship still hits the mark because we’ve followed their journey together from the start. Aleida is fed up with Helios founder Dev Ayasa (Edi Gathegi), who’s working on a sustainable city on Mars called Meru, which can house up to one million people. Has he overpromised on what he can deliver? Aleida thinks so. And how will Meru affect the conditions of those in Happy Valley, because that base’s crew quarters are still looking kind of cramped? “First Light” takes a long time to set up the remaining nine installments. Let’s hope they live up to the awe of the show’s early seasons. Perhaps Helios sending a probe to Saturn’s second-largest moon is a good sign for that.
Stray observations
- • Some other updates in this alternate reality: CIA tortures people on Mars (that tracks), Helios is trying to make a space elevator to make transporting iridium easier, and a company called Uhuru has made realistic robots on Earth. But my personal favorite twists: John Lennon is also alive and has collaborated with Jay-Z on a Grammy-winning album, and a thriving Blockbuster is opening a store on the moon.
- • Where is Danielle Poole?! We’d better get a “Hi, Bob!” moment soon.
- •For All Mankind has spent so long as a historical drama in a way that hearing Beyoncé’s “Run The World (Girls)” as a needle drop was jarring. I miss the nostalgia factor.
- • Ed tells Lee that he’s been married three times. We only know of Karen and Yvonne, so whom did he marry in the years between seasons four and five?
- • Bottoms star Ruby Cruz debuts as Miles’ teen daughter, Lily, who seems more interested in joining the Mars political movement than her crush, Alex. She’s even running around at night in secret to rebel with graffiti art.
- • I screamed “Are you kidding me?” out loud when the Mars crew referred to the rising number of people killing themselves as “pulling a Gordo.” It’s a reminder not just of the incredible season-two finale, but of just how excellent this show once was.
Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club‘s TV critic.
